The purpose of this study is to investigate the particles of the Lahu, Akha, and Korean languages, and to find out if there is a consanguinity or at least kinship relation among them. For several years(1992.1-1995.2) I have visited the northern pars o...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the particles of the Lahu, Akha, and Korean languages, and to find out if there is a consanguinity or at least kinship relation among them. For several years(1992.1-1995.2) I have visited the northern pars of the Kingdom of Thailand, and tried to make contacts with the hilltribe peoples living in the high mountains, especially of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai Provinces. Finally I have obtained the linguistic data necessary for the comparative analysis of grammatical relations of the three languages and the distributions, mon specifically, varieties and functions of the particles of Lahu end Akha languages.
Among the major characteristics of the two hilltribe languages which correspond to those of the Korean language are SOV word order, the existence of particles, various sentence endings, verbal and adjectival inflections, and adjectival predicates. The Particle Chart and The Swardesh Chart will show the relationship among the languages concerned.
Through the facts examined, it might be argued that the Lahu language is most closely connected with Korean, and Akha is a next kin, among all the languages in the world.