Yen-ling Chen

This dissertation aims to provide a thorough investigation of different varieties of Ong-Be, a Kradai language spoken in northwestern Hainan. It is intended to provide a grammatical description of Ong-Be based on data collected during fieldwork. Moreover, it will also explore the linguistic position of Ong-Be within Kradai as well as the reconstruction of its phoneme inventory using a bottom-up approach. A wordlist containing extensive lexical items fundamental to Proto-Kradai reconstruction will be provided in the appendix. This dissertation may also serve as material for comparison between Ong-Be and local Chinese vernaculars in a contact perspective.