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In terms of the direction of development, I referred to Johanna Nichols' work on head-marking vs. dependant marking. Nichols did not make reference to any languages in Tibeto-Burman, but all of the Tibeto-Burman languages that do not have verb agreement systems are solidly dependent-marking (i.e., they have marking on the nouns for case or pragmatic function); those languages with verb agreement systems, a type of head marking, also have many dependent-marking features (of the same types as the non-pronominalized languages). The question, then, is which is older, the dependent-marking type or the headmarking (actually mixed) type?
This paper is part of an ongoing investigation into the nature of grammatical relations in the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to develop a hypothesis on the typological nature of word order and grammatical relations in the mother language which gave rise to all of the many languages within the Sino Tibetan language family. As the verb agreement (pronominalization) systems of Tibeto-Burman have been said to be a type of ergative marking, and to have been a part of Proto-Tibeto-Burman grammatical relations, the questions of the dating and nature of the agreement systems in Tibeto-Burman are relevant to the discussion of the nature of grammatical relations in Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Since the mid-1970's, the question of whether or not a verb agreement system1 (VAS) should be reconstructed for Proto-Tibeto-Bunnan (PTB) has been a controversial topic, but because of the large amount of work published arguing in favor of reconstructing a VAS for PTB, especially by James J. Bauman (1974, 1975a, 1975b, 1979) and Scott DeLancey (1980, 1983, 1988, 1989, to appear), many people have begun to accept the existence of a VAS in PTB as received knowledge. In a recent paper on verb agreement systems in Tibeto-Burman, Scott DeLancey states that 'There can no longer be any serious doubt that a system of verb agreement must be attributed to Proto-Tibeto-Bunnan (PTB)' (DeLancey 1988: 1). Though the number of papers supporting this position is quite large, I would like to raise several serious doubts about the theoretical and methodological basis for reconstructing a VAS for PTB' and at the same time argue for the use of functionally and typologically based theories of grammar, as exemplified by the head-marking/dependent-marking distinction developed in Nichols 1986, in diachronic syntax and syntactic reconstruction.
This paper presents the first results of a comprehensive project on comparative Tibeto-Burman (TB) morpho-syntax. Data on morphological forms and typological patterns were collected from one hundred fifty-one languages and dialects in the TB family. For this paper the data were surveyed for nominal 'ergative' or agentive case marking (postpositions), in an attempt to determine if it would be possible to reconstruct an ergative case marker to Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB), and in so doing learn more about the nature of grammatical organization in PTB. Ablative, instrumental, genitive, locative, and other case forms were also surveyed for possible cognacy with ergative forms, as suggested in DeLancey 1984.
In attempting to understand the history of the morphology of a language or group of languages, we occasionally face a problem of isomorphy, where two or more semantic categories evince the same formal marking. We then must decide which use of that particular form of marking is the oldest, and also determine the possible source and path of development of the marking. In languages with written documents of great time depth this is often not a problem, but in unwritten languages it can be quite difficult. This paper discusses two tools that can be used for this purpose: the concepts of markedness and prototypes.
For this paper, 170 Tibeto-Burman languages were surveyed for nominal ease marking (adpositions), in an attempt to determine ifit would be possible to reeonstruet any ease markers to Proto· Tibeto-Burman, and in so doing leam more about the nature of the grammatieal organization of Proto-Tibeto-Burman. The data were also eross-cheeked for patterns of isomorphy/polysemy, to see ifwe can leam anything about the development ofthe forms we da find in the languages. The results of the survey indicate that although a11 Tibeto-Bunnan languages have developed some sort of relation marking, none of the markers ean be reconstrueted to the oldest stage of the family. Looking at the patterns of isomorphy or polysemy, we find there are regularities to the patterns we find, and on the basis of these regularities we can make assurne that the path of development most probably followed the markedness/prototypicality clines: the locative and ablative use would have arose first and then were extended to the more abstract cases.
A survey of 170 Tibeto-Burman languages showed 69 with a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns, 18 of which also show inclusive- exclusive in Idual. Only the Kiranti languages and some Chin languages have inclusive-exclusive in the person marking. Of the forms of the pronouns involved in the inclusive-exclusive opposition, usually the exclusive form is less marked and historically prior to the inclusive form, and we find the distinction cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Tibeto-Burman or to mid level groupings. Qnly the Kiranti group has marking of the distinction that can be reconstructed to the proto level, and this is also reflected in the person-marking system.