UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics Title A Grammatical Sketch of Eastern Kayah (Red Karen) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5fk0z015 Author Solnit, David Publication Date 1986 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California A Grammatical Sketch of Eastern Kayah (Red Karen) By David Benedict Solnit A.B. (University of California) 1977 M.A. (University of California) 1979 C.Phil. (University of California) 1982 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Linguistics in the GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY airman Date DOCTORAL DEGREE CONFERRED DECEMBER 16,1986 A Grammatical Sketch of Eastern Kayah (Red Karen) Copyright © 1986 David B. Solnit 1 A Grammatical Sketch of Eastern Kayah (Red Karen) David B. Solnit Abstract This dissertation describes the Eastern dialect of Kayah (also known as Red Karen), a language of the Karen group of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic stock. Kayah is the major language of the Kayah State of Burma, and is also spoken in a small area of Mae Hong Son province in northwestern Thailand, where the data for this grammatical sketch was recorded. Kayah is tonal, monosyllabic (with familiar qualifications), and lacks affixational morphology except in relic form. Compounding, however, is extensive, involving both nouns and verbs. After brief descriptions of the phonology and the nature of the morpheme and form classes, a fairly detailed description is given of the Verb Complex, a potentially very complicated structure centered around the main verb of the simple clause. Kayah is typical of languages of the mainland Southeast Asia-southern China linguistic area in having verb serialization (also 'verb series', 'verb concatenation'). It is unusual in combining basic SVO typology with extensive use of immediate concatenation of verbs, with no intervening arguments, a trait more typical of the verb-final languages of the area. It is argued that these constructions in Kayah are best analyzed as compounds, formed in the morphology/lexicon, rather than syntactic phrases, whether 2 base-generated or derived by transformation. The lexical structure of these compound verbs is described in terms of (a version of) current morphological theory. "Other chapters describe clause structure; the syntactic behavior of the NP, PP and Numeral-Classifier construction; sentence types; and an outline of interclausal syntax (nominalized clauses, attributive clauses, and clause sequences). Acknowledgements In various capacities, from my first guide to the linguistic topography of Southeast Asia to chair of my dissertation committee, from the most basic conceptual discussion to the smallest detail (including proposed scatalogical epigraphs), Jim Matisoff has been c constant source of encouragement and valuable advice. I am also indebted to the other members of my committee, Chuck Fillmore and Kun Chang. I have also benefited greatly from discussions with friends and colleagues at Berkeley and Cornell, including Paul Kay, Farrell Ackerman, Amy Dahlstrom, Knud Lambrecht, Cathy O'Connor, Wayne Harbert, Gennaro Chierchia, and Julian Wheatley. Many friends in Thailand deserve credit of various sorts, among them Professor Suriya Ratanakul, William Young, Bamrung Ruangsawat (Luka), Cee Yin, Chaiwut Hongthong, Jacques Landy, Pippa Curwen, and Jennifer Ringstad. For more humble but no less vital types of fortification I would also like to thank the Chiangmai Tea House, Boon Rawt Brewery, Tung Hoo Coffee, and Peet's of Berkeley. My research was supported by a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant (#B008200435). I am also grateful to the National Research Council of Thailand, and to the governments of Mae Hong Son and Chiangmai Provinces for assistance during my stay in Thailand. I am indebted to my major informant Kame for long hours of patient work, and to the people of Thft Medx Le Khiv, Rus5 Le and ThA Medu Li Cha, who put me up in their homes, told me stories, and allowed me to tape record hours of conversation and song. Last but not least I would like to thank my parents, who discerned my interest in linguistics long before I did, and Linda Tiffany for support of every sort, both long-distance and close-up. Contents Abstract Acknow ledgements 0. Introduction 0.1 Kayah, Karenni, Karen: language and people 0.2 Data and theory 0.3 Abbreviations, Conventions, Transcription 1. Phonology 1.1 Syllable structure 1.2 Initials 1.3 Rhymes 1.4 Tones 1.5 Phonology of prefixes 1.6 Vowel harmony 1.7 Outline of historical tone correspondences 1.8 Orthographies 2. Morphemes, Word Formation, and Form Classes 2.1 Monosyllabicity 2.2 Compounding 2.3 Affixes 2.4 Other alternations 2.4.1 Tone change 2.4.2 Reduplication 2.4.3 Allomorphy 2.5 Form classes iii Morphosyntax, Part I 51 3. Theoretical Preliminaries 52 3.1 Introduction 52 3.2 Semantic roles (general) 56 3.2.1 Preliminary remarks 56 3.2.2 Selected and non-selected roles 56 3.2.3 Dependence between role types 63 3.2.4 Specification by verb; by non-verb 66 3.3 Roles for Kayah 71 3.4 Argument structure 76 3.5 Grammatical relations 81 4. The Verb Complex 86 4.1 Introduction 88 4.1.1 Verb serialization: characteristics and problems 88 4.1.2 Verb serialization in Kayah 95 4.1.3 Outline of analysis of the VC 96 4.1.4 Versatility, another possible criterion for analysis 99 4.2 Verb-Verb constructions 102 4.2.1 Resultative 102 4.2.1.1 6eneral 102 42.1.2 Directional 106 4.2.2 Sequential 116 4.2.3 Directive 123 4.2.4 Descriptive 131 4.2.5 Modal 138 4.2.6 Summary of V-V's 142 iv 4.3 Verb/Particle constructions 144 4.3.1 Introduction 144 4.3.2 Pre-verbal particles: the khwe-class 146 4.3.3 Quasi-Modal particles 147 4.3.4 ja, a Sequential particle 147 4.3.5 Post-verbal particles: the /-/-class 148 4.3.6 Descriptive particles 158 4.3.6.1 Movable 158 4.3.6.2 General 160 4.3.7 Bound result expressions 162 4.4 Interactions 171 4.4.1 V-VandV-V 171 4.42 Particles 178 4.4.3 Excursus: noun-incorporating verbs and particles 180 5. Formalizing the Analysis 183 5.1 Introduction: many propositions, one clause 183 5.1.1 Review of arguments for monoclausality 184 5.1.2 V-V as related events 188 5.1.2.1 Predication vs. modification (1) 188 5.1.2.2 Causation vs. sequence 189 5.1.2.3 Common participant 189 V 5.1.3 Skewing of syntax and propositional semantics 191 5.1.3.1 The problem of skewing 191 5.1.3.2 Multi-level syntax: transformational and control 193 approaches 5.1.3.3 Multi-level lexical structure: lexicalist approach 196 5.1.4 Afterword 197 5.2 Multi-level syntax: transformational approach 199 5.2.1 Syntactic base-generation 200 5.2.2 A transformationalist analysis: verb incorporation 204 5.3 Multilevel lexical units: lexicalist (compounding) analysis 215 5.3.1 Characteristics of compounds vs. phrases 215 5.3.2 Some principles of lexicalist morphology 218 5.3.2.1 Headedness and percolation 218 5.3.2.2 Formation rules or not? 219 5.3.2.3 Argument linking 220 5.3.3 Application of lexicalist morphology 224 5.3.3.1 The proposed analysis 225 5.3.3.2 Some remarks on headedness and argument linking 242 5.3.3.3 Afterword 248 Morphosyntax, Part II 253 6. The Clause and Grammatical Relations 254 6.1 Definition and types 254 6,2 Constituents 255 6.2.1 The VP 255 6.2.2 Selected and non-selected grammatical relations 259 vi 6.3 Subject (and Topic) 265 6.3.1 General 266 6.3.2 InKayah 269 6.3.3 'Inverted Subjects' 275 6.4 Objects 276 6.5 ns-PP's 283 7. NP, PP, ClfP: Syntax and morpheme classes 296 7.1 NP 296 7.1.1 Lexically-headed NP's 298 7.1.2 Clf-headed NP's 302 7.1.3 Expanded NP's: NP+ClfP 305 7.1.4 Localizers 307 7.2 PP 311 7.3 ClfP 315 7.3.1 Classifiers 315 7.3.2 Quantifiers and counting in Kayah 319 8. Sentence Types and Sentence Particles 326 8.1 Sentence types 326 8.2 Sentence particles 329 8.3 Unique and problematic particles: *<?and/7/i 339 8.4 Excursus: questions 344 vii 9. Interclausal Syntax 347 9.1 Non-autonomous nominalized clauses 347 9.1.2 Embedded (non-attributive) 347 9.1.2 Preposed attributive clauses 348 9.2 Postposed attributive clauses 352 9.3 Clause as argument of verb 355 9.3.1 Clausal Objects 355 9.3.2 Clausal Subjects? 356 9.3.3 Quotatives 357 9.4 Clause sequences and ma 359 Footnotes 365 References 373 0. Introduction. 0.1 Kavah. Karen, karenni. The language described in this study is best referred to as Eastern Kayah, indicating that it belongs to the Eastern division of the Kayah group. Kayah in turn is a Central Karen language, and Karen is a major subdivision of the Tibeto-Burman branch of Sino-Tibetan. Kayah is thus very closely related to languages like Padaung and Bre; less closely to other Karen languages like Sgaw, Pho and Pa-0 (Taungthu); more distantly to hundreds of languages including Burmese, Tibetan, Lahu, Yi, Lushai, etc., etc.; and most remotely to Chinese. Eastern Kayah would be more accurately referred to as 'Kayeh', since one of the isoglosses separating the East and West dialect groups is the correspondence East /eI = West /a/ after the palatal semivowel.