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SIL and TAP presentations at SEALS 2013

(May 2013) The 23rd Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) is being hosted by the Department of Linguistics at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, 29-31 May. As one of the most significant linguistic conferences focused on Asian languages, SEALS draws Southeast Asia-focused academics, researchers and language development workers from around the world. The conference has been held annually for the past twenty-three years, hosted alternately in Asia and in a country outside Asia.

SEALS features presentations on a wide variety of topics related to Southeast Asian languages, such as those in the Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Tibeto-Burman and Tai-Kadai language families. SIL linguists presenting research at SEALS 2013 include:

  • Beau Cooper and Lisa Cooper: “Three-way contrastive voiceless plosives in Burmese”

            and “The case for an IPA symbol for the dental plosive: The example of Modern Burmese”

  • Ellie Hall: “An analysis of Muak Sa-aak tone”


Two staff members of Translators Association of the Philippines (TAP) will also present research. SIL partners with TAP in documenting Philippine languages.

  • Levi Cruz: “Basic oral language documentation in the Philippine context”
  • Ryn Jean Fe Gonzales: “Dialect perception and language development in Pasil, Kalinga”


Conference participants will have the opportunity to participate in two plenary sessions focused on current issues in Southeast Asian linguistics: “Linguistic Fieldwork in a Changing Southeast Asia” and “Going beyond history: Re-assessing genetic groupings in SEA.”

After the conference, a selection of presentation materials will be posted on the website of the SEALS journal, JSEALS.

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