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Functions of the -êy suffix in Hyow

  • Muhammad Zakaria EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: August 22, 2022

Abstract

This paper presents an extensive discussion on the functions of the -êy suffix in Hyow, a Southeastern Kuki-Chin (henceforth, KC) language spoken by approximately four thousand people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The attested use of the -êy suffix in Hyow is of interest because of its use in two opposite syntactic structures. Although the straightforward function of the -êy suffix resembles that of middle voice, its other use in prototypical transitive clauses makes it difficult to assign a category to the suffix in question. This paper deals with this anomaly in the functional domains of the -êy suffix in Hyow with empirical data and makes suggestions of a category to be assigned to this suffix.


Corresponding author: Muhammad Zakaria, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University, 3-5-10 Semba Higashi, Minoh-shi, Osaka 562-8678, Japan, E-mail:

This paper was written based on a talk presented in the “Recent Advances in Kuki-Chin Linguistics” series at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, funded by the European Research Council Synergy Grant (609823), and in preparation for the author’s current project funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (P20740) at Osaka University. Subsequent revisions were made based on the author’s current knowledge acquired from his research at Osaka University.


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Published Online: 2022-08-22
Published in Print: 2021-03-26

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