Abstract:
The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the division of Kharomuang into regional varieties on the basis of the distribution of vocabulary. The area involved covers 8 provinces in the North of Thailand. In the pilot study semantic units which are represented by different lexical items in the speech of fourteen speakers from seven provinces were selected for use in the questionnaire. The area under investigation was divided into sub-areas of equal size on the basis of the grid system of the map produced by the Royal Thai Army Survey Department with, the scale of 1:250,000. The method of random sampling was used in the selection of a village to represent each sub-area. The questionnaire was sent by post to the head master of the village school. Out of the one hundred and twenty five sub-areas, 90 percent returned the questionnaire. The words obtained for each semantic unit were analyzed to find out the lexical items representing each unit. The distribution of the lexical items for each semantic unit is shown on a map and an isogloss is drawn to mark the boundary of lexical areas. Of the sixty-three maps, four do not contain any isogloss and seven contain insignificant isogloss whereas fifty-two contain significant isoglosses. Forty-four of the fifty-two maps contain bundles of isoglosses which run from the north to the south of the area under investigation dividing if .into areas. It is possible to conclude from these that there are two main sub-dialects of Khamnruang: Western Khammuang and Eastern Khamnruang. In addition, a ratio of the lexical items in Western Kharn- maang and Eastern Khammuang used in each locality was used to locate the boundary between the two regional varieties. The result shows that Western Khasnrruang is spoken in Maehongson, Chiengmai, Lamphun and Chiengrai and Eastern. Khammuang is spoken in Lampang, Phayao, Phrae and Han. The linguistic boundary runs close to the provincial boundary separating Lampang and Lamphun, Lampang and Chiengmai, and Chiengrai and Phayao. A further investigation shows that this linguistic boundary may be explained by the history and geography of the area.