Research

[Jump to Past Projects]

About my research

I completed my PhD in 2019, with a dissertation titled The Tonal Comparative Method: Tai Tone in Historical Perspective. I work on topics including sound change in tonal languages, language documentation, evolutionary linguistics, language contact in Southeast Asia, and Southeast Asian epigraphy. I have a strong interest in methodology and data quality: I am just as interested in how to best approach research questions, and thinking about issues with the datasets we choose, as in the specific answers to them, because you can’t truly separate the two.

I also work on inclusion in linguistics. See, for example, my call for a Big Tent approach to defining the field of linguistics, or my work on gender bias in linguistic example sentences, and bias in LLM chatbots.

I lived in Thailand off and on since 2002, adding up to about a decade out of that time. Before moving back to the US in 2013 for graduate school, I spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Thailand working on Thai epigraphy, studying the language used in the stone inscriptions of the Sukhothai Era. I also worked on a large variety of projects at SEALang.net, including building assistive tools for Thai language learning, compiling contemporary and historical dictionaries of Southeast Asia, creating the Southeast Asian Linguistics Archive, the Pacific Linguistics archive, the NUSA archive, the Zorc Papers, and other projects related to archival preservation and aggregating large lexical datasets.

Since 2014 I work on language documentation in northwestern Myanmar, on minority Tai languages spoken outside the core Shan area. My fieldwork focuses on the variety of Tai Khamti [kht] that is spoken in the Upper Chindwin River Valley. Many of my field recordings, texts, and wordlists are published in my Tai Khamti archive on PARADISEC.

Publications

• 2025. Kanyarin Boonkongchuen and Rikker Dockum. “Minimal wordlist size for a phonological profile: New evidence from Kra-Dai languages.” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 10 (1).
• 2024. Rikker Dockum and Caitlin M. Green. “Toward a Big Tent Linguistics: Inclusion and the Myth of the Lone Genius.” Anne Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson and Mary Bucholtz (eds.) Inclusion in Linguistics, 95-126. Oxford University Press.
• 2024. Claire Bowern and Rikker Dockum. “Decolonizing historical linguistics in the classroom and beyond.” Anne Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson and Mary Bucholtz (eds.) Decolonizing Linguistics, 195-216. Oxford University Press.
• 2023. Hadas Kotek, Rikker Dockum and David Q. Sun. “Gender bias and stereotypes in large language models.” ACM Collective Intelligence 2023.
• 2022. Doug Whalen, Christian DiCanio and Rikker Dockum. “Phonetic documentation in three collections: Topics and evolution.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 52(1): 95-121.
• 2022. Dongmei Rao, Jason Shaw and Rikker Dockum. “Data on acoustic phonetic properties of non-coronal fricatives in monosyllabic words of Zhongjiang Chinese.” Data in Brief 42(108062).
• 2022. Erich Round, Rikker Dockum and Robin J. Ryder. “Evolution and trade-off dynamics of functional load.” Entropy 24(4).
• 2021. Hadas Kotek, Rikker Dockum, Sarah Babinski and Chris Geissler. “Gender bias and stereotypes in linguistic example sentences.” Language 97(4): 653-677.
• 2020. Catherine Sheard, Claire Bowern, Rikker Dockum and Fiona M. Jordan. “Pama–Nyungan grandparent systems change with grandchildren, but not cross-cousin terms or social norms.” Evolutionary Human Sciences 2, e30.
• 2019. Rikker Dockum and Claire Bowern. “Swadesh lists are not long enough: Drawing phonological generalizations from limited data.” Language Documentation and Description 16: 35-54.
• 2019. Sarah Babinski, Rikker Dockum, Dolly Goldenberg, Hunter Craft, and Claire Bowern. “A Robin Hood approach to forced alignment: English-trained algorithms and their use on Australian languages.” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 4.
• 2018. Rikker Dockum. “Phylogeny in phonology: how Tai sound systems encode their past.” Supplemental Proceedings of the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2017.
• 2017. Rikker Dockum. “Computational modeling of tone in language documentation: citation tones vs. running speech in Chindwin Khamti.” Proceedings of the 43rd Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Manuscripts

• In prep. Rikker Dockum. “The Tonal Comparative Method: extending historical approaches to lexical tone.”
• In prep. Rikker Dockum. “Tone documentation conventions: issues for synchrony and diachrony.”
• In prep. Rikker Dockum. “Phonological traits in computational phylogenetics: tonal and segmental evidence.”
• In prep. Rikker Dockum. “Old Khmer did not have numeral classifiers: evidence from the epigraphic corpus.”

Editing

• 2025. Sandra Auderset, Rikker Dockum and Ryan Gehrmann. Themed double issue on “Diachrony of Tone.” Diachronica.
• 2016-Present. Editorial Advising Committee, Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society.
• 2014. Ryan Bennett, Rikker Dockum, Emily Gasser, Dolly Goldenberg, Ryan Kasak, and Patrick Patterson (eds). Proceedings of the Workshop on the Sound Systems of Mexico and Central America

Invited Talks

• [Updates coming]
• 2018. “The Tonal Comparative Method: leveraging lexical tone in historical linguistics.” Annual Linguistics Homecoming Lecture. 23 October 2018, Dartmouth College.
• 2018. “Tonal recall: leveraging lexical tone to improve methods in historical linguistics.” Colloquium. 29 January 2018. University of California, Berkeley.

Conference Presentations

• [Updates coming]
• 2019. Rikker Dockum. Is Tone Phonologically Atomic? The Significance of Syllable Shape in Tone Diachrony. 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics.
  (ICHL24), Australian National University, Canberra, July 2019.
• 2019. Rikker Dockum. The Tonal Comparative Method: Leveraging Lexical Tone in Historical Linguistics. 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL24), Australian National University, Canberra, July 2019.
• 2019. Rikker Dockum and Pittayawat Pittayaporn. Dating the emergence of phonemic length contrasts in แ- /æ/ and -อ /ɔ/ in Standard Thai. 29th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS 29). 27-29 May 2019, Tokyo, Japan.
• 2019. Rikker Dockum. Lexical tone and the Comparative Method: Distinguishing innovation, retention, and chance resemblance. 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2019). 2-6 January 2019, New York City, NY.
• 2019. Sarah Babinski, Rikker Dockum, Dolly Goldenberg, Hunter Craft, Anelisa Fergus, and Claire Bowern. A Robin Hood approach to Forced Alignment: English-trained algorithms and their use on Australian languages. 93^rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2019). 3-6 January 2019, New York City, NY. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2557247 [Slides]
• 2018. Doug Whalen, Christian DiCanio, and Rikker Dockum. Phonetic documentation in the literature: Coverage rates for topics and languages. 176th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). 5-9 November 2018, Victoria, Canada.
• 2018. Rikker Dockum. Basic word order in Tai Khamti: language contact with Burmese. 13th International Burma Studies Conference. 3-5 August 2018, Bangkok.
• 2018. Rikker Dockum. Revisiting the Tai Khamti constituent order debate: New data from Myanmar. 28th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS28). 17-19 May 2018, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
• 2018. Rikker Dockum. Undocumented labor: how old fieldwork sheds new light on Tai tone system diversification. 92^nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2018). 4-7 January 2018, Salt Lake City, UT. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1136317 [Slides]
• 2017. Rikker Dockum and Ethan Campbell-Taylor. When enough is enough: Drawing linguistic generalizations from limited data. 12^th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT 2017). 12-14 December 2017, Australian National University: Canberra, Australia. [Slides]
• 2017 Rikker Dockum. Tone system diversification: Data and trends from dialect surveys of Thailand. Triggers of language change in the Language Sciences (XLanS 2017). 11-13 October 2017, Université Lumière Lyon 2: Lyon, France.
• 2017. Rikker Dockum. Phylogeny in phonology: how Tai sound systems encode their past. Annual Meeting on Phonology 2017 (AMP 2017). 15-17 September 2017, New York University: New York, NY. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1158348 [Poster] [Paper]
• 2017. Rikker Dockum and Ethan Campbell-Taylor. Wordlists for language documentation: Are we gathering too little data? International Conference on Language Studies 2017 (iCLS 2017). 9-10 August 2017, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak: Kuching, Malaysia.
• 2017. Rikker Dockum. Class term doubling in Tai Khamti: Reanalysis, reinforcement, and sesquisyllables. 27^th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS27). 11-13 May 2017, Padang, Indonesia.
• 2017. Rikker Dockum. Prosodic context in computational modeling of tone: citation tones vs. running speech. 43^rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS43). 3-5 February 2017, University of California, Berkeley: Berkeley, CA. [Slides] [Paper]
• 2017. Rikker Dockum. Double marking in Tai Khamti: Reanalysis and reinforcement. Diachronic morphology: Theoretical, areal, and phylogenetic perspectives. 26-27 January 2017, University of Zurich: Zurich, Switzerland.
• 2017. Rikker Dockum. Tone analysis in Tai Khamti: Computational models in language documentation. 91^st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2017). 5-8 January 2017: Austin, TX.
• 2016. Rikker Dockum. Numeral classifiers in areal perspective: Khmer and Thai ‘syntactic borrowing’ revisited. Austroasiatic Syntax in Areal and Diachronic Perspective. Workshop of the Austroasiatic Working Group. September 5-7, 2016. [Slides]
• 2016. Rikker Dockum. Tone analysis in Southeast Asia: Computational modeling & traditional methods. SEALS 2016. 26^th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS26). 26-28 May 2016, Manila, Philippines. [Slides]
• 2016. Rikker Dockum. Tonal evidence in historical linguistics: genetic signal or typological noise? 42^nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS42). 5-7 February 2016, University of California, Berkeley: Berkeley, CA. [Slides]
• 2015. Rikker Dockum. Sanskrit Loanword Adaptation in Old Thai: Epigraphic Evidence from the Sukhothai Corpus. 16^th World Sanskrit Conference of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies (IASS). 28 June-2 July 2015, Silpakorn University: Bangkok, Thailand. [Slides]
• 2015. Rikker Dockum. Burma Khamti and Language Classification in Southwestern Tai. 25^th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS25). 27-29 May 2015, Payap University: Chiang Mai, Thailand. [Slides]
• 2013. Rikker Dockum. Towards a Regional Convention for Epigraphic Transliteration of Southeast Asia’s Brahmic Scripts. 46^th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL46). 7-10 August 2013, Dartmouth College: Hanover, NH. [Slides]
• 2008. Doug Cooper and Rikker Dockum. Thai in Transition and the Thai Gigaword/Terabyte Web Corpus. National Language Policy: Language Diversity for National Unity. 4-5 July 2008: Bangkok, Thailand.
• 2007. Rikker Dockum. From Lost to Online: A Digital eText + Image Edition of the First Thai-English Dictionary. 17^th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS17). 31 August-2 September 2007, University of Maryland, College Park: College Park, MD. [Slides]
• 2006. Rikker Dockum. Convergences in Khumi and Marma Morphosyntax. 39^th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL39). 14-17 September 2006, University of Washington: Seattle, WA. [Handout]

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[Jump to Current Research]

Past Projects

Here are some of the projects I have created or worked on:

Lexical databases

• Contemporary and Historical Reconstruction in the Indigenous Languages of Australia (CHIRILA). NSF grants BCS-0844550, BCS-1423711. [paper]
• The Asia-Pacific Linguistic Data Warehouse. CRCL. [paper]

Digital dictionaries and text corpora

• Contemporary
  • The SEAlang Library (U.S. Dept. of Ed. TICFIA grant P337A050018)
• Historical
  • Eliza Grew Jones 1833 manuscript Thai-English dictionary
  • Dan Beach Bradley 1873 Dictionary of the Siamese Language (Thai-Thai)
  • Jesse Caswell & J.H. Chandler 1846 manuscript Thai-Thai dictionary (website fc.)
  • E.B. Michell 1892: A Siamese-English Dictionary (website fc.)

Archival scanning and indexing

• Project Gutenberg Thailand
• The Southeast Asian Linguistics Archive (SALA)
• Pacific Linguistics Publication Archive (1964-2012)
• Christian Bauer’s Ananda “Basement” Plaques
• NUSA Archive – Linguistic Studies of the Languages of Indonesia (Vols. 1-53, 1975-2004)

Assistive technology for learning Thai

• SEAlang Thai Vocabulary: 100s of semantically organized vocabulary lists
• The SEAlang Lab (U.S. Dept. of Ed. IRS grant P017A060058)
• The SEAlang Library Thai Bitext Corpus (U.S. Dept. of Ed. TICFIA grant P337A050018)

Epigraphy of Southeast Asia

• The Sukhothai Inscriptions of Thailand. 2009 Fulbright grant project. Produced the first full roman transliteration of the Sukhothai epigraphic corpus (13^th-15^th century); etymological tagging of Khmer, Pali and Sanskrit loanwords.
• Greater Southeast Asia epigraphic transliteration standardization project. Draft proposal for a regional transliteration convention for GSEA; encompassing scripts for archaic variants of Khmer, Mon, Thai, Burmese, Lao, Malay, Javanese, Balinese, Cham, and Pyu (Presented at ICSTLL 46).
• Entity tagging of the Old Thai and Old Khmer corpora: analyzing and tagging all dates, people, places, and material culture items.