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This paper is one argument for a theory of grammatical relations in Chinese in which there are no grammatical relations beyond semantic roles, and no lexical relation-changing rules. As the passive rule is one of the most common relation changing rules cross-linguistically, in this paper I will address the question of whether or not Mandarin Chinese has lexical passives, that is, passives defined as in Relational Grammar (see for example Perlmutter and Postal 1977) and the early Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) literature (e.g. Bresnan 1982), where a 2-arc (object) is promoted to a 1-arc (subject).
Thirty-one years ago Tsu-lin Mei (1961) argued against the traditional doctrine that saw the subject-predicate distinction in grammar as parallel to the particular- universal distinction in logic, as he said it was a reflex of an Indo-European bias, and could not be valid, as ‘Chinese ... does not admit a distinction into subject and predicate’ (p. 153). This has not stopped linguists working on Chinese from attempting to define ‘subject’ (and ‘object’) in Chinese. Though a number of linguists have lamented the difficulties in trying to define these concepts for Chinese (see below), most work done on Chinese still assumes that Chinese must have the same grammatical features as Indo-European, such as having a subject and a direct object, though no attempt is made to justify that view. This paper challenges that view and argues that there has been no grammaticalization of syntactic functions in Chinese. The correct assignment of semantic roles to the constituents of a discourse is done by the listener on the basis of the discourse structure and pragmatics (information flow, inference, relevance, and real world knowledge) (cf. Li & Thompson 1978, 1979; LaPolla 1990).
In attempting to reconstruct the morphosyntax of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, one of the most basic questions to be answered is what was the unmarked word order of the proto-language? Chinese, Bai, and Karen are verb-medial languages, while all of the Tibeto-Burman languages except for Bai and Karen have verb-final word order. lf these languages are all related, as we can assume from lexical correspondences, then either Chinese, Bai and Karen changed from verb-final to verb-medial word order, or the other Tibeto-Burman languages changed trom verb-medial to verb-final order. How we answer the question of which languages changed their word would then give us the answer to the question of word order in Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
The annual conferences on Sino-Tibetan languages and linguistics began on a small scale at Yale in 1968, with only eight conferees sitting around a table, but have grown tremendously over the years, until they now usually attract over 100 participants, and have become the chief focus of scholarly activity in the field. Ever since 1971, the word “international” has appeared in the official title of the Conferences, and rightly so, since they have become truly global in scope. Since the mid-1970’s, they have increasingly been held outside the U.S.: Copenhagen (1976), Paris (1979), Beijing (1982), Bangkok (1985), Vancouver (1987), Lund (1988), Bangkok (1991), Osaka (1993), Paris (1994) [planned].
[...] Most of the papers presented at the Conferences are of high quality, and usually find their way into print within a few years. Yet in spite of valiant attempts to put out real volumes of Proceedings, e.g. the partial collection achieved for #14 (University of Florida, 1983), the most that has been managed is a photocopied version of the papers velo-bound together (e.g. for #16, University of Washington, 1983), or a collection of the abstracts submitted by the participants, e.g. for #15 (Beijing, 1982), for #18 (Ramkhamhaeng University, Bangkok, 1985), or for #25 (University of California, Berkeley, 1992). It was realized early on that it would be a good thing to keep some kind of record of which papers were presented when, before things got too badly out of hand. [...] The first version of this Bibliography (1989) was produced with admirable thoroughness and rapidity by the members of the STEDT staff. John B. Lowe devised the Macintosh software for the job, and the inputting of the authors and titles was done by many willing hands. Randy J. LaPolla did most of the editorial work on the first edition: he translated the dozens of Chinese titles, tracked down almost all the published versions of the papers by scouring journals and bibliographies, and wrote personally to many authors requesting addenda and corrigenda to the listings of their works.
In Belhare (Sino-Tibetan, Nepal), consonant prothesis at morpheme boundaries and deletion of stem "augments" is found if either metrical or morphological parsing would violate the bimoraic trochee pattern that underlies the stress system of the language. This finding corroborates Dresher & Lahiri’s (1991) "Principle of Metrical Coherence" and provides new evidence for the cross-linguistic applicability of Crowhurst’s (1994) "Tautomorphemic Foot" constraint. The data also support a view of the Prosodic Hierarchy as weakly layered, allowing consonants to be directly dominated by the foot or word node if they are prothetic and do not therefore need feature licensing within the syllable canon.
Recent research has adduced growing evidence for a distinct stratum of cultural practices that underlies various "tribal" traditions in the Himalayan region and that also seems to be characteristic of various local versions of the Bon tradition. Bon literature is not uncommonly embedded in cultural patterns that are more specifically Himalayan than belonging to the greater South Asian heritage. Two aspects of this that have received attention in Ramble's (1997) study of a Bon guide to the sacred Kong-po mountain (rKong-po bon- ri) are the symbolism of wild boar hunting involved in marriage rituals and poison cults with their corresponding beliefs about poisoning. Another pattern of cultoral organization that may help better understand the Bon tradition against its Himalayan background is spatial conceptualization.
The present volume results from an initiative to foster cooperation between scholars of Himalayan languages in Europe. The initiative was launched five years ago and has brought about a series of annual workshop meetings and individual cooperative projects (cf. http://www.isw.unibe.ch/EuroHimal). The 1998 workshop, held in Heidelberg, was devoted to the role that notions of speech act participants play in the grammar of various Himalayan languages, and the present collection represents, with some additions and some subtractions, the proceedings of this workshop. In the following I will give some background on the rationale for the topics covered in this volume, especially on the ways in which the indexing of speech act participants is related in Himalayan languages to evidentials and other epistemological operators. I will close this introduction with a brief outline of the structure of the volume.