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The origin of the causative prefix in Rgyalrong languages and its implication for proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstruction

  • Guillaume Jacques EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: October 31, 2015
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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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Published Online: 2015-10-31
Published in Print: 2015-11-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

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