With close to 100 million speakers, Tai-Kadai constitutes one of the world's major language families. The Tai-Kadai Languages provides a unique, comprehensive, single-volume tome covering much needed grammatical descriptions in the area.

It presents an important overview of Thai that includes extensive cross-referencing to other sections of the volume and sign-posting to sources in the bibliography. The volume also includes much new material on Lao and other Tai-Kadai languages, several of which are described here for the first time.

Much-needed and highly useful, The Tai-Kadai Languages is a key work for professionals and students in linguistics, as well as anthropologists and area studies specialists.

ANTHONY V. N. DILLER is Foundation Director of the National Thai Studies Centre, at the Australian National University.

JEROLD A. EDMONDSON is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas Arlington and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Scholars.

YONGXIAN LUO is Senior Lecturer in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Australian Linguistic Society.

With close to 100 million speakers, Tai-Kadai constitutes one of the world's major language families. Made up of two national languages, Thai and Lao, and the so-called 'nationality languages' that represent minority 'nationalities' officially recognized in the People's Republic of China, it is a language group of immense interest and significance.

Despite this, no single volume covering the Tai-Kadai languages has existed until now, and both Thai and Lao, as well as the 'nationality languages', lack comprehensive, dependable and up-to-date reference grammars.

Addressing this, The Tai-Kadai Languages provides the clear, grammatical descriptions needed in the area. A one-of-a-kind resource, it presents a particularly important overview of Thai that includes extensive cross-referencing to other sections of the volume, sign-posting to sources in the bibliography, and can be seen as an abridged reference grammar in itself. A parallel grammatical study of Lao is also included, as are discussions of the 'nationality languages', surveys of further languages in the family with smaller numbers of speakers, and sections dealing with topics of comparative interest.

Much-needed and highly useful, The Tai-Kadai Languages is a key work for professionals and students in linguistics, as well as anthropologists and area studies specialists.

Zoulei is an endangered language spoken by several hundred speakers in China's Guizhou Province and adjacent areas. It is a variety of the Ahou dialect of the highly diverse Gelao group within the Tai-Kadai language family. Zoulei is a typical isolating and analytic language, basically monosyllabic, particularly with verbs, with a number of striking features that are generally not found in other members of the Tai-Kadai family. The language is also marked by a rich phoneme inventory and lexical tone, compounding, serial verb constructions and strong head-initial constituent order, as well as a vocabulary that may enhance our understanding of the early history and culture of this region. In the opening chapters, the volume describes the social, cultural, and linguistic organization of this group, outlines the main points of Zoulei phonology, and presents an overview of the grammar. In succeeding chapters, it examines a number of grammatical topics in greater detail, including phrase and clause structure, verbal syntax, discourse particles, among others. The volume also includes a vocabulary and several texts recorded from village elders.