Trois communications seront données dans le cadre du séminaire du CRLAO-EHESS sur la Typologie linguistique de l’Asie orientale :

1) Associated Motion beyond Dedicated Markers in Chinese and Japanese, par Christine Lamarre (INaLCO-CRLAO)
Le vendredi 11 mai 2018, de 10h à 12h, IISMM – Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman, Salle de Réunion, 1er étage, 96 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris

Résumé

I first discuss the encoding in Sinitic of motion-cum-purpose, i.e. ‘go and buy food’, by two distinct Patterns: A: qù mǎi cài [go + purpose VP] vs. B: mǎi cài qu [purpose VP + go]. Previous studies have shown that dialect specificities are a key factor in accounting for the distribution of these patterns. Both A and B are attested nowadays in Standard Mandarin to express motion-cum-purpose ‘go (and/to) VP’, together with a seemingly redundant “blended” Pattern C: qù mǎi cài qu [go + purpose VP + go]. Patterns A, B and C are attested in the case of ventive motion too, with lái (lai). Despite the obvious fact that deictic motion verbs in Pattern B have undergone grammaticalization, only Chao (1968:479) analyzed the itive or ventive morphemes in Pattern B as “particles of purpose”. The various alternative analyses put forward since then fail to be convincing. I argue that Chao’s “particles of purpose” need to be assigned to a grammatical category and that associated motion is a plausible candidate. In the second part of the talk I  switch to Japanese, where among the various grammatical functions developed by deictic verbs -iku and -kuru in conjunctive constructions, we find both the function of an associated motion marker (of the motion-subsequent-to-action type), and that of marking deictic orientation in a motion event (Shibatani 2007). These two case studies raise the issue of a possible link between associated motion markers and deictic directionals, an issue under discussion for other linguistic areas (see for instance Bourdin 2005 about Somali, and Belkadi 2015 about Berber).

Key words: deictic motion verbs, directionals, associated motion, purpose, grammaticalization, northern Mandarin, Japanese

2) Le mouvement associé en sino-tibétain, par Guillaume Jacques (CNRS-CRLAO), Aimée Lahaussois (CNRS) et Shuya Zhang (INaLCO-CRLAO)
Le vendredi 18 mai 2018, de 10h à 12h, IISMM – Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman, Salle de Réunion, 1er étage, 96 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris

Résumé

This talk primarily examines affixal Associated Motion (henceforth AM) in Rgyalrongic and Kiranti, the two branches of the family with the richest verbal morphology.
AM is found in all Rgyalrong languages, with two dedicated prefixes which are completely distinct and occupy a different slot in the verbal template from orientation prefixes. Using corpus data from Japhug and Situ, building on Jacques (2013), we show the subtle semantic differences in the expression of motion-cum-purpose with AM in contrast with a motion verb construction with purposive complement, However, differences across Rgyalrong languages are also observed. In the Kiranti group, AM is expressed by grammaticalized auxiliaries that have become quasi-suffixes. Kiranti languages have a much richer systems of AM markers that Rgyalrong, with up to seven suffixes, but these are less common in the text corpora, and lack some crosslinguistically observed properties of AM markers, such as echo constructions (Guillaume 2016). In both Rgyalrongic and Kiranti, AM markers have arisen from a serial verb construction, but in the case of Rgyalrongic the original verb has completely lost its verbal status and its inflection, while in Kiranti it keeps part of its person and TAM inflection.
AM is also attested outside of Rgyalrongic and Kiranti, in particular in Sinitic and Kuki-Chin, and appears to be a widespread areal feature; however, AM systems are generally historically unrelated across branches of ST, and result from independent grammaticalizations. Some languages, such as Karbi (Konnerth 2016), may have AM markers from words other than verbs. We illustrate the continuum of grammaticalisation of AM across the ST family, from languages with clear affixal AM to languages which show evidence of partial grammaticalisation but do not (yet) fit working definitions of AM (Guillaume 2016).

Key words: associated motion, Rgyalrongic, Kiranti, motion verb construction, grammaticalisation, Sino-Tibetan

3) Associated motion in Baoding (Sinitic): A preliminary investigation on semantic types of verbal events, par Song Na 宋娜 (INaLCO-CRLAO)
Le vendredi 1 juin 2018, de 10h à 12h, IISMM – Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman, Salle de Réunion, 1er étage, 96 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris

Résumé

The present talk provides a preliminary investigation on the associated motion (AM) system of the Baoding dialect of Jilu Mandarin (Sinitic) and shows that in the Baoding dialect the orientation of the motion depends on various semantic features of the predicates expressing the verbal event (including the situation type). With the same itive AM marker tɕhi, meaning ‘to go (away from the deictic centre)’, on account of VP’s semantic type (activity verb, ‘carry’ verb etc), the interpretation of the motion-cum-purpose ‘VP+tɕhi’ could be either Go&do or Go&do&return (‘roundtrip motion’, see Bourdin 2006). This study provides new evidence supporting Lamarre’s (to appear) point of view which challenges the previous treatment of ‘VP+qu’ in Sinitic languages, which are most often considered as a serial verb construction. We argue that ‘VP+ tɕhi or VP+ lɛ’ cannot be considered as a serial verb construction in Baoding, for the reason that tɕhi and lɛ lose their tone contour, whereas in the serial verb construction, tɕhi51 keeps its original tone value. Moreover, in Baoding, these unstressed markers trigger a tone sandhi on the previous syllable. Thus, in Baoding tɕhi and lɛ have undergone a phonetic erosion process and have grammaticalized into associated motion markers. By applying Wilkins’s semantic parameters (Wilkins 1991:220), we find that in Baoding ‘VP+ tɕhi or VP+ lɛ’ a) the moving argument is the subject of the VP; b) motion is prior to the main event; and c) the motion is deictically anchored. This talk deals with the AM system of Baoding dialect and focuses on the semantic properties of the predicates expressing the purpose of the motion, in particular on the correlation between the semantic features of the verb as well as the lexical/grammatical aspect and the interpretation of AM. The case study provided in this talk is likely to shed light on understudied simple associated motion systems and their typology.

Key words: associated motion, Baoding dialect, semantic features of the verbal event

Ces séances sont organisées par Hilary Chappell, CRLAO-EHESS, chappell@ehess.fr