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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.
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.
Two problems cloud our understanding of subgrouping in Tibeto-Burman. One is the lack of consistent and clear standards and principles for subgrouping. Subgrouping is often based on certain features that the languages are said to share, or on a few shared lexical items, or even on the fieldworker's intuitions, or on how remote speakers feel different languages are (the degree of mutual intelligibility).
This paper compares the Dulong language of northwestern Yunnan Province in China to other Tibeto-Burman languages and to Proto-Tibeto-Burman, with a view toward understanding the historical development of Dulong and toward supporting, revising, and adding to the body of accepted PTB reconstructions.
This exercise explores the historical relationship between tone, aspiration, prefixes and stem initial consonants in Tibetan. (The stem-initial consonant is underlined in those words that have prefixes or initial clusters; [ts], [tsh], [tç], [tçh], etc., all count as single consonants.) Other phonetic developments are also explored.
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.
Evidentiality is a grammatical category which has source of information as its primary meaning — whether the narrator actually saw what is being described, or made inferences about it based on some evidence, or was told about it, and so on. Evidentials are a particularly salient feature of Tibeto-Burman languages. This volume features in-depth studies of evidentiality systems in six languages: Rgyalthang, a Kham Tibetan dialect, by Krisadawan Hongladarom; Yongning Na (Naxi group; believed to be closely related to Lolo-Burmese), by Liberty Lidz; Darma (Almora branch of Western Himalayish), by Christina Willis; nDrapa (Qiangic), by Satoko Shirai; Magar (Himalayish), by Karen Grunow-Hårsta, and Tabo (or Spiti), a Tibetan dialect, by Veronika Hein. Each opens new perspectives on the composition and the semantics of evidential systems, on the marking of more than one information source in one sentence, and on the grammaticalized expression of mirativity.
The new insights on evidentiality and related issues from the Tibeto-Burman area are crucial for understanding evidentials in a cross-linguistic perspective.
Using arguments based on the data on verb agreement (pronominalization) in Tibeto-Burman, LaPolla 1989 (see also LaPolla 1992) argues that Proto-Tibeto-Burman should be reconstructed as a language with no inflectional morphology. In that paper it is argued that the Proto-Tibeto- Burman system of grammatical relations1 was closer to the typical 'role-dominated' (Van Valin & Foley 1980) Burmese-Yipho system (epitomized by Lahu—see Matisoff 1973). That is, a system where there is no definable 'subject' or 'direct object'; a system where semantic and pragmatic principles govern the organization of discourse, not syntactic functions. In this paper we look at the nature of 'objects' in Tibeto-Burman languages, and here also find support for this view of Proto-Tibeto-Burman grammatical relations. From a survey of ninety-five reliable grammars or descriptions of languages in the Tibeto-Burman family, I found eleven languages with no nominal object marking, twenty languages with nominal morphology consistently marking the patient as object, regardless of clause type, and sixty-four languages with a type of marking where the patient in monotransitve clauses is often or always marked with the same postposition as the goal or beneficiary (dative) in ditransitve clauses. This type of marking is discussed in Dryer 1986 as Primary Object marking. I argue that this type of marking in the Tibeto-Burman languages reflects the semantically based nature of grammatical relations in Proto-Tibeto-Burman.
This paper discusses an attempt to write a computer program that would properly model the phonological development of Chinese from Middle Chinese to Modern Peking Mandarin, using the rules in Chen 1976. Several problems are encountered, the most significant being that the rules cannot apply in the same order for all lexical items. The significance of this in terms of the implementation of sound change is briefly discussed.
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.
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.
This paper is an overview of the motivations and methodology for doing empirical in situ fieldwork on languages. It suggests specific methods for carrying out fieldwork in a maximally empirical way.
提要 本文通过对信息传达的性质和语言的本质的探讨,来了解语言的发展。Ostension "显 示信息传达意嚣的动作"(以下简称"动作")和inference" 推测/推论"是信息传达过程中的两 个主重要环节。在信息传达的时候,信息传达者总希望信息接受者能又快又准确地对自己所传 达的信息做出"推论/推测因此,信息传达者会尽量地做出最适宜、最不费力、最能帮助对方 进行推论/推测的"动作动作"越具体,对"推论/推测"过程的制约程度就越高。语言在信 息传达过程中的作用只是作为一种制约听话者进行"推论/推测"的工具,因此,语言是因为说 话者要制约听话者的"推论/推测"过程而发展的。不同语言的说话者对不同语义领域进行相 同或不阔的制约,制约程度和手段亦有相同与不同之处。因此,每种语窑有它的独特性,但不 同语言之间也有共岗位。
This brief paper discusses the nature of linguistic typology and its relationship to historical linguistics. It argues that typology includes a historical component, and historical linguistics includes a typological component, as grammaticalization studies can be said to be diachronic typology and some concepts such as markedness can be used in understanding the development of morphological systems, but the main foci differ in terms of synchronic vs. diachronic considerations. Typology can be of some help with understanding the direction of change in language, but it cannot be used as a standard for what is possible/impossible when we are doing reconstructions, and typological features cannot be used for establishing genetic relatedness.
This paper discusses word classes in Tagalog, the dominant language of the Philippines, using analyses developed by Himmelmann (2007) and LaPolla (2008). The goal is to clarify issues related to the identification of word classes in Tagalog, and show the distinct features of these word classes. Through the discussion of word classes in Tagalog, the authors also hope to shed some light on the issue of word classes in Chinese.
This paper presents epistemological and methodological problems found in work on the subgrouping of Sino-Tibetan languages and the reconstruction of features of the languages. A key problem is the lack of an accepted standard for judging this work, one that can stand up to statistical evaluation. An alternative methodology that involves using fixed sets of features to give us the statistical probability of common origin is suggested.
On transitivity
(2011)
This paper critically discusses and contrasts some of the different conceptualisations of transitivity that have been presented in the literature, and argues that transitivity as a morphosyntactic phenomenon and effectiveness of an event as a semantic concept should be separated in discussions of transitivity, and also, like many other aspects of grammar, transitivity should be seen as a constructional phenomenon, and so each construction in a language needs to be examined separately, in natural contexts. An Appendix presents some general questions one can consider when analysing language data.
Nominalization in Rawang
(2009)
On describing word order
(2006)
One aspect that is always discussed in language descriptions, no matter how short they may be, is word order. Beginning with Greenberg 1963, it has been common to talk about word order using expressions such as "X is an SOV language", where "S" represents "subject", "0" represents "object", and "V" represents "verb". Statements such as this are based on an assumption of comparability, an assumption that all languages manifest the categories represented by "S", "0", and "V" (among others), and that word order in all languages can be described (and compared) using these categories.
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.
Minority languages of China
(2007)
This chapter looks at language endangerment in the People's Republic of China, focusing on three of the main factors that influence language maintenance in China today: increased contact due to population movements and changes in the economy; the population policies of the government, particularly the identification of nationalities and languages; and the education system, particularly bilingual education. Finally, we give a brief account of the major efforts to document endangered languages.
Many linguists in China and the West have talked about Chinese as a topic-comment language, that is, a language in which the structure of the clause takes the form of a topic, about which something is to be said, and a comment, which is what is said about the topic, rather than being a language with a subject-predicate structure like that of English. Y. R. Chao (1968), for example, said that all Chinese clauses have topic-comment structure and there are no exceptions.
Qiang
(2003)
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.
Middle voice marking is very rarely recognized as such in the grammars written on Tibeto-Burman languages. It is often simply treated as a normal direct reflexive or as an intransitivizer. In order to draw the attention of scholars to the existence and function of middle voice marking in Tibeto-Burman languages, the present paper discusses the form and function of middle marking in several of these languages. We will first discuss key facts about middle marking in general, then discuss the individual Tibeto-Burman examples.
In chapters seven and eight of his book Language, Sapir talked about what he called ‘drift’, the changes that a language undergoes through time [...]. Dialects of a language are formed when that language is broken into different segments that no longer move along the same exact drift. Even so, the general drift of a language has its deep and its shallow currents; those features that distinguish closely related dialects will be of the rapid, shallow currents, while the deeper, slower currents may remain consistent between the dialects for millennia. It is this latter type that Sapir felt is ‘fundamental to the genius of the language’ (p. 172), and he said that ‘The momentum of the more fundamental, the pre-dialectal, drift is often such that languages long disconnected will pass through the same or strikingly similar phases’ (p. 172).