A Reference Grammar of Thai (Reference Grammars) [Hardcover]

Shoichi Iwasaki (Author), Preeya Ingkaphirom (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521650852 | ISBN-13: 978-0521650854 | Publication Date: April 25, 2005

A Reference Grammar of Thai provides a clear, detailed and comprehensive guide to Thai grammar, designed for intermediate to advanced learners. Written by two leading experts on Thai, it places a special emphasis on functional accounts of its grammatical phenomena: the use of demonstratives, personal reference terms, the modality system, the aspectual system, pragmatic particles, verb serialisation, relative clauses, question formation, passive and causative constructions, topic marking and many more. Unlike any other book on Thai grammar, it draws on data from everyday spoken discourses such as informal conversation, group discussions, interviews and narratives, as well as non-technical written texts such as folk tales, short stories and newspaper articles, to discuss grammatical phenomena at both sentence and discourse level. An extensive index is provided and examples are given in both Thai orthography and IPA symbols, making this an invaluable resource for linguists as well as students and teachers of Thai.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

A Reference Grammar of Thai provides a clear and comprehensive guide to Thai grammar, designed for intermediate to advanced learners. Unlike any other book on Thai grammar, it examines data from everyday spoken discourses as well as non-technical written texts. An invaluable resource for linguists, students and teachers of Thai.

About the Author

Shoichi Iwasaki is Professor of Asian languages and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Preeya Ingkaphirom is formerly Professor of the International Students Exchange Center, Tokyo Gakugei University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 418 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (April 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521650852
• ISBN-13: 978-0521650854
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,233,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Thai

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended text for advanced students and linguists, August 31, 2005

By 

Neil Muir (Thailand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Reference Grammar of Thai (Reference Grammars) (Hardcover)

This volume is probably unique in its field : providing a comprehensive view of Thai grammar in the context of real-life language use in Thailand (so called "functional grammar").

In my opinion, the book will provide most value to :
- linguists wanting to understanding the grammar of the Thai language. In particular the book expresses many of its ideas in the standard terminology of linguists ; it refers to recent developments in functional linguistics using Thai as a test case ; use of IPA-based phonetic symbols
- advanced students of the Thai language who want a deeper understanding of the structure and grammar of the language. In addition, this audience will learn a great deal about linguistic analysis, as most of the linguistic terminology is carefully defined at the start of each section.

For those of you reading this review who are looking for a book that will help you to learn the Thai language from scratch, this book is not for you yet. A new student of Thai looking for an introduction to basic Thai grammar would be better served by Higbie's book of a similar title.

I can highly recommend this unique and scholarly work, to linguists wanting to understand Thai grammar, or to advanced Thai students wanting a better understanding of Thai grammar, from the viewpoint of how the language is used.

This is the most scholarly and complete work I have seen on this subject and reflects an enormous amount of work undertaken by the authors. This book will surely become the standard text on this subject.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And then there were three!, May 28, 2009

By 

Geoff Puterbaugh (Chiang Mai, T. Suthep, A. Muang Thailand) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Reference Grammar of Thai (Reference Grammars) (Paperback)

There are now THREE very good Thai grammars available. David Smyth's book Thai: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Grammars) and the Higbie/Thinsan book Thai Reference Grammar were apparently the first two out of the gate, and now we have a third, which first appeared as a hardback in 2005.

This is probably not a book for beginners, BUT this judgement may depend on the type of "beginner" we are talking about. I think that once you have started learning to read Thai --- or even before --- you may find this book extremely useful. And, in an important way, it's useful aside from the grammatical explanations.

As a comparison: that old classic, William Kuo's Teaching Grammar of Thai had a lot of good grammar, but I came to love it because it presented ONLY Thai script and was fantastic handwriting practice. In a similar way, I appreciate that this is the first truly modern Thai grammar, but even more I love it because it presents hundreds and hundreds of examples of real Thai speech! Where else, for example, can you find a Thai saying, "Well, the electricity was almost unusable, or something like that..." "Or something like that?" How do you say THAT in Thai?

So, if you can read Thai in transliteration (and I give this book additional high marks for a transliteration system which is Haas-based and does not have to be learned!!), you may want to start leafing through this book in the early stages of learning the language. It will instantly take you way beyond the "sawatdii khrap" stages, and lead you into things like, "I don't THINK he was here, but I'm not quite sure..."

This book is FUN!

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Revised review: I am revising this review simply to state that I think this is the best of the three. Especially in the field of particles, it absolutely dusts the competition.