Detailed information on the Thai writing system can be
found in several books (Haas, 1980; Higbie and Thinsan,
2002). In this subsection, we review some important characteristics
of written Thai in order to lay the foundation
for explanations of research presented in the rest of this
paper. Thai is a tonal language, like Chinese, and is represented
in text form with the Thai alphabet. This native
alphabet comprises 44 consonants, 15 basic vowels, and 4
additional tone markers. Text is written horizontally, from
left to right, with no intervening spaces, to form syllables,
words, and sentences. Vowels are written above, below,
before, or after the consonant they modify, however the
consonant is always pronounced first when the syllable is
spoken. The vowel characters (and a limited number of
consonants) can be combined in various ways to produce
numerous compound vowels such as diphthongs.
The grammar of the Thai language is considerably
simpler than the grammar of most Western languages,
and for many foreigners learning Thai, this compensates
for the additional difficulty of learning tones. It is a ‘‘Subject
+ Verb + Object’’ language with no definite or indefi-
nite article, no verb conjugation, no noun declension, and
no object pronouns. Most significantly, words are not
modified or conjugated for tense, number, gender, or
subject-verb agreement. Articles such as English ‘‘a’’,
‘‘an’’, or ‘‘the’’ are not used. Tenses, levels of politeness,
and verb-to-noun conversion are accomplished by the
simple addition of various modifying words (called ‘‘particles’’)
to the basic subject-verb-object format. One of the
major problems for Thai language processing is a lack of
word boundaries and explicit sentence markers. White
space can be used as sentence, phrase, and word boundaries
without strict rules. An analogous example in English
is the word ‘‘GODISNOWHERE’’, which can be perceived
as ‘‘GOD IS NO WHERE’’, ‘‘GOD IS NOWHERE’’, or
‘‘GOD IS NOW HERE’’ depending on the context.
Detailed information on the Thai writing system can befound in several books (Haas, 1980; Higbie and Thinsan,2002). In this subsection, we review some important characteristicsof written Thai in order to lay the foundationfor explanations of research presented in the rest of thispaper. Thai is a tonal language, like Chinese, and is representedin text form with the Thai alphabet. This nativealphabet comprises 44 consonants, 15 basic vowels, and 4additional tone markers. Text is written horizontally, fromleft to right, with no intervening spaces, to form syllables,words, and sentences. Vowels are written above, below,before, or after the consonant they modify, however theconsonant is always pronounced first when the syllable isspoken. The vowel characters (and a limited number ofconsonants) can be combined in various ways to producenumerous compound vowels such as diphthongs.The grammar of the Thai language is considerablysimpler than the grammar of most Western languages,and for many foreigners learning Thai, this compensatesfor the additional difficulty of learning tones. It is a ‘‘Subject+ Verb + Object’’ language with no definite or indefi-nite article, no verb conjugation, no noun declension, andno object pronouns. Most significantly, words are notmodified or conjugated for tense, number, gender, orsubject-verb agreement. Articles such as English ‘‘a’’,‘‘an’’, or ‘‘the’’ are not used. Tenses, levels of politeness,and verb-to-noun conversion are accomplished by thesimple addition of various modifying words (called ‘‘particles’’)to the basic subject-verb-object format. One of themajor problems for Thai language processing is a lack ofword boundaries and explicit sentence markers. Whitespace can be used as sentence, phrase, and word boundarieswithout strict rules. An analogous example in Englishis the word ‘‘GODISNOWHERE’’, which can be perceivedas ‘‘GOD IS NO WHERE’’, ‘‘GOD IS NOWHERE’’, or‘‘GOD IS NOW HERE’’ depending on the context.
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