JSEALS Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Managing Editor: Paul Sidwell (Pacific Linguistics, Canberra) Editorial Advisory Board: Mark Alves (USA) George Bedell (Thailand) Marc Brunelle (Canada) Gerard Diffloth (Cambodia) Marlys Macken (USA) Brian Migliazza (USA) Keralapura Nagaraja (India) Peter Norquest (USA) Amara Prasithrathsint (Thailand) Martha Ratliff (USA) Sophana Srichampa (Thailand) Justin Watkins (UK) JSEALS is the peer-reviewed journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, and is devoted to publishing research on the languages of mainland and insular Southeast Asia. It is an electronic journal, distributed freely by Pacific Linguistics (www.pacling.com) and the JSEALS website (jseals.org). JSEALS was formally established by decision of the SEALS 17 meeting, held at the University of Maryland in September 2007. It supersedes the Conference Proceedings, previously published by Arizona State University and later by Pacific Linguistics. JSEALS welcomes articles that are topical, focused on linguistic (as opposed to cultural or anthropological) issues, and which further the lively debate that characterizes the annual SEALS conferences. Although we expect in practice that most JSEALS articles will have been presented and discussed at the SEALS conference, submission is open to all regardless of their participation in SEALS meetings. Papers are expected to be written in English. Each paper is reviewed by at least two scholars, usually a member of the Advisory Board and one or more independent readers. Reviewers are volunteers, and we are grateful for their assistance in ensuring the quality of this publication. As an additional service we also admit data papers, reports and notes, subject to an internal review process. JSEALS is published twice a year. Papers can be submitted to the Managing Editor, electronically ([email protected] or [email protected]) at any time. ii Contents Editorial iv Papers A Cognitive Linguistics Storyline Analysis of Iu-Mien Narrative Discourse T. Daniel Arisawa 1 Fixed Autosegmentism in Thai Emphatic Reduplication. Leslie Lee 41 Sorbung, an Undocumented Language of Manipur: its Phonology and Place in Tibeto-Burman David Mortenson and Jennifer Keogh 64 Floating Quantifiers in Burmese and Thai Andrew Simpson 115 The Evolution of Polyfunctionality of dây Construction in Thai: Split Patterns of Possibility-Related Modal Concepts Kiyoko Takahashi 147 iii Editorial Welcome to JSEALS Volume 4.1. We are now into our forth year and I can only report that our journal is hummiung along nicely; the quality of papers is excellent, and I am pleased to relate that there is quite a queue of papers shaping up for 4.2. This volume also sees abstracts and keywords for all papers, reflecting the ongoing process of improving standards and, importantly, accessibility. And in this regard, I urge you please to check the updated Guide for Authors on the last page - things run so much smoother when authors strictly follow the submission guidelines. As issue 4.1 is being released, the 20ll SEALS meeting is about to get underway. The host institution - Kasetsart University in Bangkok - is offering beautiful modern meeting rooms in a great campus setting. Acharn Kitima Indrambarya, Chair of the Organizing Committee, is doing a superb job, and we look forward to a very memorable meeting. Finally, I would like to pay homage to Uri Tadmor, who recently stepped down from the SEALS International Committee and the JSEALS Editorial Advisory Board. Uri, now working as an Editorial Director for De Gruyter Mouton, has been a supporter of SEALS over many years, and we especially acknowledge the great job he did taking on and running the 16th SEALS meeting at Atma Jaya University, Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2006. Thank you Uri. Paul Sidwell (Managing Editor) May 2011 iv A COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS STORYLINE ANALYSIS OF IU-MIEN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE 1 T. Daniel Arisawa Chiangrai Rajabhat University, Thailand <[email protected]> Abstract A storyline is a foregrounded mainline of development in narrative discourse. Taking the narrative as a mental picture viewed by a hearer/reader (i.e. conceptualizer), the Cognitive Linguistics posits two groups of constructions which make storyline emerge to the foreground: progression and sequential structures. The storyline progression in Iu-Mien narrative is encoded with the unmarked action/motion verbs, the development adverb aengx ‘furthermore’, Serial Verb Construction, topic chains, and the multiclausal constructions. The sequential structures include the prospective conjunction ziouc ‘and then (soon)’, the retrospective conjunction cingx_daaih ‘therefore’, the topic marker aeqv ‘as for’, and the ad-clause containing V-liuz ‘after V-ing’. Keywords: discourse, cognitive linguistics, text analysis 0. Introduction A storyline is a foregrounded mainline of development in narrative discourse. This study seeks to investigate a storyline in Iu-Mien narrative discourse. The purpose is to show what it means that the storyline is foregrounded. The approach taken here is Cognitive Linguistics (CL), particularly Cognitive Grammar (CG) theorized by Ronald W. Langacker (e.g. 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c, 2000), rather than a traditional and popular textlinguistics developed by Robert E. Longacre (e.g. 1981, 1983, 2003a, 2003b). Though Longacre’s theory was much influenced by Hopper and Thompson’s correlation between high/low transitivity and the foreground/background in discourse, he has never elaborated the relation. Longacre emphasizes (to simplify various the arguments) that a discovery the particular verb which has a morphosyntactic marking for the past tense or perfective aspect inevitably leads a researcher to identify the storyline. Iu-Mien, however, totally lacks such a marking in the verb; hence requires an alternative method. Following Somsonge’s non- verb-morphology dependent storyline identification method (i.e. temporal movement approach) in Thai (1990, 1992) and Hlai (2002), it turns out that the storyline in Iu-Mien can be analyzed in terms of two major factors: the chronological forward movement of action/event (e.g. topic chains and serial verb constructions, etc), and a bundle of the 1 I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their remarks, and also to thank Paul Sidwell the managing editor for his invaluable comments for improvement of my paper, editorial advice and his patience and kindness. I take full responsibility for any flaws found in this paper. T. Daniel Arisawa. 2011. A Cognitive Linguistics Storyline Analysis of Iu-Mien Narrative Discourse . Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 4.1:1-43 Copyright vested in the author Received 5/2/2010, revised text accepted 16/3/2011 1 2 Daniel Arisawa linguistic expressions indicating sequentiality (e.g. a developmental adverb and an inchoative conjunction, etc.) in the narrative. In this study, the former is referred to as “progression”, and the latter “sequential structure”, 2 owing Talmy (2000). The method in terms of progression and sequential structure explains cognitive linguistically why the storyline is foregrounded. From the CL perspective, a narrative is taken as a mental picture unfolded in front of the hearer/reader’s eyes. The narrative’s storyline is viewed as a thick, noticeable line that stands out (i.e. foregrounding) to the visual perception in the hearer/reader’s mental space as a result of combining two major factors: progression and sequential structure of the story. Though seven story texts of Iu-Mien (over 700 sentences) were analyzed in search of storyline, among other discourse features, only one sample story is appended in this paper. Some examples are drawn from other sources. 1. Departure from Longacre’s theory Longacre’s storyline theory within the general framework of textlinguistics is based on the discourse analyses of some eighty languages of the world. It is significantly influenced by his over fifty year study of Biblical Hebrew and Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) research on the correlation between high/low transitivity parameters and the foreground /background. 1.1. Longacre’s Premise Longacre’s strong emphasis is on the virtual equation between the preterite verb which furthers the story and the foregrounded events or the storyline (e.g. 1981:337-47). For him, discovery of the preterite tense or completive aspect almost automatically eliminates the off-the-line materials as the background, i.e. non-storyline, then arrives at identification of the storyline. 1.2 Beyond Longacre: Temporal Movement Gradually in the course of development of Longacre’s theory, some questions regarding the rigid connection between the morphosyntactic marking (e.g. preterite verb) and the foregrounded events or the storyline began to be raised even from among his colleagues and former students. One example is Somsonge 3 who states: 2 I appreciate the reviewers’ comments for improvement, particulary their recomendation that the term ‘sequentiality’ should be more general, non-particularized and straightforward. Upon consideration, however, I kept it in some places as in my original draft following Givon (1993, 1984), whose influence can be seen in Endo (1996, 2003). It is their notion of ‘topic-continuity’, ‘sequential-action’, ‘theme continuity’ (Givon 1984:296-97) and the materials which ‘control the flow of the story’ (Endo 1996:232, 244-97) that my ‘sequentiality’ means. Talmy’s ‘sequential structure’ is also comprehensive enough to signify the sense by Givon and Endo; it refers