Cambodian (Khmer) is the national language of Cambodia, and is spoken as a native lan- guage by about 90% of the current population of roughly 14 million people. Dialects are spoken in the southern third of Northeast Thailand (Surin Khmer) and in the Mekong Delta region of Southern Vietnam (Kiengang Khmer to the Vietnamese, Kiangkleang to Cambodians). Genetically it is extremely closely related to a handful of Khmeric lan- guages, among them Stieng, Kui (= Kuaj to Cambodians, Kouy for Rangier 2005), and Pear (:::: Poa to Cambodians), and more distantly related one hundred and fifty other Austroasiatic languages such as Rengao, Sre, Chrau, Sedang, Vietnamese, Mlabri, Mon, Semai, Jahai, Khasi, and Munda spoken from Southwest China to Eastern India. Sub- grouping these languages has been controversial from the beginning, although the unity of the family is not contestecll. Since all the languages of Southeast Asia notoriously constitute a Sprachbund., Khmer exhibits strong typological similarities to neighbouring languages - not only to related languages like Vietnamese, but languages from entirely difterent families, from 1hai to Hmong (Bisang 1992, Enfield 2003).