A PHONEMIC ANALYSIS OF THE UNWRITTEN LANGUAGE OF THE PULANG TRIBE

The purpose of this study was to create letters for of nonliterary Pulang tribe in Thailand those who immigrant from China. illiterate Pulang tribe hand down their tradition by primary oral culture therefore their tradition can't initiate and keep, moreover, it may disappear throughout history. So it is expected to crusade against unlettered people. The scheme of research adopted in this study was a minority race who habitate at the northern Machan, Chiangrai in Thailand. It is not only analysis of language but also the eradication of literacy and the research based on linguistic, ethnolinguistic, and primary oral culture. Five Pulang people who live in that area were chosen for creating letters. By using the I. P. A., after each word was listen to their pronunciation one by one it was described and repeated this process several times; the material words and humanbody were pointed in front of them while other words were described by gesture. For final description, number of people were in the lineup for listening the sound of words and phrases to sentences. In the first stage, it was an analysis segmental of Pulang: vocoid, contoid and diphthong were described with each sample syllables and words. The suprasegmental were studied with intonation and juncture of the words in the second stage. Two words were compared and different meanings within their intonation and juncture were shown. At the end of this part, each case of phonemic or morphophonemics representation described the juncture in the words. In the third stage, minimal pairs were analyzed with vowels and consonants and described in free variation based on words. In the last stage, syllable structure in open syllable and closed syllable was studied and then each syllable of its structure was analyzed with samples. There were thirty-two phonemes in apong Pulang as follows: seven vocoids; a, i, e, o, u, ${\ae}$, and $\wedge$, one diphthong; wu, 24 contoids; b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, k, 1, m, n, ${\eta}, {\;}p^{h}$, p, p, r, s, s, sh, t, t, w, and y. Their pronunciations of p, s, d, $p^{h}$, j, and t are frequently used in speech and are unique in triphthong. Moreover, most of the words used initial and final consonant cluster.