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This paper discusses the typology of focus structure types (variation of information structuring in the clause) and how information structure can be used to explain all of the word order patterns in Chinese without reference to grammatical relations.
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.
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.
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.
In LaPolla 1990, I presented arguments to show that Chinese is a language in which there has been no grammaticalizalion of the syntactic relations "subject" and "object". This being the case, then syntactic relations cannot be what determines word order in Chinese. In this paper I will argue that, aside from a semantic rule that the actor of a verb, if expressed, must precede that verb, it is pragmatic relations (information structure) that are the main determinants of word order in Chinese.
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.
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.