Debi Jaratjarungkiat
Chulalongkorn University
In Thai Language textbooks, such as Phraya Uppakitsilpasarn’s Lak Pasa Thai and Professor Dr. Khun Banchob Bandhumedha’s Laksana Pasa Thai, the conjunction is a word that links words or massages to form a discourse. The definitions of these words show that the important function of the conjunction is to represent the continuous thinking of the discourse. However, in studies of conjunction after that, there are only two groups of words: content words and grammatical words. Conjunction has become a grammatical term that studies only the differentiation of the type of conjunction, such as the kind of link in words and sentences, or has been a historical study, for example in its grammaticalization. Therefore, this study of conjunctions has been mainly interested in its function at the word and sentence levels and has not been extended to show that conjunction is a device that assists both spoken and written communication at the level of “meaning of discourse”. The function to clarify meaning is a vital function of the “conjunction” from the beginning, in the opinion of Thai language teachers.
(Presented in the 2020 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum : Thai-Tai Language and Culture, 20 July 2020, The St.Regis Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Department of Thai, Department of Linguistics, Southeast Asian Linguistics Research Unit, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)