ICAAL 11 (2023): Online

The 11th International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics (ICAAL11) was hosted by Chiang Mai University (Thailand) October 26-27, 2023. The conference was held entirely online, via Zoom. Special thanks to Mathias Jenny for organizing this productive meeting.


Links to ICAAL 11 slideshows & handouts

Please visit our dedicated page for ICAAL 11 Slideshows & Handouts, to access materials attached to talks given at the conference.


Summary of ICAAL 11:

The meeting began with a moving video tribute to Gérard Diffloth, who sadly passed away in August 2023 (thank you to Uma Pappuswami for organizing this video, which is embedded below). Thereafter, some 26 presentations were delivered on a variety of Austroasiatic-related topics.


In the business meeting, an offer for hosting an in-person ICAAL 12 meeting at Payap University (Chiang Mai, Thailand) in late October 2024 was accepted. Ryan Gehrmann will be organizing the meeting. This will be the first in-person ICAAL since ICAAL 8 in 2019, which was also held in Chiang Mai at Chiang Mai University, and we are looking forward to brining people together once again next year.

In lieu of a proceedings volume, we have resolved to produce an edited volume for the memory of Gérard Diffloth. This will be a hardback paper book published by a mainstream publisher (this is currently being negotiated). There will be several editors but Paul Sidwell will take the initiative in the first place. If you would like to have your conference paper write-up included in the volume please let Paul know ASAP ([email protected]). Other scholars are invited to contribute, please consider this an open call and pass on to anyone who might be interested.

(If you would prefer to have your conference paper published in a journal, we recommend JSEALS as the primary output for Austroasiatic-related papers. See sites.google.com/site/sealsjournal).)

Finally, we have also resolved to launch a new ICAAL project here on icaal.net. This will be a collaborative project to support proto-Austroasiatic lexical and phonological reconstruction, and will begin with the online publication of a draft proto-Austroasiatic lexicon and select supporting data. This is being prepared by Paul Sidwell and Mark Alves and will include numbered reference etymologies and proto-Austroastiatic lexical reconstructions. This resource will supersede the Shorto MKCD lexicon that is currently relied upon by concerned scholars, but is rather outdated nowadays. It will appear in early 2024, and a circular will be issued at that time.


The minutes of the ICAAL 11 business meeting are embedded below.


The ICAAL 11 conference program is embedded below, and links to the presentations will be supplied here in due course.


Gregory D. S. Anderson, Luke Horo:
Towards a typology of focus in Munda languages

Bikram Jora:
The semantics and morphology of applicatives and valence-related phenomena in Mundari

Zoya Khalid:
Connectives in Asur: A North Munda Language

Gamidalah War:
Copular in Pnar

Gordon D. Dkhar:
Tamabil: Exploring the Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Dynamics of the Khasis

Uma Pappuswamy, Sujoy Sarkar, Aleendra Brahma, S.Sulochana Singha, Gamidalah War, Vidyarati Joshi And Debika D. Sangma:
Unveiling Lyngngam Phonology within the Mon-Khmer Context

Mayumi Adachi:
The function of thế in Vietnamese conversation

Wenjiu Du:
Motion serialization in Vietnamese: A verbal semantic typology

Nguyen Ngoc Binh:
Socio Cultural Perspectives in Vietnamese Rice Expressions

Bui Duy Duong:
A linguistic heritage in the 17th century

Dinh Kieu Chau:
Language and Social Marketing in Vietnam (The case study of content marketing for Hoa Lo Prison Relic)

Do Hong Duong:
Effectiveness and limitations of measures supporting the development of the Vietnamese language as a heritage language in Japan and South Korea

Quỳnh-Giang Đặng, Hsu-Te Cheng:
On Tự in Vietnamese: A Quantifier Floating Analysis

Ryan Gehrmann:
The Historical Phonology of Mang, an Endangered Austroasiatic Language of China and Vietnam

Albert Badosa Roldós:
The phonology of Malieng, a Vietic language of Vietnam, in a panchronic perspective

Vatho Chem:
Phonetic reduction of Central Khmer

Mark Alves:
Loanwords in Shorto’s Austroasiatic Reconstructions

Roger Blench:
Reconstructing the culture of Proto-Austroasiatic speakers

Paul Sidwell:
How to reconstruct the Proto-Austroasiatic Vowels

Nathaniel Hiroz:
Proto-Khmuic phonation contrasts and beyond: the return of “Proto-Austroasiatic creaky voice”

Mathias Jenny et al.:
Grammatical tones in Htanaw

Nathan Badenoch:
Elevation, distance, and expressivity in Bit spatial deixis

Rachel Weymuth:
Negation in Rumai, Palaung

Irina Samarina:
Syntactic “Splitting” and Syntactic “Interlacings” in Isolating Languages of the Southeast Asia

Robertus Pujo Leksono, Thanattha Jantem, Trinh Hai Van:
A Comparative Analysis of Plant Idioms in Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian Languages

Phương Nguyễn Hoàng:
Applying Interactive Perspectives into Teaching Vietnamese Listening Comprehension to Foreigners