Randy J. LaPolla

On the dating and nature of verb agreement in Tibeto-Burman

This paper is part of an ongoing investigation into the nature of grammatical relations in the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to develop a hypothesis on the typological nature of word order and grammatical relations in the mother language which gave rise to all of the many languages within the Sino Tibetan language family. As the verb agreement (pronominalization) systems of Tibeto-Burman have been said to be a type of ergative marking, and to have been a part of Proto-Tibeto-Burman grammatical relations, the questions of the dating and nature of the agreement systems in Tibeto-Burman are relevant to the discussion of the nature of grammatical relations in Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Sino-Tibetan Languages

This article is a brief overview of the subgrouping, typological characteristics, and historical development of the Sino-Tibetan language family.

Syntax: The goals of linguistic theory

Introduction This book is about some of the devices users of human languages employ to put meaningful elements together to form words, words together to form phrases, phrases together to form clauses, clauses together to form sentences, and sentences together to form texts. The emphasis here will be on the construction of units larger than words, in particular clauses and sentences. This has often been viewed primarily as the domain of syntax . ‘The term “syntax” is from the Ancient Greek sýntaxis , a verbal noun which literally means “arrangement” or “setting out together”. Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence.’ (Matthews 1982:1). The expressions of a language involve a relationship between a sequence of sounds and a meaning, and this relationship is mediated by grammar, a core component of which is syntax. In English and many other languages, the arrangement of words is a vital factor in determining the meaning of an utterance, as illustrated in (1.1). (1.1) a. The man saw the woman. b. The woman saw the man. In Dyirbal (Australia; Dixon 1972) and many other languages, however, the order of words is irrelevant to the determination of the meaning of a sentence; it is, rather, the inflectional form of a phrase which is the crucial factor determining the interpretation of the sentence, as shown in (1.2). (The base forms of each noun are italicized.)

On categorization: Stick to the facts of the languages

Abstract This paper argues that in doing both description and comparison we should work inductively, staying true to the facts of the languages as manifested in natural data, and not resort to abstractions that lead to classifying languages or constructions in a way that ignores the actual facts of the languages. A non-Structuralist alternative view of communication and typological description is also presented.

Constituent Structure in a Tagalog Text

If there are no classes of noun or verb in Tagalog, how can there be noun phrases and verb phrases? This paper contributes to the discussion on form classes in Tagalog by taking a detailed, inductive, line-by-line look at the structures and constituents found in a randomly selected Tagalog text, to create a typology of the structures found therein. It is shown that, while there are very obvious constructions with generally clearly differentiated functions, they do not correspond with noun phrases and verb phrases in Indo-European languages, as it cannot be said that one form is used for predication and another for reference.

The Copula and Existential Verbs in Qiang.

This paper discusses the copula and existential verb constructions in Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language of northern Sichuan, China. There is only one copula verb in Qiang, which can be used in equational, identificational, attributive, naming, and cleft constructions, as well as one type of possessive construction. There are five existential verbs in Qiang, the use of which depends on the semantics of the referent being predicated as existing and its location. The existential verbs have a number of the characteristics of adjective-like stative verbs, and can be modified by adverbs of degree, but they cannot directly modify nouns. Also, the meaning of reduplication of existential verbs is different from that of adjective-like stative verbs: reduplication of existential verbs results in transitivization, while reduplication of adjective-like stative verbs results in emphasis of degree.

Wang Li (1900–1986)

The life and accomplishments of one of Chinas most important linguists, Wang Li (Wang Liaoyi), are briefly sketched.

Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function

1. The goals of linguistic theory 2. Syntactic structure I: simple clauses and noun phrases 3. Semantic representation I: verbs and arguments 4. Semantic representation II: macroroles, the lexicon and noun phrases 5. Information structure 6. Grammatical relations 7. Linking syntax and semantics in simple sentences 8. Syntactic structure II: complex sentences and noun phrases 9. Linking syntax and semantics in complex sentences Epilogue: the goals of linguistic theory revisited Notes References.

Noun-modifying clause constructions in Sino-Tibetan languages

After a short background introduction on Sino-Tibetan noun modifying clause constructions generally, this paper demonstrates, using naturally occurring data, that the Mandarin pre-head noun-modifying clausal construction is grammatically unlike a relative clause construction, as normally conceived, even though it can be used to restrict the identification of the referent of the head noun, but is grammatically a noun-noun compound, and, like noun compounds, exhibits grammatically unrestricted association between the head and the modifier. The pragmatics of how the relation between the modifier and the head is understood is also briefly discussed.

Causation as a factor and goal in typological comparisons

The following paper continues the debate in LT 20(2) 2016 on languageparticular, comparative, and universal categories. While we do not necessarily want to terminate the exchange at this point, given its undoubted importance, we suggest that it be perhaps more profitably pursued through regular research papers, rather than further position papers, that show an awareness of the potentially problematic nature of the categories used to describe and analyse particular structural-functional domains in particular languages, to compare them, and to eventually state universals about them.