Cover not available
Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 22:2 (2021) ► pp.338–375

Come is the new go

The evolution of stem alternation of basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs

 | Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
In this paper, I describe the morphology as well as the uses of the basic motion verbs, ‘to come’ and ‘to go’, in Khroskyabs based on two of its varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, before analyzing the evolutionary pathways of their stem alternation patterns. The meanings of the basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs originally were not ‘to come’ or ‘to go’; instead, these verbs denoted Goal-oriented motion and Source-oriented motion. The choice of the deictic center is the key to the semantic change toward ‘to come’ and ‘to go’ in the modern language.
Keywords: motion verbs, orientation, stem alternation, Khroskyabs, Rgyalrongic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dialects under investigation
  • 3.Basic grammatical features
    • 3.1Phonological sketch
    • 3.2The verb
      • 3.2.1Orientational prefixes
      • 3.2.2Intransitive argument indexation
      • 3.2.3Stem alternation and tense-aspect-modality categories
  • 4.The morphology of basic motion verbs
    • 4.1The verb forms in question
    • 4.2Compatibility with orientational prefixes
    • 4.3Stem alternation of Khroskyabs basic motion verbs
  • 5.Semantic distribution of Khroskyabs basic motion verbs
    • 5.1Terms used
    • 5.2The cislocative verbs
      • 5.2.1The Ground argument of cislocative verbs
      • 5.2.2Choice of the deictic center
      • 5.2.3Deictic center unreached
    • 5.3The translocative verbs
      • 5.3.1 o-u translocative verb
      • 5.3.2 o-e translocative verb
    • 5.4Summary of motion verb uses
    • 5.5Conveyance verbs
  • 6.Cross-Rgyalrongic comparison
    • 6.1Forms of motion verbs
    • 6.2Stem alternation
  • 7.Historical development of Khroskyabs motion verb stem alternation
    • 7.1Origin of (rə-)tô ‘to come’
    • 7.2 o-u/o-e verbs in the proto-language
      • 7.2.1√və̂: Goal-oriented motion
      • 7.2.2√ɕd: Source-oriented motion
      • 7.2.3Typological evidence
    • 7.3Emergence of new stem alternation patterns
      • 7.3.1Pattern merging
      • 7.3.2Which form for which stem?
  • 8.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 17 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00085.lai
References (31)
References
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1980. Deictic categories in the Tibeto-Burman verb. Bloomington: Indiana Universtiy. (Doctoral dissertation.)Google Scholar
. 1985. The analysis-synthesis-lexis cycle in Tibeto-Burman: A case study in motivated change. In Haiman, John (ed.), Iconicity in syntax: Proceedings of a Symposium on Iconicity in Syntax, Stanford, 24–26 June 1983 (Typological Studies in Language 6), 367–389. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, Bufan. 2007. Lawurongyu yanjiu [A study of the Lavrung language]. Beijing: Nationalities Press.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume. 2004. Phonologie et morphologie du Japhug (rGyalrong). Paris: Université Paris VII – Denis Diderot. (Doctoral dissertation.)Google Scholar
(ed.). 2015. Dictionnaire Japhug-Chinois-Français (Version 1.0). Paris: Projet HimalCo.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume & Lai, Yunfan & Antonov, Anton & Nima, Lobsang. 2017. Stau (Ergong, Horpa). In Thurgood, Graham & LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan languages, 597–613. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume & Michaud, Alexis. 2011. Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages: Naxi, Na and Laze. Diachronica 28(4). 468–498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Juge, Matthew L. 2000. On the rise of suppletion in verbal paradigms. In Chang, Steve S. & Liaw, Lily & Ruppenhofer, Josef (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General session and parasession on loan word phenomena, 183–194. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
2013. Analogy as a source of suppletion. In Kikusawa, Ritsuko & Reid, Lawrence A. (eds.), Historical linguistics 2011: Selected papers from the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, 25–30 July 2011 (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 326), 175–197. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lai, Yunfan. 2015. The person agreement system of Wobzi Lavrung (Rgyalrongic, Tibeto-Burman). Transactions of the Philological Society 113(3). 271–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Grammaire du khroskyabs de Wobzi. Paris: Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle. (Doctoral dissertation.)Google Scholar
Lamarre, Christine. 2008. The linguistic categorization of deictic direction in Chinese – with reference to Japanese. In Xu, Dan (ed.), Space in languages of China: Cross-linguistic, synchronic and diachronic perspectives, 69–97. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LaPolla, Randy J. 2017. An overview of Sino-Tibetan morphosyntax. In Thurgood, Graham & LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan languages, 40–69. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lin, You-Jing. 2002. A dimension missed: East and west in Situ rGyalrong orientation marking. Language and Linguistics 3(1). 27–42.Google Scholar
Matisoff, James A. 1988. The dictionary of Lahu. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakazawa, Tsuneko. 2007. A typology of the ground of deictic motion verbs as path-conflating verbs: The speaker, the addressee, and beyond. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 43(2). 59–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prins, Maria Clazina. 2011. A grammar of rGyalrong Jiǎomùzú (Kyom-kyo) dialects: A web of relations. Leiden: Leiden University. (Doctoral dissertation.)Google Scholar
Skeat, Walter W. 2005. An etymological dictionary of the English language. New York: Dover Publications. (Reprint of the 1910 edn. by Clarendon Press.)Google Scholar
Sun, Jackson T.-S. 2000a. Parallelisms in the verb morphology of Sidaba rGyalrong and Lavrung in rGyalrongic. Language and Linguistics 1(1). 161–190.Google Scholar
2000b. Stem alternations in Puxi verb inflection: Toward validating the rGyalrongic subgroup in Qiangic. Language and Linguistics 1(2). 211–232.Google Scholar
2004. Verb-stem variations in Showu rGyalrong. In Lin, Ying-chin & Hsu, Fang-min & Lee, Chun-chih & Sun, Jackson T.-S. & Yang, Hsiu-fang & Ho, Dah-an (eds.), Studies on Sino-Tibetan languages: Papers in honor of Professor Hwang-cherng Gong on his seventieth birthday ( Language and Linguistics Monograph Series W4), 269–296. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
2017. Tshobdun Rgyalrong. In Thurgood, Graham & LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan languages, 557–571. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, volume 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1991. Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. In Sutton, Laurel A. & Johnson, Christopher & Shields, Ruth (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General session and parasession on the grammar of event structure, 480–519. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
. 2000a. Toward a cognitive semantics, volume 1: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 2000b. Toward a cognitive semantics, volume 2: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Veselinova, Ljuba N. 2006. Suppletion in verb paradigms: Bits and pieces of the puzzle (Typological Studies in Language 67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilkins, David P. & Hill, Deborah. 1995. When “go” means “come”: Questioning the basicness of basic motion verbs. Cognitive Linguistics 6(2–3). 209–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yin, Weibin. 2007. Yelong Lawurongyu yanjiu [Study on the ’Jorogs Lavrung language]. Beijing: Nationalities Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Shuya. 2016. La phonologie et la morphologie du dialecte de Brag-dbar du Rgyalrong Situ. Paris: INALCO. (Master’s thesis.)Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Lai, Yunfan
2021. The complexity and history of verb-stem ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs. Folia Linguistica 55:1 ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo
Lai, Yunfan
2021. The complexity and history of verb-stem ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs. Folia Linguistica 55:1 ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.