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This paper discusses the use of comparative data when describing a particular language. That is, even tho ugh we might be describing one variety, we can gain insights into the development of that variety from comparisons with related varieties. The examples presented are from the Rawang and Dulong languages. two closely related Tibeto-Burman languages in Myanmar and China respectively. We see that comparison with Dulong data can help us to understand the development of the applicative benefactive in Rawang. and comparison with Rawang can help us understand the development of the verbal first-person plural long vowels and nominal agentive marking long vowels in Dulong.
Rawang [...] is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by people who live in the far north of Kachin State in Myanmar (Burma), particularly along the Mae Hka ('Nmai Hka) and Maeli Hka (Mali Hka) river valleys (see map on back page); population unknown, although Ethnologue gives 100,000. In the past they had been called ‘Nung’, or (mistakenly) ‘Hkanung’, and are considered to be a sub-group of the Kachin by the Myanmar government. Until government policies put a stop to the clearing of new land in 1994, the Rawang speakers still practiced slash and burn farming on the mountainsides (they still do a bit, but only on already claimed land), in conjunction with planting paddy rice near the river. They are closely related to people on the other side of the Chinese border in Yunnan classified as either Dulong or Nu(ng) (see LaPolla 2001, 2003 on the Dulong language). In this paper, I will be discussing the word-class-changing constructions found in Rawang, using data of the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect of Rawang, which is considered the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of a standard for writing and inter-group communication.
Dulong/Rawang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken on both sides of the China/Myanmar (Burma) border just south and cast of Tibet. [...] In this chapter, I will be using data of the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect, which is considered the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of a standard for writing and intergroup communication, though most of the phenomena we will be discussing are general to dialects in both China and Myanrnar. I will use the short form 'Rawang' in referring to this dialect.
This paper is more about presenting phenomena and questions related to the concept of transitivity in Tibeto-Burman languages that I hope will stimulate discussion, rather than presenting strong conclusions. Sections 2 and 3 present alternative analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in two Tibeto-Burman languages I have worked on. In Section 4 I discuss some general issues about transitivity.
This paper discusses the types of relative clause and noun complement structures found in the Rawang language, a Tibeto-Burman language of northern Myanmar, as well as their origin and uses, with data taken mainly from naturally occurring texts. Two types are preposed relative clauses, but in one the relative clause is nominalized, and in the other it is not. The non-nominalized form with a general head led to the development of nominalizing suffixes and one type of nominalized relative clause structure. As the nominalized form is a nominal itself, it can be postposed to the head in an appositional structure. There is also discussion of the Rawang structures in the context of Tibeto-Burman and the development of relative clause structures in the language family.
Rawang Texts
(2001)
This volume is a collection of fully analyzed texts of the Mvtwang dialect of the Rawang language collected as part of fieldwork on the language. The Rawang language belongs to a larger grouping of languages/ dialects we can call Dulong/Rawang or Dulong/Rawang/Anong spoken on both sides of the ClUna/Myanmar (Burma) border just south and east of Tibet. In China, the people who speak this language for the most part live in Gongshan county of Yunnan province, and belong to either what is known as the "Dulong" nationality (pop. 5816 according to the 1990 census), or to one part (roughly 6,000 people) of the Nu nationality (those who live along the upper reaches of the Nu River-the part of the Salween within China). Another subgroup of the Nu people, those who live along the lower reaches of the Nu river (in China), speak a language called "Anong" which seems to be the same as, or closely related to, the Kwinpang dialect spoken in Myanmar, so should also be considered a dialect ofDulong/Rawang. Within Myanmar, the people who speak the Rawang language (possibly up to 100,000 people) live in northern Kachin State, particularly along the Mae Hka ('Nmai Hka) and Maeli Hka (Mali Hka) river valleys. In the past they had been called "Hkanung" or "Nung", and have often been considered to be a sub-group of the Kachin (Jinghpaw). Among themselves they have had no general term for the entire group; they use their respective clan names to refer to themselves. This is true also of those who live in China, although these people have accepted the exonym "Dulong" (or "Taron", or "Trung"), a name they were given because they mostly live in the valley of the Dulong (Taron/Trung) River.
Questions on transitivity
(2008)
This handout (it isn’t a paper) presents phenomena and questions, rather than conclusions, related to the concept of transitivity. The idea is to return to these questions at the end of the Workshop to see if we can have a clearer consensus about the best general analysis of phenomena associated with transitivity. Section 2 presents alternative analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in three languages I have worked on. Section 3 discusses a few of the different conceptualisations of transitivity that might be relevant to our thinking about the questions related to these languages or that bring up further questions. Section 4 presents some general questions that might be asked of individual languages.
This paper presents the analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in two languages (Rawang and Qiang) that have been described using very different definitions of transitivity, with a view to showing that each language must be analysed on its own terms, and so the criteria used for identifying transitivity, if it is to be identified at all, might be different between languages. In the case of these two languages it is at least partly due to the two languages differing in terms of the degree of systematicity of the marking, with the Rawang marking being more systematic.
Nominalization in Rawang
(2009)