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|states=Peninsular [[Malaysia]]
|states=Peninsular [[Malaysia]]
|ethnicity=42,000 [[Semai people]] (2008)<ref>{{e18|sea}}</ref>
|ethnicity=42,000 [[Semai people]] (2008)<ref>{{e18|sea}}</ref>
|speakers=2,000
|speakers=?<!--no speaker numbers in the Ethnologue18-->
|familycolor=Austro-Asiatic
|familycolor=Austro-Asiatic
|fam2=[[Aslian languages|Aslian]]
|fam2=[[Aslian languages|Aslian]]

Revision as of 04:31, 12 June 2016

Semai
Native toPeninsular Malaysia
Ethnicity42,000 Semai people (2008)[1]
Native speakers
2,000
Language codes
ISO 639-3sea
Glottologsema1266
ELPSemai

Semai is a Mon–Khmer language of Western Malaysia spoken by about 44,000 Semai people. It is perhaps the only Aslian language which is not endangered, and even has 2,000 monolingual speakers.

One notable aspect of Semai phonology is its highly irregular pattern of expressive reduplication, showing discontiguous copying from just the edges of the reduplicant's base, thus forming a minor syllable.

References

  1. ^ Semai language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

Further reading

  • Diffloth, Gerard. 1976a. Minor-Syllable Vocalism in Senoic Languages. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, 229-247. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
  • Diffloth, Gerard. 1976b. Expressives in Semai. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, 249-264. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
  • Hendricks, Sean. 2001. Bare-Consonant Reduplication Without Prosodic Templates: Expressive Reduplication in Semai. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 10: 287-306.

External links