Sociohistorical Linguistics in Southeast Asia: New Horizons for Tibeto-Burman Studies in Honor of David Bradley

Sociohistorical Linguistics in Southeast Asia blends insights from sociolinguistics, descriptive linguistics and historical-comparative linguistics to shed new light on regional Tibeto-Burman language varieties and their relationships across spatial, temporal and cultural differences. The approach is inspired by leading Tibeto-Burmanist, David Bradley, to whom the book is dedicated.
The volume includes twelve original research essays written by eleven Tibeto-Burmanists drawing on first-hand field research in five countries to explore Tibeto-Burman languages descended from seven internal sub-branches. Following two introductory chapters, each contribution is focused on a specific Tibeto-Burman language or sub-branch, collectively contributing to the literature on language identification, language documentation, typological analysis, historical-comparative classification, linguistic theory, and language endangerment research with new analyses, state-of-the-art summaries and contemporary applications.

Picus Sizhi Ding, Ph.D. (1998), Australian National University, has researched Tibeto-Burman languages for two decades. His publications focus on less-studied languages of China, including minority languages and Chinese topolects such as Southern Min and Cantonese.
Jamin Pelkey, Ph.D. (2009), La Trobe University, is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University, Toronto. His research explores semiotic dimensions of historical, cognitive and anthropological linguistics. His book Dialectology as Dialectic (DeGruyter, 2011) defines the Phula languages of China.