A Grammar of Lakkja, South China Wenjia Fan Asia Institute The University of Melbourne A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in General Linguistics & Comparative Philology December 2019 Table of Contents Table of Contents .................................................................................................................. III Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. VII List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ XI List of Tables and Figures ................................................................................................. XIII Abstract ................................................................................................................................. XV Chapter 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 The language and its speakers .......................................................................................... 1 1.2 Habitat .............................................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Sociolinguistic situation ................................................................................................... 7 1.4 Culture .............................................................................................................................. 9 1.5 Research scope, aims and significance .......................................................................... 27 1.6 Theoretical framework and research methodology ........................................................ 28 1.7 Literature review ............................................................................................................ 30 1.8 Data management ........................................................................................................... 39 1.9 Structure of the work ...................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 2 The Sound System .............................................................................................. 43 2.1 Phonotactics ................................................................................................................... 43 2.2 Consonant phonemes...................................................................................................... 44 2.3 Vowel phonemes ............................................................................................................ 54 2.4 Finals .............................................................................................................................. 61 2.5 Tonal system .................................................................................................................. 63 2.6 Phonological alternations ............................................................................................... 68 2.7 Sound change in progress ............................................................................................... 69 2.8 Brief comparison between Lakkja and Tai-Kadai languages ......................................... 74 2.9 Summary of chapter ....................................................................................................... 76 Chapter 3 Word Formation and Morphological Processes in Lakkja............................. 79 3.1 Affixation ....................................................................................................................... 80 3.2 Reduplication ............................................................................................................... 107 3.3 Four-syllable elaborate expressions ............................................................................. 111 3.4 Compounding .............................................................................................................. 115 3.5 Segmental morphologic alternation ............................................................................. 122 3.6 Summary of chapter ..................................................................................................... 123 Chapter 4 The Noun Phrase............................................................................................... 125 4.1 Nouns ........................................................................................................................... 125 4.2 Pronouns ....................................................................................................................... 136 4.3 Interrogative pronouns ................................................................................................. 143 4.4 Numerals ...................................................................................................................... 145 4.5 Classifiers ..................................................................................................................... 149 4.6 Possessive phrase and descriptive phrase..................................................................... 163 4.7 Nominalisation and relative clause .............................................................................. 166 Chapter 5 The Verb Phrase ............................................................................................... 169 5.1 Criteria for verb-hood and verb subcategorization ...................................................... 169 5.2 Verb classes in verb phrase .......................................................................................... 180 5.3 Syntactic function of head verbs and verb phrases ...................................................... 188 5.4 Serial verb constructions .............................................................................................. 193 5.4.1 Verb concatenations .............................................................................................. 194 5.4.2 li24 ‘get, acquire’ .................................................................................................... 199 5.4.3 pən51 ‘give’............................................................................................................. 201 5.4.4 Semantic relations in SVCs ................................................................................... 202 5.5 Syntactic constructions of verb phrases ....................................................................... 204 5.6 Temporal-aspectual system .......................................................................................... 211 5.7 Summary of chapter ..................................................................................................... 219 Chapter 6 Adjectives and Adverbs .................................................................................... 221 6.1 Characteristics of adjectives ......................................................................................... 221 6.2 Syntactic function of adjectives ................................................................................... 222 6.3 Comparative constructions ........................................................................................... 225 6.4 Syntactic properties and semantic features of adverbs................................................. 231 Chapter 7 Sentence Types and Other Syntactic Issues ................................................... 255 7.1 Simple sentence ............................................................................................................ 255 7.2 Complex sentence ........................................................................................................ 259 7.3 Copula clause ............................................................................................................... 265 7.4 Declarative sentence ..................................................................................................... 266 7.5 Interrogative sentence .................................................................................................. 268 7.6 Imperative and command sentence .............................................................................. 277 7.7 Exclamative sentences.................................................................................................. 279 7.8 Possessive/presentative sentence.................................................................................. 282 7.9 Passive construction ..................................................................................................... 283 7.10 The so-called disposal form ....................................................................................... 285 7.11 Double object construction......................................................................................... 286 7.12 Locative applicative construction............................................................................... 287 7.13 Negation ..................................................................................................................... 289 Chapter 8 Grammatical Relations ..................................................................................... 295 8.1 Unrestricted neutralization of semantic roles ............................................................... 295 8.2 Nominative-accusative pivotless .................................................................................