MA Nathaniel Hiroz

Research Profile

Historical Linguistics, Austroasiatic languages, languages of Southeast Asia, Gallo-Romance 

PhD Project: Towards Proto-Khmuic: Investigations in Khmuic Historical Phonology 

The Khmuic languages of Northern Laos and adjacent areas in Thailand, Vietnam and China, constitute a relatively little-researched branch of the Austroasiatic language family. With the exception of Khmu, spoken by over half a million people and studied in some detail, Khmuic languages are spoken by small communities, some numbering only a few hundred speakers or, in the case of Iduh, less than a hundred. All of these smaller languages are endangered to some degree, and little published research has dealt with them. 

My PhD dissertation aims to provide a first account of Khmuic linguistic history, based on primary data that I am collecting in Laos and Thailand as well as published sources. For many of the varieties included in my investigations, this is the first time that they will be documented and described in print. There is urgency to work on these languages, since besides being poorly described, if at all, several of them are well on their way to extinction. 

As there are strong indications that Khmuic is an old and phonologically quite conservative branch of Austroasiatic, with important internal diversity, research on Khmuic historical phonology can be expected to contribute significantly to our understanding of Austroasiatic linguistic history more generally. 

Other research interests and projects 

Besides the thesis, I am preparing two grammars of the Khmuic languages Prai and Mal, respectively, as well as investigating questions of Austroasiatic Historical Linguistics beyond the Khmuic branch. In addition to this, I maintain a strong interest in Gallo-Romance Comparative Linguistics and Philology, a field of study in which I was trained and have worked before starting my PhD.