On the etymology of the Japanese plural suffix and its possible connection to Korean

This paper presents an etymological analysis of the Japanese plural suffix tachi, Old Japanese tati. I propose that tati originates from a grammaticalization of an earlier Pre-Old Japanese phonological form *totwi, the non-bound reflex of which is the Old Japanese quasi-collective marker dwoti ‘fellow (person), everyone, together’. The reconstruction of a Pre-Old Japanese stem *totwi (Pre-Proto-Japanese /*tətəj/) with quasi-collective and plural function clarifies the possible connection of the Japanese plural suffix to the Korean plural suffix tul (Middle Korean tólh), which Whitman (1985, p. 217) proposed to be cognates but which has since been criticized on phonological and distributional grounds. I show that reconstructing the earliest form of the Japanese plural suffix as /*tətəj/ resolves each of the three phonological issues with the Japano-Koreanic comparison, creates a better morphosyntactic match between the two languages, and rules out a loanword relationship of the Japanese and Korean forms.

Adverbs in the Austronesian languages of Taiwan

This is a study of adverbs in nine typologically divergent Austronesian languages of Taiwan, Atayal, Bunun, Favorlang, Kavalan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Thao, and Tsou. There are only a few adverbs in each of these languages. The form of an adverb is usually invariant and its position in a sentence is relatively free. On the contrary, the form of a verb usually varies and its position in the sentence is usually fixed. Since the function of an adverb is to modify a verb, it may not occur without a verb in a sentence, whereas a true verb may occur without any other verb. Many adverbial concepts in Chinese and English, such as ‘all’, ‘only’, ‘often’, and ‘again’, are expressed using verbs that manifest different foci and take aspect markers. When these words function as the main verb in the sentence, they may attract bound personal pronouns in many Austronesian languages of Taiwan. However, there are a few genuine adverbs in each of these languages. It varies from language to language whether a certain lexical item functions as a verb or adverb.

An aggregate approach to diachronic variation in modern Chinese writings and translations

Modern Chinese took the place of classical Chinese and has been the standard form of writing since the early 1920s. While several studies have been carried out on diachronic variation in modern written Chinese, these include few aggregate investigations. This study examines the diachronic variation in modern Chinese writings and translations from the 1900s to the 2000s. Frequencies of multiple linguistic features sensitive to historical change were drawn from a multi-genre comparable corpus, ‘DCMCWT’, containing five periods: 1900–1911, 1919–1930, 1931–1949, 1950–1966, and 1978–2012. Hierarchical agglomerative clustering was employed for periodisation, while multidimensional scaling supplemented the developmental path. The results suggest that Chinese writings and translations fall into three broad periods: 1900–1911, 1919–1966, and 1978–2012. Chinese translations follow a similar evolutionary path as the writings, and the gap between them, narrowed from 1900 to 2012. This developmental path corresponds to the socio-historical backgrounds in Chinese history and shares similarities and differences with the development of English. Diachronic variation in early modern Chinese mirrors that of English in that both languages developed to be more colloquial and interactive. However, early modern Chinese is different from English, as diglossia has played a crucial evolutionary role.

The split word orders APV and PAV of Nuosu Yi

Nuosu Yi is a Tibeto-Burman (henceforth TB) language lacking sufficient core case markers. Depending on the telicity and aspectuality of the predicates, its basic word order splits into APV and rigid PAV. To be specific, the atelic and/or imperfective predicates are APV, while the telic predicates indicated by the resultativity or perfect aspect are PAV. This paper describes the semantics and syntax of the syntactic PAV and APV of Nuosu Yi thoroughly; and compares them to other TB languages in terms of role marking strategies. I propose that the conditions of split word order in Nuosu Yi are on a par with those of the split ergativity encoded by the morphological marking in Tibetan and some other TB languages; namely, the rigid PAV corresponds to the ergative alignment, and the rigid APV corresponds to the accusative alignment. The study will deepen Nuosu Yi’s morpho-syntax study and show the word order diversity to the studies of linguistic typology. Additionally, the study sheds light on the possibility of extending the definition of ergativity and its potential counterpart.

Expanding the boundaries of Asian linguistics

While the general lines of the areal linguistic typology of Asia are well known, there are some less well understood pockets that promise to throw light on the overall range of variation within the continent. These include the indigenous languages of the Andaman Islands, which have for much of history stood apart from the population and language spreads that have characterized most of Asia. They fall into two families: Great Andamanese – the focus of this article – and Ongan. In some respects Great Andamanese languages go with the bulk of Asia, e.g. verb-final constituent order, but other aspects even of constituent order represent a mixture that matches neither the general Asian head-final type nor the Southeast Asian head-initial type. Some properties of Great Andamanese are typologically unusual, but do find presumably accidental parallels in languages spoken inside Asia, e.g. retroflex consonants, or elsewhere, e.g. body-part prefixes and verb root ellipsis.

An ethnolinguistic repositioning of the Balmiki language of Odisha

Language identification is a complex process. In most cases, the processes of language identification by governmental agencies are based on their political compulsions and intentions. Even objective studies made by linguists are not free from the flaws of their philosophical background. This kind of lack of objectivity in establishing linguistic identities may lead to linguistic right movements. In this context, an ethnolinguistic analysis to establish the identity of a language becomes important. The cases of Balmiki and Kupia represent a situation where the linguistic identities of many languages are equally disputable due to the lack of scientific and objective studies. They are listed as different languages in many governmental and non-governmental reports. Linguists who have worked on these languages held the view that Balmiki is an isolated language spoken in Odisha only and is certainly different from Kupia, which is spoken in Andhra Pradesh. The present study attempts to ascertain the ethnolinguistic position of Balmiki vis-à-vis Kupia using bibliographical evidence. It concludes that Balmiki and Kupia are one and the same language. It also finds that it is well recorded and studied by different scholars since long.

From topic marker to case marker

The case model of the syncretic case [xa] in the Gansu-Qinghai area came from non-Sinitic languages, while the phonetic form came from Sinitic languages (“Sinitic languages” are usually called “Chinese dialects” in the Chinese linguistic community). The paper shows that this marker [xa] may come from a topic marker and topic chain markers in Sinitic languages. The accusative/dative marker formation was motivated by pragmatic factors. This phenomenon is also found in other languages. The syncretic use of cases is commonplace in languages across the world, whereas the accusative/dative marker [xa] is one of the prominent features in Sinitic languages in the Gansu-Qinghai area. The accusative/dative case formation did not know an even speed in Sinitic languages. It seems that Wutun and Tangwang evolved rapidly while Linxia and Gangou changed with an intermediate rhythm. Qinghai languages are the closest to Tibetic languages, but paradoxically they seem to be more conservative and do not adopt dative markers in possessor and experiencer constructions which are seen overwhelmingly in Tibetic languages. However, other Sinitic languages have adopted this marking progressively and steadily. The language model of the syncretic marker [xa] is not from a single language. Amdo Tibetan as well as Mongolic languages have contributed to the case formation of [xa] in Sinitic languages. This paper proposes that an Intertwining Model helped the spread of case formation in this zone. Languages of one group or of one language family have influenced each other at different periods. The results of case formation we note today constitute a net-like relationships connected to various languages, but not a neat and linear path.

Mechanisms of semantic change

This paper examines the mechanisms of semantic change in the creation of ten Cantonese slang words. It demonstrates with synchronic evidence that metaphorization, metonymization and (inter)subjectification are three principal driving forces behind the shift in meaning. It is argued that Traugott and Dasher’s (2002) Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC), initially proposed for and widely used in the context of grammaticalization, is equally useful for the study of neologisms – in this case, the relatively recent slang expressions in Cantonese. These monosyllabic lexemes are shown to have followed the same unidirectional pathway of semantic change – that is, the shift from non-subjective meaning to encoded (inter)subjective meaning – outlined in their model of semantic change.

The structural uniqueness of languages and the value of comparison for language description

This paper shows why it is not a contradiction to say that each language is structurally unique and must be described with its own categories, but language description profits enormously from typological knowledge. It has sometimes been suggested that the Boasian imperative (“each language should be described in its own terms”) leads to uninsightful analyses, and that language description should instead be “typologically informed”. But the Boasian imperative is not at all incompatible with an intimate connection between description and comparison: Comparative (or typological) knowledge is highly valuable both for making our descriptions transparent and comprehensible, and for helping describers to ask a wide range of questions that would not have occurred to them otherwise. Since we do not know whether any of the building blocks of languages are innate and universal for this reason, we cannot rely on general frameworks (of the generative type) for our descriptions, but we can use typological questionnaires and other kinds of comparative information as a scaffold. Such scaffolds are not theoretical components of the description, but are important methodological tools.

On the nature of AA question1 in Yi2 and related problems

This paper aims to study a kind of interrogative in Yi which surfaces as an AA form commonly viewed as AA/Reduplicative Question. It explores the interrogative motivation, question type, generative mechanism and syntactic derivation of AA Question. We first assume that (i) AA question in Yi is a kind of alternative question, which is reduced successively from A-or-not-A and A-not-A question and (ii) the [+Q] feature of AA question does not result from reduplication but from other reasons. To justify these two assumptions, we use tests including adverb tests, modal tests, tag question tests, SFP tests, Q & A tests, and cross-language investigation and sociolinguistic survey. The findings include (i) the [+Q] feature of AA question results from the existence of an abstract interrogative morpheme, (ii) the phenomenon of reduplication is just a kind of byproduct with the syntactic derivation of AA question and (iii) AA question, diachronically speaking, is essentially a kind of alternative question, which is reduced successively from A-or-not-A and A-not-A question to meet the economic principle of language.