Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages

Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages PDF Author: Lauren Gawne
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110473747
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
This edited volume brings together work on the evidential systems of Tibetan languages. This includes diachronic research, synchronic description of systems in individual Tibetan varieties and papers addressing broader theoretical or typological questions. Evidentiality in Tibetan languages interacts with other features of modality, interactional context and speaker knowledge states in ways that provide important perspectives for typologists and our general understanding of evidential systems. This book provides the first sustained attempt to capture this complexity and diversity from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective.

Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages

Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages PDF Author: Lauren Gawne
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110473747
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edited volume brings together work on the evidential systems of Tibetan languages. This includes diachronic research, synchronic description of systems in individual Tibetan varieties and papers addressing broader theoretical or typological questions. Evidentiality in Tibetan languages interacts with other features of modality, interactional context and speaker knowledge states in ways that provide important perspectives for typologists and our general understanding of evidential systems. This book provides the first sustained attempt to capture this complexity and diversity from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective.

Relative Tense and Aspectual Values in Tibetan Languages

Relative Tense and Aspectual Values in Tibetan Languages PDF Author: Bettina Zeisler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110908182
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1012

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Book Description
This study presents a comparative approach to a universal theory of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD, combining the methods of comparative and historical linguistics, fieldwork, text linguistics, and philology. The parts of the book discuss and describe (i) the concepts of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD; (ii) the Tibetan system of RELATIVE TENSE and aspectual values, with main sections on Old and Classical Tibetan, “Lhasa” Tibetan, and East Tibetan (Amdo and Kham); and (iii) West Tibetan (Ladakhi, Purik, Balti); Part (iv) presents the comparative view. Discussing the similarities and differences of temporal and aspectual concepts, the study rejects the general claim that ASPECT is a linguistic universal. A new linguistic concept, FRAMING, is introduced in order to account for the aspect-like conceptualisations found in, e.g., English. The concept of RELATIVE TENSE or taxis, may likewise not be universal. Among the Tibetan varieties, West Tibetan is unique in having fully grammaticalized the concept of ABSOLUTE TENSE. West Tibetan is compared diachronically with Old and Classical Tibetan (documented since the mid 8th century) and synchronically with several contemporary Tibetan varieties. The grammaticalized forms of each variety are described on the basis of their employment in discourse. The underlying general function of the Tibetan verbal system is thus shown to be that of RELATIVE TENSE. Secondary aspectual functions are described for restricted contexts. A special focus on the pragmatic or metaphorical use of present tense constructions in Tibetan leads to a typology of narrative conventions. The last part also offers some suggestions for the reconstruction of the Proto-Tibetan verb system.

Evidence for Evidentiality

Evidence for Evidentiality PDF Author: Ad Foolen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263914
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Statements are always under the threat of the potential counter-question How do you know? To pre-empt this question, language users often indicate what kind of access they had to the communicated content: Their own perception, inference from other information, ‘hearsay’, etc. Such expressions, grammatical or lexical, have been studied in recent years under the cover term of evidentiality research. The present volume contributes 11 new studies to this flourishing field, all exploring evidential phenomena in a range of languages (Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Khalkha Mongolian, Spanish, Tibetan, Yurakaré), using a variety of methodologies. Evidential meaning is discussed in relation to other semantic dimensions, such as epistemic modality, semantic roles, commitment, quotative meaning, and tense. The volume is of interest to scholars and students who are interested in up-to-date methods and frameworks for studying evidential meaning and the various ways it is expressed in the languages of the world.

Give Constructions across Languages

Give Constructions across Languages PDF Author: Myriam Bouveret
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902726015X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This cognitive contrastive study of ten languages (Chinese, Dalabon, English, French, Spanish, Romanian, Kurdish, Khmer, Polish, Tibetan) focuses on the concept of giving from six main points of view, namely argument structure, lexical semantics and event structure, role marking in the three argument construction and in other constructions, lexicalization, grammaticalization and constructionalization of the verb from a cognitive construction grammar point of view, and central and extended meanings. It is proposed that a continuum approach to grammar and lexicon is needed in order to describe the typological and historical facts. The volume argues for a concrete and abstract transfer ‘cluster model’ involving coverage of lexical and grammatical extension or bleaching phenomena and that the semantic extensions (metaphorical and otherwise) exploit various portions of this schema. The volume is deeply anchored in the Cognitive Construction Grammar theoretical movement, and proposes analyses of constructional phenomena to illustrate a grammar to lexicon continuum, in synchrony and diachrony: language change, grammaticalization chains, constructionalization analysis, and an invariant hypothesis of giving as a basic activity in human cognition.

Egophoricity

Egophoricity PDF Author: Simeon Floyd
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265542
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
Egophoricity refers to the grammaticalised encoding of personal knowledge or involvement of a conscious self in a represented event or situation. Most typically, a marker that is egophoric is found with first person subjects in declarative sentences and with second person subjects in interrogative sentences. This person sensitivity reflects the fact that speakers generally know most about their own affairs, while in questions this epistemic authority typically shifts to the addressee. First described for Tibeto-Burman languages, egophoric-like patterns have now been documented in a number of other regions around the world, including languages of Western China, the Andean region of South America, the Caucasus, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. This book is a first attempt to place detailed descriptions of this understudied grammatical category side by side and to add to the cross-linguistic picture of how ideas of self and other are encoded and projected in language. The diverse but conceptually related egophoric phenomena described in its chapters provide fascinating case studies for how structural patterns in morphosyntax are forged under intersubjective, interactional pressures as we link elements of our speech to our speech situation.

The Role of Experience in Children’s Language Development: A Cultural Perspective

The Role of Experience in Children’s Language Development: A Cultural Perspective PDF Author: Priya Shimpi
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2832508812
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description


A Typological Study of Evidentiality in Qiangic Languages

A Typological Study of Evidentiality in Qiangic Languages PDF Author: Junwei Bai
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004526285
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
This is the first in-depth typological research into how the grammatical encoding of information source, that is, evidentiality, functions in Qiangic languages.

A Grammar of Mangghuer

A Grammar of Mangghuer PDF Author: Keith W. Slater
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135790817
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
This book is a grammar of Mangghuer, a Mongolic language. Its primary importance is as a systematic grammatical description of a little-known language. It also makes a significant contribution to comparative Mongolic studies.

Amdo Lullaby

Amdo Lullaby PDF Author: Shannon M. Ward
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487558694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In Amdo, a region of eastern Tibet incorporated into mainland China, young children are being raised in a time of social change. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Chinese state development policies are catalysing rural to urban migration, consolidating schooling in urban centres, and leading Tibetan farmers and nomads to give up their traditional livelihoods. As a result, children face increasing pressure to adopt the state’s official language of Mandarin. Amdo Lullaby charts the contrasting language socialization trajectories of rural and urban children from one extended family, who are native speakers of a Tibetan language known locally as “Farmer Talk.” By integrating a fine-grained analysis of everyday conversations and oral history interviews, linguistic anthropologist Shannon M. Ward examines the forms of migration and resulting language contact that contribute to Farmer Talk’s unique grammatical structures, and that shape Amdo Tibetan children’s language choices. This analysis reveals that young children are not passively abandoning their mother tongue for standard Mandarin, but instead are reformatting traditional Amdo Tibetan cultural associations among language, place, and kinship as they build their peer relationships in everyday play.

The Sino-Tibetan Languages

The Sino-Tibetan Languages PDF Author: Randy J. LaPolla
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113579717X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 754

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Book Description
There are more native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages than of any other language family in the world. Records of these languages are among the oldest for any human language, and the amount of active research on them, both diachronic and synchronic, has multiplied in the last few decades. This volume includes overview articles as well as descriptions of individual languages and comments on the subgroups in which they occur. In addition to a number of modern languages, there are descriptions of several ancient languages.