ศาลาชุมนุม

[DonSena]

Iwasaki and Ingkaphirom do mention this phenomenon (A Reference Grammar of Thai, page 368):

"30.3.1 . . . Resumptive pronouns, or 'shadow pronouns,' are a special device frequently used in casual speech in Thai. This type of pronoun refers back to its full noun antecedent appearing immediately before it within the same clause. Casual spoken English also uses a resumptive pronoun; in 'Tom, his is a great guy,' 'he' is a resumptive pronoun appearing right after its antecedent 'Tom.' In Thai, เขา แก and มัน are commonly used as resumptive pronouns."

"The function of a resumptive pronoun is to give local saliency (importance) to the noun referent in a particular portion of discourse; the speaker alerts the listener or reader with a resumptive pronoun that important information is now being provided. . . . "

Their sample sentence, "เด็กสองคนเนี้ยมันให้อ๊วกออกมาจ้ะ" 'These two kids threw up.'

In the sample sentence, เด็กสองคนเนี้ย is the topic, and มัน is the actual subject of the verb sequence ให้อ๊วกออกมา.

Topics introduce sentences consisting of a lead noun or noun phrase plus another noun (phrase) or an entire stand-alone sentence -- as, for instance, เด็กสองคนเนี้ย + มันให้อ๊วกออกมาจ้ะ. This type of construction is called (by linguists) an "equation," or equational sentence.

Some simple and less simple examples would include: วั้นนี้วันประกาศอิสรภาพ => วั้นนี้ + วันประกาศอิสรภาพ
ผมขาหัก => ผม + ขาหัก (The equivalent expression, ผมเป็นขาหัก, in which ผม is the subject of เป็น, is not an equation.)

เด็กๆ เขาปิดประตูกันหมด => เด็กๆ + เขาปิดประตูกันหมด (topic + subject + predication)

เด็กๆ แม่ไม่เห็นว่า ควรจะพาไปเที่ยวดรีมเวอลด์ =>
[Topic: เด็กๆ] [Subject: แม่] [Predication: ไม่เห็นว่า ควรจะพาไปเที่ยวดรีมเวอลด์]

(The actual subject is not necessarily a pronoun as in เด็กสองคนเนี้ย มันให้อ๊วกออกมาจ้ะ or เด็กๆ เขาปิดประตูกันหมด.)

Likewise, in comparison to the spoken-English example, "Tom, he's is a great guy," we could find other examples of a topical heading like "That guy Tom, I wonder how he learned to shoot like that." Here, "That guy Tom" is the topic, and 'I' is the subject.

(Japanese signifies its uses of topical headings by the postposition wa, which can then be followed by an actual subject signified by the postposition ga.)

An effective mnemonic toward conceptualizing the use of the topic is "as for (name of topic)." For instance,
'(As for) that guy Tom, I wonder how he learned to shoot like that." The semantic relationship of the topic to the rest of the sentence in Thai could be associated with this same notion of "as for (something/someone)."

[claude06thailand]

interesting point, but I think that อ้วก is the correct spelling, not อ๊วก. Am I wrong ?

[Rick Bradford]

So we have ชีวิตมันซับซ้อน (resumptive pronoun) and ชีวิตอันซับซ้อน (relative pronoun).

Just to reiterate how montyb explained the difference in meaning:

...it seems that "ชีวิตอันซับซ้อน" is more artistry. However, in some context, especially in spoken language, "ชีวิตมันซับซ้อน" could give more feeling

Perhaps the version with มัน comes closer to the English rendering: "Life, it's a bitch."

[DonSena]

interesting point, but I think that อ้วก is the correct spelling, not อ๊วก. Am I wrong ?

Saint Gabriel's Thai-English Dictionary (Louis D'Anjou of the Brothers of Saint Gabriel,1966) backs you up, Claude. อ้วก it is.

Of course, one never knows what may have changed in the last forty-six years.

[David and Bui]

I&I use a corpus of language data from which they draw their illustrations:

"Functional linguistics considers actual language use as an important motivation for grammar formation. This stance obliges us to rely heavily on data taken from language used in real communication. Though many constructed data are included in the book for succinct description of phenomena especially in the chapters in the first half of the book, we have incorporated a large number of excerpts from or corpus of spoken data, such as informal conversations, interviews, and group discussions, and to a lesser degree from non-technical written data, such as short stories and newspaper articles."

(ibid, page xv)

Using data such as this, there are bound to be variations in spelling and pronunciation. "อ๊วก" is the spelling they provided in the particular example.

[David and Bui]

Here is an example from a magazine article of the word มัน used as the subject of a clause, without a specific referent:

แต่ไม่มีใครหยุดยั้งการเปลี่ยนแปลงได้ มันจะเปลี่ยนไปตามปัจจัยแวดล้อมที่คนสร้างขึ้นมา

A literal reading might be, "No one can impede change. Things will change in accordance with surrounding circumstances that people create."
I feel better about this one: "No one can impede change. Changes will occur as people dictate their circumstances."

But, perhaps, my preference for the second is merely my mania to avoid a passive or indefinite construct in English.

What do you think?