This chapter gives an introductory overview of the patterns of reference and nominal syntax in the languages of mainland Southeast Asia. The chapter begins with the principles by which head nouns are modified, for example by adjectives or relative clauses, or in possessive constructions. Many languages of the area have systems of nominal classification, especially numeral classifiers and class terms. Personal pronoun systems range from extremely simple, such as in certain varieties of Chinese, to extremely complex, such as in the systems of Thai, Burmese, or Cambodian, whose systems of pronouns show elaborate distinctions in social-hierarchical structure and politeness. Demonstrative systems of the area span the range of complexity, ranging from two-term systems to systems with eight or more distinctions.

This chapter provides an introductory overview of the phonological systems used in the languages of mainland Southeast Asia. The chapter begins with an overview of the various systems of consonants and vowels that are found, and the phonotactic principles by which those segments are combined to form syllables. The closely-related phenomena of register and tone are then introduced and defined, followed by an outline of the processes of tonogenesis, by which a language can develop a tone system. The chapter closes with a discussion of further aspects of the area’s sound systems, including tone sandhi, intonation, the prosodic hierarchy and criteria for different notions of ‘word’.

This chapter gives an introductory overview of the strategies for forming words in the languages of mainland Southeast Asia. The chapter begins with a discussion of the form class distinctions that are found, including the categories of noun, verb, adjective, adposition, and adverb. Of the various processes for forming words, the chapter focuses on compounding and reduplication, which are relied upon widely in languages of the area, and affixation, which is a speciality of Austroasiatic languages in particular. The chapter features a section on the uses of tone in word formation, a feature of Hmong-Mien languages. Psycho-collocations are discussed: an area-wide form of compounding involving the mention of body parts to denote emotional and psychological states.

This chapter outlines the complex historical processes that have shaped the present-day distribution of communities and ethnic groups across mainland Southeast Asia. The chapter first introduces some general information about the region, the languages, and some conceptual preliminaries for the book. A historical account then traces developments since prehistory through the emergence of early states in the first millennium of the Common Era, followed by the rise of new states associated with migrations from the north, into the modern colonial and postcolonial era. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the area’s politically dominant languages and a survey of the state of the art in linguistic research.

This concludes our survey of the historical context and structural properties of the languages of mainland Southeast Asia. For a full picture of language in this area, a companion volume to this one would cover the sociology and anthropology of the languages and their speakers, with topics including multilingualism, registers and diglossia, language variation, ideologies of language, language shift and loss, language and identity, verbal art, naming practices, and much more. For now, we close with three points intended to offer some perspective on the picture of MSEA languages and their status that we have outlined in this book. The first point concerns the languages’ status in a global typology of language. The other two highlight the need for a nuanced understanding of the social context in which this dynamic area’s languages have diversified, and continue to develop.

This chapter gives an introductory overview of the basic typological properties of the languages of mainland Southeast Asia, including the morphological profile, and the relative position of major components of phrases, including clauses, noun phrases, adpositional phrases, and comparative constructions. The chapter discusses sentence type distinctions, with a special focus on sentence-final particles, which are found across the mainland Southeast Asia area. The chapter features a section on expressive language, including expressives/ideophones and poetic idioms.

The concluding chapter will first draw together the empirical findings and return to the five uses of English in Asia identified by Kachru and which were discussed in the Introduction. English is developing new domains of use and an increasing number of Asians are becoming highly proficient speakers of English and are shaping English to their own uses and cultures, allowing them to develop a sense of ownership of the language. English is now an Asian language, both in and of Asia. This conclusion comes with no sense of triumphalism. On the contrary, the chapter will conclude with the prediction that, unless regional governments develop holistic and coherent language education polices, it is likely that English will continue to increase its range at the expense of local and regional languages. It will be reiterated that delaying the introduction of English will result in a win-win solution through which students can graduate from secondary school, proficient in English and fluent and literate in their respective national language and their home language. As a language of Asia, English does not need to replace Asian languages.

Chapter 2 introduces the ACE, a corpus of naturally occurring English as spoken as a lingua franca by Asian multilinguals, in a wide range of speech events: interviews; press conferences; service encounters; seminar discussions; working group discussions; workshop discussions; meetings; panels; question-and-answer sessions; and conversations, categorized under five major settings: education (25%), leisure (10%), professional business (20%), professional organisation (35%), and professional research/science (10%). ACE was collected to act as a complementary corpus to the VOICE, a corpus of naturally occurring English used as a lingua franca in primarily European settings. ACE data have been tagged following the transcription conventions originally developed by the VOICE project team. Users can browse the corpus data according to the five settings or according to the various data collection sites. A Web concordancer has been developed which allows users to search any word/phrase in ACE, and collocation information of the search word/phrase will be illustrated. Researchers and teachers/learners can explore the ACE data for various research and pedagogical purposes.