This project continues the preparation of a linguistic database of the languages of the minority peoples living in the Vietnam-China Borderlands, with special reference to phonological and lexical features of groups who have migrated from China into Vietnam. This project is significant because it addresses historical and migratory questions about the arrival of the Tai and Kadai, Hmong-Mien, and Tibeto-Burman groups in northern Vietnam (Haut Tonkin). Brethren of these peoples were to become the nation states of Thailand, Laos, and Burma (Myanmar). Northern Vietnam has served for centuries as a first station on a grand Volkerwanderung of many ethnic groups from their original homelands in South China to sites further south; indeed 25 out of 30 of northern Vietnam's minority groups are also found in China. The Thai end of this chain has been studied in some depth by Thai and foreign scholars over the course of the last 35 years. To a lesser degree, the Chinese end has been investigated by many since 1982. The middle portion, however, "the Vietnam connection", has remained linguistically poorly known up to now. The data gathering process of the project will involve making high quality tape and DAT recordings with microphones, performing computerized speech analysis with the CECIL software-hardware package, and studying voice quality (phonation type) by means of the Rothenburg Mask. The end product of this study will be: (a) a CD-ROM with digital audio files of all recorded lexical data readable by both DOS and Mac platforms, (b) a website at http:\ling.uta.edu where all this audio data, transcribed forms in MS Excel format, and analyses can be downloaded from any location worldwide, and (c) a third volume in the series of books Comparative Kadai to complement the first two volumes on Tai and Kam-Sui languages.
