Abstract
In this paper, the first detailed description of the two causative derivations in Japhug Rgyalrong is presented, based on a corpus of spontaneous speech. Two new pathways of grammaticalization are proposed. First, it is shown that the causative derives from a special type of denominal derivation. Second, a previously undocumented development from the causative to the abilitative derivation is described. Lastly, the implications of these grammaticalization hypotheses for the reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan morphology as a whole are evaluated.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Nathan W. Hill, Laurent Sagart and three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions on a previous version of this article. The examples are taken from a corpus that is progressively being made available on the Pangloss archive (Michailovsky et al. 2014, http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/tools/list_rsc_en.php?lg=Japhug). This research was funded by the HimalCo project (ANR-12-CORP-0006) and is related to the research strand LR-4.11 “Automatic Paradigm Generation and Language Description” of the Labex EFL (funded by the ANR/CGI).
Abbreviations
The glosses follow the Leipzig glossing rules. Other abbreviations used here are as follows:
- auto
autobenefactive-spontaneous
- anticaus
anticausative
- antipass
antipassive
- appl
applicative
- dem
demonstrative
- dist
distal
- emph
emphatic
- fact
factual
- genr
generic
- ifr
inferential
- indef
indefinite
- inv
inverse
- lnk
linker
- pfv
perfective
- poss
possessor
- sens
sensory
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Articles in the same Issue
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- Pronoun innovation in Middle English
- A diachronic view of Zamucoan verb inflection
- A new interpretation of Lachmann’s Law
- Event-centrality and the pragmatics–semantics interface in Kikongo: From predication focus to progressive aspect and vice versa
- The origin of the causative prefix in Rgyalrong languages and its implication for proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstruction
- Exaptation and phonological change
- Reconstruction and idiomaticity: The origin of Russian verbless clauses reconsidered
- The historical phonology of Mawé glides
- Reviews
- David Willis, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth: The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean
- Coulter H. George: Expressions of time in Ancient Greek
- Kim Gerdes, Eva Hajičová & Leo Wanner: Dependency Linguistics. Recent advances in linguistic theory using dependency structures
- IE.com: Websites relevant to Indo-European Historical Linguistics
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Pronoun innovation in Middle English
- A diachronic view of Zamucoan verb inflection
- A new interpretation of Lachmann’s Law
- Event-centrality and the pragmatics–semantics interface in Kikongo: From predication focus to progressive aspect and vice versa
- The origin of the causative prefix in Rgyalrong languages and its implication for proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstruction
- Exaptation and phonological change
- Reconstruction and idiomaticity: The origin of Russian verbless clauses reconsidered
- The historical phonology of Mawé glides
- Reviews
- David Willis, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth: The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean
- Coulter H. George: Expressions of time in Ancient Greek
- Kim Gerdes, Eva Hajičová & Leo Wanner: Dependency Linguistics. Recent advances in linguistic theory using dependency structures
- IE.com: Websites relevant to Indo-European Historical Linguistics