A Grammar of Tshangla Brill's Tibetan Studies Library Edited by Henk Blezer Alex McKay Charles Ramble Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region Edited by George L. Van Driem VOLUME 5!10 A Gratntnar of Tshangla By Erik E. Andvik BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010 Partial funding for the publication of this volume was provided by SIL International. On the cover: A Tshanglapa abi and meme check out passersby from the doorway of their home in Kangpara. Photo by the author. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Andvik, Erik E. A grammar of Tshangla I by Erik E. Andvlk. p. em. - (Brill's Tibetan studies library. Languages of the greater Himalayan region, ISSN 1568-6183; v. 5/10) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-17827-4 (alk. paper) 1. Tshangla language-Grammar. I. Title. II. Series. PL365l.T84A63 2010 495'.4-dc22 2009054007 ISSN 1568-6183 ISBN 978 90 04 17827 4 Copyright 2010 by Koninklljke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. 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PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS To Elin, Maria, and Simon CONTENTS List of Tables xi List of Figures xiii List of Morpheme Glosses XV Acknowledgements xvii Chapter One Introduction 1 1.1 The research 1 1.2 Organisation of the description 3 1.3 Introduction to the Tshangla language 4 Chapter Two Phonology 8 2.1 Consonants 8 2.2 Vowels 12 2.3 Syllable structure and clusters 14 2.4 Word structure and stress 17 2.5 Tone 20 Chapter Three Lexicon and Word Classes 21 3.1 Nouns 21 3.2 Verbs 22 3.3 Adjectives 39 3.4 Adverbs 42 3.5 Postpositions 50 3.6 Personal pronouns 52 3.7 Honorifics 54 Chapter Four Morphophonemics 58 4.1 Case marker devoicing 58 4.2 Verbal morphophonemics 60 4.3 Degemination 70 Chapter Five Noun Phrase 77 5.1 Overview of the noun phrase 77 5.2 Pre-nominal constituents of the noun phrase 78 5.3 Post-nominal constituents of the noun phrase 89 5.4 Personal pronouns 100 5.5 Reflexive noun phrase ................................................................. 100 viii CONTENTS 5.6 Genitive noun phrase 105 5.7 Unmarked dependency 106 5.8 Apposition 107 5.9 Hierarchical structure of the noun phrase 108 Chapter Six The Clause, Syntactic Roles and Transitivity 114 6.1 Argument suppression vs. zero anaphora 114 6.2 Syntactic roles 118 6.3 Transitivity 123 Chapter Seven Case Marking 124 7.1 Agentive/instrumental -gi 124 7.2 Locative/dative -ga 155 7.3 Genitive -ga 160 7.4 Ablative -gai 162 Chapter Eight Sentence, Clause and Predicate 171 8.1 Clause types 171 8.2 Predicate types 172 8.3 Copular predicate with ca or la 174 8.4 Copular predicate with gila 178 8.5 Verbal predicates 182 8.6 Predicate types in non-final clauses 183 Chapter Nine Sentence Types and Sentence Moods 184 9.1 The non-declarative sentence moods 185 9.2 The interrogative sentence type 192 9.3 Interaction between sentence type and sentence mood 199 Chapter Ten Finite Clauses: Tense, Aspect and Mirativity 205 10.1 Affirmative verb paradigm 205 10.2 Negative verb paradigm 217 10.3 Mirativity 227 10.4 Gila 234 Chapter Eleven Relative Clauses 238 11.1 Relative clauses in -khan 238 11.2 Relative clauses in -sa 246 11.3 Relative clauses in -wa 248 11.4 Relative clauses in -le 258 11.5 Relativised forms of dakpe 'to say' 262 CONTENTS ix Chapter Twelve Other Embedded Clauses 267 12.1 Embedded question complement with mo 267 12.2 Noun complement clauses 275 12.3 Clausal object of a postposition 277 12.4 Nominalised complement 278 Chapter Thirteen Adverbial Clauses 280 13.1 Non-final adverbial clauses 281 13.2 Participial adverbial clauses 288 Chapter Fourteen Complementation 307 14.1 Semantic parameters of complement-taking verbs 308 14.2 Complement-taking verbs that share matrix subject/agent 312 14.3 Complement-taking verbs that share matrix patient 318 14.4 Verbs that allow both matrix arguments to be shared 321 14.5 Complement clause vs. adverbial clause 326 14.6 Complement clause vs. relative clause 329 14.7 Embedding 332 14.8 Double-shared arguments 336 14.9 Complex complementation 336 14.10 Aspect marking on complement clauses 336 Chapter Fifteen Concatenation: The Non-final Construction 338 15.1 Non-final vs. participial constructions 338 15.2 Degrees of clause merging with -nyi 339 15.3 Clause chaining 342 15.4 Serial predicates 346 15.5 Ambiguous utterances and underlying structure 359 15.6 Serial verbs 366 15.7 Grammaticalisation of serial verbs 372 15.8 Grammaticalisation of serial predicates 378 15.9 Idiomatic serial predicate constructions 392 15.10 Overview of grammaticalisation of concatenated constructions 393 Chapter Sixteen Daknyi and Anyi 395 16.1 Daknyi 395 16.2 Anyi 401 16.3 Grammaticalisation .................................................................. 413 X CONTENTS Chapter Seventeen Versatile Particles 417 17.1 Thur 418 17.2 Ta (tu) 419 17.3 Te 424 17.4 Rang 427 17.5 Bu 434 17.6 Sha 439 17.7 Marked topic particle sho 441 Chapter Eighteen Sentence-Level Pragmatic Devices 454 18.1 Postposing 454 18.2 Deictic centre pragmatic devices 461 18.3 Sentence-final particles 465 Chapter Nineteen Summary and Conclusion 472 19.1 'Meta-constructions': concatenation and nominalisation 472 19.2 Grammaticalisation 473 Bibliography 475 Index ............................................................................................................. 483 LIST OF TABLES 1. Consonant chart 8 2. Vowel chart 12 3. Non-finite verb suffixes 23 4. Personal pronouns 53 5. Honorific nouns 55 6. Honorific verbs-honorific patient/recipient 56 7. Honorific verbs-honorific agent/actor 56 8. Verb classes 61 9. Stem extenders 62 10. Exceptional nasal-final and liquid-final verbs 65 11. Classification of verb suffixes according to root consonant alternation and stem extender 67 12. Exceptional vowel-final verbs 68 13. Verb suffix parameters 69 14. Degemination of /mm/ 70 15. Oral stop degemination 71 16. Coronal stop geminates (non-reduced) 71 17. Reduction of coronal and palatal nasal sequences 72 18. Velar degemination 73 19. Labial spirantised degemination 75 20. Velar spirantised degemination 76 21. Demonstratives 80 22. Discourse connectors using onya 'there/that' 85 23. Predicate types and clause types 173 24. The non-mirative affirmative verb paradigm 205 25. The non-mirative negative verb paradigm 217 26. Newari negative spreading 358 27. Serial verb constructions 366 28. Verb-derived postpositions ................................................................ 379 LIST OF FIGURES 1. Tshangla in Shafer's classification of the Bodie division 7 2. Elements in the noun phrase 78 , 3. Internal structure of the noun phrase 'core 110 4. Noun phrase with quantifier 111 5. Noun phrase with post-posed modifier and quantifier 112 6. Entire noun phrase with post-nominal clitic particles 113 7. Overview of clause types 171 8. Compositionality in the verbal constituent 206 9. Relative clause structure with awa 331 10. Complement clause structure with awa 332 11. Underlying structure of concatenated constructions 341 12. Concatenation continuum ................................................................. 393 LIST OF MORPHEME GLOSSES 1s 1st person singular pronoun 2s 2nd person singular pronoun 3 3rd person pronoun (unmarked for number) 1p 1st person plural pronoun 2p 2nd person plural pronoun 3p 3rd person plural pronoun ABL Ablative case particle (-gai) ADH Adhortative mood suffix (-khe) AGT Agentive/instrumental case particle (-gi) COP Copula ( ca, la, na) (-chi/-ji in past tense negative) DEM Demonstrative (uthu, otha, unyu, onya) DIR Directional marker (-ta) DUAL Dual pronoun marker EMPH Emphatic particle (-rang) FOC Contrastive focus particle (bu) 'also, even, even though' IMP Imperative mood suffix (-sho/-co/-i) INF Infinitive participial suffix (-le) ITJ Interjection ( oi, wai, etc.) LOC Locative/dative/genitive case particle (-ga) NEG Negative prefix (rna-) NF Non-final verbal suffix (-nyi, -than, -deke) NOM Nominaliser participial suffix (-wa) OPT Optative mood suffix (-chen) PL Plural particle (-ba) PRT Particle PTC Other participial suffix (-la!-lu) QUES Question particle (mo, ya) REL Relativiser suffix (-khan, -sa) RFLX Reflexive particle/emphatic (-ten) SE Stem extender (verb roots ending in V) SUB Subjunctive mood suffix (-du!-tu) TOP Contrastive topic marker (khepa, cho ~ sho) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you who have helped me make A Gram­ mar of Tshangla a reality. Thanks especially to Professor Scott DeLancey, my advisor and supervising committee chairman, for expert advice and guidance on Tibeto-Burman and many other topics throughout my aca­ demic program. Thanks to Professor T. Givan, for inspiring discussions and feedback on Tshangla grammar in a wider context. Thanks to Pro­ fessor Doris Payne, for many hours of meticulous proofing of the origi­ nal dissertation which has become this book, and for helpful suggestions for improving its analysis and clarity. Thanks also to Dr. Austin Hale, for numerous thoughtful comments on earlier papers on Tshangla, and for insightful and enjoyable discussions on aspects of Tibeto-Burman linguis­ tics. Thanks to friends and colleagues in SAG, for friendship and practical help to me and my family while living and travelling in South Asia. I'm extremely grateful to my family, for their willingness to try all kinds of living situations, for making a home out of each of them, and for their love and encouragement as they shared with me the hills and valleys of this experience.