Word in Lao

This chapter describes and analyses the ‘word’ in Lao, a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, focusing on the concepts of grammatical versus phonological word and the relations between them. All morphemes in Lao consist of at least one syllable. In turn, syllables can be grouped into feet. A foot must include one stressed syllable, which bears contrastive tone, and consists of one or more unstressed, phonologically dependent syllables, including independent yet phonologically-bound morphemes such as class term prefixes. Above the level of the foot is the phonological word, in which two or more feet may be grouped together, with primary stress on the final foot. The boundaries of the grammatical word in Lao do not always align directly with the boundaries of the phonological word. Some grammatical words occur as clitics, incorporated into phonological words and dependent on adjacent stressed syllables.