Participant Reference Patterns in Senthang Narrative

PARTICIPANT REFERENCE PATTERNS IN SENTHANG NARRATIVE

JACOB DANIEL WATSON

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS

Payap University June 2019

Title: Participant reference patterns in Senthang narrative Researcher: Jacob Daniel Watson Degree: Master of Arts in Linguistics Advisor: Tyler M. Heston, Ph.D. Approval Date: 4 June 2019 Institution: Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand

The members of the thesis examination committee:

1. ______Committee Chair (Peter Freeouf, Ph.D.)

2. ______Committee Member (Tyler M. Heston, Ph.D.)

3. ______Committee Member (Stephen H. Doty, Ph.D.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many friends, colleagues, and family members have helped to bring me to the point of completion of this thesis. Here I would like to try to put my gratitude toward those individuals into words.

First, I would like to thank Ajarn Tom Tehan for teaching me about discourse analysis and for helping me get started on this thesis. Although Ajarn Tom left this earth to be with the Lord before I could finish, I am very thankful for the time I had to learn from him. Thank you also to Ajarn Tyler Heston for his willingness to begin advising me in an area outside his normal expertise at such a late stage in the writing process, for his careful reading and critique of this thesis, and for his enduring patience and encouragement along the way.

Secondly, I would like to thank my remaining two committee members, Dr. Steve Doty and Dr. Peter Freeouf, for reading this thesis and giving several gentle critiques that made it that much better in the end.

Many, if not all, of the faculty members in the Linguistics Department at Payap University have helped me throughout my time studying at Payap. In particular, I would like to thank Ajarns Steve and Margie Doty for their patience and encouragement, especially over the last several months of writing. Thank you to Larin Adams, who gave me much advice along the way and whose sense of humor was normally a breath of fresh air amidst all the seriousness of academic talk. Thank you to Ajarn Linda Markowski and Ajarn Phinnarat Akharawatthanakun, who both helped me polish the translation of my abstract. Thank you also to Ajarn Audra Phillips, who shared her expertise in discourse and writing on several occasions, in particular at my roundtable presentation.

Although I was unable to work with Dr. David A. Peterson on this thesis due to my health condition and logistics complications, I am nonetheless very grateful to him for the willingness to advise me and read my thesis work which he expressed when I was

just starting this project a few years ago. Even so, his many publications on Kuki- Chin languages (Hakha Lai, Khumi, Hyow, etc.) helped tremendously in providing me with a basis of understanding in those languages closely related to Senthang.

I also want to thank Dr. Stephen H. Levinsohn for his many helpful and timely responses to my numerous inquiries via email concerning his method of participant reference analysis. More than once he very patiently pointed out how “you might be making this harder than it needs to be.”

To my many friends and colleagues at Payap University and elsewhere, I extend my gratitude. To Jonathan and Rachel Craft, for sharing their knowledge about Senthang and reading my thesis. To Tyler Davis, for his faithful friendship and vast knowledge of all things Burma and Kuki-Chin which he was always happy to share. To Pastor Yeom (염신승 목사님), for his godly kindness and generosity. To Pastor Song (송충홍 목사님), for sharing his wisdom and for teaching me Korean. To Nathan Straub, Mark and Anna Scholl, Lin Kyaw Zaw, Eli Cork, Daniel Glassey, Vanlal Cross Eng Lian Hngak, Dan Loss, Syed Iftiqar Dewan, Misriani Balle, Rachel Powelson, Khumsin Nu San Lung (Nunu), Amber and Upai Jasa, Marcus Rice, and Bawi Tawng, for their continued friendship and support.

I would like to thank my parents, for their unwavering support throughout my many years of schooling. Also, thank you to my Grandma Katy for always making sure I had more than enough to eat and always being there to visit with when I came over. To all my family back home, both in Christ and by blood, at Living Hope and North Fairfield, in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Indiana, and all over that wonderful land of America—thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and steadfast love.

I would also like to thank all of the members of the Senthang community without whom this thesis could not have been done. Tia Hliang, Lai Wh, Lian Tung, Thein Za Lian, Bawi Tia, Pu Sang Hmung, Pi Ngun Hlei, and Pu Lian Hrang each gave generously of their time and energy during the data collection phase of this project.

The most instrumental—and moreover, the most beautiful—of the members of the Senthang community in completing this thesis was and is my wife-to-be, Miss Ngun Tin Par. She suffered through many long hours of glossing and translating with me following the initial data collection and, subsequently, patiently answered all my questions about her language over countless phonecalls and emails.

But all the gratitude I have expressed here is only derivative of my thankfulness to the triune God, who Himself is the source of all who have helped me reach this point. He has shown me his hesed, his steadfast love, shining through the clouds of life’s struggles and reflected in the face of each person mentioned here.

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Soli Deo Gloria.

Jacob D. Watson

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Title: Participant Reference Patterns in Senthang Narrative Researcher: Jacob Daniel Watson

Degree: Masters of Arts in Linguistics Advisor: Tyler M. Heston, Ph.D. Approval Date: 4 June 2019 Institution: Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand Number of Pages: 97 Keywords: Participant reference, Referring expression, Identifiability

ABSTRACT

Senthang (Kuki-Chin, Tibeto-Burman) is spoken in Central Chin State, Burma/Myanmar. This study aims to describe the participant reference patterns in Senthang narrative discourse. The text corpus used for analysis consists of four oral folktales containing a total of 546 clauses. Each text was recorded digitally, transcribed, glossed, translated, and then analyzed using Dooley & Levinsohn's (2001) sequential default model, which takes as its foundation Givón's (1983) concept of topic continuity.

Senthang's inventory of referring expressions is found to include overt NPs, pronouns, and zero anaphora. These referring expressions have several functions on the discourse level, consisting largely in signaling the identifiability, activation status, and thematic salience of participants.

Participant rank reflects a participant's global thematic salience. It is determined by adapting Givón's (1983) measurements of topic continuity. The analysis of one of the four texts demonstrates that the more linguistic material used to introduce a participant, the higher that participant’s rank.

Default codings of referring expressions are determined for eight subject and non- subject contexts according to the sequential default model. However, the defaults for the two contexts immediately following reported speech are only tentative due to the paucity of their occurrence. More coding tends to occur at episode boundaries and

other discontinuities, while less coding tends to occur when there is little to no semantic ambiguity in the identification of a participant.

Pronouns occur only rarely in Senthang narrative discourse outside of reported speech. Within reported speech, however, they occur more frequently. Further investigation into the functions of independent pronouns both inside and outside reported speech is recommended.

The findings of this study contribute to the description of Senthang, which has remained largely undescribed until recently. They are of special interest to those studying the discourse structures in other pro-drop languages--particularly to those studying other Kuki-Chin languages--as well as to those creating and/or translating materials in Senthang for the purpose of community development.

ชื่อเรื่อง: รูปแบบการอ้างถึงผู้แสดงบทบาทในเรื่องเล่าภาษาเซ็นทัง ผู้วิจัย: เจคอป แดเนียล วัสสัน ชื่อปริญญา: ศิลปศาสตรมหาบัณฑิต (ภาษาศาสตร์) อาจารย์ที่ปรึกษาวิทยานิพนธ์: ดร. ไทเลอร์ เอ็ม. เฮสตัน วันที่อนุมัติผลงาน: 4 มิถุนายน 2562 สถาบันการศึกษา: มหาวิทยาลัยพายัพ จังหวัดเชียงใหม่ ประเทศไทย จ านวนหน้า: 97 ค าส าคัญ: การอ้างถึงผู้แสดงบทบาท ค าหรือข้อความที่แสดงการอ้าง ถึง ความสามารถในการบ่งชี้

บทคัดย่อ

ภาษาเซ็นทัง (กลุ่มภาษากูกี-ชิน, ตระกูลภาษาย่อยทิเบต-พม่า) พูดในบริเวณรัฐชินกลาง ประเทศ เมียนมาร์ การศึกษาครั้งนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่ออธิบายรูปแบบการอ้างถึงผู้แสดงบทบาทในสัมพันธสาร เรื่องเล่าภาษาเซ็นทัง คลังข้อความที่ใช้ในการวิเคราะห์ประกอบด้วยนิทานพื้นบ้านประเภทมุขปาฐะ 4 เรื่อง รวมทั้งสิ้น 546 ประโยคย่อย แต่ละเรื่องมีการบันทึกด้วยเครื่องบันทึกเสียงดิจิทัล ถ่ายถอดเสียง ให้ความหมายหรือแสดงหน้าที่ทางไวยากรณ์ของค า แปลความหมาย และวิเคราะห์ โดยใช้รูปแบบตั้ง ต้นในการจัดเรียงประโยคของ Dooley & Levinsohn (2001) ซึ่งใช้แนวคิดพื้นฐานของ Givón (1983) เกี่ยวกับความต่อเนื่องของหัวข้อ ผลการวิจัยพบว่า ค าหรือข้อความที่แสดงการอ้างถึงในภาษาเซ็นทังประกอบด้วย นามวลี สรรพนาม และการละรูปแทน ค าหรือข้อความที่แสดงการอ้างถึงเหล่านี้มีหน้าที่หลายอย่างในระดับสัมพันธสาร ส่วนใหญ่มักใช้เพื่อบ่งบอกความสามารถในการบ่งชี้ สถานภาพที่ผู้อ่านนึกถึงผู้แสดงบทบาท รวมทั้ง การแสดงความส าคัญของผู้แสดงบทบาท การจัดล าดับของผู้แสดงบทบาทสะท้อนให้เห็นถึงการแสดงความส าคัญของผู้แสดงบทบาท ซึ่งตัดสิน ได้โดยการประยุกต์ใช้แนวคิดของ Givón (1983) เกี่ยวกับวิธีการก าหนดความต่อเนื่องของหัวข้อ ผล การวิเคราะห์หนึ่งในสี่ของนิทานพื้นบ้านแสดงให้เห็นว่ายิ่งมีการใช้ค าเพื่อแนะน าผู้แสดงบทบาทมาก ขึ้น ล าดับของผู้แสดงบทบาทก็จะสูงขึ้นเช่นเดียวกัน ในการศึกษาครั้งนี้ ได้น าการก าหนดรหัสตั้งต้นของค าหรือข้อความที่แสดงการอ้างถึงมาใช้ก าหนด บริบทที่มีประธาน และไม่มีประธาน 8 แห่งตามรูปแบบตั้งต้นในการจัดเรียง อย่างไรก็ตาม รูปแบบตั้ง ต้นส าหรับบริบททั้งสองแบบที่เกิดขึ้นตามหลังประโยคทางอ้อมยังไม่ชัดเจนมากนัก เนื่องจากรูปแบบ

ตั้งต้นดังกล่าวปรากฏไม่มาก การก าหนดรหัสมีแนวโน้มที่จะเกิดขึ้นมากขึ้น ณ รอยต่อของแต่ละตอน และในช่วงปะติดปะต่อของเรื่องเล่า และจะเกิดขึ้นน้อยลงเมื่อไม่มีความก ากวมทางความหมายในการ บ่งชี้ของผู้แสดงบทบาท ในสัมพันธสารเรื่องเล่าภาษาเซ็นทัง ค าสรรพนามเกิดขึ้นไม่บ่อยนักนอกขอบเขตของประโยคทางอ้อม แต่ในประโยคทางอ้อมจะมีค าสรรพนามปรากฏมากขึ้น ดังนั้น จึงควรมีการศึกษาต่อไปเกี่ยวกับหน้าที่ ของค าสรรพนามอิสระทั้งภายในและภายนอกของประโยคทางอ้อม ผลการวิจัยนี้ก่อให้เกิดประโยชน์ในแง่ของการพรรณนาลักษณะทางภาษาของภาษาเซ็นทัง ซึ่งยังไม่มี การศึกษามากนักจนกระทั่งปัจจุบัน และยังมีประเด็นน่าสนใจส าหรับผู้ที่ศึกษาโครงสร้างของสัมพัน ธสารในภาษาอื่นๆ ที่มีการละค าสรรพนาม โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งผู้ที่ศึกษาภาษาอื่นๆ ในกลุ่มกูกี-ชิน และส าหรับผู้ที่สร้างสรรค์หรือแปลงานในภาษาเซ็นทังเพื่อประโยชน์ในการพัฒนาชุมชนต่อไป

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... i Abstract ...... iv บทคัดย่อ ...... vi

List of Tables ...... xi List of Figures ...... xii List of Abbreviations and Symbols...... xiii Glossary ...... xvii Introduction ...... 1 1.1 The Senthang people ...... 1 1.2 Language background ...... 2 1.2.1 Language classification ...... 2 1.2.2 Language vitality ...... 3 1.2.3 Previous research on Senthang ...... 4 1.3 Research questions ...... 4 1.4 Objectives of the study...... 6 1.5 Hypotheses ...... 7 1.6 Limitations and scope ...... 7 1.7 Phonology and orthography ...... 8 1.8 The text corpus ...... 9 1.8.1 Typology and genre of text corpus ...... 10 1.8.2 Plot summaries ...... 10 1.8.3 Format of data presented in this study ...... 13 1.8.4 Metadata of texts ...... 13 1.9 Grammar Overview ...... 14 1.9.1 Referring expressions ...... 14 1.9.2 Full noun phrases ...... 14 1.9.3 Pronouns ...... 17 1.9.4 Pro-drop ...... 19 1.9.5 The verb phrase ...... 19 1.9.6 Verbal inflection ...... 19 Literature Review ...... 22

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2.1 Studies on Senthang and related languages ...... 22 2.2 The study of discourse ...... 23 2.3 Approaches to the analysis of participant reference ...... 25 2.3.1 Three major approaches ...... 26 2.3.2 Description-oriented approaches ...... 33 2.4 Other studies that inform this study ...... 38 2.4.1 Primary PR Theses ...... 38 2.4.2 Other studies ...... 40 Participant Rank ...... 42 3.1 Introduction to participant rank ...... 42 3.2 Methodology ...... 43 3.3 Results and analysis of the three measurements ...... 46 3.4 Participant Introductions ...... 51 3.5 Conclusion to the analysis of True Love ...... 53 Participant Reference Patterns ...... 54 4.1 Key concepts in the context-dependent default approach ...... 54 4.2 Methodology ...... 55 4.2.1 Charting method ...... 57 4.2.2 Principles for assigning subject & non-subject contexts ...... 58 4.3 Referring expressions and their functions...... 59 4.3.1 Noun phrases ...... 61 4.3.2 Pronouns ...... 66 4.3.3 Zero anaphora ...... 68 4.4 Rules for default encoding ...... 69 4.4.1 Subject reference patterns ...... 69 4.4.2 Non-subject reference patterns...... 83 Conclusion ...... 91 5.1 Summary of findings...... 91 5.2 Evaluation of methodology ...... 93 5.3 Significance of findings ...... 94 5.4 Further Research ...... 95 Bibliography ...... 96 Appendix A True Love Is Inseparable ...... 111 Appendix B Ngun Nw and Tia Tei by Tia Hliang ...... 128 Appendix C Ngun Nw and Tia Tei by Lian Tung ...... 138 Appendix D Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang...... 152

Resume ...... 180

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Senthang Language Use by Domain (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2010, p. 28) ...... 3 Table 2 Senthang consonants ...... 8 Table 3 Senthang vowel phonemes...... 9 Table 4 Senthang tones ...... 9 Table 5 Basic metadata of stories ...... 13 Table 6 Noun phrase template ...... 15 Table 7 Demonstratives ...... 15 Table 8 Pronouns ...... 17 Table 9 Possessive pronouns & formal independent pronouns ...... 18 Table 10 Object agreement markers ...... 20 Table 11 Subject Agreement Set 1 within verb complex ...... 20 Table 12 Subject Agreement Set 2 within verb complex ...... 20 Table 13 Subject Agreement Set 3 within verb complex ...... 21 Table 14 Subject Agreement Set 4 within verb complex ...... 21 Table 15 Participants and props in True Love ...... 46 Table 16 Participant ranking by simple count ...... 48 Table 17 Participant rank by average referential distance ...... 49 Table 18 Participant rank by persistence value...... 49 Table 19 Top three overall ranking ...... 49 Table 20 Steps in the default approach (Levinsohn, 2015, p. 128) ...... 56 Table 21 Totals of REs in S1 Context by Text ...... 69 Table 22 Totals of REs in S1+ Context by Text ...... 71 Table 23 Totals of REs in S2 Context by Text ...... 74 Table 24 Totals of REs in S3 Context by Text ...... 77 Table 25 Totals of REs in S4 Context by Text ...... 79 Table 26 Totals of REs in N1 Context by Text ...... 83 Table 27 Totals of REs in N2 Context by Text ...... 85 Table 28 Totals of REs in N3 Context by Text ...... 87 Table 29 Totals of REs in N4 Context by Text ...... 89 Table 30 Sequential default codings by context ...... 91

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Map of Chin State zooming in on Senthang area ...... 1 Figure 2 Ken VanBik's Schema for Proto-Kuki-Chin (VanBik, 2009, p. 23) ...... 3 Figure 3 Iconicity scale of phonological size (Givón, 1983b, p. 18) ...... 27 Figure 4 Identifiability and Activation, adapted from Lambrecht (1994, p. 109) ...... 32 Figure 5 “Discourse operations that influence reference form in languages” ...... 36

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

- affix = clitic ∅ zero anaphor 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person

ABS absolutive

ACCOM accompaniment

ADZR adverbializer

AFRV affirmative

AGR agreement

ALT allative

APPL applicative

ASP aspect

ATT attenuated

ATT attributive

ATTN attention

BEN benefactive

CASE case

CAUS causative

CLF classifier

CLFP classifier phrase

COM comitative

COMP complementizer

CONJ conjunctive/conjunction

COP copular DA discourse analysis

DEM demonstrative

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DET determiner

DIM diminutive

DIR directional

DM discourse marker DV Daw Vang

EE elaborate expression EGIDS Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale

EMPH emphatic

ERG ergative

EVNT event

EXP expressive

FUT future

HAB habitual

I verb stem I

II verb stem II

IMP imperative

INF infinitive

INT intensifier

INTJ interjection

IPFV imperfective

IRR irrealis KB Khwmh Bau KB&DV The Story of Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang

LOC locative LS and LD Law Sy and Law Daw

MAL malefactive

MOD modality MSEA Mainland Southeast Asia

N noun

NEG negative

NMLZ nominalizer NN&TT-LT Ngun Nw and Tia Tei by Lian Tung

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NN&TT-TH Ngun Nw and Tia Tei by Tia Hliang

NONCE nonce word / meaningless perfunctory morpheme NP noun phrase

NT.EX counter expectation

OBJ object

ONOM onomatopoeia

PFV perfective

PL plural

PN pronoun

POL polite

POSS possessive

POST postposition

POT potentiality/possibility PR participant reference

PROG progressive

PROH prohibitive

PST past

PTCL particle

Q interrogative

QUAN quantifier

RC relative clause RE referring expression

REL relativizer

REQ.CNFRM request for confirmation

SBJ subject

SG singular SLCC Senthang Literature and Culture Committee

SUBD subordinator

TAG tag (question)

TOP topic TP and TZ Tang Phw and Tang Zaw True Love True Love Is Inseparable

V verb

VOC vocative

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GLOSSARY

Referring In this study, any linguistic device(s) used by a speaker whose expression function is to identify a discourse participant in the mind of a hearer is generally called a referring expression. Referring expressions can have a small amount of coding material, i.e. zero anaphora or pronouns, or a large amount of coding material, i.e. noun phrases accompanied by several modifiers (e.g. Bequette, 2013; Edwards, 2011; Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski, 1993; Osborne, 2009; Tebow, 2010).

Specificity Specificity is a semantic distinction between kinds of referents for which a speaker either has a particular person or thing in mind (a specific referent) or has no particular person or thing in mind (a non-specific referent). This distinction has no direct grammatical correlate. Non-specific referents are often coded with indefinite noun phrases in English; however, their status as specific or non- specific can still be ambiguous apart from context or from knowing what is in the mind of the speaker—who herself at times may not know whether she means for a referent to be specific (Chafe, 1994, pp. 103-4; Givón, 2001a, pp. 449ff; Lambrecht, 1994, pp. 80ff; Lyons, 1977, pp. 187ff).

Individuation Individuation is a process that allows linguistic reference to be made to a specific entity. This is an important part of reference in classifier languages that have sort nouns (Rijkoff, 2002) like those of the MSEA region, in which a head noun will usually need to be modified by another element in order for specific reference to be made, i.e. for the concept represented by the noun to be individuated or embodied (Foley, 1997, p. 231 as cited in Osborne, 2009, p. 41; Tebow, 2010, pp. 37-38).

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Identifiability Identifiability (§2.3.1.3.2) is a quality of a referent by which the speaker assumes the hearer has a “file” that is already open in his mental representation of a discourse. Thus, if a referent is unidentifiable, then the speaker needs to introduce that referent into the discourse and thereby create a file in his hearer’s mental representation of the discourse. Furthermore, identifiability is a cognitive concept that is often represented in language by the grammatical category of definiteness (Lambrecht, 1994, pp. 77ff; Chafe, 1994, Chapter 8).

Activation A discourse, or a story, is told over a period of time, and as it state progresses through time, various ideas (events, states, participants) are activated or made known within the minds of the speaker and the hearer. Thus, in this study, an identifiable participant may be in any one of three activation states: it may be active, semiactive, or inactive (§2.3.1.3.1) (Chafe, 1994, Chapter 6; Van Valin, Jr. & LaPolla, 1997, p. 200f).

Activation Activation cost, related to activation states, is the amount of mental cost energy that must be used to activate a participant in a discourse. The activation cost of a participant in a discourse will vary based on that participant’s activation state. Thus, an active participant has no cost, a semiactive participant has a low cost, and an inactive participant has a high cost (Chafe, 1994, Chapter 6).

Topic Topic continuity (§2.3.1.1), in contrast to activation states, does not continuity focus on the state of participants in the mind, but rather the state of a topic, or participant, throughout a discourse. In a thematic paragraph, there is commonly one participant that is more continuous than the others and that unifies the paragraph under an overall theme. Thus, one can speak of a participant’s degree of topic continuity, where a highly continuous topic is expected to use minimal coding and a highly discontinuous topic is expected to use maximal coding (Givón, 1983).

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Anchoring Anchoring (§2.3.1.3.2) refers to a property of unidentifiable referents in discourse by which an unidentifiable referent is either anchored or unanchored, where an unanchored unidentifiable referent is one expressed in a way that instructs the hearer to create a completely new mental representation in his discourse register (i.e. his total set of mental representations for a given discourse) (e.g. I got on a bus yesterday.) and where an anchored unidentifiable referent is one expressed in a way that instructs the hearer to create a new mental representation, but to link that representation to one that already exists in his discourse register (e.g. A guy I work with says he knows your sister.) (Lambrecht, 1994; Prince, 1981).

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Introduction

1.1 The Senthang people There are around 32,000 speakers of Senthang located mainly in and around Chin State, Myanmar (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2010). There are 54 Senthang-speaking villages in total: 36 in Chin State (34 in Hakha Township and 2 in Than Tlang Township), 15 in Magwe Division, and three in Sagaing Division. Many Senthang live in various cities around Myanmar as well, such as Hakha, Kaleymyo, and Yangon. Some of the younger generation have gone abroad to work (in countries such as Malaysia, India, and Singapore) and others have migrated to more developed countries (e.g. the USA, Canada, Australia, Denmark, etc.). Figure 1 displays a map of Chin State with a zoomed view of Hakha Township and the Senthang area circled in red.

Phaipha A & B

Figure 1 Map of Chin State zooming in on Senthang area (adapted from Myanmar Information Management Unit, 2016)

1.2 Language background According to Ngun Tin Par (2016), people outside the Senthang community refer to the Senthang people as “Senthang”. The Senthang themselves also make use of this designation when talking with non-Senthang, or to each other when referring to the whole Senthang community. When they are talking to each other, however, they refer to themselves according to their village name, e.g. “Phaipha” or “Khuapi”. Normally, the villages correspond to different dialects of the language. These dialects are all mutually intelligible among themselves. “However,” says Ngun Tin Par (2016), “some dialects such as Surkhua, Sakta, and Buanlung are more difficult to understand for [Senthang speakers] who grew up outside of the Senthang area compared to Phaipha and Khuapi dialects” (p. 6).

The dialect spoken by the greatest number of people is centered around Surkhua, a village in southern Hakha Township, Chin State. Although the Surkhua dialect is spoken by the most people, the dialect centered around the villages of Phaipha A and Phaipha B (see Figure 1), known to the Senthang as Phaiphu, is considered the preferred dialect for language development because it is centrally located and easier for non-Phaiphu speakers to understand than other dialects, like Surkhua (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2010). The present study focuses on language data from the Phaiphu dialect of Senthang.

1.2.1 Language classification Linguistically, Senthang is classified as Tibeto-Burman, Kuki-Chin. Senthang’s subgrouping under Kuki-Chin, however, is less clear. Some classify Senthang as Kuki-Chin, Chin, Central Chin (Bradley, 2007; Khoi Lam Thang, 2001a). VanBik (2009), on the other hand, classifies Senthang as Maraic, emphasizing Senthang’s close relationship to the languages located geographically to its south and southwest (i.e. Lautu, Mara, Zotung, Zyphe). According to Peterson (2000), the traditional subgrouping of Kuki-Chin was originally laid out in the Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson, 1903) as Central Chin (e.g. Hakha, Mizo, Mara), Northern Chin (e.g. Tiddim, Thadou, Sizang), and Southern Chin (e.g. Khumi, Hyow, Chinbok).

VanBik (2009) provides a helpful schema for Proto-Kuki-Chin, displayed in Figure 3. This shows how, over time, the different Chin languages may have split off from their ancestor, Proto-Kuki-Chin. Senthang is circled. VanBik groups North and South Chin groups under “Peripheral,” a classification first proposed by Peterson (2000).

Figure 2 Ken VanBik's Schema for Proto-Kuki-Chin (VanBik, 2009, p. 23)

1.2.2 Language vitality The Ethnologue (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2019) places Senthang at level 6A (vigorous) on the EGIDS scale, which means that “in its primary country… the language is used for face-to-face communication by all generations and the situation is sustainable.” This designation for Senthang accords with the data from a 2007 sociolinguistic survey reported in J. Craft & R. Craft (2010). The survey was carried out in eight Senthang villages, seven located in Hakha Township, Chin State, at the center of the Senthang-speaking area, and one in Gangaw Township, Magway Division. The data from this survey point to strong language vitality among Senthang speakers. Evidence for this is clearly observable in Table 1, which shows how much Senthang is used in seven different domains in all eight villages. In the table, the n= column gives the number of respondents for each question.

Table 1 Senthang Language Use by Domain (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2010, p. 28)

Senthang Senthang Burmese Domain n= only plus Burmese only With parents 96 99% 1% - With children 62 98% - 2% In the house 96 98% 1% 1% With friends 96 95% 4% - At a funeral 96 98% 1% 1% At a village meeting 90 92% 1% 7% At church or 96 88% 1% 11% monastery

Many of the Senthang who live in Hakha township are able to understand and speak Hakha—another Central Chin language—to a large extent due to both their geographic proximity to Hakha and, especially, the fact that Hakha used to be taught in Senthang schools alongside Burmese. For the last 10 to 15 years, Hakha has not been taught in Senthang schools, which has led to fewer young people understanding or speaking Hakha. Those Senthang who live outside of Hakha Township generally cannot understand or speak Hakha. Burmese is the language of instruction in all Myanmar schools, so most Senthang have at least some ability in Burmese. In spite of the presence of both Hakha and Burmese as second and/or third languages for many Senthang, Senthang vitality remains very strong (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2010, pp. 27–29).

1.2.3 Previous research on Senthang Little has been written on Senthang to date. In 2016, Ngun Tin Par completed an MA thesis entitled Agreement and verb stem alternation in Senthang Chin. Beyond that thesis, there are only a few unpublished studies, including the sociolinguistic survey described in 1.2.2 (J. Craft & R. Craft 2010) and a phonology sketch (J. Craft & R. Craft 2012). Several of Senthang’s closely related neighboring languages have had a significant amount of research already, e.g. Hakha Lai, Falam, Mizo. Relevant selections from the research in these languages are discussed in Chapter 2. Ngun Tin Par (2016) included a section on the noun phrase, but beyond that, there have been no publications providing an analysis of Senthang nominal structures or of how such structures are chosen when referring to participants in a discourse. The present study aims to help fill this particular research gap—to understand both the Senthang noun phrase (NP) and the factors influencing the choice of NP structures in reference to participants in a discourse.

1.3 Research questions This thesis aims to describe the participant reference patterns, i.e. define default rules for when to use what kind of referring expression, in Senthang folktales. The main thrust behind taking this line of research is a desire to improve the quality of future translations into the language. The gap of—and hence, need for—research into the Senthang noun phrase serves as a derivative motivation.

But why would one need to study participant reference to make a good translation? Most translation work does not necessitate an explicit description of the participant

reference system of either the source or target language. This is because such translations are usually done between two languages that are both well-known to the translator. This being the case, the translator already has a knowledge of how participant reference works in both languages and can make the transfer from one language’s system of reference to the other’s easily enough, resulting in a clear and natural translation.

However, in language development projects for smaller languages, translation work is quite often of a different nature: rather than having one professional translator well-versed in both source and target languages, there is often a source language speaker working jointly with a speaker of the target language to produce a translation. To complicate the matter, in Bible translation projects, because the texts being translated were originally written in what today are considered dead languages, the context of translation work often involves a non-target language speaker who has a greater or lesser knowledge of the source language(s) and a target language speaker who may or may not know the source language. One might assume that the target language speaker could make a clear and natural transfer of the participant reference in any source language, so long as he or she understands the meaning of the source text. However, this would be a simplistic understanding of the process of translation. In an article underlining the importance of discourse studies to the work of Bible translation, Uche Aaron states:

When [target language speakers] are confronted with source language texts, they tend to be so influenced by these forms that they lose discourse competence in their mother tongue. The reason for this is that absorbing information by sight (that is, reading) is more engaging to the mind than by sound (that is, hearing). As a result, even fluent [target language speakers] are capable of transferring information from the Source Language into the [Target] Language in an unnatural, often incomprehensible way. It is therefore of the utmost importance not to rely solely on the discourse competence of the [target language speaker]. (Aaron, 1998, p. 2)

So, for Aaron, the study of discourse in both the source and target language is necessary in a translation project like the one described for producing clear and natural translations.

Encoding events and entities is one of the primary tasks of any discourse. Participant reference concerns the coding of the latter and is, therefore, an absolutely essential component in any language’s discourse structure. Moreover, although there are some

general tendencies that all languages follow in the coding of entities, there are often important differences. If a target language speaker, as in Aaron’s quote, transfers participant references into the target language while being influenced by the structure of the source language, then it may be quite unclear who is doing what to whom in the resulting translation. Over the years, many, often working specifically in the area of Bible translation, have understood this and pursued studies of participant reference in both the biblical (source) languages (Levinsohn, 1992, 2000; Longacre, 1989a; Terry, 1993) and less well-known target languages (Bequette, 2013; Edwards, 2011; Stennes, 1969; Taylor, 1994). It is with this rationale that I take up the study of participant reference in Senthang here and, more specifically, attempt to answer the following research questions:

1. What is the inventory of referring expressions available for identification in Senthang narrative discourse?

2. How do these referring expressions function on the discourse level?

3. What strategies are used in the participant identification system in Senthang narrative discourse? More specifically:

a. How does participant rank interact with Senthang’s participant identification system, and what are the strategies for signaling participant rank within that system, including in participant introductions? b. What are the default patterns for participant identification? c. What are possible motivations for non-default encodings of participant identification?

1.4 Objectives of the study The objectives in this study are to examine selected Senthang narrative texts of a similar genre in order to:

1. Compile an inventory of referring expressions and describe their functions on the discourse level,

2. Describe the default patterns for participant identification in Senthang narrative, and

3. Identify non-default occurrences of participant identification and describe possible motivations for them.

1.5 Hypotheses In relation to the objectives outlined in §1.4, the following tentative hypotheses are proposed, informed by the results of several previous studies using the same model of analysis:

1. A high percentage of occurrences of zero anaphora will be explainable in terms of their high topicality/continuity within the text and their high activation status within the mind of the speaker/hearer.

2. Most non-default occurrences of participant identification will occur at discontinuities within each text, including, but not limited to, discontinuities of time, place, and participant.

3. Only a low percentage of non-default occurrences will not have any obvious motivations.

1.6 Limitations and scope The corpus for this thesis is limited to four oral narrative texts. The stories were recorded using an audio recorder, thus whatever might have been gained from body language or the surrounding physical context of the storytelling was limited to what the researcher or his language consultant—who was also present during the data collection—could remember. Because of various limitations on travel, time, and access to the speakers, there was little opportunity for the speakers to rehearse their stories before, or to edit them after, recording. As a result of these circumstances, the researcher’s language consultant found it necessary to do some editing on each of the stories. For KB&DV, she had to make some quite significant changes because the speaker mixed up one large section of the story which subsequently had to be rearranged and edited to give it a natural flow. Besides that large single edit, most changes to the stories involved deletion of verbal pauses, speaker comments, and unnecessary conjunctions; addition of omitted obligatory agreement markers; and, rarely, the substitution of an inadvertently-used Hakha word with the proper Senthang equivalent. This editing, especially in KB&DV, was necessary in order to make the texts more coherent and grammatically accurate, as judged by a native speaker of Senthang. The improved coherency and grammaticality of the texts allows for a more consistent analysis of discourse patterns (Levinsohn, 2015, p. 13).

The researcher’s language consultant was also able to meet with some of the speakers again after the initial recording in order to clarify some unknown

vocabulary in the stories. Despite the oral, unpolished nature of these stories, they are still easily (for the most part) followed by native speakers, most pertinently including the references to their various participants throughout. With that in mind, the patterns of reference that are gathered from analyzing these stories is expected to be valid, although possibly incomplete.

1.7 Phonology and orthography This section gives a brief summary of Senthang phonology and the corresponding orthography. It is based primarily on Ngun Tin Par (2016), but J. Craft & R. Craft (2012) was also consulted. As for the orthography, a group of linguists working in conjunction with the Senthang language community is still in process of developing it. Any changes they think necessary are brought before the Senthang Literature and Culture Committee (SLCC) for approval. Such being the case, the form of the orthography used in this thesis represents as up-to-date of a version as possible at present.1

Senthang has 24 consonant phonemes which are listed in Table 2. The orthographic convention is given in parentheses where necessary.

Table 2 Senthang consonants Bilabial Labio- Inter- Alveolar Velar Glottal dental dental Stops pʰ (ph) t̪ʰ (th) kʰ (kh) p t̪ (t) k ʔ (h) b d̪ (d) Affricates ts (c) Fricatives f* s x (hr) h v z ɣ (r) Nasals m̥ (hm) n̪̪̊ (hn) m n̪ (n) ŋ (ng) Laterals l̥ (hl) l

*The phoneme /f/ is rare in Senthang and occurs only in borrowed Hakha words and girls’ names, e.g. Ngun Tha Fam (Ngun Tin Par, 2016, p. 25).

1 Orthographic conventions that have been adopted by the SLCC and which are used in this thesis include 1) doubling the vowel symbol in plural agreement markers and pronouns in order to distinguish them from their singular counterparts and 2) using the spelling nah /nɔ́ʔ/ for the ergative case marker in order to distinguish it from the postposition nawh /nɔ́ʔ/.

There are nine vowel phonemes and one allophone in Senthang. These are displayed in Table 3.

Table 3 Senthang vowel phonemes

Front Central Back

Unrounded Unrounded Unrounded Rounded

High i u

Mid e ɘ (y) ɤ (w) o

Low-mid ɛ (e) ɔ (aw)

Low a

There are three tones in Senthang: high, mid, and low. These are displayed in a minimal triplet in Table 4 below.

Table 4 Senthang tones

Tone Examples Gloss with IPA

High thy [t̪ʰɘ́] blood

Mid thy [t̪ʰɘ] wind, die

Low thy [t̪ʰɘ̀] slide

Tone often changes on a word to signal grammatical information. This occurs most commonly with agreement markers, pronouns, and verbs. With agreement markers and pronouns, a low-tone often signals plurality, while a high tone signals singularity. With verbs, tone is often a primary distinguishing factor between alternating verb stems. For more information on Senthang phonology, see Ngun Tin Par (2016, p. 25ff).

1.8 The text corpus There are 4 narrative texts in the corpus. Three of them are similar in length, while one, “Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang”, is significantly longer than the others. This section describes how the texts were collected, explains the type and genre of the texts, gives a summary of each text, and finally lists the metadata for each text.

1.8.1 Typology and genre of text corpus Narrative has been widely used as the object of analysis in the study of participant reference patterns (e.g. Clancy, 1980; Fox, 1987a; T. Givón, 1983a). Because of their agent orientation and chronological succession of past events (Longacre, 1996), narratives (particularly those with three or more participants) lend themselves well to the task of describing the patterns of reference of a language (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001, p. 44; Grimes, 1975, p. 34). The four texts used in this study are third-person narratives with more than three participants each and were chosen precisely because they met those criteria.

In terms of genre, they may all be considered folktales since they are well-known among the Senthang community. However, they all seem to belong to a more specific sub-genre of folktales as well which may be called tragic romance. This classification is added because all four stories involve the breaking apart of families and the—sometimes gruesome—death of one or more main participants. Regarding folktales, they are normally quite easy to obtain, make for interesting reading, and lend themselves well to text analysis. However, one proviso regarding stories of this genre is that “the means of tracking the participants in a folktale may not be typical of other types of narrative… as the participants are too well known” to the language community (Levinsohn, 2015, p. 12).

1.8.2 Plot summaries The following sections give a summary of each story.

True Love Is Inseparable

True Love Is Inseparable (hereafter True Love) is a Senthang folktale about a rich family and a poor family living in the same village. The poor family has twin sons named Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. The rich family has twin daughters named Law Sy and Law Daw. The twins of each family grow up together and eventually fall in love—Tang Phw with Law Sy and Tang Zaw with Law Daw. The girls’ parents strongly disapprove of the relationship because they do not want to associate themselves with such a poor family. In spite of this, the boys and the girls run away together. Eventually, the girls’ parents, through the influence they have by means of their wealth, have the boys thrown out of the village. Before the boys leave the village, Law Sy and Law Daw tell them that they will not live without them and that they will not live very long either. They also tell them a sort of prophecy, that one day they, the girls, will turn into the khaupang flower, the boys will turn into

symthawng birds, and the symthawng birds will come to feast on the khaupang flowers. In the end, this prophecy comes true. The girls tie themselves together and throw themselves from a cliff. Not long after, the boys remember what the girls had said and they also tie themselves together and jump off the same cliff. The girls live on in the form of the khaupang flower that grows on the edge of the cliff where they jumped off and the boys in the form of symthawng birds who come to feast on the khaupang flower in the summer.

Ngun Nw and Tia Tei by Tia Hliang

Ngun Nw and Tia Tei are sisters who live with their father. Their father sends them out regularly to watch the rice paddy and keep the birds away. Then one day when they go out to the rice paddy, a python befriends them and falls in love with Ngun Nw. The girls and the python play together and the girls end up tearing their sarongs. When they go home, their father sees their sarongs and becomes suspicious. Eventually, he goes out to the paddy himself, finds the python, and kills him. But then another snake casts a spell on the dead python and brings him back to life. Thus, when their father sends them out to watch the rice paddy again, the python grabs Ngun Nw and takes her to live with him deep within the lake. In the end, Tia Tei and her father are left all alone and very sad.

Ngun Nw and Tia Tei by Lian Tung

This is another telling of the same story by a different speaker. The essential plot is the same, but in this version the girls bring the python—whose name is “Khuang Tahly” in this version—back to life themselves.

Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang

The Story of Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang (hereafter "KB&DV") is a rather long and tragic tale concerning two step sisters, Kwmh Bau and Daw Vang. Khwmh Bau (KB) and her single mother lived near Daw Vang (DV) and her parents. As a result, KB's mother would often run into DV's father, and as a result, they fell in love. The most natural solution to this was apparently to kill off DV's mother, which they did by pushing her off a bridge into a river. At that point, her spirit turned into a snake. Soon after KB's mother was--supposedly--out of the way, the two parents got married and began raising KB and DV together. While they were growing up, KB and DV each kept their own garden (lit. "dry field"). DV's garden was better than KB's because DV was wise and diligent while KB was lazy. In addition, when DV would go to her field, her mother-turned-snake would give her lots of good food, which

made her beautiful. KB's parents eventually find out what is going on and plot to kill DV's mother. Though DV tries to save her mother, KB's parents succeed in killing her. After killing her, they chopped her up into pieces, put the pieces into a basket, and made the girls carry it back home. Once home, they boiled her mother and, apparently, all but DV ate the flesh. Afterwards, DV gathered her mother's bones and buried them in a valley. In that same spot, a tree grew with various beads on it. DV took the beads, made a necklace out of them, and put it on. Because it was so beautiful, KB's parents wanted it for KB, but when KB put it on, it became charcoal.

Later on, a rich old village chief, called Mangpy chief, came with his entourage looking for a maiden to marry. Both KB and DV met him and showed him their garden crops. Naturally, he decided to ask for the hand of DV due both to her superior beauty and better garden produce. But Mangpy chief was crafty and he knew DV's parents would not want to give her to him, so he asked for KB instead and when DV escorted KB out to him and his men, he took DV and sent KB back. This enraged KB's parents, so they plotted and killed DV by tricking her and pouring a pot of boiling water over her. But, instead of burying her, they simply threw her out. Then, a doe found her and, casting a spell on her, brought her back to life. The doe had DV take care of her fawns.

Meanwhile, KB's parents sent her back to the chief wearing DV's dress, thus trying to deceive him. The chief, however, knew she was KB, but kept quiet nonetheless, while trying to find out where DV was. Eventually, he found out she was with the doe and called for her to return, but the doe would not let her go unless he brought her a brideprice of snot and termites. He brought what she asked for and was able to take DV back. Then, the Mangpy chief had DV and KB fight to the death and DV won because he had given her a better knife. Next, he and his men chopped up KB's body into pieces and gave it to her parents in a covered clay pot, calling it KB's "brideprice". When her parents, full of excitement, took it back to the village and called everyone out to see what it was, they opened the pot and all were shocked to find KB's body chopped up inside. KB's parents were angered greatly at this, so they went off to find and fight the chief. But the chief had a trap set for them already--a weak ladder he had set up in their path. When they climbed the ladder, it collapsed under their weight, they fell to the ground, and were killed by the chief's men. In the end, DV and the Mangpy chief lived happily ever after.

1.8.3 Format of data presented in this study When a line from the text corpus is referred to in this study, it appears as a numbered single-clause example of interlinearized text. This includes the line in Senthang (with Senthang orthography) and an English gloss, followed by a free translation in English. An example is provided in (1) below. The label “(1)” signifies that this is the first example sentence in this thesis, and “KB&DV.2” that it is clause #2 from the text Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang.

(1) KB&DV.2 a- hlan =nawh , hnapy-hnavu aa- va- wm =hai . 3SG.POSS- before =LOC wife-husband 3PL.SBJ- PST- exist =PL

Once upon a time, there were a husband and a wife.

1.8.4 Metadata of texts All texts were recorded digitally in July 2016. Three of the texts were recorded in Hakha, Chin State, Myanmar, while the fourth, True Love, was recorded in Kalay, Sagaing Division, Myanmar. Two of the speakers were female (Tia Hliang and Bawi Tia) and two were male (Lai Wh and Lian Tung). When telling the stories, the speakers addressed themselves to the primary language consultant.

Table 5 gives a summary of the length of the four stories in words, clauses, sentences, and minutes.

Table 5 Basic metadata of stories

Speaker Words Words Clauses Sentences Time (types) (tokens) (MM:SS)

True Love Lai Wh 225 1328 123 35 6:47

NN&TT-TH Tia 171 703 83 25 4:13 Hliang

NN&TT-LT Lian 186 848 107 48 5:12 Tung

KB&DV Bawi Tia 319 1795 233 83 10:34

1.9 Grammar Overview This section provides an overview of Senthang grammar with a focus on referring expressions, i.e. nominal structures and verbal agreement. As participant reference patterns have to do primarily with choices in the use of noun phrases in discourse, a clear description of their structure and behavior in Senthang is in order. With this focus in mind, the following is based on Ngun Tin Par's (2019) unpublished sketch of Senthang grammar, unless otherwise specified.

Senthang’s clause structure is SOV and rarely deviates from that order, especially in the case of the verb. However, there is the rare possibility of a postposed constituent, similar to the “postverbal afterthought position” of Hakha described in Peterson (2003, p. 420). A heavier adverbial—quite often locative—phrase may also appear before the subject position, but adverbs and adverbial phrases generally occur just before the verb complex.

1.9.1 Referring expressions Essentially, Senthang accomplishes the task of participant reference with three grammatical structures: noun phrases, pronouns, and zero anaphora. In contrast to languages like English or French, Senthang does not require a pronoun to take the place of a noun phrase for an active participant. When referring to an active participant, zero anaphora is the norm. In this respect, Senthang is closer to “pro- drop” languages like Spanish and Portuguese. In Spanish, as in Senthang, the verb is inflected for both person and number, making a pronoun grammatically redundant. However, unlike Spanish (whose verb only agrees with its subject argument), Senthang’s verb agrees with both its subject and object arguments. An outline of the grammar of Senthang referring expressions is given below, followed by an explanation of the verb phrase with a focus on the verbal agreement system, which is quite complex.

1.9.2 Full noun phrases The Senthang NP consists of an obligatory head noun, optionally preceeded by a demonstrative pronoun, a relative clause, and/or a possessive noun phrase; and optionally followed by an attributive verb or relative clause, a classifier phrase or a quantifier, a plural marker, a demonstrative, and/or a case marker. The noun phrase template is displayed in Table 6, adapted from Ngun Tin Par (2019).

Table 6 Noun phrase template

(Pre-head) Head (Post-head)

(CLFP/ (PNDEM) (RC) (NPPOSS) N (VATT/RC) (PL) (DEM) (CASE) QUANT)

The constituents of the noun phrase are described in more detail below.

Number (CLFP, QUANT, and PL)

Number is not obligatory in an NP. When it occurs, it takes the form of a number phrase and/or a plural marker. The number phrase contains an obligatory classifier and a numeral, e.g. maw-khaih ‘CLF-one’. General quantifiers (e.g. atampy ‘a lot/many’, asiokhaih ‘some/half’, acawmpai ‘a little’, etc.) fill the same slot as number phrases in the NP. It is also possible, though uncommon, to mark plurality directly on a noun using one of two plural markers: le or hai. Of these, le is the more common.

Demonstratives (DEM)

Four basic demonstratives, generally occurring phrase finally, may modify a noun. These are displayed with their spatial distinctions in Table 7.

Table 7 Demonstratives hi /hí/ this (near speaker) khaw /kʰɔ́/ that (near addressee) khi /kʰí/ that (far from both speaker and addressee) cu /tsú/ this (not visible)

Demonstrative Pronouns (PNDEM)

2 see Table 7

Case (CASE)

Senthang has a split ergative case system in which noun phrases receive ergative- absolutive case marking, while its verbal agreement system is nominative- accusative. The ergative case marker is nah [nɔ́ʔ] while the absolutive case is zero- marked.3 Examples (2) and (3) below are adapted from Ngun Tin Par (2019).

(2) Pasiaŋ =ø a- thw PaSiang =ABS 3SBJ- sit.I

PaSiang is sitting. / PaSiang sat.

(3) pasiang =nah kamu =ø a- pa- den PaSiang =ERG me =ABS 3SG.SBJ- 1SG.OBJ- beat.up.II

PaSiang beat me up.

The split ergative/accusative system can be seen in (2) and (3) above. The intransitive subject in (2) takes the same zero marking for the absolutive case as the transitive object in (3), and the transitive subject in (3) takes the ergative case marker nah. By contrast, the subject verb agreement in both (2) and (3) remains consistent, i.e. a-.

Possession (NPPOSS)

Possession is primarily indicated by a possessive pronoun prefixed to the possessed NP. This possessive PN is optionally preceded by a possessor NP. This can be summarized in a schema as [N.POSSESSOR + PN.POSS-(N.POSSESSEE)]. Although the possessive pronoun is obligatory in almost all cases, it is commonly omitted in references to people who themselves are naturally identified by someone else closely related to them, e.g. Khwmh Bau nw ‘Khwmh Bau’s mother’.

Relative clauses (RC)

Relative clauses in Senthang can be quite complex. They may be either externally or internally headed, depending on whether the RC precedes or follows the head noun, respectively. Normally, an RC consists of a verb phrase followed by one of four relativizers: mi, pu, tw, nawh. The most common of these is mi, which may also

3 According to Ngun Tin Par (2019), “…demonstratives in Senthang sometimes seem to act like case markers…” She recommends further research into this matter.

function as a complementizer and as a nominalizer. Furthermore, although uncommon, an RC can occur within an NP without an accompanying relativizer. For further discussion on relative clauses with examples, see Ngun Tin Par (2019).

Attributive verbs (VATT)

Only a small set of attributive verbs may directly modify a noun in the slot immediately following it. This set of attributive verbs includes (at least) color, certain qualities, and size. In this slot, however, relative clauses occur more frequently than do attributive verbs. Moreover, if two modifiers occur in this slot and the first is an attributive verb, the second is almost always a relative clause.

1.9.3 Pronouns Senthang has two sets of independent pronouns which take the place of an NP, one informal and one formal. Each set of pronouns includes singular and plural forms for first, second, and third persons. Morphologically, the pronouns consist of a “generic demonstrative element” -ni/-mu and a “pronominal element proper” ka-/na-/a-/kaa- /naa-/aa- (cf. Peterson 2003, p. 411 on Hakha Lai pronouns). However, the first and second person singular informal forms kaw and naw are not segmentable in this way. Both formal and informal pronoun sets are found in Table 8. It should also be noted that plurality is distinguished almost exclusively by tone: high for singular and low for plural.

Table 8 Pronouns

Informal Formal

Singular Plural Singular Plural

1 kaw /kɔ́/ or kani /kán̪ì/ kaani /kàn̪í/ kamu /kámú/ kaamu /kàmú/

2 naw /n̪ɔ́/ or nani /n̪ánì/ naani /n̪àn̪í/ namu /n̪ámú/ naamu /n̪àmú/

3 ani /ʔán̪ì/ aani /ʔàn̪í/ amu /ʔámú/ aamu /ʔàmú/

A reflexive or reciprocal form may be created by duplicating the formal pronouns and conjoining the duplicated forms with le, e.g. kamu le kamu. However, use of the informal pronouns for this function yields an ungrammatical result.

Possessive pronouns

Nouns can be prefixed with possessive pronouns which take a form very similar to both the preverbal subject agreement markers (see §1.9.6) and the first syllable of the formal pronouns. The possessive pronouns are displayed in Table 9 where the formal pronouns are shown again for the sake of comparison. Unlike the the formal and informal pronouns, the possessive pronouns are morphologically bound to a possessed noun. In previous studies of Senthang grammar these forms are called genitive markers, e.g. (Ngun Tin Par, 2016, 2019).

Table 9 Possessive pronouns & formal independent pronouns

Possessive pronouns Formal pronouns

Singular Plural Singular Plural

1 ka /ká/ kaa /kà/ kamu /kámú/ kaamu /kàmú/

2 na /n̪á/ naa /n̪à/ namu /n̪ámú/ naamu /n̪àmú/

3 a /ʔá/ aa /ʔà/ amu /ʔámú/ aamu /ʔàmú/

Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns essentially consist of the third-person singular pronoun ʔámú, which is often reduced to ámə́, mú, or mə́, followed by one of the four demonstratives (see Table 7 above). While demonstrative pronouns may form a full NP on their own, they may also appear in pre-head position within a larger NP, in which case the head noun will also be followed by a demonstrative; see an example of this in (4) below with ʔə́.mú hí ná ʔɤ̀m.tɤᵘʔ hí. See also the NP schema in Table 6 above.

(4) NN&TT-LT.15.1 " a , ka- su =le , amu =hi naa- wmtwh =hi INTJ.anxiety 1SG.POSS- child =PL 3SG =this 2PL.POSS- behaviour =this dw =veh -ni . like =NEG -1SG.SBJ

"My children, I don't like this, your behaviour.

There are several other uses of the demonstrative, pronoun or otherwise, in Senthang, a full account of which is beyond the scope of this study.

1.9.4 Pro-drop Senthang does not require an overt NP for active referents. Moreover, even in cases where a referent is only semiactive, an overt NP may not be required because successful reference can be made on the basis of agreement affixes on the verb.4 Languages with this kind of grammatical behavior are often classified as “pro-drop.” Other pro-drop languages include Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. In such languages, it is not always clear whether an invisible argument, i.e. a zero anaphor, is actually present where there is no overt NP since it may be argued that the verbal agreement morphology takes the place of the elided argument. Accordingly, the present study makes use of the term “zero anaphora” defined simply as an elided argument, and no claim is made as to whether an invisible NP is actually present in such cases.

1.9.5 The verb phrase The verb phrase consists of an optional adverb phrase followed by the verb complex itself. The verb complex includes a verb head in one of two alternating stems, the choice of which depends on various grammatical and pragmatic conditions. Also depending on these conditions is the choice of verbal agreement marking, which appears both pre- and postverbally. A summary of the agreement system is given in §1.9.6 below.

1.9.6 Verbal inflection This section is a summary of verbal inflection based on Ngun Tin Par (2016) and (2019). All of the tables are adapted from Ngun Tin Par (2019). Verbal inflection in Senthang includes subject and object agreement particles, a directional particle va, alternating verb stems, a couple of negative particles (veʔ and laⁱ), and a plural marker hai. And they occur generally in that order, but there are also postverbal subject agreement markers which occur in certain clause types. Furthermore, there is some minor suprasegmental variation according to phonological context.

Object agreement markers, displayed below in Table 10, occur preverbally and are obligatory. There is no overt marker for third person, but plurality for both second and third persons is marked with the postverbal particle hai. This plural marker hai proves to be quite versatile, also occurring postverbally for intransitive plural subjects, and even within certain NPs and RCs.

4 See §2.3.1.3 for explanation of the active-semiactive-inactive distinction.

Table 10 Object agreement markers

Singular Plural 1 pà5 má 2 tsà tsà...hai 3 Ø Ø...hai

The preverbal subject agreement markers are only found in the first of the four sets of subject agreement markers—displayed below in Table 11 within the verb complex. Subject Agreement Set 1 occurs in non-negative declarative clauses, with verb stem II in transitive clauses, but with verb stem I in intransitive clauses.

Table 11 Subject Agreement Set 1 within verb complex

AGRSBJ Set 1 (AGROBJ) Person (DIR) VI/II (PL) Singular Plural Singular Plural 1 ká kà pà má 2 n̪á n̪à tsà tsà va hai 3 ʔá ʔà Ø Ø

There seem to be “at least” three sets of postverbal subject agreement markers according to Ngun Tin Par (2019). Phonologically, they are similar, although the tone differs between them. The first of these, Set 2, is displayed below in Table 12. This set occurs in negative declarative clauses.

Table 12 Subject Agreement Set 2 within verb complex

AGROBJ AGRSBJ Set 2 Person (DIR) VI NEG (PL) Singular Plural Singular Plural 1 pà má nì pì

2 tsà tsà (va) vɛʔ (hai) tsì tsì 3 Ø Ø Ø Ø

Agreement Set 3, displayed below in Table 13, occurs in simple yes/no interrogative sentences. The Set 3 markers are phonologically parallel to Set 2, except that they bear mid rather than low tone. Also in contrast to Set 2, Set 3 includes singular and plural third-person subject agreement markers.

5 The tones of the first person singular marker pà and second person marker tsà are assimilated to the tone of their preceeding subject particle.

Table 13 Subject Agreement Set 3 within verb complex

AGROBJ AGRSBJ Set 3 Person (DIR) VI (PL) Singular Plural Singular Plural 1 pà má ni pi

2 tsà tsà (va) (hai) tsi tsi 3 Ø Ø i i

Agreement Set 4, displayed below in Table 14, occurs in imperative clauses. It resembles Set 2 (including its tone), but has a distinctive nominative plural particle lú/ʔú. In Set 4, hai is limited to marking plural objects. An imperative clitic -ʔ attaches to the end of the clause (and does not appear in Table 14). As Table 14 shows, there are some variations in the agreement pattern based on which negative particle is used and whether the imperative is affirmative or negative. Also noteworthy is the unique pattern for the third person/jussive imperative.

Table 14 Subject Agreement Set 4 within verb complex

AGR AGR Set 4 OBJ SBJ 6 Person V NEG PLOBJ Imperative Pattern S PL S PL PL (hai) nì pì lú/ʔú Affirmative 1 pa má Hortative kʰɔ́ʔ/laⁱ nì pì lú/ʔú Negative hai ø lú/ʔú Affirmative General 2 tsa tsa kʰɔ́ʔ - - lú/ʔú Negative hai Imperative laⁱ cì lú/ʔú Negative haⁱ Affirmative 3 ø ø hai sɔ́ʔ Jussive kʰɔ́ʔ sɔ́ʔ Negative

6 Ngun Tin Par (2019) based her classification of imperative types (viz. hortative, general imperative, jussive) on So-Hartmann’s (2009) description of Daai imperatives.

Literature Review

This chapter reviews relevant literature for this thesis in four main sections: 1) studies on Senthang and related languages; 2) orientation to the study of discourse; 3) approaches to the study of participant reference; and 4) other studies that inform this study.

2.1 Studies on Senthang and related languages The research on Senthang is extremely limited. As noted in §1.2.3, there are an unpublished sociolinguistic survey (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2010), a brief unpublished phonology sketch (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2012), and, more recently, an MA thesis on Senthang grammar by a student at Payap University (Ngun Tin Par, 2016). Another, as of yet unpublished, grammar sketch (Ngun Tin Par, 2019) is also in the works. Ngun Tin Par’s (2016) thesis and (2019) sketch are the primary basis for the grammar sketch in §1.9 above.

The phonology sketch (J. Craft & R. Craft, 2012) is still being revised, but helpful nonetheless. It uses data collected mostly from one 67-year-old speaker who is originally from Phaipha, but has lived outside of the Senthang-speaking area for most of his life. It proposes that Senthang has 23 consonant phonemes, 9 vowel phonemes, and 3 tones. There are some differences in the analysis of consonant phonemes found in J. Craft & R. Craft (2012) and that found in Ngun Tin Par (2016). As for this thesis, the phonology sketch presented in §1.7 is informed by both J. Craft & R. Craft (2012) and Ngun Tin Par (2016).

Ngun Tin Par (2016) gives a general grammar sketch of Senthang, but focuses primarily on the interlocking relationship between Senthang’s agreement system and its system of verb stem alternation. She finds that identifying the syntactic and semantic environments in which verb stems and agreement occur proves to be a valuable tool in understanding these phenomena. Whereas Ngun Tin Par (2016) focused on the verb phrase, §1.9 of this study focuses on describing the noun phrase, since referring expressions normally occur as NPs.

For further information regarding the available literature on Chin languages, the reader is directed to So-Hartmann’s summary in A Descriptive Grammar of Daai Chin (2009, pp. 30–31). Since the appearance of So-Hartmann’s grammar of Daai Chin, a description of Mara—which is in the Maraic subgroup with Senthang—has been published (Arden, 2010); and, more recently, Bawi Tawng—my classmate and a native speaker of Lai (Hakha)—completed a description of Lai focusing on subordinate constructions (2017). Within Kuki-Chin, much has been written concerning the phenomenon of verb stem alternation, e.g. (Davis, 2017; Hartmann, 2002; Kee Shein Mang, 2006; King, 2009). Concerning research into the functions of discourse-level structures, some limited work was done early in the 1960s. Stern (1963) looks at discourse particles in Sizang (Northern Chin) narratives in one section of his grammar sketch of the language. Also, both Stern (1963), looking at Sizang texts of various types, and Henderson (1965), looking at two Teddim narratives, observe differences between “polite style” (Stern, p. 269) (Henderson’s “narrative style”) and what they both call “colloquial style” in the discourses of these two Northern Chin languages. More recently, David A. Peterson has done studies on applicative constructions in Hakha (2007); the roles of verbal classifiers (2008) and elaborate expressions (2010), and the marking of core participants in Khumi (2011). In addition, Khoi Lam Thang (2001b) gives a preliminary description of Teddim narrative structure in a single folktale.

2.2 The study of discourse “We say most of what we say in strings of sentences, but not in random strings of sentences. There are processes at work in language that restrict later sentences in terms of earlier ones, and large scale structures within which individual sentences play their parts” (Grimes, 1978a, p. vii).

These words from Joseph Grimes, found in the introduction to his Papers on Discourse (1978b), explain well the motivation for the study of discourse—or non- random “strings of sentences”. These strings of sentences—and specifically how they code reference—are the focus of this study.

Discourse Analysis (DA) is a field of study that centers around analyzing stretches of natural human language (Grimes’ non-random “strings of sentences”) within its situational context. The size of the unit of analysis is not necessarily defined, but tends to be above the level of the sentence. DA can be said to have begun in the early 1950s with the work of linguists like Zellig Harris (1952), T. F. Mitchell

(1957), and Kenneth Pike (1954) 7 but did not really take off until the 1960s. Although the prevailing trend in linguistics at the time was toward the generative- transformational model, which confined itself almost exclusively to the sentence, both Pike’s tagmemics and Sydney Lamb’s stratificational grammar made room for levels of analysis above the sentence. During this early period of DA, some linguists, many working in Bible translation, began to use DA to fill a need for correcting errors in translations that could not be solved by traditional sentence-level linguistics, many using tagmemic theory as a base (Longacre, 1968, 1972; Loos, 1963; Reid, Bishop, Button, & Longacre, 1968) and others stratificational grammar (Cromack, 1968; Stennes, 1969; Taber, 1966)8. James Loriot was one of the earliest and most important of these pioneers in discourse, seeking to understand the discourse structure of the Shipibo language of South America (Everett, 2004, p. 9), insights which he wrote up first in a paper in 1958 and published later as Shipibo Paragraph Structure (Loriot & Hollenbach, 1970). Separate from this early development was another one that began spread-out among different areas of study such as semiotics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and sociology in the 60s (Barthes, 1964, 1966; Bremond, 1964; Hymes, 1964) and 70s (Labov, 1972, 1991; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974)9. This later development did not focus only on monologues, as the previous one had done and continued to do, but tended to be more interested in dialogic discourse and interaction. These two developments and their respective foci correspond, albeit roughly, to the two major uses of the word participant discussed in §2.3.

Today, DA is more widely studied than ever. Some people study discourses in order to understand how people use language in conversation, i.e. conversation analysis (Schegloff, 2009; Sidnell & Stivers, 2012). Others study them to understand how people use language to influence, persuade or exert power over others, i.e. critical discourse analysis (e.g. Fairclough, 2010, 2012; Rogers, 2003; van Dijk, 2008). Still others study discourses in order to understand and identify patterns in different genres and registers of language, often accomplishing this using large corpora of both monologue and dialogue texts (Biber, 2012; Lacey, 2000; Sánchez-Macarro & Carter, 1998).

7 A summary of the work of Harris and Mitchell in the early years of DA can be found in Coulthard (1985, pp. 3–5), while that of Pike and contributions from linguists following his tagmemic theory can be found in Grimes (1975, p. 21ff). 8 Taber, Cromack, and Stennes were all students of H. A. Gleason, Jr. at Hartford Seminary, who apparently taught a model of stratificational grammar (Gleason, 1964, 1968) differing in only “relatively minor ways” (Gleason, 1968, p. 50) from that of Lamb (1966). 9 An overview of the development of this branch of DA is available in van Dijk (1985).

This thesis is concerned with describing the means by which participants may be effectively identified by both a hearer and a speaker in Senthang. A hearer or reader needs to “understand who is doing what to whom” in a discourse, while a speaker or writer “needs to make the same kind of information clear to hearers or readers” (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001, p. 111). And since stories are present in every culture and make up a basic part of the discourses of every language, it makes sense to begin a description of that system as it occurs inside stories. Accordingly, the objects of analysis in this study are Senthang narratives.

2.3 Approaches to the analysis of participant reference The meaning of the word “participant” in the context of discourse analysis depends on who is using it. Generally, there are two main senses. Also generally, those who use it in the first sense are interested in answering different kinds of questions than those who use it in the second sense. The first, perhaps more common, sense refers to the participants in “a communicative event”. This includes all those involved in the production of a discourse: the speaker(s), audience(s), and their “overhearers or eavesdroppers” (Johnstone, 2008, p. 128). This sense of ‘participant’ is used widely throughout the field of discourse analysis and a general perousal through the literature will reveal many other researchers using the word in the same or a very similar sense (Brown & Yule, 1983; Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998, p. 31ff; Coates, 2012; Coulthard, 1985; van Dijk, 1997, 2007). Authors, like Johnstone (2008), who look at participants in this sense, often analyze discourse choices made by the participants producing the discourse in order to see how they index their identities, categorize each other, and accommodate their discourse to each other.

The second sense of ‘participant’ designates an entity referred to inside the text of a discourse. Stated differently, participants include all entities referred to by “noun phrases and the elements that stand in for them” (Longacre, 1989a, p. 141)10. This sense of ‘participant’ could very well include the speaker and/or the audience(s), but it also might not if reference is not made to them within the discourse itself. In a narrative, participants include what are commonly referred to as characters, but not exclusively, since inanimate objects, places, and times also make up the entities

10 Some, including Longacre (1989a), have made a distinction between participants and props, where a prop is an entity that is not involved as an agent in any of the actions in a discourse, whether animate or inanimate (Grimes, 1975, p. 43f; Longacre, 1989a, 1990). This distinction is helpful because narratives tend to treat participants and props differently. However, these authors seem to use ‘participant’ as the umbrella term and only make the distinction between prop and participant where context makes it necessary, see also (Hwang, 1987, p. 109). More on this distinction is discussed in chapter 4 on participant rank.

referred to by nominal structures. Other terms that have been used with similar senses include topic (T. Givón, 1983a) and anaphor (Fox, 1996). This sense of ‘participant’ is the one used in the present study and is assumed when the word is used unless otherwise stated.

A review of the foundational literature on participants in discourse—specifically, how they are referred to, i.e. “participant reference”—is given in the following sections. Three major approaches to analyzing participant reference (or “PR”) have been proposed and applied cross-linguistically in the literature; these are discussed in §2.3.1. Integrating and building on these approaches, another branch of literature regarding participant reference has focused on linguistic description with a practical end in mind; this work is discussed in §2.3.2. The labels for each approach used in the following section headings come from my own effort to integrate the ways that others have referred to these ideas already and my own estimation of their central foci. The organization is both chronological and thematic, but where those two conflict, thematic organization is prioritized.

2.3.1 Three major approaches This section gives an introduction to the three major approaches to the analysis of participant reference in discourse. The grouping presented here is not unique to this thesis, but many have found it to be an effective way to organize the rapidly expanding body of literature on participant reference (Longacre & Hwang, 2012; Staley, 2007; Tomlin, 2007).

2.3.1.1 The linear approach: topic continuity Early research into participant reference choices noted the importance of distance between current and last mention of a referent in determining referential coding both in cross-language studies of narrative discourse (Clancy, 1980; T. Givón, 1983a) and in reading comprehension experiments (H. H. Clark & Sengul, 1979). Givón (1983a) in particular is the seminal work for the linear approach. Givón and a group of seven other researchers provided quantitative results for eight different languages (including both spoken and written English, Japanese, Biblical Hebrew, Amharic, et al.) with a goal “to define, in a preliminary but cross-linguistically stable fashion, the basic principles of iconicity [emphasis in original] underlying the syntactic coding of the topic identification domain” (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 18).

Givón proposes that a discourse participant’s (Givón’s “topic”) linguistic coding is determined, at least in part, by its degree of continuity, hence iconicity. According to Meir and Tkachman (2014), “Iconicity is a relationship of resemblance or similarity between the two aspects of a sign: its form and its meaning” and its opposite is “arbitrariness” (Introduction, para. 1). Givón’s use of the term is very similar, but specifically refers to the similarity he observes between linguistic coding (≈form) of a referent11 and the topicality/continuity of that referent in discourse (≈meaning). A topic’s continuity is determined by its distance from its last reference, by its persistence in subsequent references, and by the presence or absence of interference from other semantically compatible participants preceding it. The methodology presented by Givón provides clear ways to measure each of these aspects of topic continuity, namely referential distance, persistence, and potential interference, respectively. To be clear, the first two measurements, referential distance and potential interference, relate more directly to continuity, both measuring the preceding discourse, than persistence, which is more properly a measure of a topic’s thematic importance (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 14ff). This distinction between measurements of continuity and thematic importance is developed more in (T. Givón, 1990, p. 902ff, 2017) which informs the methodology in §3.2 for determining participant rank. One of the most important iconic principles presented in Givón’s (1983b) introduction is that of phonological size, which states, “the more disruptive, surprising, discontinuous or hard to process a topic is, the more coding material [emphasis in original] must be assigned to it” (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 18). So, a participant that is “hard to process” for whatever reason can be expected to surface in a story with a bigger referring expression. Likewise, a participant that is in the focus of attention and thus not hard to process can be expected to surface with a smaller referring expression. Givón’s scale illustrating this principle is shown in Figure 3, below.

more continuous/accessible topics zero anaphora unstressed/bound pronouns (‘agreement’) stressed/independent pronouns full NP’s more discontinuous/inaccessible topics Figure 3 Iconicity scale of phonological size (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 18)

11 Givón would use the term “topic” here, but “referent” seems to communicate more clearly the relationship between his idea and what iconicity means generally.

Givón provides further scales, like the one in Figure 3, to show the iconic relationship between topic continuity and phonological stress, word order, and roles and animacy. This principal is a major component of the sequential default model (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001) which is explained further in §2.3.2.3 and forms the basic methodology for Chapter 4 of this thesis.

Two of the measurements used in Givón’s study to show the iconicity of topic continuity—referential distance and persistence—are reapplied in Chapter 3 of this thesis in order to determine participant rank. As already mentioned, persistence is a clear indicator of a participant’s thematic importance; and as Givón points out, although referential distance measures primarily a participant’s accessibility/continuity, it is also an indicator of a participant’s potential importance (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 15) to a discourse. Givón’s third measurement, potential interference, is not directly as helpful in revealing a participant’s importance and is therefore not used in this study. A fuller explanation of how Givón’s measurements are applied to the Senthang texts is given in §3.2.

2.3.1.2 The hierarchical approach: episodes and paragraphs Since Givón’s methodology treats participant reference as linear, it is quite straightforward and easily quantifiable. For the same reason, however, it does not take into account discourse structure or the importance of a discourse’s individual participants. Although Givón acknowledges this weakness to his measurements (1983b, p. 12), it is nonetheless problematic.

Recognizing this shortcoming, Fox (1987a) showed that, at least for English written narrative, hierarchical discourse structure is very important in determining the coding of participants (what she calls “anaphora”). She gives a fuller treatment to this idea in (Fox, 1987b), in the introduction to which she summarizes her approach as follows: “Texts may be produced and heard/read in a linear fashion, but they are designed and understood hierarchically, and this fact has dramatic consequences for the linguistic coding employed." The same year and in the same volume as Fox (1987a), Tomlin (1987), in an exposition of his on-line experimental data, shows that the choice between noun and pronoun for coding participants correlates clearly with episodic structure in discourse and can be seen as a reflection of the allocation of attention to a paragraph-level theme. Although his conclusions are based on very carefully designed experimental data rather than naturally occurring narrative texts, Tomlin specifically rejects the linear approach (what he calls the “recency/distance

approach”) because it does not provide an adequate explanation of his data. He shows that nouns occur at episode boundaries, even when they refer to a participant that occurs only one clause away, while pronouns consistently occur inside thematic paragraphs. The combination of Fox (1987a) and Tomlin’s (1987) articles provides clear evidence of a correlation between hierarchical discourse structure and choice of referring expression, with Tomlin in particular moving towards a more direct cognitive connection, namely, the allocation of attention.

2.3.1.3 The cognitive approach Both the linear notion of distance and the structural notion of episodes correlate with a speaker’s choice of referring expression in some way, as evidenced by the studies already mentioned; however, the explanations of referential choice stemming from these approaches focus on factors within the text artifact rather than in the mind of the speaker/hearer—where the choice of referring expression is actually made.

In addition to the linear and hierarchical approaches to participant reference, a third approach, which we will call the cognitive approach, sees the choice of referring expression in discourse as a function of what the speaker assumes to be the activation state of a referent and/or focus of attention in the mind of the hearer (Chafe, 1987, 1994; Gundel et al., 1993; Tomlin, 2007). Foundational to this approach is the work of Wallace Chafe on language and consciousness, notably (Chafe, 1987, 1994), but previously developed in, for only a partial list, (Chafe, 1965, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1979), and also later in (Chafe, 2001, 2005). A major difference in Chafe’s approach is that, rather than looking mainly at narratives, he focuses on conversation. Also noticeable in Chafe’s work is the prominence of the consciousness in his consideration of discourse; however, his is similar to the above approaches in that he begins with language data and deduces his ideas about the mind from the patterns he observes in that data. Russell Tomlin, mentioned in the previous section for his work on correlating episodes in narrative with the form of referring expressions, sees Chafe’s line of reasoning as inadequate because of its circularity, i.e. starting with linguistic structures, making inferences about cognition, and then looking to those inferences for motivations of linguistic structures (Tomlin, 2007, p. 179f). In his own research, Tomlin (2007) notes that he began looking at language and the mind with a similar kind of reasoning in (Tomlin, 1987; Tomlin & Pu, 1991), but later saw a need for a way of reasoning about the mind that was independent of the language produced by it, which he explicated in (Tomlin, 1997). Instead of looking to linguistics, Tomlin began looking to cognitive psychology for

the basis of his understanding of attention (1997, p. 170f) and applies a similar understanding to the role of activation in choice of referring expression (his “referential management”) in (Tomlin, 2007).

In spite of his circularity, Chafe’s insights into the interaction of language and consciousness seem to be valid and cross-linguistically verifiable.12 Tomlin, with his firmer basis in cognitive psychology, further confirms the validity of Chafe’s earlier move toward using activation states of referents in consciousness as a pre-linguistic explanation for choice of referring expression. Because of his clear distinctions among activation states and the closely related notion of activation cost, there is an explanatory power in Chafe’s terminology very amenable to the functional description of referring expressions, cf. descriptions of referring expressions in (Edwards, 2011; Osborne, 2009; Tebow, 2010). Therefore, Chafe’s concepts and terminology are drawn from in §4.3 to describe the functions of Senthang referring expressions. With this in mind, the concepts from Chafe’s work relevant to §4.3, i.e. primarily identifiability and activation states, are explained in the following paragraphs and supplemented by Knud Lambrecht’s (1994) further development of the same ideas as they form a part of his theory of the information structure component of grammar.

2.3.1.3.1 Activation Chafe (1994), Discourse, Consciousness, and Time, brings together several ideas from Chafe’s various works and represents his fullest description of those ideas of his relating to the linguistic coding of entities and events. He takes a close look at how ideas13 flow through human consciousness over time, and how discourse is a reflection of those ideas. He explains that there are three activation states14 of ideas—active, semiactive, and inactive—in the consciousness of the speaker or the hearer, and that these states can be understood by the analogy of vision:

12 Indeed, Tomlin himself says, “…these notions of activation were not grounded in studies of cognition though they represent particularly beautiful intuitive insight about the kinds of cognitive processing that underlies language use” and “…they do align well with what did emerge in the cognitive literature” (2007, p. 179f). 13 In (1987) Chafe uses the term “concept.” He changed this to “idea” in (1994). For Chafe, an idea can be an event, a state, or an entity in the speaker/hearer’s mind, though entities are a sort of idea prototype. As this thesis focuses on participants, ideas of entities are the focus of the discussion here. 14 Although Chafe (1994) has a full chapter on activation cost, the 3-way distinction between activation states is most fully developed in Chafe (1987). Both works are referred to throughout this section.

Consciousness is like vision… One way in which [they] are alike is in the very limited amount of information each can focus on at one time. There is foveal vision and focal [active] consciousness. Surrounding this small area of maximum acuity lies, on the one hand, peripheral vision and, on the other hand, peripheral [semiactive] consciousness, both of which not only provide a context for the current focus but also suggest opportunities for its next moves. Beyond peripheral consciousness lies a vast treasury of information, some of which will at some time be brought into focal or peripheral consciousness, but all of which lies unattended at the moment [inactive]. (Chafe, 1994, p. 53)

When reference is made to a participant—or, to use Chafe’s more general term, idea—in discourse, a certain amount of mental energy is spent in the process of bringing that participant into the focal consciousness, first of the speaker, and then of the hearer. This process of bringing an idea into focal consciousness, Chafe calls activation and the amount of mental energy spent in the process of activation he calls activation cost. The activation cost of a given participant varies according to the activation state of that participant/idea in the mind of the speaker/hearer. Chafe (1987, 1994) identifies three activation states: an active idea is given (or “old”) information and has no activation cost, as it is already in focal consciousness at time of activation; a semiactive idea is accessible and has a low cost, as it is in peripheral consciousness at time of activation; and an inactive idea is new and has a high cost, as it lies outside of conscious memory at time of activation. According to Chafe, “for the most part, both new and accessible information are expressed with accented full noun phrases, whereas given information is expressed in a more attenuated way” (1994, p. 75). This attenuation of given information tends to take the form of pronouns, verbal inflection, or zero anaphora and, if verbalized (i.e. if not zero anaphora), also tends to be prosodically unaccented—though given information that is contrastive may indeed be accented: see discussion in Chafe (1987, p. 26ff).

Chafe (1994) also expounds various other helpful ideas tying together consciousness and discourse, such as: the idea that grammatical subjects act as starting points for the communication of information, containing light (given or accessible) information; the workings of identifiability of referents (discussed below); and the one new idea constraint—the mental and linguistic restriction that no more than one new idea can be focused on in consciousness or expressed in language at one time.

2.3.1.3.2 Activation and identifiability The active-semiactive-inactive distinction between states of ideas and the respective activation costs associated with each of those states are foundational concepts for the functional description of referring expressions in §4.3. One further distinction also integral to that description is the concept of identifiability. In Chafe’s words, “an identifiable referent is one the speaker assumes the hearer will be able to identify” (Chafe, 1994, p. 93). Put differently, if a participant is identifiable, then it will be present somewhere in the speaker’s projection of his hearer’s mental picture of the discourse.15

Lambrecht (1994) makes use of Chafe’s activation states in his exposition of the information structure component of grammar. With the aim to elucidate his own theory, Lambrecht sheds more light on the active-semiactive-inactive distinction as well as on its formal expression in discourse. Also borrowing from Prince (1981), he distinguishes between anchored and unanchored unidentifiable referents (participants), where an unanchored unidentifiable referent is one expressed in a way that instructs the hearer to create a completely new mental representation in his discourse register (i.e. his total set of mental representations for a given discourse) (e.g. I got on a bus yesterday.) and where an anchored unidentifiable referent is one expressed in a way that instructs the hearer to create a new mental representation, but to link that representation to one that already exists in his discourse register (e.g. A guy I work with says he knows your sister.) (Lambrecht, 1994, p. 185f). A summary of Lambrecht’s terminology relating to activation and identifiability is displayed in Figure 4.

unanchored unidentifiable anchored

inactive textually

identifiable ACTIVATION accessible situationally IDENTIFIABILITY

active inferentially

Figure 4 Identifiability and Activation, adapted from Lambrecht (1994, p. 109)

15 Also see the definition for “identifiability” in Glossary (p. x).

As Figure 4 shows, Lambrecht revises and clarifies Chafe’s terminology. For Lambrecht, an identifiable referent will necessarily be in one of the three activation states, while an unidentifiable referent has no cognitive state by definition. Chafe’s discussion of the relationship between identifiability and activation does not make a clear distinction here. Lambrecht (1994) also revises and clarifies his understanding of the activation states themselves, particularly the semiactive/accessible state. Chafe (Chafe, 1987) recognizes two types of accessible referents: (1) those that used to be active, but have been deactivated and (2) those that have become accessible by virtue of the activation of a “schema”, i.e. “a cluster of interrelated expectations” (1987, p. 29). To use Chafe’s example, concepts like “student”, “instructor”, “teaching assistant”, “classroom” are all part of the schema of an undergraduate class and by simply mentioning one of them, all become accessible. Lambrecht (1994) recognizes both of these types of accessible referents and labels them as (1) textually accessible and (2) inferentially accessible respectively. However, he also sees it necessary to recognize those referents that are accessible, not because of their presence in the consciousness of the speaker/hearer, but because of their presence in the “text-external world”, i.e. the situation or setting a discourse takes place in. Lambrecht refers to these as situationally accessible referents (1994, p. 99f).

2.3.2 Description-oriented approaches In contrast to the approaches to the analysis of participant reference described in §2.3.1 which tend to focus on linguistically universal theoretical notions of reference, those described in the following sections have mostly developed out of communities of linguists focused more on using theory as foundational underpinnings for clear methodologies, and thereby ultimately providing adequate descriptions for the languages such methodologies are applied to. I have thus termed the approaches in the following sections description-oriented, reflecting their practical bent toward getting languages effectively described. See for example some of their publications describing a wide variety of languages (Grimes, 1978b; Levinsohn, 1994a; Longacre, 1989b). The approaches they have produced as a result of this descriptive focus have tended to be methodologically more explicit and widely applicable cross-linguistically.

2.3.2.1 A dichotomy of tracking methods Joseph Grimes provides several useful ideas in his approach to participants in narrative (1975, 1978b). Among these are (1) a distinction between types of

information in a narrative, two of which are participant identification and the events in which participants are involved; (2) a further division of participants into participants and props (see Footnote 10); and (3) the Thurman Chart—a method of text charting that allows the analyst to see a text divided into several columns according to information type, thus showing more clearly the structures used to communicate the various kinds of information in a narrative text. Information types for Grimes (1975) include events, participant identification, setting, background, etc. all the participants and their identifications (or referring expressions) in a way that gives him/her a more global perspective of participant reference throughout a given text. He also explains that a Thurman chart may be used to do a span analysis, which are vertical lines drawn to show the continuity16 of one of any of the types of information (i.e. the span of all the actions that take place in one spatial location). This is particularly useful for displaying participant spans. Simple though it may be, by drawing a line tracing the span of a participant clause by clause through a text is a powerful visual for showing the global continuity/discontinuity of the participants in a narrative.

Besides information types and methods for displaying them, perhaps the most important idea developed by Grimes and his colleagues (1978b) relating to discourse participants is the general dichotomy they observed in how languages tracked participants through a narrative. According to Grimes,

There seem to be two distinct strategies that languages use for establishing and maintaining reference. Some, like English, have a sequential [emphasis in original] policy by which the reference of one word is normally taken from the nearest candidate word before it. Others manage reference in terms of a thematic [emphasis in original] policy, in which one referent is distinguished from the rest when introduced, and a special set of terms refer to it no matter how many other things have been mentioned more recently. (1978a, p. viif)

In other words, generally speaking, for some languages thematic salience— particularly applied to a single participant—is a much more important determinant in choice of referring expressions than for others. The concepts of sequential and thematic policies for participant reference provided the foundation for the participant reference analysis methodology developed by Stephen H. Levinsohn (1994b) which I discuss in §2.3.2.3.

16 Here I use Givón’s (1983) term because it fits with what Grime’s (1975) spans are trying to display.

2.3.2.2 The three-variable approach In various publications (1989a, 1990, 1995), Robert Longacre explained a methodology for describing the participant reference system in the narrative discourse of any language based on three variable factors: (1) Participant reference resources, (2) participant ranking within a story, and (3) the “particular operations” being carried out by specific instances of reference. These factors, said Longacre, had not been adequately recognized and dealt with in the previous research on participant reference, which, considering both his (1995) article and the most recent publication on the method (Longacre & Hwang, 2012), includes the bulk of what has already been discussed in §2.3.1. Longacre (1995, p. 697) describes how his approach may be harnessed for linguistic description:

The interlocking of these three factors characterizes any and all participant references within a narrative so that each variable, actualized in a given value is found jointly with values of the other two variables. Any given instance of participant reference in any story within any language can be described in terms of values of the three variables. The data thus marshalled and organized can then make possible generalizations regarding participant reference in a given text in a given language.

Longacre’s main interest concerning participants lies within the narrative text artifact, which contrasts with the non-genre-specific cognitive approach of Wallace Chafe, but has some important overlaps with the hierarchical approach of Fox and Tomlin—namely, the idea that a text occurs in paragraphs which influence the form of referring expressions. However, Fox’s (1987a) focus on English narrative is closer to the spirit of Longacre’s work17 than the psycholinguistic, experimental nature of Russell Tomlin’s research on episodes and attention (Tomlin, 1987).

Although the three-variable approach is not invoked as a method in this thesis, all three of Longacre’s variables pertain to aspects of this thesis in clearly observable ways: §4.3 relates to variable (1) and its relationship with variables (2) and (3); Chapter 3 relates to variable (2); and Chapter 4, itself being a description of the patterns of participant reference in Senthang narrative, naturally involves all three variables—but the most relevant of the variables for that chapter is (3) discourse operations.

17 This is noticeable, for example, in Longacre’s use of an English novel to illustrate his theory of textlinguistics (Longacre, 2004).

Longacre (1995)—now available as (Longacre, 2010)—lists eight different operations for participant reference, and Longacre and Hwang (2012) add two operations to the list. It is also noted that not all languages make use of all operations, though all ten have been observed. Longacre and Hwang’s (2012) list of discourse operations is shown in Figure 5, each with a “mnemonic indexing letter”.

F First mention within a story I Integration into the story as central T Tracking routinely R Restaging or reinstatement B Boundary marking episode or sub-episode C Confrontation and/or role change L Locally contrastive/thematic status E Evaluation or comment by the narrator A Addressee in dialogue X Exit Figure 5 “Discourse operations that influence reference form in languages” (Longacre & Hwang, 2012, p. 84)

Bequette (2013) uses Longacre’s (1995) methodology in her analysis of Bunong (a Mon-Khmer language) participant reference and observes one more discourse operation in her data, which she adds to the list as “U initiating Utterance” (Bequette, 2013, p. 18f.). She explains that this occurs when a referring expression intiates or introduces a quotation and breaks from narration, which, in her data, always required more than routine coding (2013, p. 163). In the same study, Bequette uses Longacre’s discourse operations as a means of explanation for all of her examples of over-coding (2013, p. 121) which she found using the context- dependent default approach (cf. §2.3.2.3).

2.3.2.3 The context-dependent default approach (Dooley & Levinsohn) Stephen A. Clark (2012) compared the application of Givón’s (1983b) linear, Tomlin’s (1987) hierarchical, and Dooley & Levinsohn’s (2001) sequential default approach to the analysis of Sio participants and found the sequential default model to have the most satisfying results. For the present researcher, Clark’s findings are not surprising when considering his practical focus on methodology and applicability over abstracted linguistic theory—something he shares more with

Levinsohn than with Tomlin or Givón. Indeed, the sequential default model—or what I have retermed the context-dependent default approach—was first presented in the overtly description-oriented publication Discourse Features of Ten Languages of West-Central Africa (Levinsohn, 1994b).18

Essentially, the context-dependent default approach (hereafter “the default approach”) is a methodology, first, for determining default coding amounts to be expected in pre-defined discourse contexts, and second, for determining why more or less than the default coding amount appears in one of those pre-defined contexts. In his (2015) revision of the default approach, Stephen H. Levinsohn lists the eight subject (S) and non-subject (N) contexts where default coding values are to be determined (p. 128):

o S1: the subject is the same as in the previous sentence o S2: the subject was the addressee of the previous reported speech o S3: the subject had some other non-subject role in the previous clause/sentence o S4: the subject was not involved in the previous clause/sentence

o N1: the referent occupies a non-subject argument role in the current clause and in the previous clause or sentence o N2: the referent was the speaker of the previous reported speech o N3: the referent was involved in the previous sentence in a role other than N1 or N2 o N4: other non-subject references than those covered by N1-N3

One may notice from these context definitions that, in the default approach, attention is given especially to the role of what Givón has called referential distance (§3.2). However, syntactic position of an argument in a clause (viz. subject vs. non- subject) as well as the unique character of reported speech are also recognized as important factors in determining the amount of coding material used in participant reference.

With only a few minor changes in defining the contexts, this same approach is adapted for analysis of the Senthang texts in Chapter 4, where more detail is given as to those changes as well as more information regarding the specific methodology.

18 Apparently, Dooley and Levinsohn first presented their approach to PR analysis in a 1992 edition of their textbook Analyzing Discourse, but this edition seems to have been only used in their own courses until it was published by SIL International in 2001.

2.4 Other studies that inform this study In addition to the literature already discussed, there have also been several studies done recently, mainly MA theses, that have influenced the direction of this thesis, especially with regard to methodology. The following sections explain this influence.

2.4.1 Primary PR Theses Starting with an MA thesis by R. L. E. Bequette (Bequette, 2008), more recently published as an ebook (Bequette, 2013), at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, there has been a steady stream of MA theses focusing specifically on participant reference in narrative discourse in various languages of Southeast Asia. The theses in this tradition that have followed Bequette (2008) have all been done at Payap University and the researcher’s intention with the present study on Senthang is for it to be a continuation of this same tradition, building onto the foundation already laid down and, hopefully, adding some helpful bricks in new places. The goal of this section is, primarily, to describe chronologically how this foundation was laid starting with Bequette (2008, 2013) and, secondarily, to evaluate critically the good and the not so good of what has been done.

Although titled “Participant reference, deixis, and anaphora in Bunong narrative discourse”, Bequette’s MA thesis (2008, 2013) discusses the role of deixis as it relates to participant reference only minimally, and the idea of anaphora is not developed separately. She focuses on participant reference from a discourse perspective and makes use of both Dooley & Levinsohn’s (2001) context-dependent default approach and Longacre and Hwang’s three-variable approach (Hwang, 2007; Longacre, 1995) (described above in §2.3.2.3 and §2.3.2.2, respectively) in order to tease out the workings of participant reference in Bunong, an Austroasiatic language of Cambodia, as employed in two folktales and one first-person narrative. She found that zero anaphora was the default coding for participants in most (six out of the eight) syntactic environments of the sequential model, and, thus, did not consider this a revealing insight. The three-variable approach (her “discourse profile and operations model”) provided the means of explaining the non-default codings found under the default approach (her “sequential default model”). Bequette’s use of these two models helped her give a fuller picture of the factors affecting Bunong participant reference than either model could have provided on its own. This methodological combination also made it clear that when the linear, default codings do not occur in their expected syntactic environments, the reason is often found within discourse structure (or a story’s profile, to use Longacre’s term). One weakness of Bequette’s

study on Bunong is the small size of her corpus, which only includes two third- person narratives and one first-person narrative. Strengths of her study include her integration of the default and three-variable approaches and the thoroughness of her analysis, limited though it was.

Although this thesis does not apply the three-default approach as Bequette, it does indeed seek to integrate the role of discourse structure into the description of default participant codings.

Rosalind A. Osborne, in Who's who in Kmhmu': Referring expressions and participant identification in selected Kmhmu' narrative texts (2009), building on Bequette’s foundation, goes deep into the nominal structures of Kmhmu, an Austroasiatic language of Thailand and Laos, looking at them under Rijkhoff’s (2002) theoretical lens of nominal subcategories and a layered NP structure. Thus, the primary strength of her study is its depth of grammatical analysis. Indeed, she gives an entire chapter on the phrasal and sentential functions of nominal structures in Kmhmu, followed by a chapter describing the discourse functions of the same structures (inasmuch as they function as referring expressions). Osborne’s thesis also gives clear explanations of theoretical concepts and these concepts are observably cohesive to the analyses in each chapter. Thus, her work of theoretical synthesis paved the way for others like Tebow (2010) and Edwards (2011).

Tebow (2010) An analysis of participant reference in Bru narrative texts as spoken in Khok Sa-at Village followed soon after Osborne (2009), to some extent modifying what she had done as he applied participant reference analysis to Bru, another Austroasiatic language, spoken in southern Loas and central Vietnam. He did not go into the same detail as Osborne in describing nominal structures, but did add a chapter on participant rank. He found the methodology used by Somsonge (1991) in reapplying Givón’s (1983) measurements of topic continuity to the determining of participant rank to be helpful and applied these measurements to the participants in his stories. Tebow’s charts and description of how he applied these measurements is particularly helpful to the present study.

Neither Osborne (2009) nor Tebow (2010) included a dedicated section on the discourse structure of their texts as Bequette (2008, 2013); although, they did indeed include structural/thematic factors in explaining non-default occurences of referring expressions. Such an omission could be considered a weakness since it does not give as thorough an analysis of the overall structure of a language’s discourse. However, given the limitations and scope of their theses, I found that this seemed to

allow for both of them to give more depth to their central focus on describing participant reference patterns in Kmhmu and Bru, respectively.

In Participant reference in Tai Dam narrative discourse, Edwards (2011) looks at Tai Dam, a Tai-Kadai language of northern Vietnam, and builds on the method that Bequette (2008), Osborne (2009) and Tebow (2010) started by tying together Osborne and Tebow’s methods of determining participant rank, measuring both topic continuity (as Tebow) and looking at participant introductions (as Osborne). Because of this, his chapter on participant rank and introduction is particularly helpful. In his conclusion, he suggests ranking the participants according to the number of episodes in which they appear as a possible fourth measurement to consider in determining rank.

Apart from these four primary participant reference theses, others have also appeared through Payap University. Some have included shorter chapter-long components focusing on participant reference (Morris, 2008; Pham, 2006; Vong, 2009; Zaw, 2017). Others have been fully focused on participant reference analysis (Artz, 2012; Leung, 2016). These others were helpful references for the present study, but did not directly contribute to the methodology as did Bequette, Osborne, Tebow, and Edwards.

2.4.2 Other studies This section gives a brief overview of some other studies that have contributed to this thesis’ approach to PR analysis.

To my knowledge, Somsonge’s (1991) study of Thai narrative was the first to employ Givón’s (1983a) measurements of topic continuity to determine participant rank. In this way, Somsonge’s work is foundational. She also provides some helpful criteria for grouping participants as central, major, minor, and peripheral apart from the quantitative measurements of continuity. Taylor (1994) is also helpful in providing criteria for grouping participants into different ranks, but her categories are slightly different, viz. primary, secondary, tertiary, impersonal, and prop. In this same study, Taylor provides one of the earliest applications of Dooley & Levinsohn’s default approach in her analysis of Nɔmaande participant reference. Both Taylor (1994) and Somsonge (1991) are helpful in providing models for the methodology of Chapter 3.

Finally, the concepts of spectrum and profile as presented in Longacre (1981) are an important piece of the understanding of motivations behind the forms of referring expressions in discourse. Spectrum refers to the observable cline of grammatical structures that categorizes information into various levels of grounding in a discourse, e.g. simple past tense for main events, past progressive for backgrounded activities, and statives (“be”) for the most static or depictive information. While the grammatical distinction between foregrounded events and backgrounded events is not unique to Longacre (1981), he goes beyond that in showing how strands of information in a narrative can be arranged on a cline ranging from more dynamic information to more static information, just as a spectrum of light that ranges from red to violet. Closely related to spectrum is profile, or the surface structure in a narrative that results from the rising and falling tension throughout its notional structure. This profile, Longacre argues, results from the presence of one or more “peaks” in a narrative’s surface structure, which themselves correlate with the narrative’s climax(es). Longacre concludes:

When we keep in mind that the peak(s) also affect the spectral lines of the discourse and a number of other features as well, it is evident that much of the detail of a story – down to its morphosyntax, systems of nominal/pronominal reference, and linkage – can be explained relative to the twin concerns of spectrum and profile. (1981, p. 353)

Spectrum and profile, although not specifically referenced in Chapter 4, lend a helpful layer of understanding to the motivations behind deviations from Senthang’s normal reliance on a sequential strategy for determining PR coding.

Participant Rank

3.1 Introduction to participant rank It is clear from previous studies on third-person narrative discourse (i.e. Somsonge (1991); Osborne (2009); and Bequette (2013)), that the importance of a participant to a narrative has a bearing on how that participant is referred to throughout the narrative, i.e. the linguistic devices used when he or she is referred to. Therefore, if the relative importance of a participant to its story can be determined, then a useful ranking can be assigned to that participant and its various references throughout the text analyzed in light of this ranking.

One clear, quantitative way to determine the importance of a participant in a text is to use Givón’s (1983b) notion of topic continuity (see §2.3.1.1). Following this idea, one can say that the more continuous the topic19, the more important that topic is to the text. Givón (1983b) proposes a methodology for calculating the topicality, or continuity, of a given instance of reference within a text. Givón’s aim was more focused on showing how topic continuity correlates with the choice of grammatical devices in a discourse. In this study, his measurements are repurposed in order to determine participant rank. It is only that ranking itself which is then correlated with the grammatical devices20 used to introduce each participant.

In the present study, two of the measurements that Givón introduced are used to help determine the ranking of participants in the text True Love. Those measurements are (1) referential distance or “look-back” and (2) persistence or “decay”. Somsonge’s (1991) study of Thai discourse was, to my knowledge, the first to make use of these measurements in order to determine participant rank in third- person narrative. Later, both Tebow (2010) and Edwards (2011), following Somsonge (1991), applied these measurements to participant ranking in Bru Khok Sa-at and Tai Dam, respectively21. This methodology proved to be helpful in

19 Givón’s topic is roughly equivalent to this study’s idea of a participant, though more general in nature. 20 These devices include, but are not limited to, referring expressions. 21 Bequette (2013) and Osborne (2009) did not apply Givón’s measurements to determine rank, but instead used participant introductions and a few other factors to determine rank.

providing a quantitative way to determine participant rank—an area of participant reference analysis where previous studies mostly based their conclusions on the way that participants are introduced, c.f. Taylor (1994), Bequette (2013), and Osborne (2009). As relevant as participant introductions are to participant rank, they do not provide the kind of quantitative, objective results that Givón’s measurements do. Therefore, in recognition of the usefulness of these objective methods, they are used to aid in the determination of participant rank in the present study.

3.2 Methodology As previously mentioned, Givón’s measurements of referential distance and persistence are used in this study to determine participant rank. Further explanation of these measurements is given below.

Referential distance (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 13) is the number of clauses separating one mention of a participant from the previous mention of that participant. Thus, if a participant mentioned in the current clause was mentioned in the previous clause, then the referential distance for the current mention of that participant is 1. If, on the other hand, the currently mentioned participant is not mentioned within the 20 previous clauses, or if this mention happens to be the first mention of that participant in the text, then a maximal referential distance value of 20 is given to that reference. If we assume, like Givón, that “more important discourse topics appear more frequently in the register…”, then we can say that topics/participants “that are highly continuous in terms of low referential distance…” are “potentially important discourse topics” (p. 15). So, if we measure the average referential distance of all the references to a participant in a discourse and that average is low, then it will be clear that we are dealing with a participant that is important to its discourse. Therefore, in this study, the participant with the lowest average referential distance is considered the most important.

Persistence (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 14) is the number of clauses in the text following the measured clause in which the participant continues to be present as a semantic argument, regardless of its role or grammatical encoding. Put another way, persistence is a measure of the number of clauses during which a participant “persists” or continues being mentioned. Thus, for a given instance of reference to a participant, if that same participant is mentioned in the next 5 clauses, but then not in the 6th clause, its persistence score at that instance will be 5. If a participant is mentioned once and then not in the next clause, then it receives the minimal

persistence value of zero. Unlike referential distance, there is no upper limit to the persistence value of a participant in a given clause. Unlike referential distance, persistence measures subsequent rather than preceding discourse and “most directly it is a reflection of the topic’s importance in the discourse, and thus a measure of the speaker’s topical intent” (p. 14). Thus, the higher the persistence value, the more important the topic/participant.

Because persistence measures the “topical intent” (in Givón’s words) of the speaker in this way and because it has no upper limit, it can probably be considered the most accurate single measure of a participant’s importance within a narrative. This is primarily because referential distance can be less accurate as an indicator of importance when considering a text as a whole, a weakness that persistence does not share. Since referential distance is an average, it can be skewed if a participant is mainly only present in a single episode but is the most salient participant in that particular episode. Both Edwards (2011) and Tebow (2010) ran into this issue in the course of their analyses of participant rank and had to adjust their referential distance values accordingly.22

Below are some explanations about how these measurements are applied to True Love.

• If a participant appears in a clause as a possessive noun phrase, but lacks a coreferential argument NP, then that clause is not counted for the persistence of that participant because, in that case, it is not a semantic argument of the clause.

• Following Cooreman (1983, p. 443), in her study on topic continuity in Chamorro, “Relative clauses and direct quotes are not considered as a gap in the counts when the NP referent is not found in them…” However, unlike Cooreman (1983), this study will remain consistent with other studies with similar aims, e.g. Somsonge (1991) and Tebow (2010), by not including references within quotes and relative clauses in the counts for referential distance or persistence. Stated more succinctly, relative clauses and direct quotes are not counted as gaps between references (as Cooreman did), but (unlike Cooreman) references occurring inside relative clauses and direct quotes are not counted when calculating persistence and referential distance.

22 Tebow (2010) originally proposed the method of adjustment, which Edwards explains like this: “This was done by dividing the total number of clauses by the amount of activations for each participant. This number was then multiplied by the look-back [referential distance] score” (2011, p. 81).

• In cases where the reference to a certain participant is slightly ambiguous, but probable according to the context and the available reference devices, that reference is counted for both measurements (i.e. Tang Phw and Tang Zaw in clause #11.1)

In addition to these measurements, a simple count of all the references to each participant is done, following Tebow (2010) and Edwards (2011). Once all of these measurements are completed, an overall ranking of participants can be created, taking into consideration all three measurements. Below is a list of the steps taken in this study.

1. Use a Thurman chart (Grimes, 1975) to organize the text into a form that makes each instance of reference easily visible.

2. Count each instance of reference for each participant in the narrative and give the total number of references for each participant. Only unique references are counted, so references where a participant is a part of a larger group are not counted for that participant, but rather for the group as a unit.

3. By examining the Thurman chart, calculate the referential distance value for each mention of each participant and place that value in its own column to the right of the “identification” column. After calculating this value for each instance of reference for each participant, find the total referential distance value for each respective participant and divide that by the total number of references for that participant. This will provide an average referential distance value for each participant. The lower this value, the higher the importance of that participant.23

4. Calculate the persistence value of each reference to each participant and sum the persistence values for each participant. The result is the participant’s overall persistence value. While calculating this for each reference, make a new column for it in the Thurman chart next to the referential distance values column. Those participants with a higher overall persistence value are considered more important to the narrative.

23 Although—as stated previously—references within relative clauses and clauses in quotes are not counted for either referential distance or persistence, certain instances of reference occurring in sentence fragments are counted since these occur as individual utterances.

5. Compare the three different values for each participant in the narrative and, from this information, decide on their order of importance within the narrative.

6. Examine the linguistic devices used to introduce each participant, noting similarities and differences and how those relate to each participant’s rank as determined in step 5.

3.3 Results and analysis of the three measurements In True Love, there are a total of 24 participants and props, shown in Table 15. Grimes (1975) makes a distinction between participants and props, in which participants are most often animate and semantically agentive while props tend to be inanimate and semantically non-agentive. Following this distinction, Table 15 displays participants on the left and props on the right, listed in order of appearance in the text. The number in the column to the right of each participant or prop is the clause where that participant or prop is first introduced into the text. Following Tebow (2010) and Edwards (2011), rather than doing an exhaustive ranking of every participant and prop, this study will focus on determining the rank of only the most important participants, i.e., primary, secondary and tertiary.

Table 15 Participants and props in True Love

Participants Intro Props Intro the village 1.1 rich family’s house 14.3 the poor family 1.1 window 17.2 Tang Phw (TP) and Tang Zaw (TZ) 1.1-1.2 poor family’s house 24.1 the rich family 2.1 rope 17.6 Law Sy (LS) and Law Daw (LD) 2.1-2.2 ground 17.6 LS and LD’s parents 4 khuihlw 19.2 LS and LD’s mother 20.2 khuihlw plucking place 19.3 LS and LD’s father 21.1 meeting to cast out TP and TZ 29.2 TP and TZ’s parents 24.2 Khaupang Flower 29.8 young men of the village 25.1 cliff 30.4 the village leader 28.2 the whole village 28.4 Symthawng Bird 29.10 LS and LD’s mother 20.2 As shown, there are a total of 14 participants and 10 props. Several of the participants in Table 15 appear as groups of people (e.g. TP and TZ, LS and LD, LS

and LD’s parents, etc.). This is because these participants are introduced as groups and always referred to as a unit in the subsequent discourse. For example, LS is never referred to individually in the story, but is always referred to together with LD as a plural unit.

To better explain the difference between props and participants, a borderline case of a participant that is similar to a prop is explained below. The segment of text shown in (5) are the only place where the young men of the village appear in the story:

(5) True Love.25.1-25.4

25.1 mi rwm mi ngai kaa- le =hai =ca =nah . person rich person rich 1PL.SBJ- say =PL =that =ERG Because they were rich,

25.2 aa- no =le po =le =nah khui sung 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG village inside tangvaw =viatei aa- va- au =thw =hai ei . unmarried.man =all 3PL.SBJ- DIR- call.II =all =PL and their parents called together all the young men in the village and

25.3 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ aa- va- hoh =hai =ca =nawh . 3PL.SBJ- PST- find =PL =that =LOC When they went to look for them, .

25.4 ram sung =law khuihlw lo =nawh =law =ca forest inside =LOC fruit (small.round.sour) pluck =NMLZ =LOC =that =nawh ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ aa- va- sui =hno =hai . =LOC 3PL.SBJ- DIR- arrive.I =MAL =PL they found them in the forest at the place where they were plucking khuihlw

The young men are patients in their first mention where they are “called together” by the rich parents and in the next two clauses, they are only accomplices to the parents while looking for the four twins. It is the rich parents who seem to be the real agents in these three clauses and the young men do not appear again in the story; thus, they might be given the status of prop—something parents merely use to accomplish their goal. However, because they do some movement, we might also consider them a kind of minor participant, which is what we will call them in this study. One other participant, the village leader, is only mentioned in a single clause, but he is an agent in that sentence and, so, is given the status of participant.

In this study, props are also included in all of the measurements and, as shown below, their status as props rather than participants is strongly confirmed by their low continuity.

The first set of results, in Table 16, is a ranking according to a simple count of all the mentions of each participant and prop, except for those within quotes and relative clauses. In the interest of concentrating on the most important results, only the top ten participants/props are displayed. The three participants with by far the highest number of mentions in the text are shaded in the tables for all three measurements in order to highlight their importance as topics throughout the story as compared to the rest of the participants and props.

Table 16 Participant ranking by simple count

Ranking Participant/Prop # of mentions 1st Law Sy and Law Daw 58 2nd Tang Phw and Tang Zaw 34 3rd LS and LD’s parents 27 4th the whole village 6 5th TP and TZ’s parents24 5 6th the rich family’s house 5 7th rope 4 8th the village 3 9th window 3 10th LS and LD’s mother 3

Table 17 displays the top ten ranks according to the average referential distance of each participant. Three props (shaded in gray) made the top ten list.

24 Although both TP and TZ’s parents and the rich family’s house had a simple count of five, TP and TZ’s parents were given a higher ranking because their simple count including quotes and relative clauses was 16, while that of the rich family’s house was only 6.

Table 17 Participant rank by average referential distance

Ranking Participant/Prop Average referential distance 1st Law Sy and Law Daw 1.775862 2nd LS and LD’s parents 3.037037 3rd Tang Phw and Tang Zaw 3.117647 4th the whole village 5 5th young men of the village 7.333333 6th LS and LD’s mother 7.666667 7th Symthawng Bird 8 8th rope 8.5 9th TP and TZ’s parents 9.6 10th cliff 11.5

Table 18 displays the top ten ranks according to the persistence value of each participant. Only one prop, the rope, made the top ten list in this measurement.

Table 18 Participant rank by persistence value

Ranking Participant/Prop Total persistence value 1st Law Sy and Law Daw 159 2nd LS and LD’s parents 51 3rd Tang Phw and Tang Zaw 39 4th young men of the village 3 5th rope 2 6th TP and TZ’s parents 2 7th the whole village 2 8th LS and LD’s mother 1 9th LS and LD’s father 1 10th Symthawng Bird 1

Considering all three measurements, a very clear overall ranking can be assigned to the top three participants in True Love; this is displayed in Table 19.

Table 19 Top three overall ranking

Rank Participant # of Avg. ref. Persistence mentions distance 1st Law Sy and Law Daw 58 1.775862 159 2nd LS and LD’s parents 27 3.037037 51 3rd Tang Phw and Tang Zaw 34 3.117647 39

Although LS and LD’s parents are mentioned slightly fewer times than Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, their referential distance averages and persistence values show clearly that they are the more important participant to the story.

In her study of Thai narratives, Somsonge (1991) showed that “participants in Thai narrative discourse can be ranked into three categories: main, secondary, and tertiary…” and she confirmed the difference in importance of these three categories through Givón’s (1983b) measurements of referential distance and persistence (Somsonge, 1991, p. 124). Likewise, we can see at least three categories of participants in True Love which are unambiguously differentiable by simply comparing the measurements of topic continuity. So, in our story, we have the primary participant (group), Law Sy and Law Daw; two secondary participant (groups), both Law Sy and Law Daw’s parents as well as Tang Phw and Tang Zaw; and several tertiary participants who only come into the story briefly at various times (i.e. Tang Phw and Tang Zaw’s parents, the young men of the village, the whole village, etc.). Before looking at and comparing the linguistic devices used to introduce these different ranks of participants, it may be helpful to consider an example of a heavily modified Senthang NP, while also recalling the basic structure of the Senthang NP (see §1.9.2).

In the Senthang NP, the noun head is the only required constituent and, notably, a relative clause can either precede or follow the head noun. An example of a complex NP is shown in (6) below. The head noun, inn, is displayed in bold text.

(6) a sen mi inn hei py maw thwm hai 3SBJ red REL house big very CLF.general three PL the three big houses that are red

In (6), the head noun, inn, is preceded by an RC, a sen mi, and followed by an attributive verb, hei py, a classifier phrase, maw thwm, and a plural marker, hai.25 The next section examines the introductions to the participants in True Love.

25 The presence of the plural marker, hai, here needs further analysis. It is uncertain whether it is a constituent of the NP or of the classifier phrase it appears next to. Whichever the case, it seems to be optional. This plural marker also occurs in the participant introductions.

3.4 Participant Introductions In this section, the participant rankings determined in §3.3 are compared with the participant introductions.

Interestingly, the introduction to one of the secondary participants, Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, comes first in the story, as shown below in (7). This is also the introduction for Tang Phw and Tang Zaw’s parents, since it is assumed that an innsungkhaw, “family”, will include both a mother and a father.

(7) True Love.1.1-1.2

1.1 =kha hlan =lawh =ha =nawh khui khui =khaih =law =that before =at =this =LOC village CLF.village =one =LOC

=ha =nawh mi synu innsungkhaw =law =ha =mawh sapu =this =LOC person poor family =LOC =this =POST son pa =hni suphia aa- va- ngai =hai ei . CLF.person =two twins 3PL.SBJ- PST- own.II =PL and

Once upon a time, in a certain village, from a poor family, they had two sons, twins (and...).

1.2 ∅.SBJ aa- sutei =le pa =hni =cucu aa- ming 3PL.POSS- child =PL CLF.person =two =TOP.EMPH 3PL.POSS- name =lawh =LOC TangPhw TangZaw =lemawh aa- va- au =hai . Tang Phw Tang Zaw =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- call.II =PL

Their two children, they named them TangPhw and TangZaw.

The first thing to note is that this opening seems a bit choppy. Because the text was recorded orally, this choppiness happened from time to time. It is possible that, if an opportunity for revising the text had been possible, the speaker might have changed some things, such as this opening. In any case, what we have here is an introduction to the story’s time and setting followed by the family, which is introduced first as part of a postpositional phrase, mi-synu innsungkhaw=law=ha=mawh, person-poor family=LOC=this=POST. One of our secondary participant groups, Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, is introduced in (1.1) by an overt NP with a general noun, sapu ‘son’, as head, followed by a classifier phrase, pahni, and another general noun, suphia ‘twins’. This NP occurs inside an existential clause with the family as subject: NP a

va ngai hai, ‘they had NP’. The second clause, in (1.2), reintroduces the boys as ‘a sutei le pahni cucu’, with the structure possessive pronoun—general noun with plural marker—classifier phrase—topic marker. This gives further information in order to introduce Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. The linguistic devices used here to introduce the twin boys are significantly more explicit than those used to introduce their parents, who are introduced by mere implication in a postpositional phrase with the word innsungkhaw, ‘family’. Our ranking seems to be supported by these introductions.

In (8) below, the introduction to the primary participant, Law Sy and Law Daw, is shown. As with the introduction of Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, who were part of a ‘family’, by implication, this is also the introduction of Law Sy and Law Daw’s parents.

(8) True Love.2.1-2.2

2.1 ei , ama =cu khui =law =thawngaw =ca =nawh innsungkhaw and 3SG =that village =LOC =same =that =LOC family

=khaih =hai a- si =mi =hai , mi rwm =tawih aa- si =one =PL 3SBJ- COP =NMLZ =PL person rich =very 3PL.SBJ- COP =mi =hai innsungkhaw =kha =nah sanw suphia =NMLZ =PL family =that =ERG unmarried woman twins pa =hni aa- va- ngai =rawh =hai ei . CLF.person =two 3PL.SBJ- PST- own.II =also =PL and

And in that same village, one family, who was very rich, also had two twin daughters.

2.2 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ aa- ming =law awh LawSy LawDaw aa- va- le 3PL.POSS- name =at Law Sy Law Daw 3PL.SBJ- PST- say

=hai . =PL

They called them Law Sy (and) Law Daw (for their names).

Although LS and LD’s parents are also introduced by implication, i.e. as part of an innsungkhaw or ‘family’, there is heavier linguistic material used to describe this family, which reflects LS and LD’s parents’ rank as secondary participants. Whereas TP and TZ’s family is introduced as the object of a rather short postpositional phrase, ‘from a poor family’, LS and LD’s family/parents are here introduced—albeit

also in a way that is a bit choppy—by an overt subject NP with two preposed relative clauses. So, not only is there heavier linguistic material in the introduction to this family, but the family’s syntactic position, i.e. that of subject, is more prominent as well. Not considering the bearing of their family’s introduction on their own, Law Sy and Law Daw are introduced in a way nearly identical to Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. Considering both TP and TZ and LS and LD’s membership in their respective families, however, they are not identical in their introductions. The difference in their families’ introductions back up their participant ranking: LS and LD as primary and TP and TZ as secondary.

3.5 Conclusion to the analysis of True Love After hearing the introductions to the participants for the first time, one might conclude that this is a story primarily about two sets of twins who fall in love. But, the subsequent discourse shows that it is primarily a story about the female twins, Law Sy and Law Daw, and their struggle against their parents. Furthermore, when analyzed more closely, the linguistic material used in introducing the participants in True Love correlates with the participant ranking as determined by the measures of topic continuity on the text as a whole. So, the analysis of True Love confirms the hypothesis that the more linguistic material used to introduce a participant, the higher that participant’s rank. In addition, we can see that Law Sy and Law Daw are more continuous as topics than any other participant by far. They are the agents of most of the actions, and in the end, they are the ones who plant the very idea to commit suicide in the minds of Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. The story is clearly about the girls. The girls’ parents and the boys are secondary participants. When examined closely, their introductions confirm their ranks.

Participant Reference Patterns

4.1 Key concepts in the context-dependent default approach The key concepts of the context-dependent default approach (§2.3.2.3) may be organized around three types of tasks which “a viable system of reference in any language must accomplish” (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001, p. 112ff). These are,

• Semantic: identify the referents unambiguously, distinguishing them from other possible ones

• Discourse-pragmatic: signal the activation status and prominence of the referents or the actions they perform

• Processing: overcome disruptions in the flow of information (p. 112).

The discourse-pragmatic task corresponds with many of the ideas from Chafe and Lambrecht presented in §2.3.1.3; on the other hand, the processing task has much to do with the ideas presented in §2.3.1.2 in the hierarchical approach to PR analysis. More specifically, the processing task deals mainly with disruptions caused by boundaries between thematic groupings in a text, i.e. episodes and paragraphs.

All three of the above tasks are interrelated, and this interrelation is perhaps most transparent when considering Givón’s iconicity principle (§2.3.1.1), which is, arguably, the primary underlying component of Dooley & Levinsohn’s approach. According to Givón’s principle of iconicity of phonological size, “the more disruptive, surprising, discontinuous or hard to process a topic is, the more coding material [emphasis in original] must be assigned to it” (T. Givón, 1983b, p. 18). This principle has been treated previously in this study in §2.3.1.1. At this point, it should simply be noted that “the three tasks of a system of reference all illustrate [Givón’s] iconic principle…” (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001, p. 114).

In order to accomplish the task of reference, languages must employ one or more strategies. Dooley and Levinsohn (2001) describe two types of these strategies— sequential (look-back) strategies and VIP (VERY IMPORTANT PARTICIPANT) strategies— of which they say “though all languages probably use both, the extent to which they

prefer one over the other appears to vary considerably” (p. 117). Dooley and Levinsohn describe sequential strategies as having three basic characteristics in common: (1) “they are basically concerned with how to identify the referent of expressions that are lower than full noun phrases” on Givón’s coding scale (see Figure 3 in §2.3.1.1), (2) they “identify the referent of such expressions by noting what or who was mentioned most recently (perhaps restricted to a certain category, such as subject)”, and (3) they do not take into consideration discourse hierarchy (cf. §2.3.1.2). VIP strategies, on the other hand, are concerned with thematic salience of particular participants both locally and globally within a text. Grimes (1978a) characterizes a VIP strategy—his “thematic strategy”—as where ‘one referent is distinguished from the rest when introduced, and a special set of terms refer to it no matter how many other things have been mentioned more recently” (p. viii). Dooley and Levinsohn (2001) employ this same definition for their description of a VIP strategy.

A note concerning VIP strategies

Concerning VIP strategies, there is, in my reading of the literature, some confusion. According to the definition from Grimes cited above, there are quite specific grammatical requirements in certain languages for reference to a VIP. However, many who employ the term “VIP strategy”, instead of observing “a special set of terms” (as Grimes puts it) used consistently throughout a thematic unit or entire text to refer to a VIP participant, are actually observing the more general attribute of thematic salience, which allows a given participant to be referred to by means of less-than-default coding within a given thematic unit of text. But this less-than- default coding observed by many as the result of a VIP strategy (e.g. Osborne (2009), Tebow (2010), Bequette (2013)), while similar in nature, is not, on my reading, what Grimes was talking about. In an effort to avoid any miscommunication concerning Senthang’s PR strategies, rather than try to redefine the VIP strategy for use in this analysis, I instead refer to the more general concept of thematic salience (more on this concept in §4.3) and its interaction with the sequential strategy. It may serve as helpful to point out here that the assigning of participant ranks (Chapter 3) is essentially an attempt to assign labels to varying levels of global thematic salience carried by each participant in a text.

4.2 Methodology The participant reference analysis reported in this chapter was based on a modified version of the methodology proposed by Dooley & Levinsohn (2001, pp. 127–135).

The steps to the basic methodology are displayed in Table 20, according to Levinsohn (2015)—which is essentially the same as the 2001 version, but contains some improvements in the context definitions. The adaptation of this approach used in this thesis is explained in §4.2.1 and §4.2.2.

Table 20 Steps in the default approach (Levinsohn, 2015, p. 128)

1 Give the encoding scale for further reference to activated participants 2 Prepare a chart of participant encoding in a text 3 Track the participants 4 Identify the context in which each reference to a participant occurs 5 Propose default encoding values for the following contexts involving activated subjects and non-subjects in the text: • S1: the subject is the same as in the previous sentence • S2: the subject was the addressee of the previous reported speech • S3: the subject had some other non-subject role in the previous clause/sentence • S4: the subject was not involved in the previous clause/sentence • N1: the referent occupies a non-subject argument role in the current clause and in the previous clause or sentence • N2: the referent was the speaker of the previous reported speech • N3: the referent was involved in the previous sentence in a role other than N1 or N2 • N4: other non-subject references than those covered by N1-N3 6 Inspect the text for other than default encoding a) When the coding material is less than predicted b) When the coding material is more than predicted 7 Incorporate any modifications to the proposals of (5) 8 Generalize the pragmatic motivations for deviances from default encoding

Levinsohn’s (2015) eight steps in Table 20 were given three main modifications for the present study. First, a description of the discourse-level functions of the referring expressions listed in the encoding scale in step 1 is given, in continuity with previous studies using this methodology (Edwards, 2011; Osborne, 2009; Tebow, 2010). Second, the method of charting texts was modified (more on this in §4.2.1). Third, the assignment of the eight subject/non-subject contexts to each reference to an activated participant was governed by a set of guidelines which I created especially for the present study. These last two changes require some further explanation.

4.2.1 Charting method The steps for charting used in the analysis of the texts is listed below in chronological order. I also point out where the charting method used here differs from that recommended by Dooley & Levinsohn (2001).

1. After translating and glossing the texts, each of them was charted using the Text Chart tab within the Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx) software. This chart is designed according to Longacre and Levinsohn’s (1978) discourse chart for field analysis, which is also described in Dooley & Levinsohn (2001). It is not, however, specifically recommended in Dooley & Levinsohn (2001) for use in the analysis of participant reference, but was found to be a helpful place to start in the present study—primarily because of the ease of using the Text Chart function digitally within FLEx. Creating discourse charts for each of the texts in this way does not require a large mess of paper, scissors, tape, etc.

2. Next, I printed all the charts as well as a copy of each text’s (uncharted) interlinearization for reference.

3. Then, I used these printouts to accomplish both (3) and (4) of the eight steps in Table 20, which I did using pencil and eraser in a large notebook to create a wide spreadsheet of data according to the template recommended by Dr. Larin Adams. Dr. Adams used this template in a course he taught at the University of North Dakota and recommended it to me as an easier, more efficient charting layout than that provided by Dooley & Levinsohn (2001, p. 128ff) (personal communication, April 24th, 2018).

4. I then transferred the charts from the notebook into a Microsoft Excel workbook, using separate sheets for each text’s analysis data.26

5. Next, I created pivot tables inside each sheet displaying the distribution of referring expressions in each context individually for each text.

6. Finally, I created eight more pivot tables in a new sheet displaying each subject and non-subject context (eight contexts altogether, thus eight tables) using the tables created in (5). These tables appear in §4.4.1 and §4.4.2.

26 Steps 3 and 4 could obviously be combined and the charting done directly in Excel, but this strategy avoids the need to sit before a computer screen for so long—something I found very helpful.

4.2.2 Principles for assigning subject & non-subject contexts The following principles were used for determining subject and non-subject contexts in the Senthang texts.

1. DEFINITION OF A SENTENCE: Because many of the segments of text originally analyzed as “sentences” according to my language consultant’s intuition contain rather long strings of coordinate clauses (i.e. multiple main clauses within the same “sentence”), for the sake of a clear and consistent analysis of participant reference patterns, this study defines a “sentence” as a main clause and its subordinates.

2. SINGLED OUT FROM GROUP: If a referent is mentioned in the preceeding sentence (or earlier in the same sentence) as part of a group and referred to individually in the current sentence, this is considered an instance of S4 or N4, both of which occur most commonly when a participant is not involved in the preceeding sentence (though N4 may have other possibilities—see Table 20) and must be reactivated in the mind of the hearer. A reference to a participant singled out from a group can be reasonably expected to act in the same manner as a reactivation of an inactive participant.

3. SINGULAR MENTIONS: A participant that is mentioned 1-2 times and then never referred to again is not counted on the chart. Such a participant is only considered in analysis inasmuch as it affects references to other participants.

4. RELATIVE CLAUSES, COMPLEMENT CLAUSES, & NOMINALIZED VPs: Cases of reference to a participant within a larger NP (e.g. references inside an RC, complement clause, etc.) are counted and assigned subject and non-subject contexts according to their local grammatical roles (e.g. in She hit the car that he was driving, he is considered to be in a subject context—even though its parent NP is in the object role).27

27 According to Levinsohn. these types of NP-internal clauses are, as would be expected, not normally considered to intervene between other NP-external clauses when assigning contexts to participant references. This holds true for subordinated clauses within a sentence as well. However, Levinsohn also recommends that “suitable provisos” be made if any of these clauses are “very complex” (personal communication, February 23-24, 2017).

5. FRAGMENTS: In accordance with Levinsohn (2015), sentence fragments occurring as independent utterances within a text are treated the same as full sentences.28

6. PARTICIPANTS COMBINED INTO A SINGLE SUBJECT (S1+): Following Levinsohn (2015, p. 126), cases where “the subject and other participants in the action of the previous clause are included in a plural subject in the next clause” are considered instances of the same subject (i.e. S1), but are labeled “S1+” to specify the circumstances. Previous studies considered such cases instances of S4, but had to make exceptions in their default rules for the S4 context to account for them and showed that such cases actually demonstrate the default rules for S1, i.e., they have minimal coding (Edwards, 2011; Tebow, 2010).

7. POSSESSIVE PHRASES: Possessive phrases are considered a non-subject context; however, they are unlike other referring expressions in that they can never occur as zero anaphora (the possessive pronoun is obligatory in a possessive NP). These restrictions are taken into consideration during analysis.29

8. PARTICIPANT OCCURS IN BOTH N AND S CONTEXTS IN PREVIOUS SENTENCE: If the same participant is referred to in both subject and non-subject references in the previous sentence, the most recent of these will govern the assignment of the present context.30

4.3 Referring expressions and their functions For the purposes of this description, a referring expression (RE) is any linguistic device(s) used by a speaker whose function is to identify a discourse participant in the mind of a hearer; these can have a small amount of coding material, e.g. zero anaphora or a pronoun, or a large amount of coding material, e.g. a noun phrase containing several modifiers. This discourse participant in the mind of the speaker/hearer may be called that participant’s mental representation or, simply, its referent (Lambrecht, 1994).

28 This rule is primarily applicable to unedited texts, but while the texts included here were indeed edited, some independent sentence fragments of this kind still remain. 29 This type of referring expression was difficult to assign a context to at first, but after discussing it with Dr. Levinsohn, I was able to formulate this rule (personal communication, 24 February, 2017). 30 Although not discussed with Dr. Levinsohn, this rule is in line with Givón’s idea of topic continuity (§2.3.1.1) in that it prioritizes the shortest referential distance in governing the assignment of a subject/non-subject context.

It has been clearly demonstrated in previous studies similar to this that there are two types of key factors which work in tandem to determine the proper referring expression in a given context. These are, (1) grammatical factors and (2) discourse- pragmatic factors (Edwards, 2011; Osborne, 2009; Tebow, 2010).

Grammatical factors

Like the majority of languages in Southeast Asia, Senthang’s nouns are sort nouns. According to Rijkhoff (2002, p. 54), sort nouns are those that “designate a property that is characterized as not having a definite outline and as being non- agglomerative” [emphasis original]. Said differently, sort nouns refer to concepts rather than discrete entities. This means that sort nouns must be individuated or embodied (Foley, 1997, p. 231) by an accompanying grammatical device of some kind, most commonly a classifier, in order to make reference to a specific entity. Thus, unlike the English count noun, which on its own can make reference to a specific entity in a discourse (though normally preceeded by an article or possessor), Senthang’s noun must be embodied by another grammatical device. Proper nouns are excluded from this requirement however.

Discourse-pragmatic factors

The second set of factors that govern a speaker’s choice of RE has to do primarily with what the speaker believes to be the activation state of a referent in the mind of the hearer. Thus, the theory and terminology of the cognitive approach to analyzing participant reference of Chafe (1994) and Lambrecht (1994) is integral to the description of this set of factors and is used to that end in the present chapter. Please refer to §2.3.1.3 for a fuller explanation of the concepts of activation state, identifiability, and anchoring—all of which will be used in the following descriptions of the functions of REs in discourse.

Related to these cognitive, anaphoric factors is the cataphoric property of thematic salience. Osborne explains:

While the anaphoric information signaled by a referring expression concerns the pragmatic properties of a referent, namely its identifiability and activation status, the cataphoric information signaled by a referring expression concerns its prominence (Lambrecht, 1994), also described as persistence as a topic throughout the following discourse (Givón, 2001), or thematic salience (Longacre, 1990). The thematic salience of a new referent is signaled by the amount and type of encoding used (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001; Givón, 2001; Longacre, 1990). (2009, p. 42)

In sum, the discourse-pragmatic factors encompass both anaphoric—activation state and identifiability—and cataphoric—thematic salience—considerations.

Senthang has three main types of REs. These are, from largest to smallest, (1) full noun phrases, (2) pronouns, and (3) zero anaphora. These three REs are described in terms of their functions on the discourse level in §4.3.1, §4.3.2, and §4.3.3 respectively.

4.3.1 Full noun phrases Senthang uses noun phrases31 (NPs) to (1) introduce unidentifiable participants, (2) reactivate inactive participants, (3) refer to active participants after an episode boundary, and (4) signal the thematic salience, i.e. importance, of a participant. These functions are further described below and illustrated with corresponding examples from the text corpus. A description of two more functions follows in §4.3.1.5 dealing with possessive noun phrases.

4.3.1.1 Introducing unidentifiable participants One function of NPs is to introduce new participants into a discourse, thus serving either to activate an inactive participant or to create an altogether new mental representation for an unidentifiable participant in the mind of a hearer. This is illustrated in (9) where the participants Ngun Nw and Tia Tei are introduced for the first time.

(9) NN&TT-LT.1 a- hlan =nawh , Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei =lemi hawhnw 3SG.POSS- before =LOC Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei =COMP maiden pa =hni aa- va- wm =hai . CLF.person =two 3PL.SBJ- PST- exist =PL

Once upon a time [lit. Before], there were two maidens called Ngun Nw and Tia Tei.

31 Noun phrases in this section refer to NPs with overt referential coding above the level of a single pronoun.

4.3.1.2 Reactivating inactive participants The use of an overt NP to reactivate an inactive participant can be seen in (10) where the girls’ father is inactive in 19.1-20.1 and then reactivated in 20.2 by the use of the NP aa-po=nah, their-father=ERG.

(10) NN&TT-LT.19.1-20.2

19.1 ama =kha =mawh 'kaling kaleng kalung kaleng' =lemawh khasih 3SG =that =POST ONOM =COMP evil.spirit pau =khaw ma =kha =mawh va- suih =tawn =awh . sound =that 3SG =that =POST PST- arrive.I =HAB =SUBD

So, the sound of the evil spirit--"kaling kaleng kalung kaleng"--like that, arriving...

19.2 ma =khaw =mawh ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ a- va- wm =py =tawn 3SG =that =POST 3SG.SBJ- PST- stay =ACCOM =HAB =hai . =PL

In that way, he would come and stay with them (for a while).

20.1 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ a- va- wm =py =tawn =hai ei . 3SG.SBJ- PST- live =ACCOM =HAB =PL and

When he would come to stay with them...

20.2 ahnwtwdwmawh aa- po =nah ∅.OBJ a- hni in.the.end 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- know.II tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

Later on, when their father learned about it.

4.3.1.3 Referring to active participants following an episode boundary Noun phrases are also used to refer to active participants after episode boundaries, which take the form of disruptions in the flow of discourse. A good example of this is seen in (11) where Ngun Nw and Tia Tei are referred to by way of zero anaphora in the clauses 4, 5, and 6, but then by means of a full NP in clause 6.2 following an episode boundary between the introduction and the opening action of the story. Two discontinuities give evidence for this episode boundary, namely, those of

participants and place. The change of participants is seen in the girls’ father going off stage, while the change of place is made clear when the girls are seen going to the dry field in 6.1 and then pulling weeds there in 6.2—where, as already observed, they are referred to by an NP.

(11) NN&TT-LT.4-6.2

4 aa- po =nah ∅.OBJ a- mai =py 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- remain.without.remarrying =ACCOM

=hai . =PL

Their father stayed with them without remarrying.

5 ∅.SBJ lau aa- tui . dry.field 3PL.SBJ- make

They worked on a dry field.

6.1 ∅.SBJ lau =kawi aa- va- sei =tawn =hai ei . dry.field =towards 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =HAB =PL and

They used to go to the dry field and...

6.2 Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei =khaw lau aa- va- tho . Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei =that dry.field 3PL.SBJ- DIR- weed

Ngun Nw and Tia Tei would pull [lit. pulled] weeds in the field.

4.3.1.4 Signaling thematic salience of a participant Another function of NPs on the discourse level is that of signaling the thematic salience of a participant. This function of NPs is often seen specifically in the introductions of thematically salient participants. In these introductions, there is often a large amount of coding material which also often includes a classifier phrase. Example (12) illustrates this use of an NP with a classifier phrase in the introduction of the thematically salient participants Ngun Nw and Tia Tei.

(12) NN&TT-LT.132 a- hlan =nawh , Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei =lemi hawhnw 3SG.POSS- before =LOC Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei =COMP maiden pa =hni aa- va- wm =hai . CLF.person =two 3PL.SBJ- PST- exist =PL

Once upon a time [lit. Before], there were two maidens called Ngun Nw and Tia Tei.

4.3.1.5 Possessive noun phrases Possessive noun phrases have two primary discourse functions: (1) anchoring an unidentifiable participant to another, usually more important participant (see §2.3.1.3.2), and (2) locating accessible referents within the discourse world. An example of the second function is found in (13). In the context, the body of the python (who was actually Daw Vang’s mother) has just been boiled in a pot and the Mangpy chief and his men are in the middle of eating the cooked meat when, in (13), Daw Vang is seen gathering up the bones of her deceased mother-turned- python. The a- ‘3SG.POSS/her’ serves to locate the already inferentially accessible33 referent karw ‘bones’ within the discourse world in the mind of the hearer.

(13) KB&DV.23.3-23.4

23.3 a- nw a- su =khaw oh =bawm =lau =tei 3SG.POSS- mother 3SG.POSS- meat =that eat.II =also =NEG =DIM =kha =that =mawh a- karw =tei =khaw a- lawh lawh ei . =ADZR 3SG.POSS- bone =DIM =that 3SG.SBJ- take.II take.II and without also eating her mother's meat, she gathered up her mother's bones, and

23.4 vatahei =law =nawh a- phwm awh aa le . valley =LOC =LOC 3SG.SBJ- bury DM she buried them in the valley, it was said.

Another example of the use of a possessive NP in this function is found in (14), where Law Sy and Law Daw are the subject in clause 7.5 and, in the immediately following clause 8, are the referent of the possessive pronoun aa by which they are

32 This same example also appears earlier in (9). 33 See §2.3.1.3.2 for an explanation of inferential accessibility.

used to locate their parents within the discourse. Because all of the stories in the text corpus for this study include parents and their children as primary participants, the use of the possessive pronoun to anchor and locate the parents throughout each of the four texts is ubiquitous, especially given that none of the parents are ever referred to by his or her own name, rather only in relation to his or her child(ren), i.e. with a possessive NP—as in (14).

(14) True Love.7.5-8

7.5 =lemawh ∅.SBJ va- le . =COMP PST- say they said.

8 aa- no =le po =le =nah ∅.OBJ ceih =lemawh a- 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG PTCL =COMP 3SG.SBJ- va- PST- kham =liamaw =hai . prohibit =PROG =PL

Their parents continued prohibiting them over and over again (from befriending the twins)

Lastly, (15) is an example of the first function of possessive NPs, i.e. anchoring an unidentifiable participant. The first time Law Sy and Law Daw’s parents are referred to specifically, they are anchored to their daughters, Law Sy and Law Daw, who were already introduced five clauses before in clause 2.1 (not shown).

(15) True Love.4

4 asanumawh LawSy LawDaw aa- no =le aa- po =le but Law Sy Law Daw 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ 3PL.POSS- father =PL

=ha =nah TangPhw TangZaw =le =hawi ei aa- kawm =mi =this =ERG Tang Phw Tang Zaw =PL =with LOC 3PL.SBJ- befriend =NMLZ

=hai =khaw va- dw =veh =hai . =PL =that PST- like =NEG =PL

But, Law Sy and Law Daw's parents didn't like that they had befriended Tang Phw and Tang Zaw.

4.3.2 Pronouns The use of Senthang pronouns for PR within narrative text is quite rare, though they are much more common in dialogue—which is observable in that they are commonly found inside reported speech found in the text corpus.34

Lyons (1977) explains a basic distinction between the deictic and anaphoric use of pronouns, but sees the anaphoric use as basically an extension of the deictic use. The deictic use may be defined as the use of a pronoun to point to something or someone present in the text-external world, whereas the anaphoric use of pronouns may be defined as the use of a pronoun to refer to a participant previously mentioned within a text. Lyons’ view that the anaphoric use of pronouns is derived from the more basic deictic use seems quite accurate when considering the common occurrence of Senthang pronouns within reported speech and their corresponding scarcity as anaphora. The use of pronouns within reported speech may be considered deictic because it is an unabstracted use of pronouns for reference to things or persons in the text-internal world.

The more abstracted, anaphoric use of pronouns in Senthang is rare, but may be seen in clause 30.3 of (16). Here, a pronoun is used by the speaker in order to clarify the subject of 30.3 as Daw Vang and not Daw Vang’s crops, which she had just referred to in a standalone topic NP in the immediately preceeding clause. Because the possessive NP in 30.2 already includes a reference to Daw Vang, a pronoun is sufficient to reestablish reference to her as subject in the following clause. Thus, the pronoun’s function here is to refer to an already active participant (DV) in a clause where some semantic ambiguity must also be resolved.

(16) KB&DV.30

30.1 ma =kha tyh =kha =nawh ∅.SBJ lau aa- tui 3SG =that time =that =LOC dry.field 3PL.SBJ- do tyh =nawh . time =LOC And then, when they worked in their dry field,

30.2 Daw Vang a- lau ei =cu . Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- dry.field LOC =TOP the things from Daw Vang's dry field...

34 PR within reported speech is not analyzed directly in the approach used here. However, when such PR affects PR outside of the reported speech, this is taken into account.

30.3 ani =cu a- hruam =tawih =mi , a- sym =tawih =mi 3S =TOP 3SBJ- willing =very =NMLZ 3SBJ- wise =very =NMLZ a- si tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- COP time =that =LOC Since she was a very diligent and wise one,

30.4 a- lau =khaw a- thu . 3SG.POSS- dry.field =that 3SBJ- good Her dry field (the crops) was good.

The anaphoric use of a pronoun in the context of a more continuous string of clauses is found in (17), where amu=khaw ‘that (one)’ is used to refer to an active participant (the evil bachelor spirit) following an episode boundary. The boundary occurs between 16.3 and 17.1, where there are discontinuities of both place and participants.

(17) NN&TT-LT.16.1-17.1

16.1 asinumawh aa- po =kha =nah ruih =awh . but 3PL.POSS- father =that =ERG think =SUBD However, their father, thinking (about it)

16.2 ahnwtwdwmawh " a , ka- bo kau ti =aw in.the.end INTJ.resignation 1SG.SBJ- keep.watch EMPH PTCL =FUT

" a- le ei . 3SG.SBJ- say and later on, saying, "Ok, I will just keep watch (on him)",

16.3 makhaw khasih tangvaw pu =khaw a- bo . that evil.spirit unmarried.man male =that 3SG.SBJ- keep.watch he kept watch on that evil bachelor spirit.

17.1 amu =khaw a- vai =tawn =lawh =hai =kha =nawh 3SG =that 3SG.SBJ- visit =HAB =LOC =PL =that =LOC =i . =REQ.CNFRM When he would visit them, (You know?)35,

35 The phrase “You know?” in this free translation is an approximation of the meaning of the clitic =i, which is a request by the speaker for confirmation of understanding by the hearer.

4.3.3 Zero anaphora Null reference, or zero anaphora, is Senthang’s most common way to accomplish routine tracking of participants in discourse. It maintains reference to an active participant. From the perspective of the hearer, a zero anaphor signals to him or her that a participant is active. A clear example of this use of zero anaphora is shown in (18), which also provides a fitting summary of this section by illustrating a progression of REs (from large to small) employed in referring to a single participant, namely, Daw Vang’s beads. First, the beads are introduced by means of an NP in 24.2, then they are specificied by means of a pronoun in the midst of possible semantic ambiguity in 24.3, and, finally, reference to the beads is maintained by the use of zero anaphora in both 24.4—where they are the object— and 24.5—where they are the subject, albeit transformed into a grammatically singular necklace. Each reference to the beads in (18) is bolded.

(18) KB&DV.24.1-24.5 24.1 vatahei =law =ca =nawh twmkung a- kung sang =py valley =LOC =that =LOC twmkung tree 3SG.POSS- tree high =very phun =khaw a- khau ei . kind =that 3SBJ- grow.plant and In the valley, a very tall tree grew, and

24.2 ama =kha =law =kha =mawh pwmteih , thirual a phunphun 3SG =that =LOC =that =POST bead bead various =khaw a- tai ei . =that 3SBJ- grow and on it, different kinds of beads were growing and

24.3 ama =kha =hai =khaw Daw Vang =ca =nah a- lawh ei . 3SG =that =PL =that Daw Vang =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- take.II and Daw Vang took them and,

24.4 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC when she put them on herself (as a necklace)

24.5 ∅.SBJ a- do =tawih =hinghan aa le . 3SBJ- beautiful =very =very DM it was extremely beautiful.

4.4 Rules for default encoding The following subsections include a series of tables displaying the distribution of the four RE categories by story in each of the eight contexts36 of Dooley & Levinsohn’s default approach. In addition, rules for default encoding in each context are also given, along with an example from the text corpus.

4.4.1 Subject reference patterns The following four subsections display data and default rules for the four subject contexts.

4.4.1.1 S1 context The S1 context occurs when the subject is the same as in the previous sentence. The clear default RE for the S1 and S1+ contexts is a zero anaphor, as evinced by the data shown in Table 21 and Table 22. Thus, it is not expected that a pronoun or NP will occur in an S1 context.

Table 21 Totals of REs in S1 Context by Text

S1 TT&NN by True TT&NN by KB&DV Total Context TH Love LT ∅ 25 89% 45 85% 48 84% 82 91% 200 87.7% PN 0 0% 1 2% 0 0% 0 0% 1 0.4% NP 3 11% 7 13% 9 16% 8 9% 27 11.8% Total 28 53 57 90 228

It is notable that all four texts have a similar distribution of zero anaphora and NP occurences in the S1 context. The occurences are NP are largely predictable based on the presence of episode boundaries in the text.

(19) illustrates the use of zero anaphora in the S1 context in reference to the Mangpy chief, who is referenced in an N4 context in 59.2, then in an S3 context in 59.2, and continues as subject (i.e. in the S1 context) through the next four clauses (60.1-60.4). All four references employ S1 default REs, i.e. zero anaphora. The NPs referring to the Mangpy chief are bolded.

36 Nine including the S1+ context.

(19) KB&DV.59.1-60.4

59.1 ∅.SBJ ama =khaw Daw Vang a- thuam =hawi =awh 3SG =that Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- uniform =with =LOC Khwmh Bau Khwmh Bau =khaw a- thuam theng =hai =awh . =that 3SG.POSS- uniform exchange =PL =and

As for Khwmh Bau, they switched her dress with Daw Vang's dress.

59.2 macamawh mangpy bawi pu zung =kawi =kha =nawh and Mangpy chief male middle =towards =that =LOC a- nw =le pu =le =nah aa- sei -sawh 3SG.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG 3PL.SBJ- go -CAUS tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC And, when her mother and father made her go to the Mangpy chief,

59.3 mangpy bawi pu =kha =nah a- hni kau . Mangpy chief father =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- know.II EMPH the Mangpy chief knew (that it was actually Khwmh Bau and not Daw Vang).

60.1 ∅.SBJ a- hni kau =nuteimawh . 3SG.SBJ- know.II EMPH =although Even though he knew,

60.2 ∅.SBJ balai =tei =kha =mawh a- wm ei . quiet =DIM =that =POST 3SBJ- stay and he kept quiet.

60.3 ∅.SBJ thawngpang a- hlaih tyh =kha =nawh . news 3SG.SBJ- investigate time =that =LOC

When he investigated about it,

60.4 ∅.SBJ Daw Vang a- wm =nawh =khaw a- hni =kia . Daw Vang 3SG.SBJ- exist =NMLZ =that 3SG.SBJ- know.II =again he found out where Daw Vang was.

Table 22 displays the count of REs in the S1+ context found in each of the four texts. The fact that the S1+ context may be expected to prefer the same default RE as the S1 context is clearly seen in the overwhelming occurrence of zero anaphora within the S1+ context.

Table 22 Totals of REs in S1+ Context by Text

S1+ Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 1 100% 4 100% 0 0% 7 100% 12 92% PN 0 0% 0 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% NP 0 0% 0 0% 1 100% 0 0% 1 8% Total 1 4 1 7 13

In (20), clause 10 contains separate references to the twin girls (as null subject) and twin boys (as null object). Then, in clause 11.1, both sets of twins are combined into a single subject reference, i.e. they occur in an S1+ context, and a zero anaphor is used as expected.

(20) True Love.10-11.1

10 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ aa- kawm =thawngaw =hai . 3PL.SBJ- befriend =still =PL They (the twin girls) still went out and played with them (the twin boys).

11.1 amakhamawh ∅.SBJ va- wm =hai =awh . in that way PST- exist =PL =and

They (the two sets of twins) went on like that and

An example of an NP occurring in the S1 context following a discourse boundary is shown in (21). The event in 6.2 is reiterated in 7.1 which initiates the first episode of the narrative following the introductory paragraph. On the notional level, the obvious rise in tension in 7.2 is clear evidence of a new episode. It is the presence of the episode boundary between 6.2 and 7.1 that causes the S1 context in 7.1 to code an NP.

(21) KB&DV.6.2-7.2

6.2 Khwmh Bau nw =le Daw Vang pu =cu aa- dw =hai Khwmh Bau mother =CONJ Daw Vang father =TOP 3PL.SBJ- like =PL Khwmh Bau's mother and Daw Vang's father fell in love.

7.1 macamawh Khwmh Bau nw =le Daw Vang pu =khaw and Khwmh Bau mother =CONJ Daw Vang father =that aa- dw =hai ei . 3PL.SBJ- like =PL and

Khwmh Bau's mother and Daw Vang's father fell in love, and

7.2 Daw Vang nw =khaw deih thaih aa- twm =caw =hai . Daw Vang mother =that kill 3PL.SBJ- attempt =PFV =PL now they were trying to kill Daw Vang's mother.

Non-default coding for S1

At this point, some examples of non-default codings in the S1 context are provided along with an attempt to explain their motivations.

(22) contains a section of text from KB&DV where KB’s parents are having the two girls try on a necklace one at a time. It is important to notice here that 27.1 and 27.2 make up two clauses in a single sentence and since DV is mentioned as the subject of 27.1 and then again in 28.1, her reference in 28.1 qualifies as an instance of the S1 context. The occurrence of an NP to code the reference to DV in 28.1 is most likely the result of semantic ambiguity, or stated otherwise, of a lack of relational givenness in the context. There are two referents on stage in the context in 28.1 that fulfil the semantic requirements of the verb, so an explicit NP reference is appropriate.

(22) KB&DV.27.1-28.3 27.1 Daw Vang =nah a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC When Daw Vang put it on,

27.2 a- do =tawih =kia =tung . 3SBJ- beautiful =very =again =NT.EX it was very pretty again in contrast.

28.1 macamawh Daw Vang =nah a- tui tyh =nawh a- and Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =LOC 3SBJ- do =tawih tyh =nawh . beautiful =very time =LOC And since it was very pretty when Daw Vang put it on,

28.2 " Khwmh Bau a- tui -sawh =u =h " =mawh aa- le Khwmh Bau 3SBJ- put.on -CAUS =2.PL =IMP =COMP 3PL.SBJ- say tyhawh . when when they said, "Let Khwmh Bau put it on,"

28.3 Khwmh Bau a- cung paw =law =kha =nawh =cu maikahei Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- above top =LOC =that =LOC =TOP charcoal

=awh pau a- leih =kia =liamaw . =to EXP 3SBJ- turn =again =ASP

On Khwmh Bau, it turned into charcoal again and again.

Another example of non-default coding in the S1 context is shown in (23), where DV’s crops/the things from her field are the subject of both 30.2 and 30.4, qualifying 30.4’s subject as an instance of the S1 context. 30.2 is, in fact, a fragment occurring as an individual utterance and seems to have been a result of the speaker changing her mind mid-sentence and then reformulating the sentence in 30.3-30.4. The presence of a non-default NP in 30.4 seems to be a result of this reformulation by the speaker.

(23) KB&DV.30.2-30.4

30.2 Daw Vang a- lau ei =cu . Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- dry.field LOC =TOP the things from Daw Vang's dry field...

30.3 ani =cu a- hruam =tawih =mi , a- sym =tawih =mi 3S =TOP 3SBJ- willing =very =NMLZ 3SBJ- wise =very =NMLZ a- si tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- COP time =that =LOC

Since she was a very diligent and wise one,

30.4 a- lau =khaw a- thu . 3SG.POSS- dry.field =that 3SBJ- good

Her dry field (the crops) was good.

4.4.1.2 S2 context The S2 context occurs when the subject was the addressee of the previous reported speech. Since there are so few instances of the S2 context in the current text corpus, it is not possible to assign a particular RE as the S2 default here. The S2 context needs to be examined within a significantly larger text corpus. For now, considering what might normally be expected in the S2 position in similar studies (which all point to coding lower on the scale than a full NP) and taking into account the few instances recorded here (see Table 23), we may tentatively assign a zero anaphor as the default RE for the S2 context.

Table 23 Totals of REs in S2 Context by Text

S2 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 5 83% 4 50% 2 33% 2 100% 13 59% PN 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% NP 1 17% 4 50% 4 67% 0 0% 9 41% Total 6 8 6 2 22

Example

(24) provides an instance of the S2 context with a zero anaphor. Clause 5.337 contains a speech reported by the girls’ father and addressed to the girls; then, clauses 5.4-5.5 contain the girls’ reply. The zero anaphor at the beginning of 5.4 refers to the girls, who were the addressee of the reported speech in 5.3. This zero anaphor is the subject of the speech verb in 5.6.

(24) NN&TT-TH.5.1-5.6

5.1 ma =ca =mawh zangkawi =ha =nawh ∅.SBJ va- suih =tawn 3SG =that =POST evening =this =LOC DIR- arrive.I =HAB

=hai =awh . =PL =and

37 Normally, Senthang places the subject of a reported speech before the speech itself and the speech verb following the speech. However, for ease of reading and analysis, where there is an overt subject for a reported speech in the present corpus, the speech verb (along with any other elements appearing with it) is moved back to appear next to its subject and an ellipsis (“…”) is placed between them to represent the actual position of the reported speech in the clause—see 5.2 and 5.3 of

(24) for an example of this convention.

And they would arrive home like that in the evening and,

5.2 aa- pu =ha =nah ∅.OBJ/ADDRESSEE ... =lemawh a- va- 3PL.POSS- father =this =ERG =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- le cu . say when when their father ... said (to them),

5.3 " zakaw =maw ka- su =le naa- hnapei =cu why =TAG 1SG.POSS- child =PL 2PL.POSS- sarong.(female) =TOP macamawh naa- baw khy thw e ?". like that 2PL.SBJ- tear all Q

"My children, why did (you) tear up your sarongs like that?"

5.4 ∅.SBJ/SPEAKER " rih a- hang =tawih ei . crop-eating.animal 3SBJ- wild =very and

"The birds are [running] wild [out there].

5.5 macamawh ∅.SBJ rih kaa- koih =nawh and crop-eating.animal 1PL.SBJ- chase =NMLZ.EVNT

=law =ha =nawh thingcahmui =nah ∅.OBJ a- ma- baw =LOC =this =LOC tree.stump =ERG 3SG.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- tear

=pih khy =thw ." =MAL break =all

And when (we) were scaring away the birds, the tree stumps tore up our sarongs (to us)."

5.6 =lemawh aa- va- le =tawn . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- say =HAB

(they) would reply.

The following example in (25) contains an instance of the S2 context coded with a full NP in clause 25.2 (bolded). In 25.2, the girls’ parents are the subject after having been the addressee of the immediately preceding reported speech in 24.2-24.4. Assuming the above analysis of a zero anaphor as the default coding for S2, this instance of an NP in the S2 context can be explained by the presence of a discourse

boundary as evinced by the scene, participants, and action discontinuities in 25.1- 25.2.

(25) True Love.24.2-25.2

24.2 aa- no =le po =le =ca =nah ∅.OBJ/ADDRESSEE “…” 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =that =ERG =ca =mawh le =hai =awh . =that =POST say =PL =and their (the boys’) parents said to them (the girls’ parents) “…”

24.3 " a , kaa- inn =kawi va- sei =veh =hai . INTJ.surprise 1PL.POSS- house =towards DIR- go =NEG =PL

"Oh, they didn't come to our house.

24.4 kaa- sutei =le =zawng ama lei =lawh aa- wm =nawh 1PL.POSS- child =PL =also 3SG place =LOC 3PL.SBJ- exist =NMLZ hnih =veh =hai -pi ." know.I =NEG =PL -1PL.SBJ

We don't know where our children are either.”

25.1 mi rwm mi ngai kaa- le =hai =ca =nah . person rich person rich 1PL.SBJ- say =PL =that =ERG

Because they were rich,

25.2 aa- no =le po =le =nah khui sung 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG village inside tangvaw unmarried.man =viatei { aa- } va- au =thw =hai ei . =all 3PL.SBJ- DIR- call.II =all =PL and their parents (the girls’ parents) called together all the young men in the village and

4.4.1.3 S3 context The S3 context occurs when the subject had some other non-subject role in the previous clause/sentence. Like the data for the S2 context, the data for the S3 context is less than sufficient to come to a definitive conclusion on a default coding.

However, there is a fairly clear majority of instances of the S3 context containing zero anaphora, as Table 24 shows. Specifically, a zero anaphor occurs in 33 out of 53 instances or 62.2%. Although a default coding is difficult to determine, many of the instances of NP coding in the S3 context are reasonably explained by the presence of discourse boundaries.

Table 24 Totals of REs in S3 Context by Text

S3 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 2 29% 4 100% 9 90% 18 56% 33 62% PN 0 0% 0 0% 1 10% 1 3% 2 4% NP 5 71% 0 0% 0 0% 13 41% 18 34% Total 7 4 10 32 53

(26) gives a selection of clauses from KB&DV, with an instance of the S3 default coding, zero anaphor, present in clause 63.1. The Mangpy Chief and his people are the object in 62.2 and 62.3; then, in 63.1, they are the subject, and thus in an S3 context. The zero anaphora referring to the Mangpy Chief and his people are bolded in each clause.

(26) KB&DV.62.2-63.1

62.2 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ man a- hau =mi =hai =cu . brideprice 3SG.SBJ- say =NMLZ =PL =TOP

The price that she said to them (was)

62.3 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ hnamh =khaw hnamh azawihpy =le tuangtuan azawihpy snot =that snot a.lot.of =CONJ termite a.lot.of =khaw a- hau =hai awh aa le . =that 3SG.SBJ- say =PL DM she asked them for a bunch of snot and termites.

63.1 ∅.SBJ macamawh tuangtuan =cu aa- khawm . and termite =TOP 3PL.SBJ- collect

And they (the Mangpy chief and his people) collected the termites,

In (27), NN and TT’s father first begins to keep watch on the evil bachelor spirit (16.3) and then, in 17.1, a new episode begins with the evil bachelor spirit going to visit the girls, NN and TT. It is the episode boundary between 16.3 and 17.1 that

motivates the use of a pronoun for the subject of 17.1, an S3 context that would normally expect a zero anaphor.

(27) NN&TT-LT.16.3-17.1

16.3 makhaw khasih tangvaw pu =khaw a- bo . that evil.spirit unmarried.man male =that 3SG.SBJ- keep.watch he kept watch on that evil bachelor spirit.

17.1 amu =khaw a- vai =tawn =lawh =hai =kha =nawh 3SG =that 3SG.SBJ- visit =HAB =LOC =PL =that =LOC =i . =REQ.CNFRM

When he (the bachelor spirit) would visit them (the girls), (You know?),

Non-default coding for S3

In (28), an instance of the S3 context occurs in 16.1 where the python is the subject referent and coded with an NP. This NP is likely motivated by the fact that the python, although the addressee of Ngun Nw’s song in 15.1-15.2 and active in the mind of the hearer, is himself not yet on stage in the discourse world until he responds to her song in 16.1, and thus an NP is used to bring him out.

(28) NN&TT-TH.15.1-16.2

15.1 macamawh ∅.SPEAKER ∅.ADDRESSEE "... " =lemawh a- va- and =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- le . say

And she said (to him), “…”

15.2 " Khuangthahli , Khuangthahla , na- w Ngun Nw =ne , Khuangthahli Khuangthahla 2SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw =ERG ra seh law ti , ti ." come HORT POL say say

"Khuangthahli, khuangthahla, your sister Ngunnu tells you to come." (Quote in Hakha)

16.1 macamawh , parypy =ca =nah ... =lekhamawh a- va- le . and python =that =ERG =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say

And the python ... replied [lit. said]

16.2 " ra lio e , ra lio e , lwm cung suamai ra come PROG POL come PROG POL python above mighty.one come lio e ". PROG POL

"I'm coming, I'm coming, the mighty python is coming.” (Quote in Hakha)

4.4.1.4 S4 context The S4 context occurs when the subject was not involved in the previous clause/ sentence. The default RE for the S4 context is unambiguously an NP, which occurs in a clear majority of cases in the corpus (71%) as shown in Table 25.

Table 25 Totals of REs in S4 Context by Text S4 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total ∅ 3 23% 2 11% 2 15% 18 41% 25 28% PN 0 0% 1 5% 0 0% 0 0% 1 1% NP 10 77% 16 84% 11 85% 26 59% 63 71% Total 13 19 13 44 89

It is notable that 28% of REs in the S4 context occur as zero anaphora. Such a result is unexpected in the context because normally a referent not mentioned in the previous clause will have been deactivated in the mind of the hearer and need reactivating with an explicit NP. However, this reactivation via NP is often unnecessary if a participant (1) remains active in the mind of the hearer and (2) is unambiguously identifiable in its context. A participant may remain active in an S4 context if it is still understood to be on-stage in the narrative with a minimum number of other participants on-stage simultaneously. An active participant may be unambiguously identifiable via a zero anaphor if it meets the semantic requirements of the verb in that particular context, or what Rosén (1996) terms relational givenness [as cited by Bequette (2013, p. 91)]. In Senthang, the relational givenness of a verb is strengthened by the obligatory presence of agreement affixes (§1.9.6).38 In addition, the ability of a hearer to successfully identify the correct referent of a zero

38 The presence of agreement marking on the verb is something that was not the case for Rosén, who I cite here on relational givenness, since she was applying the idea to verbs in Vietnamese, a language with no inflectional morphology.

anaphor in the S4 context can be aided by the thematic salience of the participant in question.

(29) shows an example of an NP default coding in an S4 context in clause 6.6. The context is that Ngun Nw and Tia Tei’s father has gone to spy on them and when he does, he witnesses them playing with the python. Having already been introduced into the story at this point, the python is reactivated with an NP (bolded in the example) in subject position within a complement clause in 6.6, which fits our definition of an S4 context.

(29) NN&TT-TH.6.5-6.6

6.5 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ a- va- ven phy =hai tyh =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- PST- observe-stealthily =PL time =LOC and so when (he) [went and] spied on (them).

6.6 parypy =nah ∅.OBJ heh =lemawh a- va- reih =py =mi python =ERG PTCL =COMP 3SBJ- DIR- play =COM =NMLZ

=hai =khaw ∅.SBJ a- hni . =PL =that 3SG.SBJ- know.II

(he) found out that the python played and joked around with (them).

The one instance of a pronoun occurring in an S4 context appears appended to clause 22.4. This is shown in bold text in (30). This appended pronoun is likely the result of the speaker’s realization that the referent of the subject (i.e. Law Sy and Law Daw) may not be fully active in the hearer’s mind at this point and would have been replaced with an NP in the normal subject position in a more polished telling of the story.

(30) True Love.22.3-22.4

22.3 ma =cu cuahry thai =tham =mi va- cuan tyh =nawh . 3SG =that rope hang =away =NMLZ DIR- look.II time =LOC

When they went to look (more closely) at the rope that was hanging down,

22.4 inn leng =kawi pau va- twm =tham =caw =hai aani . house outside =towards EXP PST- descend =away =PFV =PL 3PL

They (Law Sy and Law Daw) had already gone down out of the house.

Non-default coding for S4

(31) shows an example of non-default coding in the S4 context, here, of a zero anaphor. Daw Vang is the referent of the zero anaphor in clause 23.3, and since she is not mentioned in the preceding sentence, this zero anaphor occurs unexpectedly in an S4 context. Although unexpected in this context, a zero anaphor is indeed the most appropriate coding here because Daw Vang is the only referent semantically compatible with the context.

(31) KB&DV.23.1-23.4

23.1 macamawh inn aa- phawh tyh =kha =nawh . and house 3PL.SBJ- arrive time =that =LOC

And when they arrived at home,

23.2 aa- sau ei . 3PL.SBJ- boil and they boiled it and,

23.3 ∅.SBJ a- nw a- su =khaw oh =bawm =lau 3SG.POSS- mother 3SG.POSS- meat =that eat.II =also =NEG =tei =DIM =kha =mawh a- karw =tei =khaw a- lawh lawh ei . =that =ADZR 3SG.POSS- bone =DIM =that 3SG.SBJ- take.II take.II and without also eating her mother's meat, she (Daw Vang) gathered up her mother's bones, and

23.4 vatahei =law =nawh ∅.SBJ a- phwm awh aa le . valley =LOC =LOC 3SG.SBJ- bury DM she buried them in the valley, it was said.

(32) is a good example of the an unambiguous use of a zero anaphor in an S4 context. Khwmh Bau’s mother is having the girls try on a necklace in the context, so there are only three participants on stage in the scene. In addition to there being a small number of participants on stage, the semantic content of the reported speech in 28.2 makes Khwmh Bau’s mother the only compatible referent for the zero anaphor.

(32) KB&DV.25-28.3

25 macamawh Khwmh Bau nw =kha =nah " ka- su Daw Vang and Khwmh Bau mother =that =ERG 1SG.POSS- child Daw Vang a- tui =khaw ka- su Khwmh Bau a- tui -sawh " 3SG.SBJ- put.on =that 1SG.POSS- child Khwmh Bau 3SBJ- put.on -CAUS

=lemawh a- le awh aa le . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- say DM

And Khwmh Bau's mother said, "Let my child, Khwmh Bau, wear what my child Daw Vang is wearing."

26.1 macamawh Khwmh Bau =nah a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . and Khwmh Bau =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC

And when Khwmh Bau put it on,

26.2 maihei =awh pau a- leih . charcoal =to EXP 3SBJ- turn it turned into charcoal.

27.1 Daw Vang =nah a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC

When Daw Vang put it on,

27.2 a- do =tawih =kia =tung . 3SBJ- beautiful =very =again =NT.EX it was very pretty again in contrast.

28.1 macamawh Daw Vang =nah a- tui tyh =nawh a- and Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =LOC 3SBJ- do =tawih tyh =nawh . beautiful =very time =LOC

And since it was very pretty when Daw Vang put it on,

28.2 ∅.SBJ " Khwmh Bau a- tui -sawh =u =h " =mawh Khwmh Bau 3SBJ- put.on -CAUS =2.PL =IMP =COMP aa- le tyhawh . 3PL.SBJ- say when when they (KB’s mother & DV’s father) said, "Let Khwmh Bau put it on,"

28.3 Khwmh Bau a- cung paw =law =kha =nawh =cu maikahei Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- above top =LOC =that =LOC =TOP charcoal

=awh pau a- leih =kia =liamaw . =to EXP 3SBJ- turn =again =ASP

On Khwmh Bau, it turned into charcoal again and again.

4.4.2 Non-subject reference patterns The following four subsections display data and default rules for the four non-subject contexts.

4.4.2.1 N1 context The N1 context occurs when the referent occupies a non-subject argument role in the current clause and in the previous clause or sentence. As shown in Table 26, the clear default RE for the N1 context is a zero anaphor, with 78% of the total occurences. However, when a discourse boundary is present prior to the occurrence of an N1 context, an NP is the default coding. This caveat explains almost all of the occurences of NPs in an N1 context in the corpus.

Table 26 Totals of REs in N1 Context by Text

N1 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 11 73% 3 60% 13 87% 34 79% 61 78% PN 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% NP 4 27% 2 40% 2 13% 9 21% 17 22% Total 15 5 15 43 78

(33) shows a clear example of the default zero anaphor RE in an N1 context. The python is the object in 9.4 and is again the object in 10.1, which is therefore an N1 context according to our definition.

(33) NN&TT-TH.9.4-10.1

9.4 … ∅.SBJ parypy =khaw a- va- thu . python =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- kill

…he killed the python.

10.1 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ cang =hni cang =thwm a- va- CLF.long.piece =two CLF.long.piece =three 3SG.SBJ- DIR- sih ei . put.II and

He cut him up into two or three pieces and

(34) is an example of a predictable instance of an NP in the N1 context. Since Daw Vang is the object argument in 46.8 and again in 47.1, the second clause (47.1) contains an instance of the N1 context with Daw Vang as the referent and coded by an NP. The NP coding is attributable to the presence of a discourse boundary between 46.8 and 47.1. The boundary is evinced notionally by the discontinuities of participants, place, and (arguably) time present between the two clauses.

(34) KB&DV.46.8-47.1

46.8 Daw Vang hawi =khaw aa- timh =hai . Daw Vang marry =that 3PL.SBJ- intend =PL

They (the Mangpy chief and his entourage) intended to take Daw Vang.

47.1 macamawh Daw Vang aa- vai tyh =kha =nawh aa- le and Daw Vang 3PL.SBJ- visit time =that =LOC 3PL.SBJ- say

=mi =cu . =NMLZ =TOP

And what they told Daw Vang when they visited her (was)

Non-default coding for N1

One of the few instances of non-default coding in an N1 context is displayed in (35), where KB is the object referent in both 51.3 and 51.4 (thus the N1 context in 51.4). However, KB is coded with an NP in 51.4 because of semantic interference: if the default zero anaphor were used here, it would be unclear whether KB or DV was the correct referent in the context. The use of an explicit NP makes this reference unambiguous.

(35) KB&DV.51.3-51.4

51.3 Daw Vang =kha =nah ∅.OBJ a- va- hawithu ei . Daw Vang =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- PST- see.off and

Daw Vang went with her to see her off and

-sawh ei . -CAUS and and in the middle of the road, they made Khwmh Bau carry bamboo stems with her basket and,

4.4.2.2 N2 context The N2 context occurs when the referent was the speaker of the previous reported speech. As shown in Table 27, there is not enough data in the present corpus to determine a default coding for the N2 context. Moreover, the occurences of the N2 context in this corpus contain an almost even split of zero anaphora and noun phrases. However, considering what has been said about this context is previous studies39, a zero anaphor can be tentatively assigned as the default coding for N2.

Table 27 Totals of REs in N2 Context by Text

N2 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 1 50% 2 50% 1 50% 1 100% 5 56% PN 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% NP 1 50% 2 50% 1 50% 0 0% 4 44% Total 2 4 2 1 9

In (36), Ngun Nw and Tia Tei are speaking with their father. In clause 7.10, the girls are the speakers, then in 8.1 they are the addressees. The non-subject reference to the girls in 8.1 fits the definition for the N2 context and contains an example of the tentative default RE for the N2 context, i.e. a zero anaphor.

39 Both Tebow (2010) and Leung (2016) found a definitive majority of zero anaphora in the N2 context for Bru and Brao, respectively, both Austroasiatic languages.

(36) NN&TT-TH.7.10-8.1

7.10 ∅.SBJ … =lemawh aa- va- le =kia . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- say =again

They (the girls) replied again.

8.1 macamawh ni =khaih =cu ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ ... =lemawh a- va- le and day =one =TOP =COMP 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say

=hai ei . =PL and

And once, ... he said to them (the girls) and

Non-default coding for N2

(37) displays a non-default coding for the N2 context, namely, the bolded NP referring to the girls’ father in 20.7. There does not appear to be a clear motivation for an NP in place of a zero anaphor in 20.7. More analysis is needed to first discover exactly what the appropriate default coding is for the N2 context.

(37) NN&TT-TH.20.1-20.7

20.1 inn =kawi =tei =kha =nawh ∅.SBJ a- va- suih ei . house =towards =DIM =that =LOC 3SBJ- DIR- arrive.I and

And she arrived home and

20.2 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ " zakaw na- wtei Ngun Nw sawh ?". why 2SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw CNTR.FOC

"Why [are you alone]? [And where is] your older sister, Ngun Nw?

20.3 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ a- va- le tyhnawh . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say when

... When he said to her,

20.4 " E , ka- w Ngun Nw =cu parypy =nah tyhly =py umm 1SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw =TOP python =ERG lake =big

=lawh a- zuan =py =caw ei . =LOC 3SG.SBJ- jump.over =COM =PFV and

"Umm, the python jumped into the big lake with my older sister Ngun Nw and

20.5 ∅.SBJ wm =ty =veh . exist =any.more =NEG she isn't here any more

20.6 ∅.SBJ va- sei khau =ty =veh ." DIR- go can =any.more =NEG she can't come back anymore,"

20.7 ∅.SBJ a- po =khaw a- va- sym . 3SG.POSS- father =that 3SG.SBJ- PST- tell.II she told her father.

4.4.2.3 N3 context The N3 context occurs when the referent was involved in the previous sentence in a role other than N1 or N2. Once again, the data available in the present corpus is not sufficient to assign a definitive default coding to the N3 context. This is especially the case considering that 25 out of 51 NP occurences are actually possessive NPs containing a single possessive pronoun. Because the possessive pronoun is grammatically obligatory, unlike other NPs, it has the effect of skewing the data for this particular context. If the 25 occurences of lone possessive pronouns are excluded from the count of NPs, then the NPs’ share of the total is lowered to 29%, putting zero anaphora as the most likely default coding. Considering what other studies have concluded regarding the N3 context, a zero anaphor as the default coding makes good sense.

Table 28 Totals of REs in N3 Context by Text

N3 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 4 36% 4 44% 7 35% 22 44% 37 41% PN 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 2 4% 2 2% NP 7 64% 5 56% 13 65% 26 52% 51 57% Total 11 9 20 50 90

(38) contains a single clause (i.e., 12.2), but within that clause is another nominalized verb phrase, which itself contains a subject reference to Ngun Nw and Tia Tei (in bold). Following this nominalized verb phrase is the remainder of its

matrix clause, whose object referent is also the girls, thus yielding a clear instance of an N3 context and a default zero anaphor coding.

(38) NN&TT-LT.12.2

12.2 amu =khaw =mawh Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei lau aa- 3SG =that =POST Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei dry.field 3PL.SBJ- tho =nawh sia =tei ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ a- va- vai =tawn =hai . weed =NMLZ every =INT 3SG.SBJ- DIR- visit =HAB =PL

Every time Ngun Nw and Tia Tei went to weed the dry field, he would visit them like that.

Non-default coding for N3

(39) is an example of a non-default NP coding in an N3 context, where the girls’ parents refer to the girls in their reported speech in 14.3; then, in 15, the girls are referred to by a non-subject NP. This NP fits the definition of an N3 context. A likely explanation for the non-default NP coding here is the influence of the episode boundary between 15 and 16.1.

(39) True Love.14.3-15

14.3 aa- no =le po =le =ca =nah " a , 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =that =ERG INTJ.surprise pupoh sa zawng awh inn sung =law =hrahrwm =mawh aa- tawi no matter what house inside =LOC =absolutely =POST 3PL.SBJ- exit

-sawh =thang =ty =veh =hai -pi , LawSy LawDaw =hi -CAUS =out =anymore.FUT =NEG =PL -1PL.SBJ Law Sy Law Daw =this

" aa- va- le =hai . 3PL.SBJ- PST- say =PL

Their parents said to each other, "No matter what, we are not going to let those two go outside the house anymore."

15 LawSy LawDaw =khi inn sung =awh aa- va- khwm Law Sy Law Daw =that house inside =LOC 3PL.SBJ- PST- keep

=cuicui =hai . =always =PL

They always kept Law Sy and Law Daw in the house.

4.4.2.4 N4 context The N4 context occurs with other non-subject references than those covered by N1- N3. As Table 29 shows, an NP is the clear default coding for the N4 context, with a total of 84% of REs occurring in an N4 context as a noun phrase.

Table 29 Totals of REs in N4 Context by Text

N4 Context TT&NN by TH True Love TT&NN by LT KB&DV Total

∅ 2 14% 3 11% 5 20% 5 17% 15 16% PN 0 0% 0 0% 2 8% 0 0% 0 0% NP 12 86% 24 89% 18 72% 24 83% 80 84% Total 14 27 25 29 95

(40) provides an example of two instances of the default NP coding for the N4 context. Neither Khuang Tahly nor the pieces of his body (each separate participants at this point in the text) are mentioned in 35.3, thus producing an N4 context for both in the following clause 35.4. Both Khuang Tahly and the pieces of his body occur as full noun phrases, the N4 default coding, in 35.4. Khuang Tahly’s RE is displayed in bold, while his chopped-up body pieces’ RE is shaded.

(40) NN&TT-LT.35.3-35.4

35.3 tawhrabua ei bahu a- ro =mi =cu aa- va- thua ashes LOC taro 3SG.SBJ- grill =NMLZ =TOP 3PL.SBJ- PST- take.out tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

When she took the 'bahu' that he grilled out of the ashes,

35.4 makhaw , i , Khuang Tahly , aa- tangvaw pu that GEN.PER.PN Khuang Tahly 3PL.POSS- unmarried.man male a- ruih =khaw ( a- ) va- si =caw , a- tan sym 3SG.POSS- body.dead =that 3SBJ- PST- COP =PFV 3SG.SBJ- cut PFV

=thw =mi =khaw . =all =NMLZ =that that was, that guy, Khuang Tahly, their man's body, the one that he cut into pieces.

Non-default coding for N4

(41) is an example of non-default coding in an N4 context. The instance where an N4 context occurs is found in the zero anaphor object RE bolded in 63.3. There are two intervening main clauses between the RE in 63.3 and the next most recent reference to the same participant, found in 62.3 in bold text. This is less than the expected coding, so it is almost certainly not motivated by any thematic/episode boundaries in the text. Rather, in the present case, a full NP is unnecessary because the referent, the doe, remains active through 63.3. She is able to do this because there is continuity of action, participants, etc. from where she is mentioned in 62.3 to her later reference in 63.3.

(41) KB&DV.62.3-63.3

63.1 ∅.SBJ macamawh tuangtuan =cu aa- khawm . and termite =TOP 3PL.SBJ- collect

And they (the Mangpy chief and his people) collected the termites,

63.2 ∅.SBJ hnamh =cu aa- khawm ei . snot =TOP 3PL.SBJ- collect and they collected snot, and

63.3 ∅.SBJ ∅.OBJ ama =ca aa- man ei . 3SG =that 3PL.SBJ- pay and they paid that to her and

Conclusion

5.1 Summary of findings In the preceding chapters, the researcher has (1) shown the theoretical basis of the present study in the relevant literature, (2) shown how the phonological size of participant introduction reflects and confirms participant rank, (3) provided a list of Senthang referring expressions and their functions on the discourse level, (4) described the default codings used in four subject contexts and four non-subject contexts of the context-dependent default approach of Dooley & Levinsohn (2001), and (5) attempted to explain the occurrence of non-default codings. Regarding the results for (4), the eight contexts and their default codings are listed in Table 30, with tentative defaults in parentheses.

Table 30 Sequential default codings by context

Context Definition Default Referring Expression

S1 subject same as previous sentence Zero anaphor

S2 subject was addressee of previous reported speech (Zero anaphor)

S3 subject had some other non-subject role in Zero anaphor previous clause/sentence

S4 subject not involved in previous clause/sentence overt NP

N1 referent occupies a non-subject argument role in Zero anaphor current clause and in previous clause or sentence

N2 referent was speaker of previous reported speech (Zero anaphor)

N3 referent was involved in previous sentence in a (Zero anaphor) role other than N1 or N2

N4 other non-subject references than N1-N3 overt NP

For the sake of comparison, the hypotheses with which this study was undertaken (§1.5) are repeated here:

2. Most non-default occurrences of participant identification will occur at discontinuities within each text, including, but not limited to, discontinuities of time, place, and participant.

3. Only a low percentage of non-default occurrences will not have any obvious motivations.

Regarding hypothesis (1), the results largely confirmed this hypothesis in that Senthang exhibits a primarily sequential strategy for referring to participants in narrative, e.g. the main function of zero anaphora is for routine tracking of activated participants (see §4.3.3). Also in confirmation of (1) is the finding that the S1-S3 and N1-N3 contexts all code primarily for a zero anaphor (with deviances from this largely predictable based on the presence of episode boundaries or semantic ambiguity) and all six of these contexts involve activated participants. Hypothesis (2) was also largely confirmed by this study—indeed, only a small number of non- default occurrences were found to have other motivations besides thematic discontinuities. Hypothesis (3) was also largely confirmed in that most non-default codings were found to be motivated by episode boundaries (as mentioned previously) or the presence/absence of semantic ambiguity.

What turned out to be the most surprising result of this study for the present researcher is the small number of pronouns found in the data outside reported speech compared with the much larger number of pronouns found within reported speech, which was not included in the analysis because of its nature as embedded discourse (see Footnote 34). One may observe evidence of this by noting that a pronoun is not used as a default coding in any of the contexts shown in Table 30. This result was surprising because, in previous studies done using Dooley and Levinsohn’s model, pronouns were found to be more common outside reported speech40 and were even found to be the default coding in contexts like S3/N3, e.g. Osborne (2009).

40 Indeed, to my knowledge, nearly all previous studies in this vein found pronouns to be more common.

Upon comparison with these previous studies, it became clear that Senthang’s nature as a pro-drop language with obligatory verbal agreement morphology was likely a primary reason for this. These previous studies dealt mainly with languages of the MSEA region, which tend to be isolating, and thus lacking verbal morphology, e.g. Tai Dam (Edwards, 2011), Kmhmu (Osborne, 2009). Senthang, although located within the MSEA region, is unlike these other nearby languages in that it does have verbal morphology, including required verbal agreement. It seems that, as a result of this, Senthang’s verbal agreement affixes perform many of the discourse functions that are performed by independent pronouns in isolating languages. Furthermore, this difference in the distribution of discourse functions among referring expressions in Senthang likely points to a set of functions for independent pronouns in Senthang which are more specialized than in other, isolating languages of the MSEA region.

5.2 Evaluation of methodology At the outset of this study, nearly 30 stories told by native Senthang speakers were digitally recorded. At first blush, this would have seemed like a more than large enough pool from which to select an appropriate corpus for analysis; however, because (1) almost all of the stories were told in a largely unrehearsed fashion, and (2) the researcher did not always communicate the important plot requirements (e.g. at least three participants interacting on stage, not a personal experience story, etc.) clearly enough beforehand, in actuality, only a small handful of the stories that were recorded proved adequate for analysis. Even the four texts chosen for analysis here required a fair amount of editing by a native speaker (see §1.6). Because the data collection sets the stage for all subsequent steps in this methodology, it is of utmost importance that it be well-planned out in advance and that the appropriate text requirements be clearly communicated to the story-teller(s) with enough time for them to decide on an appropriate story (and rehearse it several times beforehand if they are not accostumed to story-telling on a regular basis). Furthermore, the story- teller ought preferably to be very experienced and well-respected among the target language community—in which case, it would likely be unnecessary for him or her to rehearse the story beforehand.

Dooley and Levinsohn’s (2001) sequential default model of analyzing participant reference in narrative has proven effective for determining the participant reference patterns of languages that use a primarily sequential strategy for participant reference. Moreover, as Fox (1987a) has observed in the work of Givón (1983a), such a sequential or “look-back” strategy seems to account for a large portion of the

available cross-linguistic data on PR (Dooley & Levinsohn, 2001, p. 118). This is certainly the case for Senthang. Indeed, where the Senthang data is unaffected by discontinuities or ambiguity, a sequential strategy may account for most of the reference patterns found in the language.

Since one of the applications of this kind of study is to aid in the translation of written texts, it would be beneficial to do a similar study based on a corpus of written texts. This would, of course, be impossible in Senthang since there has been so little written down (and nothing published formally to my knowledge); however, if one were able to collect oral texts and edit them into acceptable, well-formed written texts (as judged by experienced native speakers who are familiar with the story-telling conventions and styles of the language), this would provide a good substitute.

5.3 Significance of findings The findings of this study will contribute to the knowledge of Senthang discourse structure, and, consequently, to the knowledge of the Kuki-Chin family and its general discourse features. Furthermore, the interlinearized texts gathered for this study will make an important contribution to what little data is presently available in the Senthang corpus. As a result, these interlinearized texts will provide an aid to those glossing, analyzing, and translating Senthang texts in the future.

The knowledge of Senthang PR patterns may serve to make tranlations into Senthang more natural and accurate. Osborne (2009) very helpfully notes in the conclusion to her study on Kmhmu’ PR patterns,

Community development is closely linked with language development, and generally requires the translation of materials for education, whether in formal or nonformal areas such as agriculture, health, or religion. In order for such materials to be translated clearly, accurately, and naturally, an understanding of the discourse structures of the language is a prerequisite. Thus this study will contribute to better translation of helpful materials into Kmhmu' (p. 125)

Likewise, the present study will help to improve translation of helpful materials into Senthang, and thereby contribute to community development.

5.4 Further Research Due to the limitations already discussed, the corpus for this study was not large enough to come to more than tentative conclusions for default coding for some contexts, e.g. S2 and N2. In view of this, a study of Senthang PR patterns using a larger corpus is recommended. Ideally, such a corpus should include only edited oral texts (unless written ones become available) from one or more experienced story- tellers who are well-respected for their story-telling ability within the Senthang community. In addition, an ideal study of PR patterns will include a number of original stories or, more specifically, stories which are not well-known among the Senthang community. Including such stories will lessen the possibility of skewed PR patterns due to shared knowledge of a story between speaker and audience.

Also of interest is the question of pronouns in Senthang discourse. Specifically— what are the functions of pronouns in Senthang narrative both inside and outside reported speech? Moreover, does Lyons’ (1977) distinction between deictic and anaphoric pronouns help explain why more pronouns occur within reported speech than without, assuming reported speech represents a kind of projected reality in the minds of speaker and hearer (see §4.3.2)?

More research into Senthang discourse structure is also needed in order to improve future translations into the language. The present study focused on PR patterns in Senthang and found episode boundaries to be a significant factor affecting those patterns; a study focusing on hierarchical discourse structure in Senthang narrative would be helpful in identifying any genre-specific patterns of that structure. Moreover, studies in the structure of the other types of discourse besides narrative (e.g. hortatory, expository, procedural) remain to be done for Senthang. Knowledge of these types of discourse and their various genres could prove to be an important asset in future translation work as well as a good foundation for inquiry into more areas of Senthang discourse.

Concerning morphology, there is also a need for more analysis and description of verbal and nominal inflection in Senthang. During the course of glossing and translating the texts for this study, a long list of affixes, clitics, and other, less bound morphemes was created with the intention of using it as a springboard into a more detailed grammatical analysis of Senthang. Such an analysis should prove more feasible as the corpus of interlinearized Senthang texts continues to grow.

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APPENDIX A TRUE LOVE IS INSEPARABLE

1.1 =kha hlan =lawh =ha =nawh khui khui =khaih =law =that before =at =this =LOC village CLF.village =one =LOC =ha =nawh mi synu innsungkhaw =law =ha =mawh sapu =this =LOC person poor family =LOC =this =POST son pa =hni suphia aa- va- ngai =hai ei . CLF.person =two twins 3PL.SBJ- PST- own.II =PL and

Once upon a time, in a certain village, from a poor family, they had two sons, twins (and...). 1.2 aa- sutei =le pa =hni =cucu aa- ming =lawh 3PL.POSS- child =PL CLF.person =two =TOP.EMPH 3PL.POSS- name =LOC TangPhw TangZaw =lemawh { aa- } va- au =hai . Tang Phw Tang Zaw =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- call.II =PL

Their two children, they named them TangPhw and TangZaw. 2.1 ei , ama =cu khui =law =thawngaw =ca =nawh innsungkhaw and 3SG =that village =LOC =same =that =LOC family =khaih =hai a- si =mi =hai , mi rwm =tawih aa- si =one =PL 3SBJ- COP =NMLZ =PL person rich =very 3PL.SBJ- COP =mi =hai innsungkhaw =kha =nah sanw suphia =NMLZ =PL family =that =ERG unmarried woman twins pa =hni aa- va- ngai =rawh =hai ei . CLF.person =two 3PL.SBJ- PST- own.II =also =PL and

And in that same village, one family, who was very rich, also had two twin daughters. 2.2 aa- ming =law awh LawSy LawDaw aa- va- le =hai . 3PL.POSS- name =at Law Sy Law Daw 3PL.SBJ- PST- say =PL

They called them Law Sy (and) Law Daw (for their names).

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3.1 LawSy LawDaw TangPhw TangZaw =cu aa- va- thang Law Sy Law Daw Tang Phw Tang Zaw =TOP 3PL.SBJ- PST- grow lawngmang =hai ei . IPFV =PL and

Law Sy and Law Daw and Tang Phw and Tang Zaw were growing up (and) 3.2 hawhnw tangvaw aa- va- sui tyhkhanawh [ aamu maiden unmarried.man 3PL.SBJ- PST- become.I when 3PL innsung ] aamu pa =hni , suphia =vevei =tei =khaw aa- family 3PL CLF.person =two twins =each =DIM =that 3PL.SBJ- va- kawm =hai ei . PST- befriend =PL and

When they had become young ladies and young men, the two sets of twins befriended each other. 3.3 aa- va- thang =sau lawngmang =hai . 3PL.SBJ- PST- grow =upward IPFV =PL

....as they were growing up. 4 asanumawh LawSy LawDaw [ =ha =nah ] aa- no =le but Law Sy Law Daw =this =ERG 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ aa- po =le =ha =nah TangPhw TangZaw =le =hawi ei 3PL.POSS- father =PL =this =ERG Tang Phw Tang Zaw =PL =with LOC aa- kawm =mi =hai =khaw va- dw =veh =hai . 3PL.SBJ- befriend =NMLZ =PL =that PST- like =NEG =PL

But, Law Sy and Law Daw's parents didn't like that they had befriended Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. 5.1 " a- kawm khawh =hai =u =h ," =lemawh . 3SBJ- befriend PROH =PL =2.PL =IMP =COMP

"Do not befriend them. 5.2 " mi dang aa- kawm =hai =u =h ." person different 3PL.SBJ- befriend =PL =2.PL =IMP

Befriend other people."

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5.3 =mawh aa- va- le tyh =hai =kha =nawh LawSy LawDaw =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- say time =PL =that =LOC Law Sy Law Daw =kha =nah " mi dang =cu =cu aa- kawm dw =veh =that =ERG person different =that =that 3PL.SBJ- befriend want =NEG =hai -pi . =PL -1PL.SBJ

When they said, ("Don't be friends with them, find other friends,") Law Sy and Law Daw (replied), "We don't want to be friends with other people. 5.4 aamu wnau =tei lawng kaa- kawm dw =hai ." 3PL sibling =DIM only 1PL.SBJ- befriend want =PL

We only want to be friends with those twins" 5.5 =lemawh { aa- } va- le . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- say

(They) said. 6.1 aa- no =le po =nah aa- va- le =mi =hai 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =ERG 3PL.SBJ- PST- say =NMLZ =PL =cu " a , aani =cu aa- sy nu =tawih . =TOP INTJ.surprise 3PL =TOP 3PL.SBJ- NONCE hurt =very

And so what their parents said to them was, "Oh, that family, they are too poor, 6.2 sy -sawh aa- hawi =hai ." disgusted -CAUS 3PL.SBJ- NONCE =PL

They are disgusting," 6.3 =lemawh { aa- } va- le . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- say they said. 7.1 asanumawh LawSy LawDaw =nah aa- le =mi =hai =cu " but Law Sy Law Daw =ERG 3PL.SBJ- say =NMLZ =PL =TOP aamu =khi aa- thinlung a- thu . 3PL =that 3PL.POSS- mind 3SBJ- good

But, what Law Sy and Law Daw said back to them was "They're good people 7.2 dw -sawh a- hawi =hai . like -CAUS 3SBJ- NONCE =PL they are lovely,

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7.3 zapu =hmaw aa- ngai =lau zawng awh aa- thinlung dw what =even 3PL.SBJ- own.II =NEG even though 3PL.POSS- mind like -sawh a- hawi =hai . -CAUS 3SBJ- NONCE =PL

Even though they don't have anything, they have a good heart. 7.4 ma cu =ca =nawh kaa- kawm dw =mi =hai si ". 3SG cause =that =LOC 1PL.SBJ- befriend want =NMLZ =PL COP

That's why we want to be their friends," 7.5 =lemawh va- le . =COMP PST- say they said. 8 aa- no =le po =le =nah ceih =lemawh a- va- 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG PTCL =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- kham =liamaw =hai . prohibit =PROG =PL

Their parents continued prohibiting them over and over again (from befriending the twins) 9 asanumawh va- kham khau =veh =hai . but DIR- prohibit can =NEG =PL

But they were not able to prevent them. 10 aa- kawm =thawngaw =hai . 3PL.SBJ- befriend =still =PL

They (the twin daughters) still went out and played with them. 11.1 amakhamawh va- wm =hai =awh . in that way PST- exist =PL =and

They went on like that and 11.2 hawhnw tangvaw aa- va- sui tyh =nawh =cu . maiden unmarried.man 3PL.SBJ- PST- become.I time =LOC =TOP

When they had grown to be young ladies and young men-- 11.3 aa- hawhtei =lawh ei . 3PL.SBJ- young =LOC LOC

--when they were little,

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11.4 a- va- kawm =nawh =mi =hai , a- va- dawih =nawh 3SBJ- PST- befriend =NMLZ =NMLZ =PL 3SBJ- PST- love =NMLZ =mi =hai =khaw aa- va- taisan =ben =hai . =NMLZ =PL =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- adore =add =PL the friendship that they had, the love that they had for each other--they grew to be attached to each other. 12 aa- va- dw =vevei =hai . 3PL.SBJ- PST- love =each =PL

They fell in love with each other. 13.1 TangPhw =le LawSy a- va- dw =hai ei . Tang Phw =CONJ Law Sy 3SBJ- PST- love =PL and

Tang Phw and Law Sy fell in love [with each other] and 13.2 TangZaw =le LawDaw a- va- dw =hai . Tang Zaw =CONJ Law Daw 3SBJ- PST- love =PL

Tang Zaw and Law Daw fell in love [with each other] 14.1 ma tyh =kha =nawh aa- no =le po =le =cu 3SG time =that =LOC 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =TOP aa- thin va- haw =tawih =hu ei . 3PL.POSS- liver PST- NONCE =very =very and

So then, their parents got really really angry and 14.2 " zapu tui mawh i kaa- tui =hai " =lemawh { aa- } va- le how 1PL.SBJ- do =PL.FUT =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- say ei . and

"What are we going to do with them?" 14.3 aa- no =le po =le =ca =nah " a , 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =that =ERG INTJ.surprise pupoh sa zawng awh inn sung =law =hrahrwm =mawh aa- tawi no matter what house inside =LOC =absolutely =POST 3PL.SBJ- exit -sawh =thang =ty =veh =hai -pi , LawSy LawDaw =hi " -CAUS =out =anymore.FUT =NEG =PL -1PL.SBJ Law Sy Law Daw =this aa- va- le =hai . 3PL.SBJ- PST- say =PL

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Their parents said to each other, "No matter what, we are not going to let those two go outside the house anymore." 15 LawSy LawDaw =khi inn sung =awh aa- va- khwm =cuicui Law Sy Law Daw =that house inside =LOC 3PL.SBJ- PST- keep =always =hai . =PL

They always kept Law Sy and Law Daw in the house. 16.1 ma tyh =kha =nawh TangPhw TangZaw =kha =nah LawSy 3SG time =that =LOC Tang Phw Tang Zaw =that =ERG Law Sy LawDaw =hawi tawn =lau =mawh aa- wm tyhkhanawh . Law Daw =with meet =NEG =POST 3PL.SBJ- live when

So then, when Tang Phw and Tang Zaw had to live without meeting Law Sy and Law Daw, 16.2 va- wm khau =veh =hai . PST- exist can =NEG =PL they couldn't stand it. 17.1 aa- inn =kawi =tei =awh aa- va- sei =hai ei . 3PL.POSS- house =towards =DIM =LOC 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =PL and

They went towards their house. 17.2 mu pu thalangku =law =tei =kha =mawh . 3SG similar window =LOC =DIM =that =POST

From a window like this one [LRP points to a window nearby], 17.3 aa- wm =kha =nah va- haw =tawih ei , aa- va- 3PL.SBJ- exist =that =ERG PST- NONCE =very and 3PL.SBJ- PST- hawn ei . open.II and they (the twin girls) were so bored, they opened (it) and (They (the twin girls) were so bored that they opened a window like this one.) 17.4 TangPhw TangZaw aa- va- sei =mi =khaw aa- hwmh Tang Phw Tang Zaw 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =NMLZ =that 3PL.SBJ- see.II tyhkhanawh " a , pupoh sa zawng awh aamu =hawi tawn =lau when INTJ.surprise no matter what 3PL =with meet =NEG =mawh =cu wm khau =veh -pi . =POST =TOP exist can =NEG -1PL.SBJ

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When they saw that Tang Phw and Tang Zaw were coming, (they said), "Ahh, no matter what, without meeting them, we can't live. 17.5 TangPhw TangZaw zung =kawi kaa- sei =aw " aa- va- Tang Phw Tang Zaw middle =towards 1PL.SBJ- go =FUT 3PL.SBJ- PST- le . say

We will go to Tang Phw and Tang Zaw," they said. 17.6 aa- wnau =ca =mawh va- khang =hai =awh . 3PL.POSS- sibling =that =POST PST- plan.I =PL =and the two of them made a plan and 17.7 aa- inn sung khua lawmawh cuahry va- sy =hai =awh , 3PL.POSS- house inside from rope PST- knot =PL =and thalangku =law =kha =mawh laiphy =kawi =kha =nawh . window =LOC =that =from earth =towards =that =LOC

From inside their house they tied a rope to the window and let it down to the ground. 18.1 macamawh aani cuapahry =khaw aa- va- ngei =hai =awh . and 3PL rope =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- hang.onto =PL =and

And they hung onto the rope and 18.2 aa- va- twm =swh =hai ei . 3PL.SBJ- PST- descend =downward =PL and

They descended and 18.3 TangPhw TangZaw zung =kawi aa- va- sei =hai . Tang Phw Tang Zaw middle =towards 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =PL

They went to Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. 19.1 macamawh a- leng =kawi =kha =nawh va- sei =hai and 3SG.POSS- outside =towards =that =LOC DIR- go =PL =awh . =and

And they went out and 19.2 " khuihlw kaa- lo =aw ". fruit (small.round.sour) 1PL.SBJ- pluck =FUT

"We are going to pluck khuihlw,"

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19.3 va- le ei . PST- say and they said and 19.4 macamawh khuihlw lo =nawh =kawi { aa- } and fruit (small.round.sour) pluck =NMLZ =towards 3PL.SBJ- va- sei =hai . PST- go =PL

And they went towards the place where they would pluck the khuihlw. 20 aa- sei =tham khau =kha =mawh aa- no =ca =nah 3PL.SBJ- go =away then =that =POST 3PL.POSS- mother =that =ERG ka- sutei =le =hi zapu =i aa- tui =lemawh a- va- 1SG.POSS- child =PL =this what =Q 3PL.SBJ- do =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- cuan =hai =ca =nawh , inn =law =ca =nawh wm =ty look.II =PL =that =LOC house =LOC =that =LOC exist =any.more =veh =hai . =NEG =PL

After they went out, when their (the girls') mother, (wondering) "what are my children doing?", looked around for them, they were no longer at home. 21.1 macamawh aa- po =cu a- va- au ei . and 3PL.POSS- father =TOP 3SG.SBJ- PST- call.II and

And she called their father and 21.2 " a- ran =nawh =mawh va- sei ti =hi =h . 3SG.SBJ- move.fast =NMLZ =POST DIR- go INT =this =IMP

(said) "Come here quickly! 21.3 LawSy LawDaw wm =veh =hai ." Law Sy Law Daw exist =NEG =PL

Law Sy and Law Daw are not (here)," 21.4 le =ca =mawh { a- } va- le . say =that =POST 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say she said. 22.1 aa- va- cuan =cu . 3PL.SBJ- DIR- look.II =that

When they went to look,

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22.2 thalangku =law =kha =mawh cuahry =khaw a- va- thai window =LOC =that =POST rope =that 3SBJ- PST- hang =tham ei . =away and the rope was hanging down from the window. 22.3 ma =cu cuahry thai =tham =mi va- cuan tyh =nawh . 3SG =that rope hang =away =NMLZ DIR- look.II time =LOC

When they went to look (more closely) at the rope that was hanging down, 22.4 inn leng =kawi pau va- twm =tham =caw =hai aani . house outside =towards EXP PST- descend =away =PFV =PL 3PL they had already gone down out of the house. 23.1 " Zapu Poh Sa Zawng ma =hi =cu TangPhw TangZaw =nah whatever it is 3SG =this =TOP Tang Phw Tang Zaw =ERG aa- va- sei =hno =mi =hai si =aw . 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =MAL =NMLZ =PL COP =FUT

Whatever it is, this must be that Tang Phw and Tang Zaw came to them (to their detriment). 23.2 Caculawcanawh kaa- sei hnu =hai ". therefore 1PL.SBJ- go MAL =PL.FUT

So, Let's go get them," 23.3 va- le . PST- say they said. 24.1 TangPhw TangZaw inn =kawi =nawh va- sei =cu . Tang Phw Tang Zaw house =towards =LOC DIR- go =when

When they went to Tang Phw and Tang Zaw's house, 24.2 aa- no =le po =le =ca =nah " a , 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =that =ERG INTJ.surprise kaa- inn =kawi va- sei =veh =hai . 1PL.POSS- house =towards DIR- go =NEG =PL their (the boys') parents (said), "Oh, they didn't come to our house.

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24.3 kaa- sutei =le =zawng ama lei =lawh aa- wm =nawh 1PL.POSS- child =PL =also 3SG place =LOC 3PL.SBJ- exist =NMLZ hnih =veh =hai -pi ." know.I =NEG =PL -1PL.SBJ

We don't know where our children are either. 24.4 =ca =mawh le =hai =awh . =that =POST say =PL =and

(they) said to them and 25.1 mi rwm mi ngai kaa- le =hai =ca =nah . person rich person rich 1PL.SBJ- say =PL =that =ERG

Because they were rich, 25.2 aa- no =le po =le =nah khui sung tangvaw 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG village inside unmarried.man =viatei { aa- } va- au =thw =hai ei . =all 3PL.SBJ- DIR- call.II =all =PL and their parents called together all the young men in the village and 25.3 aa- va- hoh =hai =ca =nawh . 3PL.SBJ- PST- find =PL =that =LOC

When they went to look for them, . 25.4 ram sung =law khuihlw lo =nawh =law =ca forest inside =LOC fruit (small.round.sour) pluck =NMLZ =LOC =that =nawh aa- va- sui =hno =hai . =LOC 3PL.SBJ- DIR- arrive.I =MAL =PL they found them in the forest at the place where they were plucking khuihlw 26.1 macamawh aa- thin va- haw =tawih =hu ei . and 3PL.POSS- liver DIR- NONCE =very =very and

So, they got really angry. 26.2 aa- no =le po =le , TangPhw TangZaw no 3PL.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL Tang Phw Tang Zaw mother =le po =le =khaw aa- va- au =rawh =hai ei . =CONJ father =PL =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- call.II =also =PL and

They sent for their parents--Tang Phw and Tang Zaw's parents and

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26.3 macamawh " naa- sutei =le =nah ma bantwh =mawh and 2PL.POSS- child =PL =ERG 3SG manner [like(this)] =POST kaa- sutei =le ram sung =kawi aa- sei =py =tham =hai 1PL.POSS- child =PL forest inside =towards 3PL.SBJ- go =COM =away =PL .

And (they said), "Your children took our children out to the forest like this 26.4 Caculawcanawh pu tui =mawh =i naa- ruih ? therefore what do =POST =Q 2PL.SBJ- think

So, what do you think? 26.5 kaa- khui sung =awh naa- wm =i wm =lau ?" 1PL.POSS- village inside =LOC 2PL.SBJ- exist =Q exist =NEG

Do you want to stay in our village or not? 26.6 =lemawh { aa- } va- le ei . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- say and

(they) said, and 26.7 macamawh " a , kaa- sutei =le =nah naa- sutei and INTJ.surprise 1PL.POSS- child =PL =ERG 2PL.POSS- child =le =hi aa- dw =tawih aa- dawih =tawih cu =law =hai =PL =this 3PL.SBJ- like =very 3PL.SBJ- love =very cause =LOC =PL =nawh ama =ha =mawh aa- kawm =mi =hai { a- } si =LOC 3SG =this =POST 3PL.SBJ- befriend =NMLZ =PL 3SBJ- COP ei . and

So, (they replied), "Nooo, (it's) because our children love your children so much that they went out together like this. 26.8 zapu =hmaw si =law naa- cung paw =law =nawh kaa- what =even COP =LOC 2PL.POSS- above top =LOC =LOC 1PL.SBJ- sua =nawh kaa- paih =nawh wm =veh . sin =NMLZ 1PL.SBJ- wrong =NMLZ exist =NEG

We have done you no wrong at all. 26.9 kaa- sy naih =mi =tham =cu kaamu kaa- dw 1PL.POSS- NONCE NONCE =NMLZ =down =TOP 1PL 1PL.SBJ- want =mawh sy naih sa =tung =lau ." =POST NONCE NONCE COP =NT.EX =NEG

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Yeah, we're poor, but it's not because we want to be. (It's not some sin that we have done against you, it's just the way it is.) 26.10 =lemawh { aa- } va- le . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- say they said 27 aa- thin va- haw tymaw . 3PL.POSS- liver DIR- NONCE more and more

They became angrier and angrier. 28.1 " naamu =hu pu phun mi synu =le =nah kaamu =le 2PL =similar REL kind person poor =PL =ERG 1PL =PL =hu pu =le mi rwm mi ngai , sanw a- =similar REL =PL person rich person rich unmarried woman 3SBJ- do =mi =tei aa- ngai =mi =hai =le naa- sutei =le beautiful =REL =DIM 3PL.SBJ- own.I =REL =PL =PL 2PL.POSS- child =PL =nah ma- va- kawm =hai =cu =cu ". =ERG 1PL.OBJ- PST- befriend =PL =that =that

"(How dare) poor people like you... (how dare) your children become friends with rich people like us who have beautiful daughters," 28.2 =lemawh { aa- } va- le ei . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- say and they said. 28.3 macamawh khuibawi pu =khaw mi rwm mi ngai and village.leader male =that person rich person rich mih hmai { a- } va- cuan ei . eye face 3SG.SBJ- DIR- look.II and

And the village leader took the rich family's side. 28.4 " aa- sutei =le kaa- hawih tham =hai . 3PL.POSS- child =PL 1PL.SBJ- cast.sb.out =PL.FUT

"We will cast their children out (from the village)." 28.5 aa- innsung pwm =mawh kaa- hawih tham =hai ". 3PL.POSS- family whole =POST 1PL.SBJ- cast.sb.out =PL.FUT

"We will cast out their whole family," 28.6 =lemawh khui { aa- } va- khan . =COMP village 3PL.SBJ- DIR- plan.II

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the village planned, 28.7 khui sung =py =ca =mawh , aa- ngai =mi aa- village inside =all =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- rich =NMLZ 3PL.POSS- mih hmai =khaw aa- va- cuan =hai ei . eye face =that 3PL.SBJ- DIR- look.II =PL and

(28.5-28.7) The whole village, taking their side because they were rich, discussed the matter, "We will cast their whole family out from the village," they said. 29.1 macamawh inn =kawi =ca =nawh { aa- } va- tin and house =towards =that =LOC 3PL.SBJ- DIR- return.home =py =hai ei . =COM =PL and

And they took them home and 29.2 TangPhw TangZaw hawih tham =nawh =vau =ca =mawh meting Tang Phw Tang Zaw cast.sb.out =NMLZ =INF =that =POST meeting =cu va- tui =hai =awh . =TOP DIR- do =PL =and

They held a meeting in order to cast out Tang Phw and Tang Zaw. 29.3 ma =ca =lawh =ca =nawh LawSy LawDaw =ca =nah a- 3SG =that =LOC =that =LOC Law Sy Law Daw =that =ERG 3SBJ- phy =tei mawh { aa- } va- tawi =tham =hai ei . stealthy =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- PST- exit =away =PL and

At that time, Law Sy and Law Daw secretly went out and 29.4 " TangPhw TangZaw , naa- ngai si khawh =u =h . Tang Phw Tang Zaw 2PL.POSS- NONCE bad PROH =2.PL =IMP

(They said), "Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, don't be sad. 29.5 kaa- dam sung =pohpoh =hi pasaw va- ngai ( =aw ) 1PL.SBJ- healthy inside =every =this husband DIR- own.I =FUT =veh -pi . =NEG -1PL.SBJ

As long as we live, we will not take a husband. 29.6 Amacakhaumawh san tung =zawng =mawh va- nung =veh afterwards age peak =also =POST DIR- alive\FUT =NEG -pi . -1PL.SBJ

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And moreover, we are not going to live long. 29.7 naamu naa- sei =tham ni =hi kaa- thyh ni va- si =rawh 2PL 2PL.SBJ- go =away day =this 1PL.SBJ- die.II day DIR- COP =also =aw ei . =FUT and

The day that you leave will be the day we die. 29.8 kaani kaa- thyh tyh =nawh . 1PL 1PL.SBJ- die.II time =LOC

When we die, 29.9 khaupang =lemi pangpaw =kha =nawh kaa- va- cang khaupang.flower =COMP flower =that =to 1PL.SBJ- DIR- become =aw . =FUT we will become the flower called khawpang 29.10 macamawh naani =hi aa- ca- hawih tham ni =hai =mawh and 2PL =this 3PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- cast.sb.out day =PL =from naa- va- thy =rawh =aw ei , naa- wnau =mawh . 2PL.SBJ- DIR- die.I =also =FUT and 2PL.POSS- sibling =POST

And on the day they cast you out you will also die, both of you. 29.11 naa- va- thyh tyhkhanawh symthawng pavu =awh naa- va- 2PL.SBJ- PST- die.II when symthawng.bird bird =to 2PL.SBJ- DIR- cang =rawh =aw ei . become =also =FUT and

When you die, you will also become symthawng birds and 29.12 macamawh thawpani tyh =nawh kaani kaa- paw kaa- va- and summer time =LOC 1PL 1PL.POSS- flower 1PL.SBJ- DIR- paw =aw ei . bloom =FUT and

And in the summer, we will bloom (as a flower) and 29.13 naani naa- ma- va- dawi =tawn =lai ." 2PL 2PL.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- DIR- feast =HAB =IRR

You will come (regularly) to feast on us. 29.14 va- le =hai . DIR- say =PL

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(they) said to them. 30.1 macamawh LawSy LawDaw =cu . and Law Sy Law Daw =TOP

So, Law Sy and Law Daw-- 30.2 TangPhw TangZaw =cu a- thaithw =ca =mawh aa- Tang Phw Tang Zaw =TOP 3SG.POSS- tomorrow =that =from 3PL.SBJ- va- hawih tham =hai ei . PST- cast.sb.out =PL and they cast Tang Phw and Tang Zaw out the next day and 30.3 aa- va- sei =tham ni =kha =mawh , TangPhw TangZaw 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =away day =that =POST Tang Phw Tang Zaw hawih tham =nawh =kawi ei aa- sei =tham =thw kawngkaw cast.sb.out =NMLZ =towards LOC 3PL.SBJ- go =away =all between =lawh =kha =nawh aani aa- wnau =tei =ca =mawh { aa- =LOC =that =LOC 3PL 3PL.POSS- sibling =DIM =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- } va- symtui =rawh =hai =awh . DIR- prepare =also =PL =and

--and on the day they (Tang Phw and Tang Zaw) left, while everyone else had gone away to cast out Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, the two of them also got ready to go. 30.4 aa- pa =hni =mawh aa- va- tawm =ben va- tawm 3PL.POSS- CLF.person =two =POST 3PL.SBJ- DIR- tie =add PST- tie =ben =hai =awh . =add =PL =and

They tied themselves together around and around and 30.5 thapang =law =mawh aa- va- zuang =tham =hai . cliff =LOC =POST 3PL.SBJ- PST- jump =away =PL

They jumped off of a cliff. 31.1 macamawh TangPhw TangZaw =zawng =cu " LawSy LawDaw =nah and Tang Phw Tang Zaw =also =TOP Law Sy Law Daw =ERG makhamawh bi aa- ma- cu =khaw " le =ca in.that.way word 3PL.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- leave.message =that say =that =mawh va- le =hai =awh . =ADZR PST- say =PL =and

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And Tang Phw and Tang Zaw also, said to each other, "Law Sy and Law Daw told us all those things." 31.2 aa- ho tham =tw =hai aa- leih =kia cangku =khaw 3PL.SBJ- cast.sb.out =NMLZ =PL 3PL.SBJ- turn =again as.soon.as =that .

As soon as the people who had cast them out went back (towards the village), 31.3 aa- wnau =ca =mawh { aa- } va- tawm =ben va- tawm 3PL.POSS- sibling =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- DIR- tie =add PST- tie =ben =hai =awh . =add =PL =and the two of them tied themselves together around and around. 31.4 thapang =law =ca =mawh { aa- } va- zuang =tham =rawh cliff =LOC =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- PST- jump =away =also =hai ei . =PL and they also jumped off of a cliff and 32.1 ma =ca khau =ca =mawh LawSy LawDaw aa- lwm =tham 3SG =that then =that =POST Law Sy Law Daw 3PL.SBJ- fall =away =nawh =law =mawh khaupang =hi va- khau . =NMLZ =LOC =POST khaupang.flower =this PST- grow.plant

After that, (it is said that) the khaupang flower grew up at the place where Law Sy and Law Daw fell off. 32.2 a- le . 3SBJ- say

It is said.

33.1 macamawh symthawng pavu kaa- le =mi =hi . and symthawng.bird bird 1PL.SBJ- say =NMLZ =this

And what we call the symthawng bird-- 33.2 atw san =awh =cu symthawng =cu pavu bawi =lemawh now age =LOC =TOP symthawng.bird =TOP bird chief =COMP aa- au . 3PL.SBJ- call.II

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nowadays they call it pavu bawi ('bird chief')-- 33.3 ama =khaw pavu bawi =khaw amu TangPhw TangZaw =le =khaw 3SG =that bird chief =that 3SG Tang Phw Tang Zaw =PL =that aa- si =hai =lemawh . 3PL.SBJ- COP =PL =COMP those pavu bawis are Tang Phw and Tang Zaw, 33.4 { aa- } le ei . 3PL.SBJ- say and it is said. 34.1 thawpani tyh awh ma =kha khaupang =tei =khaw a- va- summer when 3SG =that khaupang.flower =DIM =that 3SBJ- PST- paw ei . bloom and

In the summer, that little khaupang flower bloomed. 34.2 macamawh symthawng =kha =nah va- dawi =tawn =lemawh . and symthawng.bird =that =ERG PST- feast =HAB =COMP

And the symthawng birds would feast on them. 34.3 le . say they say 35.1 ka- lawm . 1SG.SBJ- happy

Thank you! 35.2 dy =caw . finish =PFV The End!

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APPENDIX B NGUN NW AND TIA TEI BY TIA HLIANG

1.1 a- hlan =awh Tia Tei =le Ngun Nw =lemi hawhnw 3SG.POSS- before =LOC Tia Tei =CONJ Ngun Nw =COMP maiden pa =hni aa- va- wm =hai ei . CLF.person =two 3PL.SBJ- PST- exist =PL and

Once upon a time, there were two maidens who were called Tia Tei and Ngun Nw. 1.2 wnau aa- va- si =hai . sibling 3PL.SBJ- PST- COP =PL

(They) were siblings. 2.1 macamawh aa- pu =nah ... =lemawh a- le =hai ei . and 3PL.POSS- father =ERG =COMP 3SG.SBJ- say =PL and

Their father ... said (to them) 2.2 " sacang rih naa- va- hu =aw ". paddy.rice crop-eating.animal 2PL.SBJ- DIR- watch =FUT

"(You) are going to watch the rice and keep the birds away." 2.3 macamawh sacang rih hu =nawh =kawi =nawh and paddy.rice crop-eating.animal watch =NMLZ =towards =LOC aa- va- sei =tawn =hai . 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =HAB =PL

And (they) would go to the place where ((they)) animal-watched the rice plants. 3 macamawh parypy =kha =nah Ngun Nw =khaw a- va- dw . and python =that =ERG Ngun Nw =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- like

And a python fell in love with Ngun Nw. 4.1 ma =kha =mawh heh =lemawh a- va- reih =py =tawn 3SG =that =POST PTCL =COMP 3SG.SBJ- DIR- play =COM =HAB =hai ei . =PL and

And (he) would play a lot with (them).

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4.2 ma =kha =mawh aa- hnapei =hi aa- va- 3SG =that =POST 3PL.POSS- sarong.(female) =this 3PL.SBJ- DIR- bawkhy thw . tear all

And their sarongs got all torn up. 5.1 ma =ca =mawh zangkawi =ha =nawh va- suih =tawn =hai 3SG =that =POST evening =this =LOC DIR- arrive.I =HAB =PL =awh . =and

And (they) would arrive home like that in the evening and, 5.2 aa- pu =ha =nah ... =lemawh a- va- le cu . 3PL.POSS- father =this =ERG =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say when when their father ... said, 5.3 " zakaw =maw ka- su =le naa- hnapei =cu why =TAG 1SG.POSS- child =PL 2PL.POSS- sarong.(female) =TOP macamawh naa- baw khy thw e ?". like that 2PL.SBJ- tear all Q

"My children, why did (you) tear up your sarongs like that?" 5.4 " rih a- hang =tawih ei . crop-eating.animal 3SBJ- wild =very and

"The birds are [running] wild [out there]. 5.5 macamawh rih kaa- koih =nawh and crop-eating.animal 1PL.SBJ- chase =NMLZ.EVNT =law =ha =nawh thingcahmui =nah a- ma- baw =pih khy =LOC =this =LOC tree.stump =ERG 3SG.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- tear =MAL break =thw ." =all

And when (we) were scaring away the birds, the tree stumps tore up our sarongs (to us)." 5.6 =lemawh aa- va- le =tawn . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- say =HAB

(they) would reply.

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6.1 macamawh mu =kha =mawh va- si =liamaw =awh . and 3SG =that =POST DIR- COP =PROG =and

And that happened again and again. 6.2 ni =khaih =cu aa- pu =nah ... =lemawh . day =one =TOP 3PL.POSS- father =ERG =COMP

One day, their father ... saying [to himself], 6.3 " a , ma =hi zapu =riamruam =i a- si ? INTJ.surprise 3SG =this what =INT =Q 3SBJ- COP

"Ah, what* in the world is this*?" 6.4 ma =ha =mawh zapu =i a- si kau atw ?". 3SG =this =POST what =Q 3SG.SBJ- COP EMPH now

What* is it now?" 6.5 a- va- ven phy =hai tyh =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- PST- observe-stealthily =PL time =LOC and so when (he) [went and] spied on (them). 6.6 parypy =nah heh =lemawh a- va- reih =py =mi =hai =khaw python =ERG PTCL =COMP 3SBJ- DIR- play =COM =NMLZ =PL =that a- hni . 3SG.SBJ- know.II

(he) found out that the python played and joked around with (them). 7.1 parypy =kha =nah a- va- reih =py =hai =awh . python =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- DIR- play =COM =PL =and

The python played and joked around with (them) and 7.2 ahnwtwdwmkhanawh aa- pu =kha =nah ... a- va- le . finally 3PL.POSS- father =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say

In the end, their father ... said, 7.3 " a , a- thu . INTJ.surprise 3SBJ- good

"Ah, okay [lit. it's good] 7.4 ma =hi =mawh =paw a- va- si =tawn =hi ". 3SG =this =POST =PTCL 3SBJ- DIR- COP =HAB =this

So that's what has been going on," [lit. So it has been like this]

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7.5 ei inn =kawi a- va- tin . and house =towards 3SG.SBJ- PST- return.home

And (he) returned home. 7.6 Zang kawi Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei inn aa- va- suih evening Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei house 3PL.SBJ- DIR- arrive.I tyhkhanawh . when

When Ngun Nw and Tia Tei arrived home in the evening, 7.7 a- va- haw =kia =hai =ca =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- ask.II =again =PL =that =NMLZ.EVNT when (he) asked them [the same question] again, 7.8 " rih a- hang =tawih ei . crop-eating.animal 3SBJ- wild =very and

"the birds were too wild and so 7.9 ma =khaw kaa- koih =nawh =law awh thingcahmui =nah 3SG =that 1PL.SBJ- chase =NMLZ.EVNT =at tree.stump =ERG kaa- hnapei =hi a- ma- baw =pih khy thw ". 1PL.POSS- sarong.(female) =this 3SG.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- tear =MAL break all while (we) were chasing the birds away, tree stumps tore up our sarongs (to us)." 7.10 =lemawh aa- va- le =kia . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- say =again

(they) replied again. 8.1 macamawh ni =khaih =cu ... =lemawh a- va- le =hai ei and day =one =TOP =COMP 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say =PL and .

And once, ... (he) said to them and 8.2 " khawh , naamu =hi naa- va- wm =caw ei . PROH 2PL =this 2PL.SBJ- DIR- exist =FUT.PFV and

"Ok, you* are going to stay (home) and 8.3 kamu =nah ka- va- hu =caw ". 1SG =ERG 1SG.SBJ- DIR- watch =FUT.PFV

I* am going to keep watch over the crops"

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8.4 macamawh nam sau =py =khaw a- va- ken ei . and knife long =big =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- bring and and (he) brought a long knife [with him] and 8.5 parypy =khaw a- va- bo . python =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- keep.watch

(he) lay in wait for the python [in order to kill him]. 9.1 a- hnw ta dwm =kha =nawh parypy =khaw a- 3SG.POSS- behind fall almost =that =LOC python =that 3SBJ- va- sei ei . DIR- go and

In the end, the python came and 9.2 mu =kha =nawh ... a- le ei . 3SG =that =LOC 3SG.SBJ- say and

At that time, ... (he) said 9.3 " Aw , na- nw swh namu kau =hi =mo na- va- INTJ 2SG.POSS- mother vagina 2SG EMPH =this =TAG 2SG.SBJ- DIR- si ?". COP

"Ah, you son of a gun [lit. your mother's vagina], you* were [the one, weren't you]?" 9.4 parypy =khaw a- va- thu . python =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- kill

(he) killed the python. 10.1 cang =hni cang =thwm a- va- sih ei . CLF.long.piece =two CLF.long.piece =three 3SG.SBJ- DIR- put.II and

(He) cut (him) up into a few pieces and [lit. (he) put (him) into two or three pieces] 10.2 macamawh tamhrabua =khaw a- va- vua . and ashes =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- cover.up

And (he) covered up the pieces with ashes. 11.1 tamhrabua =khaw a- va- vua ei . ashes =that 3SG.SBJ- DIR- cover.up and

(He) covered [them] up with ashes and

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11.2 macamawh a- thaithw =kha =nawh ... =lemawh aa- and 3SG.POSS- tomorrow =that =LOC =COMP 3PL.POSS- po =nah a- va- le =hai . father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say =PL And on the next day, ... their father said (to them) 11.3 " khawh ka- su =le naamu =nah naa- va- hu CALL.FOR.ATTN 1SG.POSS- child =PL 2PL =ERG 2PL.SBJ- DIR- watch =kia =caw . =again\FUT =PFV

"Hey girls, you* are going to go and keep watch again. 11.4 lungthw =law =kha =nawh bahu ka- ca- sih =pih =hai fireplace =LOC =that =LOC taro 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- put.II =BEN =PL .

At the fireplace, (I) put some bahu there for (you). 11.5 malei =law =kha =nawh ka- ca- ro =pih =hai ei . this =LOC =that =LOC 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- grill =BEN =PL and At that place, (I) grilled ((it)) for (you). 11.6 naa- va- sei =aw ei . 2PL.SBJ- DIR- go =FUT and (You) will go and 11.7 ma =khaw bahu =khaw naa- va- oh telai ". 3SG =that taro =that 2PL.SBJ- DIR- eat.II later then later, (you) eat that bahu. 12.1 thaithw =kha =nawh Tia Tei =le Ngun Nw =cu aa- va- tomorrow =that =LOC Tia Tei =CONJ Ngun Nw =TOP 3PL.SBJ- DIR- sei =kia =hai . go =again =PL

The next day, Tia Tei and Ngun Nw went [to the field] again and 12.2 mu =kha =nawh parypy =khaw pary dang =kha =nah 3SG =that =LOC python =that snake different =that =ERG a- va- cam ei . 3SG.SBJ- PST- cast.spell and At that time, another snake put a spell on the python and 12.3 amu =le mu =tei mawh a- va- pei =kia rui hih . 3SG =PL 3SG =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- DIR- join =again MOD.POT PTCL

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he* connected himself* back together [it seems]. 12.4 makhamawh Tia Tei =le Ngun Nw =cu rih kaa- in.that.way Tia Tei =CONJ Ngun Nw =TOP crop-eating.animal 1PL.SBJ- hu =lekhamawh aa- va- sei =kia tyhkhanawh . watch =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- go =again when And when Ngun Nw and Tia Tei went [to the field] again in order to keep watch over the crops, 12.5 parypy =kha =nah Ngun Nw =khaw a- va- lem =kia . python =that =ERG Ngun Nw =that 3SG.SBJ- PST- persuade =again the python [tried to] persuade Ngun Nw again. [i.e. tried to get her to love him again] 13.1 heh =lemawh a- va- lem ei . PTCL =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- persuade and

(He) kept [trying to] persuade her and 13.2 macamawh tyhly =py sung =law =kha =nawh a- va- and lake =big inside =LOC =that =LOC 3SG.SBJ- PST- zuan =py . jump.over =COM And, (he) jumped into a big lake ((with her)) 14.1 tyhly =py sung =law =kha =nawh a- va- zuan =py lake =big inside =LOC =that =LOC 3SG.SBJ- PST- jump.over =COM ei . and

(He) jumped into the big lake ((with her)) and 14.2 a- nautei Tia Tei lawng =khaw a- va- si 3SG.POSS- sibling.younger Tia Tei only =that 3SG.SBJ- PST- COP tyhkhanawh . when when her younger sister Tiatei was alone 14.3 a- wtei Ngun Nw =tei =khaw a- va- ngai . 3SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw =DIM =that 3SG.SBJ- PST- miss

(she) missed her older sister Ngun Nw. 15.1 macamawh ... =lemawh a- va- le . and =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say

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And ... (she) said, 15.2 " Khuangthahli , Khuangthahla , na- w Ngun Nw =ne , Khuangthahli Khuangthahla 2SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw =ERG ra seh law ti , ti ." come HORT POL say say

"Khuangthahli, khuangthahla, my sister Ngunnu tells you to come." (Quote in Hakha) 16.1 macamawh , parypy =ca =nah ... =lekhamawh a- va- le . and python =that =ERG =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say And the python ... replied [lit. said] 16.2 " ra lio e , ra lio e , lwm cung suamai ra come PROG POL come PROG POL python above mighty.one come lio e ". PROG POL

"I'm coming, I'm coming, the mighty python is coming.” (Quote in Hakha) 17 makhaw Ngun Nw =cu va- suih =baw =ty =veh . that Ngun Nw =TOP PST- arrive.I =ever =any.more =NEG

[As for] that Ngun Nw, she never came back. 18 parypy =ca =nah tyhly sung =law =ca =nawh a- wm python =that =ERG lake inside =LOC =that =LOC 3SG.SBJ- exist =py =caw =cuh =ih . =COM =PFV =AFRV =REQ.CNFRM

[As you know already,] the python made ((her)) stay [with him] inside the water 19.1 makhamawh ahnwtwdwmkhanawh Tia Tei =khaw amu lawng =mawh in.that.way finally Tia Tei =that 3SG only =POST a- va- si tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- PST- COP time =that =LOC

So, in the end, when Tia Tei was by herself*, 19.2 a- ngai =khaw a- va- si =tawih ei . 3SG.POSS- NONCE =that 3SBJ- DIR- bad =very and (she) was very sad and 19.3 macamawh inn kawi =tei =kha =nawh a- va- sei . and house towards =DIM =that =LOC 3SBJ- DIR- go

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And (she) went back home and 20.1 inn =kawi =tei =kha =nawh a- va- suih ei . house =towards =DIM =that =LOC 3SBJ- DIR- arrive.I and

And (she) arrived home and 20.2 " zakaw na- wtei Ngun Nw sawh ?". why 2SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw CNTR.FOC

"Why [are you alone]? [And where is] your older sister, Ngun Nw? 20.3 a- va- le tyhnawh . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- say when

... When (he) said [to her], 20.4 " E , ka- w Ngun Nw =cu parypy =nah tyhly umm 1SG.POSS- sibling.older Ngun Nw =TOP python =ERG lake =py =lawh a- zuan =py =caw ei . =big =LOC 3SG.SBJ- jump.over =COM =PFV and

"Umm, the python jumped into the big lake with my older sister Ngun Nw and 20.5 wm =ty =veh . exist =any.more =NEG

(she) isn't here any more 20.6 va- sei khau =ty =veh ." DIR- go can =any.more =NEG

(she) can't come back anymore," 20.7 a- po =khaw a- va- sym . 3SG.POSS- father =that 3SG.SBJ- PST- tell.II

(she) told her father. 21.1 makhamawh aa- po =khaw a- ngai a- va- si in.that.way 3PL.POSS- father =that 3SG.POSS- NONCE 3SBJ- DIR- bad =tawih ei . =very and

And their dad became very sad and 21.2 heh =lemawh a- va- tamh . PTCL =COMP 3SBJ- DIR- cry And (he) cried [and cried and cried].

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22.1 macamawh heh =mawh parypy =khaw aa- va- lem and PTCL =ADZR python =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- persuade zawng awh . even though And even though (they) [tried to] persuade the python [possibly, to return Ngun Nw], 22.2 va- lem khau =ty =veh =hai . DIR- persuade can =any.more =NEG =PL

(they) couldn't persuade ((him)) any more. 23.1 aa- va- lem zawng awh . 3PL.SBJ- PST- persuade even though Even though (they) tried to persuade ((him)), 23.2 va- lem khau =ty =veh =hai . PST- persuade can =any.more =NEG =PL

(they) couldn't persuade ((him)) anymore. 24 macamawh Ngun Nw =tei =cu parypy a- zung lei ei tyhly and Ngun Nw =DIM =TOP python 3SG.POSS- middle place LOC lake =py sung =law =ca =nawh parypy =nah a- wm =py =caw . =big inside =LOC =that =LOC python =ERG 3SG.SBJ- exist =COM =PFV And the python made Ngun Nw stay with him [lit. with the python] under the water. 25.1 macamawh ahnwtwdwm =cu zapu =hmaw tui khau =ty =veh and in.the.end =TOP what =even do can =any.more =NEG =hai =awh . =PL =and

And since (they) couldn't do anything about it anymore, 25.2 Tia Tei =le a- pu =cu ngaisih =tei mawh inn Tia Tei =CONJ 3SG.POSS- father =TOP sad =ADZR house =kawi =nawh aa- va- kia =kia =hai . =towards =LOC 3PL.SBJ- DIR- return =again =PL

Tia Tei and her father went back home sad.

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APPENDIX C NGUN NW AND TIA TEI BY LIAN TUNG

1 a- hlan =nawh , Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei =lemi hawhnw 3SG.POSS- before =LOC Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei =COMP maiden pa =hni aa- va- wm =hai . CLF.person =two 3PL.SBJ- PST- exist =PL

Once upon a time [lit. Before], there were two maidens called Ngun Nw and Tia Tei. 2 wnau aa- si =hai . sibling 3PL.SBJ- COP =PL They were siblings. 3 aa- no ( a- ) thy . 3PL.POSS- mother 3SG.SBJ- die.I Their mother was dead. 4 aa- po =nah ( a- ) mai =py =hai 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- remain.without.remarrying =ACCOM =PL .

Their father stayed with them without remarrying. 5 lau ( aa- ) tui . dry.field 3PL.SBJ- make They worked on a dry field. 6.1 lau =kawi ( aa- ) va- sei =tawn =hai ei . dry.field =towards 3PL.SBJ- DIR- go =HAB =PL and

They used to go to the dry field and... 6.2 Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei =khaw lau ( aa- ) va- tho . Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei =that dry.field 3PL.SBJ- DIR- weed

Ngun Nw and Tia Tei would pull [lit. pulled] weeds in the field. 7.1 makhaw lau ( aa- ) va- tho =lawh =kha =nawh . that dry.field 3PL.SBJ- DIR- weed =LOC =that =LOC

While they were weeding,

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7.2 [ khasih kaa- le =aw =ih , khasih ]. evil.spirit 1PL.SBJ- say =FUT =REQ.CNFRM evil.spirit Let's call it an evil spirit, okay? 7.3 khasih tangvaw pu =nah a- va- hwmh =hai ei . evil.spirit unmarried.man male =ERG 3SG.SBJ- DIR- see.II =PL and An evil bachelor spirit noticed [lit. saw] them and 7.4 a- va- vai =tawn =hai . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- visit =HAB =PL

He would visit them. 8.1 mu =kha =mawh va- vai =tawn =hai =awh . 3SG =that =ADZR DIR- visit =HAB =PL =SUBD And visiting that way, 8.2 Ngun Nw =khaw vaih ( a- ) va- dw thaih . Ngun Nw =that very 3SG.SBJ- DIR- love very He really liked Ngun Nw. 9 khasih tangvaw pu a- ming =cu Khuang Tahly evil.spirit unmarried.man male 3SG.POSS- name =TOP Khuang Tahly =lemawh ( aa- ) le . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- say

The name of the evil bachelor spirit was Khuang Tahly. [lit. As for the name of the evil bachelor spirit, (they) said "Khuang Tahly".]

10.1 macamawh a- vai tyh =kha =nawh . and 3SG.SBJ- visit time =that =LOC

When he visited her. 10.2 pary =kha =mawh a- va- lang =tawn . snake =that =POST 3SBJ- DIR- appear =HAB he would appear in the form of a snake. 11 [ khasih kaa- le =cu a- phun phun =mawh ( a- ) evil.spirit 1PL.SBJ- say =that 3SG.POSS- kind kind =POST 3SBJ- wm thiam =cuh =ih , khasih =cu ]. exist able =AFRV =REQ.CNFRM evil.spirit =that

So, since he is an evil spirit, he can appear in many different forms.

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12.1 pary =py =kha =mawh ( a- ) va- lang =tawn . snake =very =that =POST 3SBJ- DIR- appear =HAB

He would appear as a python. 12.2 amu =khaw =mawh Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei lau ( aa- ) 3SG =that =POST Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei dry.field 3PL.SBJ- tho =nawh sia =tei ( a- ) va- vai =tawn =hai . weed =NMLZ every =INT 3SG.SBJ- DIR- visit =HAB =PL

Every time Ngun Nw and Tia Tei went to weed the dry field, he would visit them like that. 13.1 ahnwtwdwmawh mu =khaw khasih =nah Ngun Nw a- dw in.the.end 3SG =that evil.spirit =ERG Ngun Nw 3SG.SBJ- like =mi =khaw aa- po =nah a- hni ei . =NMLZ =that 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- know.II and

Eventually, their father found out that the evil spirit was in love with Ngun Nw. 13.2 macamawh a- thin ( a- ) haw . and 3SG.POSS- liver 3SBJ- NONCE

And he got angry. 14.1 " a , ma =hi pu tui si " le =awh . INTJ.anxiety 3SG =this what do COP say =SUBD

Saying, "Ugh... how can this be?!" 14.2 lau =kawi ( a- ) sei ei . dry.field =towards 3SG.SBJ- go and

He went to the dry field and 14.3 Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei aa- zung =kawi =lawh a- sei Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei 3PL.POSS- middle =towards =LOC 3SG.SBJ- go =sy =hai . =APPL =PL

He went to Ngun Nw and Tia Tei 15.1 " a , ka- su =le , amu =hi naa- wmtwh INTJ.anxiety 1SG.POSS- child =PL 3SG =this 2PL.POSS- behaviour =hi dw =veh -ni . =this like =NEG -1SG.SBJ

"My children, I don't like this, your behaviour.

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15.2 apalauparu , tangvaw =nah aa- ca- vai =hai . nonsense unmarried.man =ERG 3PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- visit =PL

Nonsense! Some guy visited you. 15.3 tangvaw =nah aa- ca- dw =hai ". unmarried.man =ERG 3PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- like =PL

Some guy is in love with you." 15.4 le =kha =mawh aa- po =kha =nah aa- thinhaw say =that =ADZR 3PL.POSS- father =that =ERG 3PL.POSS- angry =mawh a- le tyh =kha =nawh . =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- say time =that =LOC when their father angrily said (this-above quotation), 15.5 " a , kaa- po , si =hahen =veh . INTJ.frustration 1PL.POSS- father COP =certainly =NEG

"Dad... that's not true. 15.6 ma- dw =veh ." 1PL.OBJ- like =NEG

He's not in love with us." 15.7 le =kha =mawh aa- phei =bawm . say =that =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- deny =also they lied to him. 16.1 asinumawh aa- po =kha =nah ruih =awh . but 3PL.POSS- father =that =ERG think =SUBD

However, their father, thinking (about it) 16.2 ahnwtwdwmawh " a , ka- bo kau ti =aw in.the.end INTJ.resignation 1SG.SBJ- keep.watch EMPH PTCL =FUT " a- le ei . 3SG.SBJ- say and later on, saying, "Ok, I will just keep watch (on him)", 16.3 makhaw khasih tangvaw pu =khaw a- bo . that evil.spirit unmarried.man male =that 3SG.SBJ- keep.watch he kept watch on that evil bachelor spirit.

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17.1 amu =khaw a- vai =tawn =lawh =hai =kha =nawh 3SG =that 3SG.SBJ- visit =HAB =LOC =PL =that =LOC =i . =REQ.CNFRM

When he would visit them, (You know?), 17.2 Ngun Nw =ha =nah " Tia Tei , khuanghly =cu au ti Ngun Nw =this =ERG Tia Tei Khuanghly =TOP call.I PTCL =lawh !" =IMP.POL

Ngun Nw (would say), "Tia Tei, why don't you get Khuanghly?" 17.3 =lemawh a- va- le =tawn . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say =HAB

(she) would say to her 18 ama =ca =mawh , Tia Tei =ca =nah Khuangthahly =cu 3SG =that =POST Tia Tei =that =ERG Khuang Tahly =TOP a- va- au =tawn . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- call.II =HAB

So, Tia Tei would call out for Khuang Tahly. 19.1 ama =kha =mawh 'kaling kaleng kalung kaleng' =lemawh khasih 3SG =that =POST ONOM =COMP evil.spirit pau =khaw ma =kha =mawh va- suih =tawn =awh . sound =that 3SG =that =POST PST- arrive.I =HAB =SUBD

So, the sound of the evil spirit--"kaling kaleng kalung kaleng"--like that, arriving... 19.2 ma =khaw =mawh a- va- wm =py =tawn =hai . 3SG =that =POST 3SG.SBJ- PST- stay =ACCOM =HAB =PL

In that way, he would come and stay with them (for a while). 20.1 a- va- wm =py =tawn =hai ei . 3SG.SBJ- PST- live =ACCOM =HAB =PL and

When he would come to stay with them... 20.2 ahnwtwdwmawh aa- po =nah a- hni in.the.end 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- know.II tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

Later on, when their father learned about it.

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20.3 " a , ma =hi ka- thu =lau cawmacu thu ( =aw ) INTJ.resolve 3SG =this 1SG.SBJ- kill =NEG if good =FUT =veh ," =lemawh a- va- le . =NEG =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say

"It won't be good if I don't kill him", he thought to himself [lit. he said]. 21.1 ma =cu =nawh voi =khaih =cu lau =kawi 3SG =because =LOC CLF.occasion =one =TOP dry.field =towards =cu ( a- ) sei =bawm ei . =TOP 3SBJ- go =also and

For that reason, once, he also went to the dry field and 21.2 " khawh , ka- su =le , pa- dwm khawh CALL.FOR.ATTN 1SG.POSS- child =PL 1SG.OBJ- lie PROH =u =h . =2.PL =IMP

"My children, do not lie to me!" 21.3 naa- tangvaw pu =cu au ti =u =h ." 2PL.POSS- unmarried.man male =TOP call.I INT =2.PL =IMP

"Call your man!" 21.4 =lemawh a- le =hai . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- say =PL he said to them. 22.1 macamawh , [ khasih ku kaa- le =cu makhaw aa- and evil.spirit language 1PL.SBJ- say =TOP that 3PL.SBJ- va- au tyh =kha =nawh . PST- call.II time =that =LOC And, so since it was the evil spirit language, when they called him 22.2 va- sei =lai le phun =kha =mawh ( aa- ) va- au DIR- go =NEG.IRR say kind =that =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- PST- call.II =cuh =ih .] =AFRV =REQ.CNFRM They called him in a way such that he wouldn't come 23.1 khasih =kha =cu " kaa- po ( a- ) va- sei . evil.spirit =that =TOP 1PL.SBJ- father 3SG.SBJ- DIR- go

To the evil spirit (they said), "Our Father came.

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23.2 va- sei =lai -ci =h !" DIR- go =NEG.IRR -2SBJ =IMP

Do not come!" 23.3 le =hu pu phun =mawh aa- va- au say =similar NMLZ kind =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- DIR- call.II tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

Because they called the evil spirit (saying in that kind of way "[above quotation]") 23.4 [ khasih ku =cu a- va- sym =rawh evil.spirit language =TOP 3SG.SBJ- DIR- teach =also =thau =hai khawh , khasih =ca =nah =MDL.Epistemic.possibility =PL.FUT CALL.FOR.ATTN evil.spirit =that =ERG =ih . =REQ.CNFRM

He must have also taught them the evil spirit language, you see--the evil spirit did. 23.5 mu aa- po =khaw =nah thai =ty =lau .] 3SG 3PL.POSS- father =DEM =ERG hear.II =any.more =NEG

Which [lit. This,] their father could no longer understand. 24.1 mu =kha =nawh , aa- po =nah a- va- bo 3SG =that =LOC 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- PST- keep.watch =kha =nawh . =that =LOC

Then, their father was looking around (for him), but 24.2 va- suih =baw =ty =veh . PST- arrive.I =ever =any.more =NEG he never showed up 25.1 a , va- suih =baw =ty =veh =awh . INTJ.frustration DIR- arrive.I =ever =any.more =NEG =SUBD

Because he never showed up, 25.2 amu =hi aa- pa- dwm . 3SG =this 3PL.SBJ- 1SG.OBJ- lie

"[Ah,] this... they lied to me,"

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25.3 le =kha =mawh a- hni ei . say =that =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- know.II so he realized, so 26.1 a- ni dang =awh . 3SG.POSS- day different =LOC

On another day, 26.2 a- phy =tei =mawh aa- po =kha =nah sym 3SBJ- secret =DIM =ADZR 3PL.POSS- father =that =ERG tell.II =ty =lau =hai =kha =mawh . =any.more =NEG =PL =that =ADZR secrectly, the father, without telling them anymore 26.3 a- phy =tei =mawh namtei ( a- ) va- taih va- taih 3SBJ- secret =INT =ADZR knife 3SG.SBJ- PST- sharpen PST- sharpen ei __ vai namtei , a- haw =tei ___. and Burmese knife 3SBJ- sharp =INT secretly, he sharpened a knife, a Burmese knife, sharply 26.4 a- va- bo , lam =law =mawh . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- keep.watch road =LOC =POST he waited for him, from the road 27.1 va- bo =awh . DIR- keep.watch =SUBD

(and) waiting for him... 27.2 mu =ca =nawh Ngun Nw =le Tia Tei =zawng =kha =nah 3SG =that =LOC Ngun Nw =CONJ Tia Tei =also =that =ERG aa- po =nah a- bo =khaw hnih =veh =hai . 3PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG.SBJ- keep.watch =that know.I =NEG =PL

Then, neither Ngun Nw or Tia Tei knew that their father was trying to kill him. 28.1 hnih =veh =hai =awh . know.I =NEG =PL =SUBD

Not knowing that,

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28.2 macamawh Ngun Nw =kha =nah " Tia Tei , Khuangthahly =cu au and Ngun Nw =that =ERG Tia Tei Khuang Tahly =TOP call.I =kia =ni ." =again =ATT.IMP

Ngun Nw (said to Tia Tei), "Tia Tei, (why don't you) get Khuang Tahly again (now)." 28.3 ( a- ) va- le . 3SG.SBJ- PST- say she said to her. 29.1 Khuangthahly =cu a- va- au =kia ei . Khuang Tahly =TOP 3SG.SBJ- PST- call.II =again and

She called out for Khuang Tahly again and, 29.2 amu =ca =mawh a- va- sui =law =kha =nawh . 3SG =that =POST 3SG.SBJ- PST- arrive.I =LOC =that =LOC when he got there (before the girls saw him coming -- implied info) 29.3 aa- po =nah . 3PL.POSS- father =ERG their father 29.4 [ ma =khaw =mawh pary phun =kha =mawh a- va- 3SG =that =POST snake kind =that =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- DIR- lang =cuh =ih ]. appear =AFRV =REQ.CNFRM

So, he showed up as a snake 29.5 " amu si kau =caw " va- le =awh . 3SG COP MOD =PFV PST- say =SUBD

Saying "It's him..." 29.6 namtei =ca =mawh a- va- twh ei . knife =that =with 3SG.SBJ- PST- hit.II and he hit him with the knife and 29.7 a- va- twh =thaih . 3SG.SBJ- PST- hit.II =RES

He hit him to death.

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30.1 a- va- twh =thaih ei . 3SG.SBJ- PST- hit.II =RES and

He hit him to death and 30.2 a- va- can sym =thw . 3SG.SBJ- PST- cut PFV =all

He chopped him into pieces. 31.1 macamawh " a , a- nw swh mu si kau and INTJ.satisfaction 3SG.POSS- mother vagina 3SG COP EMPH =caw " va- le =awh . =PFV PST- say =SUBD

And, saying "Ah... the little piece of shit, this was the guy (the snake)" 31.2 pary a- tan sym =mi =cu va- pw =awh . snake 3SG.SBJ- cut PFV =NMLZ =TOP PST- carry.I =and

He carried the snake that he chopped (into pieces) and 31.3 tawhrabua , bei khin =nawh tawhrabua =law =kha =nawh ashes pot cook.II =NMLZ ashes =LOC =that =LOC a- va- phwm . 3SG.SBJ- DIR- bury buried it in the ashes, the ashes left over from cooking. 32 a- sutei =le =nah a- twh =thaih =mi =khaw hnih 3SG.POSS- child =PL =ERG 3SG.SBJ- hit.II =RES =NMLZ =that know.I =veh =hai =cuh =ih . =NEG =PL =AFRV =REQ.CNFRM

His daughters [lit. children] didn't know that he (the father) [had] killed (it), you know? 33.1 makhaw va- phwm =awh . that DIR- bury =and

He buried (it) and 33.2 a- va- phwm khaumawh . 3SG.SBJ- PST- bury after after he burried (it)

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33.3 a- sutei =le =khaw " khawh , ka- su =le , kaw 3SG.POSS- child =PL =that CALL.FOR.ATTN 1SG.POSS- child =PL 1SG ka- va- lang =caw . 1SG.SBJ- DIR- go.back =FUT.PFV

"Alright, my children, I'm going back." 33.4 tawhrabua =law =kha =nawh bahu ka- ca- ro =pih =hai ashes =LOC =that =LOC taro 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- grill =BEN =PL khawh . CALL.FOR.ATTN

"in the [cooking] ashes I grilled some taro for you." 33.5 zangkawi mu =khaw va- thua ( =aw ) =cawh . evening 3SG =that DIR- take.out =FUT =2S.CONN

"In the evening, you will take those out and 33.6 naa- va- oh =lai ." 2PL.SBJ- DIR- eat.II =IRR

(you)'ll eat (them)." 33.7 =lemawh ( a- ) va- le =hai . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- PST- say =PL he said to them. 34 macamawh aa- po =cu inn =kawi ( a- ) va- lang and 3PL.POSS- father =TOP house =towards 3SBJ- PST- go.back .

And their father returned home. 35.1 inn =kawi =ca =nawh va- lang =awh . house =towards =that =LOC PST- go.back =and

Lit. He went back home and 35.2 " a , kaa- po =nah mu =kha le =khaw " INTJ.surprise 1PL.POSS- father =ERG 3SG =that say =that =lemawh . =COMP

(saying/thinking) "..., dad said something."

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35.3 tawhrabua ei bahu a- ro =mi =cu aa- va- thua ashes LOC taro 3SG.SBJ- grill =NMLZ =TOP 3PL.SBJ- PST- take.out tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

When she (probably 'they') took the 'bahu' that he grilled out of the ashes, 35.4 makhaw , i , Khuang Tahly , aa- tangvaw pu

that PNGENERAL Khuang Tahly 3PL.POSS- unmarried.man male a- ruih =khaw ( a- ) va- si =caw , a- tan sym 3SG.POSS- body.dead =that 3SBJ- PST- COP =PFV 3SG.SBJ- cut PFV =thw =mi =khaw . =all =NMLZ =that that was, that guy, Khuang Tahly, their man's body, the one that he cut it into pieces. 36.1 " ca , kaa- po =nah kaa- tangvaw pu a- EXCM 1PL.POSS- father =ERG 1PL.POSS- unmarried.man male 3SG.SBJ- ma- twh =pih =sym ." 1PL.OBJ- hit.II =MAL =PFV

"What!?, Dad chopped up our man." 36.2 le =kha =mawh va- le =hai =awh . say =that =ADZR PST- say =PL =SUBD saying "..." 37 [ a- hlan =cu khasih kaa- le =cu aa- va- 3SG.POSS- before =TOP evil.spirit 1PL.SBJ- say =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- thiam =bawm tyh =kha =nawh =ih ]. be.skilled.at =also time =that =LOC =REQ.CNFRM

You know, in the past, as a spirit (being), since they also were able (to do things)... 38.1 amu =kha =mawh a- tan sym =mi =khaw va- pei va- 3SG =that =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- cut PFV =NMLZ =that PST- join PST- pei =hai =awh . join =PL =and

So, they joined the pieces together that he chopped up and 38.2 aa- hrw =khaw ( aa- ) va- peih . 3PL.POSS- breath =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- give.II

They gave him their breath.

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39 a- va- nung =kia . 3SBJ- PST- alive =again

He came back to life.

40.1 Khuang Tahly =cu va- nung =kia =awh . Khuang Tahly =TOP PST- alive =again =and

Kuang Tahly came back to life, and 40.2 mu =ca =mawh " a , mu =cu si khau ( =aw ) 3SG =that =POST INTJ.frustration 3SG =TOP COP can =FUT =veh " le =kha =mawh . =NEG say =that =ADZR

(saying to himself) "Ah, this is not going to work..." 40.3 Khuang Tahly =ca =nah a- thinhaw =kha =mawh Ngun Nw Khuang Tahly =that =ERG 3SG.POSS- angry =that =ADZR Ngun Nw =khaw va- sei =py =awh . =that PST- go =COM =and

Khuang Tahly took Ngun Nw angrily and 41.1 tyhly =law =kha =nawh lau hnu ( a- ) lake =LOC =that =LOC disappear with.the.result.that 3SG.SBJ- va- kun =py ei . PST- enter =COM and

He disappeared with her into the lake. 41.2 ma =kha =mawh Ngun Nw =le Khuang Tahly =cu tyhly sung 3SG =that =POST Ngun Nw =CONJ Khuang Tahly =TOP lake inside =law ( aa- ) lau =hai ei . =LOC 3PL.SBJ- disappear =PL and

In that way, Ngun Nw and Khuang Tahly disappeared into the lake and 41.3 macamawh , pau ( aa- ) lau lan =hai . and EXP 3PL.SBJ- disappear permanently =PL

And they disappeared forever. 42 khui sawh =kha =mawh ( aa- ) lau lan =hai . life building =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- disappear permanently =PL

They disappeared forever to build (their life together).

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43 Tia Tei =tw =khaw =cu amu khaw =mawh ( aa- ) sei Tia Tei =CNTR.FOC =that =TOP 3SG alone =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- go =sen . =leave.behind

As for Tia Tei, they left her (behind) by herself.

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APPENDIX D KHWMH BAU AND DAW VANG

1 Khwmh Bau =le Daw Vang a- baphung ka- ca- sym =aw Khwmh Bau =CONJ Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- story 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- tell.II =FUT =hai . =PL

I'm going to tell you the story of Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang. 2 a- hlan =nawh , hnapy-hnavu aa- va- wm =hai . 3SG.POSS- before =LOC wife-husband 3PL.SBJ- PST- exist =PL

Once upon a time, there were a husband and a wife. 3 Daw Vang =hi aa- va- hrin . Daw Vang =this 3PL.SBJ- PST- give.birth

They gave birth to Daw Vang. (a female name) 4 ama =ca =mawh Khwmh Bau nw =lemi =hi Daw Vang nw 3SG =that =POST Khwmh Bau mother =COMP =this Daw Vang mother =le Daw Vang pu aa- inn kam =law =tei =nawh a- =CONJ Daw Vang father 3PL.POSS- house beside =LOC =DIM =LOC 3SBJ- wm ei . exist and

And, the one called Khwmh Bau's mother was near the house of Daw Vang's mother and father. 5.1 a- hlan =cu , maiteih =le wm =veh =awh . 3SG.POSS- before =that lighter =PL exist =NEG =SUBD

In the past, since there were no lighters, 5.2 macamawh maicy =tei =khi aa- va- luih =hai , a- and ember =DIM =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- gather.up.I =PL 3SG.SBJ- lui =mawh . gather.up.II =ADZR they would take embers from each other.

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6.1 ma =cu mai a- lui =nawh =law =nawh aa- va- 3SG =that fire 3SG.SBJ- gather.up.II =NMLZ =LOC =LOC 3PL.SBJ- PST- hwm =hai ei . see.I =PL and

They would see each other when(ever) she went to get embers and 6.2 Khwmh Bau nw =le Daw Vang pu =cu aa- dw =hai . Khwmh Bau mother =CONJ Daw Vang father =TOP 3PL.SBJ- like =PL

Khwmh Bau's mother and Daw Vang's father fell in love. 7.1 macamawh Khwmh Bau nw =le Daw Vang pu =khaw aa- and Khwmh Bau mother =CONJ Daw Vang father =that 3PL.SBJ- dw =hai ei . like =PL and

Khwmh Bau's mother and Daw Vang's father fell in love, and 7.2 Daw Vang nw =khaw deih thaih aa- twm =caw =hai . Daw Vang mother =that kill 3PL.SBJ- attempt =PFV =PL now they were trying to kill Daw Vang's mother. 8.1 " pu tui =mawh =i kaa- thu khau =aw ?." what do =ADZR =Q 1PL.SBJ- kill can =FUT

"How will we be able to kill her?" 8.2 aa- le ei . 3PL.SBJ- say and

They thought/said and 8.3 ma =ca =mawh tavu ei hlai aa- hry lawh kha nawh . 3SG =that =ADZR river LOC bridge 3PL.SBJ- cross at that time while they were crossing a bridge over a river, 8.4 Daw Vang nw =cu ty sung =kawi aa- nam Daw Vang mother =TOP water inside =towards 3PL.SBJ- push.II phwm . RESUL.INTER they pushed Daw Vang's mother into the water.

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9 ma =ca =mawh Daw Vang nw =cu a- tharau =khaw 3SG =that =ADZR Daw Vang mother =TOP 3SG.POSS- spirit =that pary =nawh a- cang . snake =to 3SBJ- become

And the spirit of Daw Vang's mother turned into a snake.

10.1 ei , Khwmh Bau nw =le Daw Vang pu =cu aa- va- and Khwmh Bau mother =CONJ Daw Vang father =TOP 3PL.SBJ- PST- hawi =hai ei . marry =PL and

And, Khwmh Bau's mother and Daw Vang's father got married, and 10.2 sutei pa =hni , Daw Vang =le Khwmh Bau =cu aa- child CLF.person =two Daw Vang =CONJ Khwmh Bau =TOP 3PL.SBJ- cawm =hai . raise.children =PL they raised the two children, Khwmh Bau and Daw Vang. 11.1 macamawh Khwmh Bau =le Daw Vang =cu lau and Khwmh Bau =CONJ Daw Vang =TOP dry.field maw =khaih cangcio aa- tui ei . CLF.general =one each 3PL.SBJ- do and

And Kwmh Bau and Daw Vang each made a dry field and, 11.2 lau =kawi =nawh aa- sei =cuicui =hai . dry.field =towards =LOC 3PL.SBJ- go =always =PL they would always go to the dry fields. 12.1 lau =law =kha =nawh Daw Vang =kha =cu a- nw dry.field =LOC =that =LOC Daw Vang =that =TOP 3SG.POSS- mother =kha =nah oh tho tho =khaw a- va- dang ei . =that =ERG food delicious.I delicious.I =that 3SG.SBJ- PST- give.food and

As for Daw Vang, her mother gave her delicious food at the dry field. 12.2 ama =ca =mawh Daw Vang =cu a- do . 3SG =that =POST Daw Vang =TOP 3SG.SBJ- beautiful

So, Daw Vang was beautiful.

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12.3 a- tyhsu a- thu . 3SG.POSS- complexion 3SG.SBJ- good

Her complexion was good. 13.1 ei , makhaw a- kawng =khaw Khwmh Bau a- no and that 3SG.POSS- about =that Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- mother =le pu =kha =nah aa- hlaih tyh =kha =nawh . =CONJ father =that =ERG 3PL.SBJ- investigate time =that =LOC

And, when Khwmh Bau's mother and father looked into that, 13.2 Daw Vang =hi cuanmin =tw a- ngai =lemi =khaw Daw Vang =this take care =NMLZ 3SG.SBJ- own.II =COMP =that aa- hni . 3PL.SBJ- know.II they found out that Daw Vang had someone to take care of her. 14.1 ama =khaw kaa- thu =aw aa- le ei . 3SG =that 1PL.SBJ- kill =FUT 3PL.SBJ- say and

They said they were going to kill her (i.e. the person taking care of Daw Vang/her mother now-turned-serpent) and 14.2 thu aa- timh tyh =kha =nawh . kill 3PL.SBJ- plan time =that =LOC while they were plotting to kill her, 14.3 Daw Vang =nah a- thai ei . Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- hear.II and

Daw Vang heard it (i.e. their plan to kill her mother) and 14.4 a- nw =tei =khaw a- sym . 3SG.POSS- mother =DIM =that 3SG.SBJ- tell.II she told her mother 15.1 a- nw =kawi =kha =nawh , " ka- nw , thu 3SG.POSS- mother =towards =that =LOC 1SG.POSS- mother kill aa- ca- timh ei . 3PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- plan and

To her mother, "Mother, they are plotting to kill you, so

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15.2 au =lawh =mawh aa- pa- le =hu call.I =IMP.POL =COMP 3PL.SBJ- 1SG.OBJ- say =IRR tyh =kha =nawh ka- ca- au tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- call.I time =that =LOC when I call you, since they will tell me to call for you 15.3 "va- sei =lawh , va- suan =sau =lawh " ka- ca- le DIR- go =IMP.POL DIR- flee =upward =IMP.POL 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- say tyhawh . when

When I tell you 'Come! Flee upward,' 15.4 na- suan =swh =aw . 2SG.SBJ- flee =downward =FUT you will flee downward. 15.5 “suan =swh =lawh" ka- ca- le tyh =nawh . flee =downward =IMP.POL 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- say time =LOC

When I tell you to flee downward, 15.6 na- suan =sau =aw . 2SG.SBJ- flee =upward =FUT you will flee upward. 15.7 mu =kha =mawh ka- ca- va- le =hu ei . 3SG =that =ADZR 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- DIR- say =FUT and

That's how I'll say it to you, so 15.8 ca- tai khau =aw =veh =hai " le =kha =mawh a- 2OBJ- catch.I can =FUT =NEG =PL say =that =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- le ei . say and they won't be able to catch you," she said to her and 16.1 tai aa- timh tyh =kha =nawh . catch.II 3PL.SBJ- intend time =that =LOC

When they tried to catch her,

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16.2 " ka- nw =awh , suan =sau =lawh , suan =sau 1SG.POSS- mother =VOC flee =upward =IMP.POL flee =upward =lawh ." =IMP.POL

"Mother, flee upward, flee upward," 16.3 =lemawh a- au ei . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- shout and she shouted and 16.4 ma =kha tyh =kha =nawh pau =khaw a- nw 3SG =that time =that =LOC EXP =that 3SG.POSS- mother =khaw a- suan =swh . =that 3SBJ- flee =downward and so, her mother fled downward. 17.1 makhamawh a- tui =liamaw tyh =kha =nawh . in.that.way 3SBJ- do =ASP time =that =LOC

When that happened on and on 17.2 tai khau =veh =hai . catch.I can =NEG =PL they could not catch her 18 tai khau =veh =hai =awh . catch.I can =NEG =PL =SUBD

They couldn't catch her. 19.1 ahnwtwdwmkhanawh , Daw Vang =kha =nah ,. finally Daw Vang =that =ERG

Finally, Daw Vang (said) 19.2 " ka- no , tua ty =veh -ni eh , va- lang 1SG.POSS- mother bear any.more =NEG -1SG.SBJ PTCL DIR- appear kau =ni =lawh ." MOD =ATT.IMP =IMP.POL

"Mother, I cannot bear it anymore, please show yourself," 19.3 =lemawh a- le ei . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- say and she shouted and

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19.4 ma =ca =mawh a- no =cu aa- thu . 3SG =that =POST 3SG.POSS- mother =TOP 3PL.SBJ- kill that way, they killed her mother. 20.1 macamawh aa- can can ei . and 3PL.SBJ- cut cut and And they chopped her up and 20.2 Daw Vang =cy Khwmh Bau =cy =kha =mawh pasai =mawh Daw Vang =with Khwmh Bau =with =that =POST basket =POST aa- phua -sawh =hai ei . 3PL.SBJ- carry -CAUS =PL and They made Daw Vang and Khwmh Bau each carry her in a basket and 21 Daw Vang =nah a- phua =mi =khaw , a- no Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- carry =NMLZ =that 3SG.POSS- mother a- su a- phua =mi =tei =khaw rau karing =tei mawh 3SG.POSS- meat 3SG.SBJ- carry =NMLZ =DIM =that dry EE =ADZR zang bading =tei mawh a- le . light EE =ADZR 3SBJ- be What Daw Vang carried, her mother's flesh, was very light and dry. 22.1 Khwmh Bau =nah a- phua tyh =kha =nawh . Khwmh Bau =ERG 3SG.SBJ- carry time =that =LOC

When Khwmh Bau carried it, 22.2 a- rady =py =khaw a- zung ei . 3SG.POSS- drip =big =that 3SBJ- leak and it was dripping, and 22.3 a- thy lawngtei =khaw a- si awh aa le . 3SG.POSS- blood only =that 3SBJ- COP DM it was covered with her (Daw Vang's mother's) blood, it was said. 23.1 macamawh inn aa- phawh tyh =kha =nawh . and house 3PL.SBJ- arrive time =that =LOC And when they arrived at home, 23.2 aa- sau ei . 3PL.SBJ- boil and they boiled it and,

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23.3 a- nw a- su =khaw oh =bawm =lau =tei 3SG.POSS- mother 3SG.POSS- meat =that eat.II =also =NEG =DIM =kha =mawh a- karw =tei =khaw a- lawh lawh ei . =that =ADZR 3SG.POSS- bone =DIM =that 3SG.SBJ- take.II take.II and without also eating her mother's meat, she gathered up her mother's bones, and 23.4 vatahei =law =nawh a- phwm awh aa le . valley =LOC =LOC 3SG.SBJ- bury DM she buried them in the valley, it was said. 24.1 vatahei =law =ca =nawh twmkung a- kung sang =py valley =LOC =that =LOC twmkung tree 3SG.POSS- tree high =very phun =khaw a- khau ei . kind =that 3SBJ- grow.plant and

In the valley, a very tall tree grew, and 24.2 ama =kha =law =kha =mawh pwmteih , thirual a phunphun 3SG =that =LOC =that =POST bead bead various =khaw a- tai ei . =that 3SBJ- grow and on it, different kinds of beads were growing and 24.3 ama =kha =hai =khaw Daw Vang =ca =nah a- lawh ei . 3SG =that =PL =that Daw Vang =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- take.II and

Daw Vang took them and, 24.4 a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC when she put them on herself (as a necklace) 24.5 a- do =tawih =hinghan aa le . 3SBJ- beautiful =very =very DM it was extremely beautiful.

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And Khwmh Bau's mother said, "Let my child, Khwmh Bau, wear what my child Daw Vang is wearing." 26.1 macamawh Khwmh Bau =nah a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . and Khwmh Bau =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC

And when Khwmh Bau put it on, 26.2 maihei =awh pau a- leih . charcoal =to EXP 3SBJ- turn it turned into charcoal. 27.1 Daw Vang =nah a- tui tyh =kha =nawh . Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =that =LOC

When Daw Vang put it on, 27.2 a- do =tawih =kia =tung . 3SBJ- beautiful =very =again =NT.EX it was very pretty again in contrast. 28.1 macamawh Daw Vang =nah a- tui tyh =nawh a- and Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- put.on time =LOC 3SBJ- do =tawih tyh =nawh . beautiful =very time =LOC

And since it was very pretty when Daw Vang put it on, 28.2 " Khwmh Bau a- tui -sawh =u =h " =mawh aa- le Khwmh Bau 3SBJ- put.on -CAUS =2.PL =IMP =COMP 3PL.SBJ- say tyhawh . when when they said, "Let Khwmh Bau put it on," 28.3 Khwmh Bau a- cung paw =law =kha =nawh =cu maikahei Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- above top =LOC =that =LOC =TOP charcoal =awh pau a- leih =kia =liamaw . =to EXP 3SBJ- turn =again =ASP

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On Khwmh Bau, it turned into charcoal again and again. 29.1 Khwmh Bau a- pwm paw ei =khaw Daw Vang =kawi Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- body top LOC =that Daw Vang =towards =nawh aa- paleih tyh =kha =nawh . =LOC 3PL.SBJ- turn.over time =that =LOC

When they moved what was on Khwmh Bau's body to Daw Vang, 29.2 Daw Vang pwm paw =lawh =cu a- do =tawih =kha Daw Vang body top =LOC =TOP 3SBJ- beautiful =very =that =mawh a- so a- sam =khaw a- tui =thw =ADZR 3SG.POSS- clothes 3SG.POSS- hair.head =that 3SBJ- do =all le a si . end.of.story.DM

On Daw Vang, it was very beautiful. 30.1 ma =kha tyh =kha =nawh lau aa- tui tyh =nawh 3SG =that time =that =LOC dry.field 3PL.SBJ- do time =LOC .

And then, when they worked in their dry field, 30.2 Daw Vang a- lau ei =cu . Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- dry.field LOC =TOP the things from Daw Vang's dry field... 30.3 ani =cu a- hruam =tawih =mi , a- sym =tawih =mi 3S =TOP 3SBJ- willing =very =NMLZ 3SBJ- wise =very =NMLZ a- si tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- COP time =that =LOC

Since she was a very diligent and wise one, 30.4 a- lau =khaw a- thu . 3SG.POSS- dry.field =that 3SBJ- good

Her dry field (the crops) was good. 31 a- thawvawi =le a- thu . 3SG.POSS- corn =PL 3SBJ- good

Her corn was good. 32 a- pazy =le a- thu . 3SG.POSS- cucumber =PL 3SBJ- good

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Her cucumbers were good. 33.1 Khwmh Bau =cu =ca =mawh lau =kawi =ca =nawh Khwmh Bau =TOP =that =ADZR dry.field =towards =that =LOC a- sei ei . 3SBJ- go and

But Khwmh Bau, she would go to the dry field and 33.2 a- yh ei . 3SBJ- sleep.I and she would go to sleep and 33.3 makhamawh a- lau tho =mi =khaw thu khau =veh . in.that.way 3SG.POSS- dry.field weed =NMLZ =that good can =NEG

So, she couldn't take good care of her dry field. 34 a- thawvoi ro =le =khaw a- sau =py le =veh . 3SG.POSS- corn grill =PL =that 3SBJ- long =very happen =NEG

Her ears of corn were not very long. 35 a- pazy =le =khaw kalwh kalawh =khaw a- si .

3SG.POSS- cucumber =PL =that EECURVY =that 3SBJ- COP

Her cucumbers were curvy. 36 macamawh mangpy bawi le =mi , a- hlan =lawh ei bawi and Mangpy chief say =NMLZ 3SG.POSS- before =LOC LOC chief mi ngai pu , =hi =nah a- va- vai =hai . person rich male =this =ERG 3SG.SBJ- PST- visit =PL

And the one called 'mangpy chief', (who was) a rich chief in the past, visited them. 37.1 " hnapy ka- hawi =aw . wife 1SG.SBJ- marry =FUT

"I will take a wife. 37.2 ahu =i ka- hawi =aw ?" who =Q 1SG.SBJ- marry =FUT

Whom should I marry? 37.3 a- le ei . 3SG.SBJ- say and he said and

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38.1 hawhnw aa- si tyh =kha =nawh . maiden 3PL.SBJ- COP time =that =LOC

Since they were maidens, 38.2 a- va- vai =hai . 3SG.SBJ- PST- visit =PL he visited them. 39.1 a- va- vai tyh =hai =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- PST- visit time =PL =that =LOC

When he visited them, 39.2 Khwmh Bau =khaw aa- va- vai =taw . Khwmh Bau =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- visit =before

They visited Khwmh Bau first.

40.1 Khwmh Bau =ca =nah . Khwmh Bau =that =ERG

Khwmh Bau (said) 40.2 " a , kaw ka- pazy =le , kaw ka- INTJ.resignation 1SG 1SG.POSS- cucumber =PL 1SG 1SG.POSS- thahmai =le , ka- thawvawi ro =le =cu a- thu =tawih ". pumpkin =PL 1SG.POSS- corn grill =PL =TOP 3SBJ- good =very

"My cucumbers, my pumpkins, and my ears of corn are very good." 40.3 le =kha =mawh a- le ei . say =that =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- say and she said. 41 ama =ca =mawh a- va- lo =pih =mi =hai =le 3SG =that =POST 3SG.SBJ- PST- pick =BEN =NMLZ =PL =CONJ a- peih =mi =hai =khaw akalwh akalawh a- thu =lau

3SG.SBJ- give.II =NMLZ =PL =that EECURVY 3SBJ- good =NEG =mi lawngtei =khaw a- si . =NMLZ only =that 3SBJ- COP

But the ones she picked up for them and gave to them were all curvy, not good ones. 42 ama =ca =mawh Daw Vang =khaw aa- va- vai =kia . 3SG =that =POST Daw Vang =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- visit =again

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And they visited Daw Vang too. 43.1 Daw Vang =nah a- le =mi =cu . Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- say =NMLZ =TOP

What Daw Vang said (to him) (was) 43.2 " a , naamu mangpy bawi =le =hi =cu kamu =nah INTJ.resignation 2PL Mangpy chief =PL =this =TOP 1SG =ERG ka- ca- dang khau =hu =mi =hai , ka- ca- dang 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- give.food can =IRR =NMLZ =PL 1SG.SBJ- 2OBJ- give.food ngam =hu =mi =hai ngai =veh -ni . dare =IRR =NMLZ =PL own.I =NEG -1SG.SBJ

"Oh, I don't have any food that I can or would dare to give to you (and your companions), Mangpy Chief. 43.3 sihmawsiselawh zangnaihnawh tei mawh ka- lau tho nevertheless please 1SG.POSS- dry.field weed voi =tei =hi naa- pa- oh =pih =rawh kau =aw ". fully.grown =DIM =this 2PL.SBJ- 1SG.OBJ- eat.II =BEN =also EMPH =FUT

"Nevertheless, please partake of my crops, at least." 43.4 makhamawh a- le ei . in.that.way 3SG.SBJ- say and she said (to him) like that and 44.1 thawvoi =le pazy =le =khaw a- suipy corn =CONJ cucumber =PL =that 3SG.SBJ- bring tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

When she brought the corn and cucumbers, 44.2 a- hei =pypy , a- sau =pypy aa- le . 3SBJ- big =really 3SBJ- long =really 3PL.SBJ- be they were really big and long. 45.1 macamawh a- va- ro =pih ei . and 3SG.SBJ- PST- grill =BEN and

And she grilled them (for them) and 45.2 a- va- tui =pih ei . 3SG.SBJ- PST- do =BEN and

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she prepared them (for them) and 45.3 a- va- dang =hai . 3SG.SBJ- PST- give.food =PL served them. 46.1 a- va- dang tyh =hai =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- PST- give.food time =PL =that =LOC

When she served them 46.2 " a , ama =hi hnapy rui a- si . INTJ.satisfaction 3SG =this wife potential 3SBJ- COP

"Aha! This one is the potential wife. 46.3 Daw Vang =hi kaa- hawi =aw . Daw Vang =this 1PL.SBJ- marry =FUT

We will take Daw Vang (to give in marriage to the Mangpy chief). 46.4 a- do =zawng a- do . 3SBJ- beautiful =also 3SBJ- beautiful

Not only is she beautiful, 46.5 a- sym =zawng a- sym . 3SBJ- wise =also 3SBJ- wise she is also wise, 46.6 a- tuan =zawng a- tuan ." 3SBJ- hardworking =also 3SG.SBJ- hardworking and hardworking." 46.7 le =kha =mawh aa- le ei . say =that =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- say and they said and 46.8 Daw Vang hawi =khaw aa- timh =hai . Daw Vang marry =that 3PL.SBJ- intend =PL they intended to take Daw Vang. 47.1 macamawh Daw Vang aa- vai tyh =kha =nawh aa- le and Daw Vang 3PL.SBJ- visit time =that =LOC 3PL.SBJ- say =mi =cu . =NMLZ =TOP

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And what they told Daw Vang when they visited her (was) 47.2 " khawh , na- nw =le na- pu =nah namu CALL.FOR.ATTN 2SG.POSS- mother =CONJ 2SG.POSS- father =ERG 2SG kaa- ca- hawi dw tyh =ha =nawh . 1PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- marry like time =this =LOC

"Look, your mom and dad, when we want to marry you, 47.3 namu =hi ma- pei dw =aw =veh =hai =awh . 2SG =this 1PL.OBJ- give.I like =FUT =NEG =PL =SUBD will not want to give you to us 47.4 " Khwmh Bau kaa- va- haw ." Khwmh Bau 1PL.SBJ- DIR- ask.II

'We come to ask for Khwmh Bau' 47.5 =mawh kaa- le =hu ei . =POST 1PL.SBJ- say =IRR and we will say (to them) and 47.6 macamawh " ka- nautei ka- hawithu =aw . and 1SG.POSS- sibling.younger 1SG.SBJ- see.off =FUT then, (you'll say) 'I will send my sister off' 47.7 " =mawh na- va- le =hu ei . =COMP 2SG.SBJ- DIR- say =IRR and you'll say, and 47.8 na- va- hawithu tyh =kha =nawh . 2SG.SBJ- DIR- see.off time =that =LOC when you see her off 47.9 kaa- ca- theng =lai =hai ei . 1PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- exchange =IRR =PL and we will switch you and 47.10 namu =hi kaa- ca- hawi =aw ." 2SG =this 1PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- marry =FUT we will marry you." 47.11 le =kha =mawh aa- le ei . say =that =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- say and

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they said to her and 48 Khwmh Bau =cu aa- va- haw . Khwmh Bau =TOP 3PL.SBJ- PST- ask.II

They asked the hand of Khwmh Bau. 49.1 Khwmh Bau nw Khwmh Bau pu =cu aa- lawm =tawih Khwmh Bau mother Khwmh Bau father =that 3PL.SBJ- happy =very =hai ei . =PL and

Khwmh Bau's mother and father were very happy, and 49.2 ma =ca =mawh Daw Vang a- so a- vu =le 3SG =that =POST Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- stuff 3SG.POSS- stuff =PL a- thu =am =mi thu =am =mi =kha =mawh Khwmh Bau 3SBJ- good =more =NMLZ good =more =NMLZ =that =POST Khwmh Bau =khaw aa- tui . =that 3PL.SBJ- do

So, they dressed her with Daw Vang's clothes, which were much nicer. 50 lau =kawi aa- sei tyh =kha =nawh . dry.field =towards 3PL.SBJ- go time =that =LOC

When they went to the dry field 51.1 ama =kha tyh =kha =nawh Mang bawi pu =ca =nah 3SG =that time =that =LOC Mangpy chief male =that =ERG ka- hawi =hai =mawh a- sei =hno 1SG.SBJ- marry =PL.FUT =COMP 3SG.SBJ- go =MAL tyh =hai =ca =nawh . time =PL =that =LOC

And, when the Mang chief went to (them) (in order) to marry them, 51.2 Khwmh Bau =cu a- haw kau nuteikhamawh . Khwmh Bau =TOP 3SG.SBJ- ask.II EMPH although

Although he asked for Khwmh Bau, 51.3 Daw Vang =kha =nah a- va- hawithu ei . Daw Vang =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- PST- see.off and

Daw Vang went with her to see her off and

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51.4 macamawh lam kaw =lawh =kha =nawh Khwmh Bau =khaw and road between =LOC =that =LOC Khwmh Bau =that a- pasai =law =kha =nawh ruicang =khaw aa- phua 3SG.POSS- basket =LOC =that =LOC bamboo.stem =that 3PL.SBJ- carry -sawh ei . -CAUS and and in the middle of the road, they made Khwmh Bau carry bamboo stems with her basket and, 51.5 aa- leih -sawh =kia =hai ei . 3PL.SBJ- return -CAUS =again =PL and they made her go back and 51.6 Daw Vang =khaw aa- sei =py awh aa le . Daw Vang =that 3PL.SBJ- go =COM DM they took Daw Vang with them. 52.1 ma =kha tyh =kha =nawh Khwmh Bau a- nwpu 3SG =that time =that =LOC Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- parent =khaw aa- thin aa- haw =tawih ei . =that 3PL.POSS- liver 3PL.SBJ- NONCE =very and

And so, Khwmh Bau's parents were really angry and

52.2 " Daw Vang =hi kaa- au =hu ei . Daw Vang =this 1PL.SBJ- call.II =IRR and

"We will call for Daw Vang (to return) and 52.3 kaa- thu =aw ." 1PL.SBJ- kill =FUT we will kill her." 52.4 =lemawh aa- timh =hai . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- intend =PL they planned. 53.1 macamawh Daw Vang =cu " na- pu a- nu . and Daw Vang =TOP 2SG.POSS- father 3SBJ- sick

And to Daw Vang, "Your father is sick.

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53.2 ma- va- tawng =lawh ." 1PL.OBJ- DIR- visit =IMP.POL

Come visit us." 53.3 =lemawh bi aa- cu . =COMP word 3PL.SBJ- leave.message they sent word 54 dawbei khamh =kui =kha =mawh ty su =khaw aa- toh copper pot span =nine =that =with water hot =that 3PL.SBJ- boil -sawh =hai . -CAUS =PL

They brought the hot water to a boil in a huge, nine-span copper pot. 55.1 macamawh Khwmh Bau nw =kha =nah a- hawngsau and Khwmh Bau mother =that =ERG 3SG.POSS- porcupine spine =tei =khaw inn thui =kawi =kha =nawh a- thawh =thang =DIM =that house under =towards =that =LOC 3SG.SBJ- put.in =out ei . and and, Khwmh Bau's mother dropped her porcupine spine under the house, and

55.2 Daw Vang =khaw a- khy -sawh . Daw Vang =that 3SG.SBJ- pick up -CAUS She made Daw Vang go retrieve it. 56.1 inn tang =kawi =kha =mawh Daw Vang =nah a- khy house under =towards =that =POST Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- pick up =lawh =kha =nawh . =LOC =that =LOC

While Daw Vang was retrieving it from under the house, 56.2 inn awng =law =kha =mawh Khwmh Bau nw =ca =nah house hole =LOC =that =POST Khwmh Bau mother =that =ERG ty su =cu a- ten =hno ei . water hot =TOP 3SG.SBJ- pour.II =ALT and from a hole in the floor of the house, Khwmh Bau's mother poured the hot water on her, and

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56.3 macamawh Daw Vang =cu pau thy awh aa le . and Daw Vang =TOP EXP die.I DM

And so, Daw Vang died. 57.1 pau a- thy ei . EXP 3SBJ- die.I and

She died, and 57.2 a- phwm =hmaw phwm =lau =mawh , aa- vaw =thang 3SBJ- bury =even bury =NEG =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- throw.at =out ei . and without even burying her, they threw her away, and 57.3 aa- vaw =thang =nawh =law =kha =nawh . 3PL.SBJ- throw.at =out =NMLZ =LOC =that =LOC where they threw her away, 57.4 zwhpy =kha =nah a- hwmh ei . doe =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- see.II and a doe saw her and 57.5 makhamawh zwhpy =ca =nah a- cam ei . in.that.way doe =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- cast.spell and the doe cast a spell on her, and 57.6 manung =kha =nawh a- cang =kia awh aa le . human =that =to 3SBJ- become =again DM she became a human being again. 58.1 macamawh zwhpy =ca =nah a tatei =le =khaw a- and doe =that =ERG PTCL baby.animal =PL =that 3SG.SBJ- cawng -sawh =hai ei . take.care.of.sb -CAUS =PL and

And the doe made her take care of her fawns, and 58.2 ama =kha =mawh a- wm awh aa le . 3SG =that =POST 3SBJ- live DM

In that way, she lived.

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59.1 ama =khaw Daw Vang a- thuam =hawi =awh Khwmh Bau 3SG =that Daw Vang 3SG.POSS- uniform =with =LOC Khwmh Bau =khaw a- thuam theng =hai =awh . =that 3SG.POSS- uniform exchange =PL =and

As for Khwmh Bau, they switched her dress with Daw Vang's dress. 59.2 macamawh mangpy bawi pu zung =kawi =kha =nawh and Mangpy chief male middle =towards =that =LOC a- nw =le pu =le =nah aa- sei -sawh 3SG.POSS- mother =CONJ father =PL =ERG 3PL.SBJ- go -CAUS tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC

And, when her mother and father made her go to the Mangpy chief, 59.3 mangpy bawi pu =kha =nah a- hni kau . Mangpy chief father =that =ERG 3SG.SBJ- know.II EMPH the Mangpy chief knew (that it was actually Khwmh Bau and not Daw Vang). 60.1 a- hni kau =nuteimawh . 3SG.SBJ- know.II EMPH =although

Even though he knew, 60.2 balai =tei =kha =mawh a- wm ei . quiet =DIM =that =POST 3SBJ- stay and he kept quiet. 60.3 thawngpang a- hlaih tyh =kha =nawh . news 3SG.SBJ- investigate time =that =LOC

When he investigated about it, 60.4 Daw Vang a- wm =nawh =khaw a- hni =kia . Daw Vang 3SG.SBJ- exist =NMLZ =that 3SG.SBJ- know.II =again he found out where Daw Vang was. 61.1 macamawh Daw Vang =cu aa- au =kia ei . and Daw Vang =TOP 3PL.SBJ- call.II =again and

And they called Daw Vang again, and 61.2 aa- au =kia tyh =kha =nawh . 3PL.SBJ- call.II =again time =that =LOC

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when they called her again, 61.3 sazwh zwhpy =kha =nah va- siang =ty =veh . deer doe =that =ERG PST- allow.I =any.more =NEG the doe no longer wanted to let her go. 62.1 si =hmaw si =lawh " man naa- pa- man =aw " COP =even COP =LOC brideprice 2PL.SBJ- 1SG.OBJ- pay =FUT =mawh a- le =hai ei . =COMP 3SG.SBJ- say =PL and

However, she said to them, "You're going to pay me the brideprice," and 62.2 man a- hau =mi =hai =cu . brideprice 3SG.SBJ- say =NMLZ =PL =TOP

The price that she said to them (was) 62.3 hnamh =khaw hnamh azawihpy =le tuangtuan azawihpy =khaw snot =that snot a.lot.of =CONJ termite a.lot.of =that a- hau =hai awh aa le . 3SG.SBJ- say =PL DM she asked them for a bunch of snot and termites. 63.1 macamawh tuangtuan =cu aa- khawm . and termite =TOP 3PL.SBJ- collect

And they (the Mangpy chief and his people) collected the termites, 63.2 hnamh =cu aa- khawm ei . snot =TOP 3PL.SBJ- collect and they collected snot, and 63.3 ama =ca aa- man ei . 3SG =that 3PL.SBJ- pay and they paid that to her and 63.4 aa- dawn khau awh aa le . 3PL.SBJ- pick.up can DM they were able to take her back home. 64.1 macamawh Daw Vang =cu aa- sui py tyh =kha =nawh . and Daw Vang =TOP 3PL.SBJ- bring time =that =LOC So, when they brought Daw Vang back,

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64.2 Khwmh Bau =cy =ca =mawh aa- wm =khemh =caw =hai Khwmh Bau =with =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- exist =together =PFV =PL she stayed together with Khwmh Bau 65.1 mangpy bawi pu =kha =nah . Mangpy chief male =that =ERG

The Mangpy chief, 65.2 " khawh , asicawmacu naamu =le naamu =hi naa- tw CALL.FOR.ATTN if so 2PL =PL 2PL =this 2PL.SBJ- hit.I =hu ei . =FUT and

"Alright, then, you (two) are going to fight each other, and 65.3 a- tai =mi =nah kamu =hi naa- pa- lawh =aw " 3SBJ- win.I =NMLZ =ERG 1SG =this 2PL.SBJ- 1SG.OBJ- take.II =FUT

The winner will take me." 65.4 le =kha =mawh a- le =hai . say =that =ADZR 3SG.SBJ- say =PL he said to them 66.1 macamawh vai nam =khaw taih taih taih =hai =awh and Burmese knife =that sharpen sharpen sharpen =PL =and

They (the Mangpy chief and his people) sharpened the long knife, and 66.2 Daw Vang =khaw aa- peih ei . Daw Vang =that 3PL.SBJ- give.II and they gave it to Daw Vang, and 66.3 Khwmh Bau =khaw nam a- twh =mi =py =khaw aa- Khwmh Bau =that knife 3SBJ- blunt =NMLZ =INT =that 3PL.SBJ- peih awh aa le . give.II DM they gave Khwmh Bau a really blunt knife, 67.1 macamawh " Khwmh Bau naw tw =tawh !" and Khwmh Bau 2SG hit.I =first

And, "Khwmh Bau, you hit her first,"

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67.2 aa- le ei . 3PL.SBJ- say and they said to her, and 67.3 a- twh tyh =kha =nawh . 3SG.SBJ- hit.II time =that =LOC when she hit her, 67.4 lwhlawh =hmaw tai =veh awh aa le . PTCL =even grab.I =NEG DM it (the knife) didn't grab hold at all. 68.1 " Daw Vang khawh tw =bawm !" Daw Vang CALL.FOR.ATTN hit.I =also

"Hey Daw Vang, hit her back!" 68.2 aa- le ei . 3PL.SBJ- say and they said to her, and 68.3 Daw Vang =nah a- twh tyh =kha =nawh . Daw Vang =ERG 3SG.SBJ- hit.II time =that =LOC when Daw Vang hit her, 68.4 a- liang pai =khaih =khaw pau a- twh sym ei . 3SG.POSS- shoulder half =one =that EXP 3SG.SBJ- hit.II PFV and she chopped off one of her shoulders, and 68.5 macamawh a- thy ei . and 3SBJ- die.I and

And she (Khwmh Bau) died, and 68.6 can can can =hai =awh . cut cut cut =PL =and they chopped her (into pieces), and 68.7 Khwmh Bau =khaw lungreng =lawh aa- phan awh aa le . Khwmh Bau =that pot =LOC 3PL.SBJ- put DM they put Khwmh Bau's remains into a clay pot. 69 macamawh aa- phan ei . and 3PL.SBJ- put and

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So, they put her inside (the clay pot), and 70 mangpy bawi pu =le =ca =nah Khwmh Bau nw =le pu Mangpy chief male =PL =that =ERG Khwmh Bau mother =CONJ father =khaw aa- au =hai . =that 3PL.SBJ- call.II =PL

The Mangpy chief and those with him called for Khwmh Bau's mother and father. 71.1 " man kaa- ca- man =hai , ma- va- tawng brideprice 1PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- pay =PL.FUT 1PL.OBJ- DIR- visit =u =h !" =2.PL =IMP

"We are going to give you the brideprice, come visit us," 71.2 =lemawh Khwmh Bau a- nw =le pu =khaw aa- =COMP Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- mother =CONJ father =that 3PL.SBJ- au =hai ei . call.II =PL and

"..." they called out to Khwmh Bau's mother and father, 71.3 aa- va- sei =hai . 3PL.SBJ- PST- go =PL so they came 72.1 macamawh mangpy bawi pu =cu a- ngai =tawih and Mangpy chief male =TOP 3SG.SBJ- rich =very tyh =kha =nawh . time =that =LOC And since the Mangpy chief was very rich, 72.2 " zapu man =i a- ma- man =aw ? what price =Q 3SG.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- pay =FUT "What will he give us?" 72.3 chy =le daw =cy =mawh kaani kaa- =kia kau =aw " bead =CONJ copper =with =with 1PL 1PL.SBJ- =again EMPH =FUT

"We might be going back with (a bunch of ) beads and copper (things).

72.4 =lehupuphunkhamawh aa- ruihsan =hai . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- hope =PL thus they were hoping.

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73.1 asinumawh , lungreng =khaw aa- peih =hai ei . but pot =that 3PL.SBJ- give.II =PL and

However, they handed them a pot and 73.2 " ma =tei =hi kaa- ca- man =hai . 3SG =DIM =this 1PL.SBJ- 2OBJ- pay =PL

"We offer you this as a bride price. 73.3 khui naa- phawh tyhawh . village 2PL.SBJ- arrive when

When you arrive at the village, 73.4 khui nw khui pu =zawng naa- va- peih =bawm =lai =hai ." villagers =also 2PL.SBJ- DIR- give.II =also =IRR =PL

You will share it with the villagers also." 73.5 =lemawh aa- va- le . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- say they said. 74.1 lungreng =khaw aa- va- phua ei . pot =that 3PL.SBJ- PST- carry and

They (KB's parents) took the pot and 74.2 " khui naa- va- phawh khau lawng =mawh naa- va- hawn village 2PL.SBJ- DIR- arrive then only =ADZR 2PL.SBJ- DIR- open.II =lai ." =IRR

"You will only open it up after you get to the village." 74.3 =lemawh aa- le tyh =kha =nawh . =COMP 3PL.SBJ- say time =that =LOC since they (the Mangpy chief and his entourage) had said "...". 74.4 hawn =lau =tei =kha =mawh phua =hai =awh . open.II =NEG =DIM =that =POST carry =PL =and not opening it up, they carried it, and 74.5 khui sui =lai =khi ngai tai =veh =hai . village arrive.I =IRR =that wait V.PTCL =NEG =PL

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they couldn't wait to get to the village. 75.1 macamawh aa- va- phawh tyh =kha =nawh . and 3PL.SBJ- PST- arrive time =that =LOC

And, when they arrived 75.2 innpu =le khui mi =khaw va- au =hai =awh . neighbour =CONJ village person =that PST- call.II =PL =and they gathered their neighbours and other villagers, and 75.3 " mangpy bawi pu =nah so a- ma- man ." Mangpy chief male =ERG stuff 3SG.SBJ- 1PL.OBJ- pay

"The Mangpy chief gave us some stuff as a brideprice." 75.4 le =ca =mawh aa- va- le . say =that =POST 3PL.SBJ- PST- say they said. 76.1 aa- va- lawm =tawih =hai ei . 3PL.SBJ- PST- happy =very =PL and

So, they were all very excited and 76.2 aa- va- kau =cu " Ai ze , Khwmh Bau a- kyh =paw 3PL.SBJ- PST- open.II =when ah! Khwmh Bau 3SG.POSS- hand =PTCL a- si ka- le e ". 3SBJ- COP 1SG.SBJ- say certainty.MOD

When they opened it, "Ah!? This is Khwmh Bau's hand! 76.3 aa- va- le . 3PL.SBJ- PST- say they said 77 aa- va- do =thang . 3PL.SBJ- PST- pull =out

They pulled it out. 78.1 pa =khaih =nah aa- va- do =thang ei . CLF.person =one =ERG 3PL.SBJ- PST- pull =out and

Someone pulled out another piece, and 78.2 " Khwmh Bau lw =paw a- si ka- le e ." Khwmh Bau head =PTCL 3SBJ- COP 1SG.SBJ- say certainty.MOD

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"This is Khwmh Bau's head," 78.3 aa- va- le . 3PL.SBJ- PST- say they said 79.1 makhaw aa- hwmh tyh =kha =nawh . that 3PL.SBJ- see.II time =that =LOC

When they saw that, 79.2 a- nw =le pu =khaw aa- thin aa- haw 3SG.POSS- mother =CONJ father =that 3PL.POSS- liver 3PL.SBJ- NONCE =tawih ei . =very and

Her (Khwmh Bau) mother and father were very angry, and 79.3 kaa- twh =hai =lemawh aa- va- tho =hai . 1PL.SBJ- fight.II =PL.FUT =COMP 3PL.SBJ- PST- get.up =PL they set off to fight with them

80 hlaihlawh =khaw a- deih khih =vau =kha =mawh mangpy ladder =that 3SBJ- break =INF =that =POST Mangpy bawi pu =le =kha =nah aa- va- do ei . chief male =PL =that =ERG 3PL.SBJ- PST- extend and

They (the Mangpy chief and friends) set up a ladder so that it would break (by itself) (when they stepped on it), and 81.1 makhaw hlaihlawh aa- kai =lawh =kha =nawh . that ladder 3PL.SBJ- climb =LOC =that =LOC

When they stepped on the ladder, 81.2 hlaihlawh =nah a- ki =py =hai ei . ladder =ERG 3SG.SBJ- break =ACCOM =PL and the ladder collapsed under their weight, and 81.3 aa- tu =thang =hai awh aa le . 3PL.SBJ- fall =out =PL DM they fell down.

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82.1 malawkhanawh mangpy bawi pu =le =kha =nah at.that.time Mangpy chief male =PL =that =ERG zuan =hno =hai =awh . jump.over =ALT =PL =and

When that happened, Mangpy chief and his men jumped over them, and 82.2 aa- twh =thaih =ben =hai ei . 3PL.SBJ- hit.II =RES =add =PL and killed them. 83 ama =ca =mawh Daw Vang =le mangpy bawi pu =cu 3SG =that =ADZR Daw Vang =CONJ Mangpy chief male =TOP nuam =tei mawh aa- wm =khemh =hai awh le a si . enjoy =ADZR 3PL.SBJ- live =together =PL end.of.story.DM

That way, Daw Vang and Mangpy bawipu lived together happily forever.

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RESUME

Name: Jacob Daniel Watson

Date of Birth: 13 November 1989

Place of Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

Institutions Attended: 2019, Master of Arts in Linguistics, Payap University (Chiang Mai, Thailand)

2012, Bachelor of Arts in French and Spanish, Anderson University (Anderson, Indiana, U.S.A.)

2008, Cincinnati Christian High School (Fairfield, Ohio, U.S.A.)

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