Abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to compare the tone system and the phonetic claracteristics of tones in the Southern Thai dialect of Samui island spoken by two groups of speakers-the older groups (60-70 years old) and the younger group (10-20 years old)-in the seven tambons of Samui island in Suratthani province i.e. Lipa Noi, Taling Ngam, Ang Thong, Maret, Na Muang, Bo Phut, and Mae Nam. The researcher asked a number of people in each tambon to select a village were its inflabitants still speak the original dialect of Samui isliand. The village that received the highest number of votes was selected as the study location for that tambon. At each location six informants -3 per age group-were interviewed. There are altogether 42 informants in this study. 15 test words, all of which are monosyllabie, were used-9 live syllables khaaA1, taaA23, thaaA4, khaaB1, paaB23, thaaB4, phaaCl, paaC23, and thaaC4, 3 long checked syllabls khaatDLI, patDL23, thaappL4, and 3 short checked syllables: khatDS1, patDS23, and thapDS4 They were chosen as representatives of the words that appear in the tone box (William J. Gedney. 1972) A wordlist consisting of 10 tokens of each word was compiled. No two tokens of the same word appear together in the list. Pictures were shown to elicit these words and recording was made. The data were analyzed auditorily to obtain the tone system of eact informant. The phonetic characteristics of the tones were analyzed acoustically using Praat version 4.4.13 and Microsoft Excel version 5. 1 was used to produce line graphs. The study shows that the tone system of the Southern Thai dialect of Samui island is the same for both age groups in all of the tambons. it consists of 6 tones. The phonetic characteristic of each tone is similar in all speakers. It can be concluded that the tone system and the phonetic characteristics of a tons of every tambon of the Southern Thai dialect of Samui island do not vary either by age group or by location.