A Corpus-based Study of Thai and English Quantity Word Equivalents: 'Lǎay', 'Several' and 'Many'

Abstract

The present study investigates the Thai quantifier ‘lǎay’ (หลาย) and its two major English lexical equivalents: ‘several’ and ‘many’, using data from an English-Thai parallel corpus, the Thai and British National Corpora. An examination of the parallel corpus reveals that the quantifier ‘lǎay’ has a broad semantic property as it can express meanings related to small, medium and large quantities or just the plurality of entities. This provides support to an observation that the word can pose problems for Thai EFL learners, translators and interpreters when expressing the concept of ‘lǎay’ in English. Based on the parallel corpus, two English quantity words that denote different scales of quantity, ‘many’ and ‘several’, were found to be among the most common lexical equivalents of ‘lǎay’. Further comparative investigation was conducted on the Thai and British National Corpora. It is found that ‘lǎay’ and its two common equivalents have overlapping and different co-occurrence patterns, illustrating their lexical equivalent status and distinct usage profiles at the same time. Differences between the two English equivalents were then focused on so that empirical evidence of usage patterns of the two most common English lexical equivalents of ‘lǎay’ can be obtained. Findings from the study provide an insight into phraseological patterns and pragmatic-discourse functions associated with the English equivalents, which Thai speakers of English can make use of as a possible framework for their decision making when translating ‘lǎay’ into English.