DOCSLIB.ORG

Mathias Jenny: the Verb System of Mon

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Mathias Jenny: the Verb System of Mon Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2005 The verb system of Mon Jenny, Mathias Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-110202 Dissertation Originally published at: Jenny, Mathias. The verb system of Mon. 2005, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. Mathias Jenny: The Verb System of Mon Contents Preface v Abbreviations viii 1. Introduction 1 1.1 The Mon people and language 1 1.2 Sources and methodology 8 1.3 Sentence structure 13 1.4 Sentence types 15 1.4.1 Interrogative sentences 15 1.4.2 Imperative sentences 18 1.4.3 Conditional clauses 20 1.5 Phonology of Mon 23 1.5.1 Historical overview 23 1.5.2 From Middle Mon to Modern Mon 26 1.5.3 Modern dialects 30 1.5.4 The phonology of SM 33 1.5.5 Phonology and the writing system 37 2. Verbs in Mon 42 2.1 What are verbs? 42 2.2 The predicate in Mon 43 2.2.1 Previous studies of the verb in Mon 44 2.2.2 Verbs as word class in Mon 47 2.2.3 Nominal predicates and topicalised verbs 49 2.3 Negation 51 2.3.1 Negated statements and questions 51 2.3.2 Prohibitive 58 2.3.3 Summary 59 2.4 Verbal morphology 60 2.4.1 Historical development 60 2.4.2 Modern Mon 65 2.4.3 Summary 67 2.5 Verb classes and types of verbs 67 2.5.1 Transitive and intransitive verbs 68 2.5.2 Aktionsarten 71 2.5.3 Resultative verb compounds (RVC) 75 2.5.4 Existential verbs (Copulas) 77 2.5.4.1 ‹dah› th ‘be something’ 78 2.5.4.2 ‹måï› mŋ ‘be at, stay’ 80 2.5.4.3 ‹nwaÿ› nùm ‘be at, exist, have’ 82 2.5.4.4 ‹(hwa’) seï› (hùʔ) siəŋ ‘(not to) be so’ 86 i Mathias Jenny: The Verb System of Mon 2.5.5 Directionals 88 2.6 Complements of verbs 89 2.6.1 Direct objects 90 2.6.2 Oblique objects 91 2.6.3 Complement clauses 95 3. The syntax of verbs 98 3.1 Serial verb constructions 98 3.1.1 Historical development 100 3.1.2 Serial verbs in modern Mon 102 3.2 Voice 106 3.3 Attributive and relative 109 4. Causatives 113 4.1 Introduction 113 4.2 Historical overview 114 4.2.1 Verbs with single initial (non labial) 115 4.2.2 Verbs with labial initial 117 4.2.3 Verbs with initial consonant cluster 118 4.2.4 Irregular causatives 119 4.2.5 Causatives of directionals 120 4.2.6 Affix syncretism in MM 120 4.3 The situation in modern Mon 121 4.3.1 Productivity of the p-/pə- prefix 121 4.3.2 The hə- and pə- prefixes 122 4.3.3 The vocalic infix 124 4.3.4 The p- prefix in clusters 125 4.3.5 Irregular developments 126 4.3.6 The periphrastic construction 127 4.3.7 Verbs without morphological causative 129 4.3.8 Suppletive stems 130 4.4 Causatives with directionals 131 4.5 Semantics of causative derivates 132 4.6 Orthography of causatives 134 4.7 Summary of causatives 135 5. The focal and assertive particles, ‹ra› raʔ and ‹roï› noŋ 137 5.1 Description 137 5.2 Historical development 139 5.3 Modern Mon 142 5.3.1 The focal particle ‹ra› raʔ 142 5.3.2 The assertive particle ‹roï› noŋ 147 5.4 Conclusion 151 6. TAM markers and other verbal operators 152 6.1 Iterative and continuous events 154 ii Mathias Jenny: The Verb System of Mon 6.2 Conative reading 156 6.3 Predicate operators 157 6.3.1 ‹måï› mŋ and ‹tau› tao ‘STAY, STAND’ 158 6.3.2 ‹’ā› ʔa and ‹õā› na ‘GO, CAUS:GO’ 167 6.3.3 ‹kluï› klŋ and ‹naï› nŋ ‘COME, CAUS:COME’ 173 6.3.4 ‹tuin› tn and ‹ptuin› pətn ‘MOVE UP, CAUS:UP’ 179 6.3.5 ‹ceh› ceh and ‹phyeĥ› phyeh ‘MOVE DOWN, CAUS:DOWN’ 183 6.3.6 Other directionals 187 6.3.7 ‹law› l ‘KEEP’ 191 6.3.8 ‹tho’› thʔ ‘THROW’ 196 6.3.9 ‹ca› iəʔ ‘EAT’ 199 6.3.10 ‹ket› ket ‘TAKE’ 204 6.3.11 ‹kuiw› k ‘GIVE’ 207 6.3.12 ‹gwa’› kʔ ‘GET’ 215 6.3.13 ‹lep› lèp and ‹mān› màn ‘ABLE’ and ‘WIN’ 228 6.3.14 ‹dah› th ‘HIT’ 231 6.3.15 ‹mik, mik-gwa’› mòc, məkʔ ‘WANT TO’ 238 6.3.16 ‹tuy› toə ‘FINISH’ 241 6.3.17 ‹ira, yya› yaʔ ‘NEW SITUATION’ 249 6.3.18 ‹keï, klā, õiÿ, phuih› kiəŋ, kla, nm, phh ‘EXPER, BEFORE, PERS’ 252 6.4 Summary of verbal and clausal operators 257 Appendices 261 A. Maps of Mon speaking areas 262 B. Phonology tables of Mon dialects 264 C. Excerpt from Saddā Man ‘Mon Grammar’ 272 D. Sample Texts 1. Myazedi Imscription (OM) 277 2. Shwedagon Inscription (MM) 279 3. The story of King Dhammacetī (LM) 281 4. Experiences of a temple boy (SM) 283 E. Table of operators and SFPs 286 F. Text Sources 287 G. References 290 iii Mathias Jenny: The Verb System of Mon Preface This study of the verb system of Mon would not have been possible without the assistance of a number of people in Switzerland, Thailand and Burma. Prof. Karen H. Ebert, head of the Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft at Zurich University guided me through my studies and gave me the support I needed, also during long stays in Thailand. Prof. G. Diffloth, Dr. E. Guillon and Dr. Nai Pan Hla shared their profound knowledge of the Mon language and culture with me in personal communications on different occasions. Prof. Sujaritlak and Dr. Praphasi of the Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development at Mahidol University in Bangkok were most helpful, especially in discussing parts of the present study with me and assisting with the publication of parts of my research results in Mon-Khmer Studies (Vol. 33). I am most indebted to the many Mon people in Thailand and especially in Burma who sat through recording sessions and had to endure my (to them) nonsensical questions about their language. Abbots and temple boys, housewives and peasants, market sellers and story writers, pop stars and traditional musicians and dancers, drivers and hotel employees, teachers, journalists and politicians, scholars and illiterate workers, and the people just passing by and stopping for a chat, they all contributed to the completion of this study, more often than not unknowingly, sharing their culture and language with an outsider. It is customary (and sensible) not to mention by name people in Burma itself who assist foreign researchers working on Burmese minority issues, however apolitical they may be. I therefore refrain from listing the names of the Mon in Burma, who not only invited me to their homes but also accompanied me through Monland and introduced me to places and people that I would not have had a chance to find on my own. It is experiences like listening to old monks telling the long forgotten local history, sitting in wooden houses eating freshly caught fried rats, watching whole villages participating in religious ceremonies at a local temple, being invited to an ordination party after a nightlong bus ride through southern Burma, spending nights in monasteries sleeping on the floor among monks who have to get up at five in the morning, and being given the chance to teach village children and at the same time learn a lot from them that keep the interest in a culture and its language alive. It is experiences like these that let one forget the heavy monsoon rains that pour down on Monland six months a year, the very moody electricity supply (if there is any at all), the less than perfect communication and transport facilities within Burma, as well as the political tension that surrounds all Burmese ethnicities, including the Burman themselves. v Mathias Jenny: The Verb System of Mon In Wangka (Sangkhlaburi, Thailand), where most of the research was done, the situation is much more comfortable, although the village has its own share of tension (and heavy monsoon rains), being basically a huge Mon refugee camp in Thailand, though a very open one. Here I owe special thanks to Mr. Ok Pung, who in the first phase of my Mon studies was an invaluable help in almost all respects. He created many sets of Mon fonts for Windows computers and published a number of books, mostly editions of old manuscripts. His daughters Suda and Sajiang spent many nights transcribing and typing my audio recordings. Without their help I would not have been able to make the extensive use of recorded spoken language material that is necessary for a study of this kind. Mr. Ok Pung’s wife Mi Nge proved to be an inexhaustible source of a variety of delicious Mon food, which made working through the nights much more pleasant than it would otherwise have been. Other people worthy mentioning in Wangka are Mr. and Mrs. Phophueak-Sirihong of Wangka Cable TV, who possess an extensive video collection of documentaries and music, and an always open house. Mr. Win Myint was my first Mon teacher, patiently repeating his phrases and trying to understand my first steps in a language that seemed impossible to master.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Sign Language Typology Series
    SIGN LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY SERIES The Sign Language Typology Series is dedicated to the comparative study of sign languages around the world. Individual or collective works that systematically explore typological variation across sign languages are the focus of this series, with particular emphasis on undocumented, underdescribed and endangered sign languages. The scope of the series primarily includes cross-linguistic studies of grammatical domains across a larger or smaller sample of sign languages, but also encompasses the study of individual sign languages from a typological perspective and comparison between signed and spoken languages in terms of language modality, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to sign language typology. Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Languages Edited by Ulrike Zeshan Sign Language Typology Series No. 1 / Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages / Ulrike Zeshan (ed.) / Nijmegen: Ishara Press 2006. ISBN-10: 90-8656-001-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-8656-001-1 © Ishara Press Stichting DEF Wundtlaan 1 6525XD Nijmegen The Netherlands Fax: +31-24-3521213 email: [email protected] http://ishara.def-intl.org Cover design: Sibaji Panda Printed in the Netherlands First published 2006 Catalogue copy of this book available at Depot van Nederlandse Publicaties, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (www.kb.nl/depot) To the deaf pioneers in developing countries who have inspired all my work Contents Preface........................................................................................................10
    [Show full text]
  • Perfect-Traj.Pdf
    Aspect shifts in Indo-Aryan and trajectories of semantic change1 Cleo Condoravdi and Ashwini Deo Abstract: The grammaticalization literature notes the cross-linguistic robustness of a diachronic pat- tern involving the aspectual categories resultative, perfect, and perfective. Resultative aspect markers often develop into perfect markers, which then end up as perfect plus perfective markers. We intro- duce supporting data from the history of Old and Middle Indo-Aryan languages, whose instantiation of this pattern has not been previously noted. We provide a semantic analysis of the resultative, the perfect, and the aspectual category that combines perfect and perfective. Our analysis reveals the change to be a two-step generalization (semantic weakening) from the original resultative meaning. 1 Introduction The emergence of new functional expressions and the changes in their distribution and interpretation over time have been shown to be systematic across languages, as well as across a variety of semantic domains. These observations have led scholars to construe such changes in terms of “clines”, or predetermined trajectories, along which expressions move in time. Specifically, the typological literature, based on large-scale grammaticaliza- tion studies, has discovered several such trajectorial shifts in the domain of tense, aspect, and modality. Three properties characterize such shifts: (a) the categories involved are sta- ble across cross-linguistic instantiations; (b) the paths of change are unidirectional; (c) the shifts are uniformly generalizing (Heine, Claudi, and H¨unnemeyer 1991; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994; Haspelmath 1999; Dahl 2000; Traugott and Dasher 2002; Hopper and Traugott 2003; Kiparsky 2012). A well-known trajectory is the one in (1).
    [Show full text]
  • The Aorist in Modern Armenian: Core Value and Contextual Meanings Anaid Donabedian-Demopoulos
    The aorist in Modern Armenian: core value and contextual meanings Anaid Donabedian-Demopoulos To cite this version: Anaid Donabedian-Demopoulos. The aorist in Modern Armenian: core value and contextual mean- ings. Zlatka Guentcheva. Aspectuality and Temporality. Descriptive and theoretical issues, John Benjamins, pp.375 - 412, 2016, 9789027267610. 10.1075/slcs.172.12don. halshs-01424956 HAL Id: halshs-01424956 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01424956 Submitted on 6 Jan 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. The Aorist in Modern Armenian: core value and contextual meanings, in Guentchéva, Zlatka (ed.), Aspectuality and Temporality. Descriptive and theoretical issues, John Benjamins, 2016, p. 375-411 (the published paper miss examples written in Armenian) The aorist in Modern Armenian: core values and contextual meanings Anaïd Donabédian (SeDyL, INALCO/USPC, CNRS UMR8202, IRD UMR135) Introduction Comparison between particular markers in different languages is always controversial, nevertheless linguists can identify in numerous languages a verb tense that can be described as aorist. Cross-linguistic differences exist, due to the diachrony of the markers in question and their position within the verbal system of a given language, but there are clearly a certain number of shared morphological, syntactic, semantic and/or pragmatic features.
    [Show full text]
  • Ter + Past Participle Or Estar + Gerund? Aspect and Syntactic Variation in Brazilian Portuguese
    Ter + past participle or Estar + gerund? Aspect and Syntactic Variation in Brazilian Portuguese Ronald Beline Mendes University of São Paulo The verbal aspect in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has been described by a number of authors. Wachowicz 2003, based on Verkuyl 1993 and 1999, has accounted for the iterative and progressive interpretations of estar (be) + gerund. Ilari 2000 shows why ter (have) + participle is recognized as the iterative periphrasis in that language, even though it can possibly express progressive, durative meanings. Castilho 2000 proposes an aspectual typology for the aspect and shows how periphrastic constructions are productive in BP aspectual composition. None of those authors have, however, approached the use of those periphrases from a variationist, quantitative perspective. In contemporary BP, estar + gerund and ter + participle actually appear in the same context when the aspectual interpretation is iterative, and are commonly found in the data provided by a same speaker. That is a synchronic evidence of their variable use, as shown below: (1) Eu estou estudando muito ultimamente. I am studying much lately "I have been studying a lot lately" (iterative) (2) Eu tenho estudado muito ultimamente. I have studied much lately "I have been studying a lot lately" (iterative) Diachronic data show that their uses changed. In the 16th century, neither of the periphrases were used to express iterative - estar + gerund could only express durative, progressive meanings, whereas ter + participle would convey a resultative, punctual meaning, as in (3) and (4) respectively. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some tokens of ter + participle are found to be ambiguous, the iterative and resultative being possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Mandarin Resultative Constructions and Aspect Incorporation Chienjer Lin University of Arizona
    Aspect is Result: Mandarin Resultative Constructions and Aspect Incorporation Chienjer Lin University of Arizona 0 Introduction Aspect and resultative constructions have been treated as distinct phenomena in the linguistic literature. Viewpoint aspect encodes ways of viewing the “internal temporal constituency of a situation;” in particular, it provides information about completion and boundedness that is superimposed on verb phrases (Comrie 1976:3). It takes place at a functional position above the verb phrase. A sentence with simple past tense like (1) describes an action that occurred prior to the speech time. The perfective aspect phrase have V in (2) emphasizes the completion and experience of this action. Aspect is therefore seen as additional information that modifies the telicity of a verb phrase. (1) I saw him in the park. (2) I have seen him in the park twice. Resultatives on the other hand are taken as information within the verb phrase. They typically involve at least two events—a causative event followed by a resultative state, which is denoted by a small clause embedded under the main verb (Hoekstra 1989). For instance, the verb phrase wipe the slate clean involves the action of wiping and the final state of the slate’s being clean. The resultative state is embedded under the verb phrase, governed by the causative verb head. This paper explores the possibility of an alternative account for viewpoint aspect. Instead of viewing aspect as a functional head above verb phrases, I attempt to associate aspect with resultative predicates and claim that (at least part of) aspect should be base generated below the verb phrases like resultatives.
    [Show full text]
  • Building Resultatives Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts at Amherst August 20041
    1 Building Resultatives Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts at Amherst August 20041 1. The construction: Adjectival resultatives Some natural languages allow their speakers to put together a verb and an adjective to create complex predicates that are commonly referred to as “resultatives”. Here are two run-of-the- mill examples from German2: (1) Die Teekanne leer trinken The teapot empty drink ‘To drink the teapot empty’ (2) Die Tulpen platt giessen The tulips flat water Water the tulips flat Resultatives raise important questions for the syntax-semantics interface, and this is why they have occupied a prominent place in recent linguistic theorizing. What is it that makes this construction so interesting? Resultatives are submitted to a cluster of not obviously related constraints, and this fact calls out for explanation. There are tough constraints for the verb, for example: 1 . To appear in Claudia Maienborn und Angelika Wöllstein-Leisten (eds.): Event Arguments in Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Thank you to Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein-Leisten for organizing the stimulating DGfS workshop where this paper was presented, and for waiting so patiently for its final write-up. Claudia Maienborn also sent comments on an earlier version of the paper, which were highly appreciated. 2 . (2) is modeled after a famous example in Carrier & Randall (1992). 2 (3) a. Er hat seine Familie magenkrank gekocht. He has his family stomach sick cooked. ‘He cooked his family stomach sick.’ b. * Er hat seine Familie magenkrank bekocht. He has his family stomach sick cooked-for And there are also well-known restrictions for the participating adjectives (Simpson 1983, Smith 1983, Fabb 1984, Carrier and Randall 1992): (4) a.
    [Show full text]
  • Types of Predicate
    chapter 9 Types of Predicate This chapter deals with the types of predicates. The predicate of a sentence can be expressed by almost any word classes, not only through a verb. How- ever, verbal predicates are most common, about 87% of all predicates are verbs. They can be simple, containing only one verb or complex with more than one verbal element. The following figure shows the occurrence of predicates in an annotated sub-corpus. In the following sections, first the verbal predicates are discussed. 1 Verbal Predication The most common distinction between verbal predicates is their simplicity. The verbal predicate usually is simple. Complex predicates consist of an aux- iliary and a lexical verb. There are only few auxiliary verbs, one of these aux- iliaries is the negation auxiliary, which serves to form standard negation and appears most often in complex verbal predicates. Other auxiliaries are seman- tically not empty, but they have an additional, mostly modal meaning. In this section, only examples for the usage of auxiliary konɨďi ‘go away’ are given. For a detailed description of auxiliaries see Section 3.3 in Chapter 3, for negation see Chapter 12. The auxiliary verb konɨďi ‘go away’ appears only in essive or resultative- translative constructions. In these constructions an NP is followed by the infini- tive form (converb1) of the BE-verb (isʲa) and the conjugated form of the aux- iliary. Word order variations are not allowed. Contrary to Enets and Nenets, the infinitive/converb construction wasn’t grammaticalized as the essive case. This form has word stress of its own, and it never undergoes cliticization.
    [Show full text]
  • Resultative and Depictive Constructions in English*
    Resultative and Depictive Constructions in English* Chang-Su Lee Department ofEnglish Language Education I. Introduction The following illustrates two types of secondary predication, the resultative and the depictive construction: (1) a. John hammered the metal flat. (Resultative Construction) b. John ate the meat raw. (Depietive Construction) In (la), the adjective flat, called a resultative, a result phrase, or a resultative predicate, describes the final state of the object NP which results from the action or process denoted by the verb. Thus (la) means "John caused the metal to become flat by hammering it." On the other hand, in (lb) the adjective raw, called a depictive, a depictive phrase, or a depictive predicate, characterizes the state of an NP at the time of the initiation of the main predicate's action." So the sentence (lb) has the meaning "John ate the meat, and at the time he ate it, it was raw." Many ltngutsts have assumed that the resultative and the depictive construction are not syntactically different despite their difference in semantic interpretation (cf. Rapoport, 1990). In this paper, however, we propose that the resultative and the depietive construction involve two different types of syntactic configuration. *This paper is the summarized version of Lee's Ph.D. Thesis. 1) "Resultative" and "depletive" may be used to indicate a resultative and a depictive sentence. respectively. 56 THE SNU JOURNAL OF EDUCATION RESEARCH II. Syntactic Status of Resultatives and Depictives In the literature, it is generally assumed that resultatives and depictives are predicates (Hoekstra, 1984, 1988; Rothstein, 1985; Rapoport, 1990; Napoli, 1992). Let's consider the following examples: (2) a.
    [Show full text]
  • Auxiliary Verbs in the Left Periphery: Spanish Ir and Venir As Focus Markers
    Auxiliary Verbs in the Left Periphery: Spanish ir and venir as Focus Markers Ana Bravo ∗ 1. Spanish standard and non-standard constructions with ir ‘to go’ + infinitive∗∗ Apart from the well known and fully acknowledged temporal-aspectual meaning of either futurity or prospectivity, the construction1 with the auxiliary verb ir ‘to go’ [ir a + infinitive] may be used to convey the two less standard meanings of resultativity and focus, as exemplified in (1) and (2). It must be observed that they are common to all varieties of Spanish, although it seems that in some of these varieties venir subtitutes ir as a focus marker (2c):2 (1) RESULTATIVE IR a. El hombre […] cerró los ojos, trastabilló y fue a golpearse con [… ] la campana. [CREA, Vicente Molina Foix, La quincena soviética, Spain] 3 ‘The man closed his eyes, stumbled and ended up hitting himself against the bell.’ b. El vehículo se salió de la cinta asfáltica y fue a chocar con el puente Camella. [CREA, La Hora, 30/04/1997, Guatemala] ‘The vehicle went off of the road and, at the end, it crashed into Camella Bridge.’ (2) FOCUS IR ~ VENIR a. Fíjese que el güey del Aristóteles […] le fue a poner a su hijo mayor Cristo Rey. ¡Pobre cuate! [CREA, Arturo Azuela, La casa de las mil vírgenes, México] ‘That guy of Aristoteles had to give his older son the name of Cristo Rey, as if there were no more names. ¡Poor guy!’ b. Fue a aparecer en el peor momento. [RAE-ASALE, § 28.8j] ‘He had to appear at the worst moment.’ c.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Study on Mandarin and Cantonese Resultative Verb Compounds
    PACLIC 29 A Comparative Study on Mandarin and Cantonese Resultative Verb Compounds Helena Yan Ping Lau Sophia Yat Mei Lee Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong Hong Kong [email protected] [email protected] Shi 2002)1. As one of the main varieties of Chinese, Abstract Cantonese seems to be closely-related to Mandarin. There are, however, some remarkable differences This paper explores the conditions where Mandarin RVCs can be preserved in their between them in terms of the usage. An example of Cantonese counterparts. Six types of Mandarin Mandarin RVC construction is shown in (1), with a RVCs – ergatives, unergatives, accusatives, syntactically parallel yet ill-formed sentence in causatives, pseudo-passives and object- Cantonese illustrated in (2). fronting – have been examined. Modifications have been made for certain kinds of RVCs that (1) 我 跑丟-了 車票 are usually misclassified. The analysis has been 1.SG run lost-ASP ticket done at both the lexical and syntactic levels. At the lexical level, the concept of ‘strong ‘I lost the ticket as I ran.’ resultative’ and ‘weak resultative’ has been adduced to support the idea that indirect (2) *我 跑跌-咗 張 車飛 causation cannot be expressed by RVC in 1.SG run lost-ASP CL ticket Cantonese. At the syntactic level, the presentations of the same RVCs falling into Since RVCs in Cantonese are found to be less different sentence types are illustrated. Since productive than they are in Mandarin, most of the the structure of Mandarin RVCs are often previous works have been dedicated to the study of restricted in Cantonese, three substitutive constructions have been introduced for Mandarin Chinese, neglecting numerous concerns presenting the same resultatives in Cantonese.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Tsezian Languages Bernard Comrie, Maria Polinsky, and Ramazan
    Tsezian Languages Bernard Comrie, Maria Polinsky, and Ramazan Rajabov Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany University of California, San Diego, USA Makhachkala, Russia 1. Sociolinguistic Situation1 The Tsezian (Tsezic, Didoic) languages form part of the Daghestanian branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian (East Caucasian) language family. They form one branch of an Avar-Andi-Tsez grouping within the family, the other branch of this grouping being Avar-Andi. Five Tsezian languages are conventionally recognized: Khwarshi (Avar x∑arßi, Khwarshi a¥’ilqo), Tsez (Avar, Tsez cez, also known by the Georgian name Dido), Hinuq (Avar, Hinuq hinuq), Bezhta (Avar beΩt’a, Bezhta beΩ¥’a. also known by the Georgian name Kapuch(i)), and Hunzib (Avar, Hunzib hunzib), although the Inkhokwari (Avar inxoq’∑ari, Khwarshi iqqo) dialect of Khwarshi and the Sagada (Avar sahada, Tsez so¥’o) dialect of Tsez are highly divergent. Tsez, Hinuq, Bezhta, and Hunzib are spoken primarily in the Tsunta district of western Daghestan, while Khwarshi is spoken primarily to the north in the adjacent Tsumada district, separated from the other Tsezian languages by high mountains. (See map 1.) In addition, speakers of Tsezian languages are also to be found as migrants to lowland Daghestan, occasionally in other parts of Russia and in Georgia. Estimates of the number of speakers are given by van den Berg (1995) as follows, for 1992: Tsez 14,000 (including 6,500 in the lowlands); Bezhta 7,000 (including 2,500 in the lowlands); Hunzib 2,000 (including 1,300 in the lowlands); Hinuq 500; Khwarshi 1,500 (including 600 in the lowlands).
    [Show full text]
  • How to Turn Into a Resultative Monica-Alexandrina Irimia
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia How to turn into a resultative Monica-Alexandrina Irimia University of Toronto 1. Verb-framed languages and resultative secondary predicates The presence of resultative secondary predicates (RESSP) is taken to be a robust correlate of ‘satellite-framed’ languages (Talmy 1975, 1985, 2000, a.o.). However, it also appears that languages which might be classified as ‘verb-framed’ under other diagnostics do tolerate some restricted types of resultativity. In order to better understand the sources and limits of the ‘resultative parameter’ (Kratzer 2005), this paper investigates the nature of a largely ignored construction with resultative semantics in Romanian (Romance), the BARE NOUN RESULT (BNRES). These data indicate that cross-linguistic variation in the construction of RESSP is dependent on (at least) two factors: a) distinctions in the featural composition of the functional projections constructing resultativity; b) whether resultativity is dependent on telicity/syntactic directed motion or not (see also Folli and Harley 2006). The paper proposes that the BNRES contains a functional projection specified as TURN-INTO, which introduces a resultative NP, in the absence of syntactic composition of manner and directed motion. 2. The ‘resultative parameter’ (Kratzer 2005) Starting with Talmy’s (1975, 1985, 2000) formalization of cross-linguistic differences in the expression of motion, a thorny issue in subatomic semantics has been the variation in the realization of adjectival secondary predicates (Dowty 1979, Goldberg 1995, Mateu and Rigau 2002, Borer 2005, Kratzer 2005, Snyder 2001, Zubizarreta and Oh 2007, Acedo-Matellán 2010, etc.).
    [Show full text]