Linguistics 426/526                              Fall 2003

          
Structure of Tibeto-Burman Languages

Scott DeLancey
Straub 227
346-3901
delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu

Week 1:   Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-Burman; geography of the T-B
          languages; history of T-B studies; genetic, typological,
          and areal classification
          Readings:  DeLancey 1992a, Thurgood 2003

Week 2:   General phonological, morphological, and syntactic
          typology of the family
          Readings:  LaPolla 2003

Week 3:   Morphologically complex "pronominalized" and
          agglutinative "non-pronominalized" languages
          Readings:  DeLancey 1989

Week 4:   The importance of nominalization in Tibeto-Burman grammar
          Readings:  DeLancey 1999, Noonan 1997

Week 5:   Case, topic-marking, and alignment
          Readings:  DeLancey ms.

Week 6:   Clause-chaining and serialization
          Readings:  DeLancey 1991, Matisoff 1991

Week 7:   Renewal of verbal morphology
          Readings:  DeLancey 1985, Matisoff 1976

Week 8:   Evidential, mirative & conjunct systems
          Readings:  DeLancey 1992b, (1990), Hargreaves 1991

Week 9:   Tone & tonogenesis;  Word formation
          Readings:  Matisoff 1973

Week 10:  unscheduled

Each student will be responsible for getting to know the grammar of
one language (I'll give you a list of usable grammars), and being
able to contribute information about that language to class
discussion.

Grading will be based on class participation and on a final project
involving grammatical or phonological analysis of your language.


Readings

DeLancey, Scott. 1985. The Analysis-synthesis-lexis cycle in
     Tibeto-Burman:  A Case Study in Motivated Change.  in John
     Haiman, ed., Iconicity in Syntax.  Amsterdam: 
     Benjamins, 367-89.
     . 1989.  Verb agreement in Proto-Tibeto-Burman. Bulletin of
     the School of Oriental and African Studies 52:315-33.
     . 1990. Ergativity and the cognitive model of event structure
     in Lhasa Tibetan.  Cognitive Linguistics 1.3:289-321.
     . 1991. The Origins of Verb Serialization in Modern Tibetan. 
     Studies in Language. 15:1-23.
     . 1992a.  The Sino-Tibetan languages.  W. Bright, ed.,
     International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol 3, pp.
     445-7.  NY: Oxford University Press.
     . 1992b. The historical status of the conjunct/disjunct
     pattern in Tibeto-Burman.  Acta Linguistica Hafniensia
     25:39-62.
     . 1999.  Relativization in Tibetan.  in Yogendra Yadava and
     Warren Glover, eds, Studies in Nepalese Linguistics,
     pp. 231-249.  Kathmandu:  Royal Nepal Academy.
Hargreaves, David. 1991.  The conceptual structure of intentional
     action:  Data from Kathmandu Newari.  Papers from the
     Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics
     Society.
Matisoff, James A. 1973. Tonogenesis in Southeast Asia. In Larry M.
     Hyman, ed., Consonant Types and Tone, pp. 71-95.
     Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 1.
     .  1976. Lahu Causative Constructions:  Case Hierarchies and
     the Morphology/syntax Cycle in Tibeto-Burman Perspective.  in
     Masayoshi Shibatani, (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 6:  The
     Grammar of Causative Constructions, pp. 413-442.  New
     York: Academic Press.
     . 1991. Areal and Universal Dimensions of Grammatization in
     Lahu. in Traugott and Heine (eds.), vol. 2, 383-453.
Noonan, Michael. 1997. Versatile nominalizations. Essays on
     language function and language type, ed. by Joan Bybee,
     John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson, 373-394. Amsterdam:
     Benjamins.