Research on the Dialects of Myanmar

This book provides a detailed description and a cross-dialectal comparison of the major dialects of Myanmar. The fieldwork was carried outunder very difficult conditionsin Myanmar, which makes this material all the more valuable. Chapter 1 provides phonological and grammatical sketches of 8 major Burmese dialects, while Chapter 2 describes in detail the particular features of theirrepertoireof initial consonants, rhymes, and tones and remarks on their systems of particles. The Appendices are devoted to detailed lexicons of the dialects, largely based on the first author's personal fieldwork. Each dialect is exemplifiedwithapproximately 1800 forms. Comprising by far the largest corpora of such data ever assembled in one place, the research on tonal systems presented in this book contributes significantlyto the tone studyof the world's languages.