Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area - Volume 41, Issue 2, 2018

Va, an obscure language of Southwestern Yunnan, belongs to the Wa-Lawa cluster under the Waic subgroup of Palaungic in the Austroasiatic language family. This article presents an overview of Va synchronic phonology and an account of its evolution from the Proto-Wa-Lawa sound system reconstructed by Gérard Diffloth. Modern Va phonology is characterized by fully monosyllabic word structure, reduced syllable canon, and a robust three-tone system. Its atypical phonological profile from an Austroasiatic perspective and its tonogenesis may be directly attributed to the sociolinguistic ambience of the Va-speaking areas. The phonological innovations discussed herein, including onset-driven tone splitting rules and coda-driven vowel splitting rules, will help determine the language’s distinct status within the Wa-Lawa language cluster.

This paper presents an overview of bipartite verbs in Japhug and describes related constructions in that language, including compound and serial verbs. Several hypotheses are proposed to account for the genesis of these constructions and the historical relationship between them. Typological comparisons with other languages of the family, including Kiranti and Rawang, are offered to illustrate the specificities of the Japhug constructions.

“Induced Creaky Tone (ICT)” is a grammatical tone in Burmese. It is the result of a process by which Low or High tone is changed into Creaky tone. This alternation is multifunctional, and one of its functions is possessor marking. This paper demonstrates several well-distinguished conditions of different nature and different domain for this tonal alternation. ICT is primarily induced by syntax, varies due to pragmatic factors, occurs only on the shared right boundary of phrases and stem forms, and its phonological condition has a domain stretching to the left boundary of the prosodic word. A comprehensive account of such conditions provides the basis for a grammatical analysis which tests the theoretical options for representing a tonal morpheme in the morpho-syntactic structure of a sentence. It also sheds light on other issues such as the interfaces between phonology and grammar, and between tonal morphology and tonal syntax.

This paper focuses on the morphosyntax as well as the semantics of relativisation in Wobzi Khroskyabs, a Rgyalrongic language spoken in Sichuan, China. Different strategies of relativisation are presented, especially the nominalisation strategy. Wobzi Khroskyabs exhibits an innovative relativisation strategy with the genitive marker =ji, which is rarely found in other Rgyalrongic languages. Several hypotheses are put forward to account for the evolutionary pathway from genitivisation to relativisation, showing that genitive =ji probably followed an ergative pattern to enter the relativisation of core arguments.

In this paper, we propose that in Stau (Rgyalrongic, Sino-Tibetan) there is a system of four vowel pairs (/i/-/ə/, /e/-/ɛ/, /æ/-/ɑ/, /u/-/o/) that undergo regressive vowel harmony. This system of vowel harmony produces root morpheme forms such as [æCæ] and [ɑCɑ], whereas forms like [æCɑ] or [ɑCæ] are remarkably absent. Vowel harmony is also observed when combining morphemes to create complex words. Unambiguous cases show that the vowel of the first morpheme assimilates to the vowel of the second (e.g. /æCɑ/ → [ɑCɑ]), if the vowels of the two morphemes belong to the same vowel pair set (e.g. /æ/-/ɑ/). At the same time, there are several situations where vowel harmony is consistently not observed. Notable among these blocking mechanisms are lexemes that contain semantically-heavy first syllables. In this situation, we observe the interplay of semantics and phonology. Analysis of the vowel harmony system in Stau yields a way to measure the distance between morphemes.

In Rgyalrongic studies, it is believed that the most complex stem alternation system is found in Zbu, a Northern Rgyalrong language, whereas other languages, including Situ, have simpler systems. However, as a dialect of Situ Rgyalrong, Brag-bar presents a complex stem alternation system exhibiting several opaque features in comparison with other Situ dialects. This paper documents the stem alternations in the Brag-bar dialect of Situ Rgyalrong. It first describes the distribution and stem formation devices of different verb stems in Brag-bar, then explains the occurrence of the irregular stem I′/II′ in Brag-bar and investigates their synchronic status.