The Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society accepts submissions written in English that deal with general linguistic issues which further the lively debate that characterizes the annual SEALS conferences. Devoted to a region of extraordinary linguistic diversity, the journal features papers on the languages of Southeast Asia, including Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Tibeto-Burman, and Tai-Kadai.

Topics may include descriptive, theoretical, or historical linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and anthropological linguistics, among other areas of linguistics of languages of Southeast Asia. JSEALS also admits data papers, reports, and notes, subject to an internal review process.

Although we normally expect that JSEALS articles will have been presented and discussed at the SEALS conference, submission is open to all, regardless of participation in SEALS meetings. Each original article undergoes double-blind review by at least two scholars, usually a member of the Advisory Board and one or more independent referees.

Sponsor: Southeast Asian Linguistics Society

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

JSEALS publishes fully open access content, which means that all articles are available on the internet to all users immediately upon publication. Non-commercial use and distribution in any medium is permitted, provided the author and the journal are properly credited. Authors retain copyright of their material. The journal does not charge Article Processing Fees.

Read Online:

2017 to present

Back content starting in 2009

• Recent Articles

• The Evolution of Consonant Clusters in Vietnamese: Reconstruction Based on Manuscripts in Quốc ngữ Script from 17th to 19th Centuries
  Posted on Tuesday April 29, 2025

  Facilitated Participatory Orthography Development in Sorsoganon, Philippines
  Posted on Tuesday April 29, 2025

  Papers from the 33rd Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2024)
  Posted on Tuesday April 29, 2025

  Connectives in Asur: A North Munda Language
  Posted on Wednesday January 01, 2025

  Thai Passive Markers in Adversative and Non-adversative Passives in Speakers of Different Ages
  Posted on Wednesday January 01, 2025

  Review of: Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania: Functional and Diachronic Perspectives
  Posted on Wednesday January 01, 2025

  Mān on the Referentiality Continuum in Thai
  Posted on Wednesday January 01, 2025

  Basic Grammar of Khamti Shan
  Posted on Monday January 01, 2024

  The Interaction of Digital Technology and Literacy Practices in Nuosu Script, China
  Posted on Monday January 01, 2024

  Distribution and Dating of the *s- > /th-/ Shift in Central Trans-Himalayan Languages
  Posted on Tuesday August 27, 2024

• Pricing Guide

• This journal is an open-access and peer reviewed online-only journal. Read online here.

• Author Guidelines

• Submissions to JSEALS may be made at any time of year.  Papers will go into the queue for review and will be published in the first scheduled issue after being formally accepted.

  Find Submission Guidelines for the Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society here.

• Editorial Board

• Editor-in-Chief

  Mark Alves (Montgomery College, USA) Vietnamese linguistics, Austroasiatic languages, Chinese linguistics, Southeast Asian Historical Linguistics and Language

  Managing Editors

  Mathias Jenny (Chiang Mai UniversIty, Thailand) – Languages of Myanmar and Thailand, Austroasiatic languages, Language contact, Language change, Historical syntax, Language and ethnicity, Language endangerment

  Sigrid Lew (Dallas International University, USA) Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman phonetics and phonology, Latin-based and Brahmi-based orthography development

  Paul Sidwell (Australia National University, Australia) Austroasiatic languages, Historical linguistics, Phonology, Phonetics

  Kenneth Van Bik (California State University, USA) – Kuki-Chin Linguistics, Comparative-Historical Linguistics, and Endangered Languages

  JSEALS EDITORIAL BOARD

  Edith ALDRIDGE (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) – Syntax (especially case, voice, word order, alignment), syntactic change & reconstruction, Austronesian, Chinese

  Nathan BADENOCH (Villanova University, USA) – Austroasiatic linguistics, Tibeto-Burman linguistics, linguistic anthropology, ideophones/expressives

  Luke BRADLEY (University of Freiburg, Germany) – Psycholinguistics, Orthography, Sound change, Morphology, Vietnamese

  Marc BRUNELLE (University of Ottawa, Canada) – Phonetics and phonology, Tone and voice quality, Language contact, Vietnamese and Chamic languages

  Christopher BUTTON (Independent researcher) – Old Chinese, Old Burmese, Kuki-Chin, Proto-Sino-Tibetan / Proto-Tibeto-Burman, Comparative/Historical Phonology, Morphology & Semantics, Palaeography (Oracle Bone Inscriptions)

  Thomas CONNERS (University of Maryland, USA) – Javanese, Indonesian, Dialectology, Fieldwork, Language documentation
   

  Kamil DEEN (University of Hawaii, USA) – Thai syntax, First language acquisition

  Rikker DOCKUM (Yale University, USA) – Kra-Dai languages, Historical linguistics, Tone systems, Quantitative comparative linguistics, Thai epigraphy, Language documentation

  David M. EBERHARD (Ethnologue general editor, SIL International) – Language Shift, Language Development

  Ryan GEHRMANN (Payap University) – Historical phonology, Tone and voice quality, Austroasiatic languages

  Nathan HILL (Trinity College Dublin, UK) Tibeto-Burman and Historical linguistics

  San San HNIN TUN (INCALCO, France) – Burmese language, Discourse marking, Corpus linguistics

  Kitima INDRAMBARYA (Kasetsart University, Thailand) – Thai linguistics, Thai Syntax, Language acquisition

  Peter JENKS (UC Berkeley, USA) – Thai linguistics, Syntax, Semantics, Kra-Dai languages

  Daniel KAUFMAN (Queens College, City University of New York & Endangered Language Alliance, USA) – Austronesian languages, Historical linguistics, Typology, Syntax, Morphology

  James KIRBY (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany) – Phonetics and phonology, Sound change, Evolution of voicing, Tone and register, Language and music, Khmer, Vietnamese, Tai languages

  Hsiu-chuan LIAO (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan) – Austronesian linguistics, Historical linguistics, Syntax, Morphology, Language documentation

  Bradley MCDONNELL (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA) – Austronesian languages, Phonology, Syntax, Language documentation

  Alexis MICHAUD (CNRS (Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), France) – Tibeto-Burman languages, Phonetics/phonology, Prosody, Language documentation

  Marc MIYAKE (The British Museum) – Historical phonology, Writing systems, Language contact, Chinese and Indic influence on Southeast Asian languages, Pyu

  David MORTENSEN (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) – Hmong-Mien Languages, Phonology, OT, and Computational linguistics

  Peter NORQUEST (University of Arizona, USA) – Languages of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Kra-Dai and Austronesian languages, Historical phonology, Long-range relationships, Language contact

  Teresa Wai See ONG (National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) – language maintenance and language shift, language planning and policy, linguistic landscape, multilingualism 

  Christina Joy PAGE (Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada) – Literacy development, Latin- and Brahmi-based orthographies

  John D. PHAN (Columbia University, USA) – Sino-Vietnamese linguistics, Austroasiatic linguistics, historical phonology, language contact

  Trang PHAN (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy)  – Vietnamese syntax, syntactic theory

  Pittayawat PITTAYAPORN (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand) – Thai linguistics, Kra-Dai languages, Historical linguistics, Phonology, Language contact

  Nathaniel A. SIMS (University of Oregon, USA) – Tibeto-Burman Phonology and Morphology, Historical Linguistics, Community-based Language Documentation

  Alexander D. SMITH (University of North Texas) – Austronesian Comparative Linguistics, Island Southeast Asia, Historical linguistics, Phonology, Field work

  Napasri TIMYAM (Kasetsart University, Thailand) – Thai linguistics, Syntax, Morphology 

  Seth VITRANO-WILSON (Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand) – Orthography, Writing Systems

  Alice VITTRANT (University Lumière Lyon 2 /CNRS-DDL, France) – Languages of Burma, Burmese dialects, Hmong, Endangered languages, Typology, Syntax, TAM, Classifiers, Motion and space, Deixis

  Heather WINSKEL (Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia) – Psycholinguistics, Reading Research

• Indexes

• Articles appearing in the Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society are indexed in the following sources:

  Brill–
  Linguistic Bibliography (Online)

  DOAJ-Directory of Open Access Journals

  EBSCOhost–
  Communication Source, 12/1/2011-
  TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 12/1/2011-

  Elsevier BV–
  Scopus, 2014-

  ProQuest–
  Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (Online), Core
  Linguistics Collection, 1/1/2016-
  Social Science Premium Collection, 1/1/2016-

  Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.–
  Linguistics Abstracts (Online)