Riang-Lang vocabulary: compiled from the materials collected by G. H. Luce

Abstract

This is a facsimile edition of the Riang-Lang vocabulary prepared by late Prof. Harry Shorto in 1964, and which had until now only circulated privately as rather poor quality photocopies. Prof. Shorto complied the vocabulary in the context of preparing the first draft of his A Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary (posthumously published in 2006 by Pacific Linguistics), by compiling and analyzing data from the extensive notes of Gordon H. Luce (now archived in the manuscript collection of the Australian National Library). Luce’s notes were in turn based on his own field work in Burma and on the (now lost) substantial index card compilation of Prof. Otto Blagden, who preceded both Shorto and Luce at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African studies. The entries in this Riang-Lang are written in Shorto’s phonemic transcription, they are glossed in English, and are richly augmented with etymological commentary that includes citations from Shan, Burmese, many Austroasiatic languages, and Shorto’s preliminary Proto-Mon-Khmer reconstruction. The present word list was found among boxes kept by his daughter Anna, which she kindly donated to the present series editor (Sidwell) for the purposes of publication and archiving. The images were created by scanning the original pages at 200 DPI in greyscale