Trois langues d’Asie du Sud-Est et leur première grammaire (vietnamien, thaï, cambodgien)
First Grammars of Three Southeast Asian Languages (Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian)

Summary/Abstract: This article aims at studying and comparing the first grammars of three languages of Southeast Asia: Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian, which were published in different dates, respectively 1651, 1828 and 1915. The authors of these grammars have to face the analysis of several linguistic phenomena which are radically “exotic” in comparison with the languages of Europe, such as the absence of inflection, the monosyllabism, the presence of tones or the complex system of “pronouns”. Each of the grammar has its own approach to these points and proposes a singular classification of the words, which it is necessary to study in connection with the Latin grammar and with the concept of “part of speech”. Furthermore, the three texts examined here do not share identical goals, since the first and second grammars are mainly didactic, whereas the third is clearly a scientific one. Eventually, the grammars differ from the point of view of general linguistics and with regard to the typological and historical comparison.

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