Esquema de interpretación multimodal

1SG

CONT

‘The child’s hat’

Though the use of khɔ̌ɔŋ for possession in Thai is optional, a look at its use in both the Thai and Shan corpora shows a marked difference in how often it is used. There were a total of 20 Thai possessional NPs, 12 of which were marked with khɔ̌ɔŋ. The overall frequency of khɔ̌ɔŋ in Thai was 0.22% which includes 2 lexical ‘thing’ usages. In Shan khɔ̌ɔŋ only appeared 3 times in the corpus with only one use marking possession. Of the 24 possessional NPs in Shan, only one was marked with khɔ̌ɔŋ and the other two appearances of khɔ̌ɔŋ were lexical uses. These differences in the marking of possession are shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Comparison of noun-phases of possession Shan Thai

Genitive khɔ̌ɔŋ construction 4% 60% Contiguous word order 96% 40%

The findings here suggests that possession phrases are more likely to be marked by khɔ̌ɔŋ in Thai, while if Shan khɔ̌ɔŋ has grammaticalized the possessive marking function, it is not used as often and its use could possibly be the result of influence from Thai.

Papers from Chula-ISSSEAL – Loss

66

5 Conclusion

As a basis of comparison, grammaticalization proved to be useful, at least identifying several Shan grams. But these findings can also lead to other interesting questions, concerning a broader Pan-Tai grammatical comparison which focuses on grammaticalization. It seems that with more comparative data, Tai languages have something to add to general grammaticalization theory, such as adding to the inventory of ‘clines’, a key concept in the literature. This line of thought is based on findings here which showed similar developments from similar lexical content (e.g. V ‘to be good’ > ADJVZR, V ‘to give’ > CAUS, V ‘to touch’, > PSSV etc.). Thus, while identifying differences between Shan and Thai is interesting for its own sake, it also presents areas for further exploration. With consideration of more general sociolinguistic factors, it also seems likely that with any influence on Shan from Thai, it could have the potential of one day subsuming unique Shan linguistic features. This possibility places a higher value on identifying unique features throughout Shan and its varieties, which could in turn present a glimpse at broader Tai grammatical phenomenon. In doing this type of research, the work of historical Thai researchers, and their work on grammaticalization, may give an interesting and valuable context from which to begin some discussions on these matters. Despite the largely exploratory nature of this study, it hopes to point to areas for further research.

References

Bisang, W. 2004. Grammaticalization without coevolution of form and meaning: The case of tense- aspect-modality in east and mainland Southeast Asia. In What makes grammaticalization? - A look from its fringes and its components, ed. by W. Bisang, N. P. Himmelmann & B. Wiemer, 109-138. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bisang, W. 2008. Grammaticalization and the areal factor: The perspective of east and mainland Southeast Asian languages. In Rethinking grammaticalization: New perspectives, ed. by M. J. López-Couso, & E. Seoane, 15-35. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Bybee, J. L. 2003. Mechanisms of change in grammaticalization: the role of frequency. In The handbook of historical linguistics, ed. by B. D. Joseph & R. D. Janda, 602-623. Malden, MD: Blackwell Publishing.

Chancharu, N. 2009. The polyfunctionality of the word form / tɔ̂ŋ / in Thai: A cognitive linguistic study. (Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Chulalongkorn University).

Diller, A. V. N. 2001. Grammaticalization and Tai linguistic change. In Essays in Tai linguistics, ed. by M.R. Kalaya Tingsabadh, & A. S. Abramson, 139-176. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press.

Diller, A. V. N., Edmondson, J. A. & Luo, Y. 2008. The Tai-Kadai languages. New York: Routledge. Enfield, N. J. 2002. Parallel innovation and ‘coincidence’ in linguistic areas: On a bi-clausal

extent/result constructions of mainland Southeast Asia. In Proceedings of the 28th meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special session on Tibeto-Burman and Southeast Asian linguistics, ed. by P. Chew, 121-128. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Enfield, N. J. 2003. Linguistic epidemiology: Semantics and grammar of language contact in mainland Southeast Asia. London: Routledge Curzon.

Enfield, N. J. 2005. Areal linguistics and mainland Southeast Asia. Annual Review of Anthropology 34, 181-206.

Enfield, N. J. 2011. Linguistic diversity in mainland Southeast Asia. In Dynamics of human diversity: The case of mainland Southeast Asia, ed. by N. J. Enfield, 63-80. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Iwasaki, S., & Yap, F. H. 1998b. ‘Give’ constructions in Thai and beyond: A cognitive and

grammaticalization perspective. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tai studies, 371-382.

Jenny, M. 2009. Modality in Burmese: ‘may’ or ‘must’ – grammatical uses of yá ‘get’. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1:111-126.

Jenny, M. 2012. The far west of Southeast Asia – ‘give’ and ‘get’ in the languages of Myanmar. Paper presented at Mainland Southeast Asia - State of the art, MPI Leipzig.

Kullavanijaya, P. 2008. A historical study of /thîi/ in Thai. In The Tai-Kadai languages, ed. by Diller, A. V. N. et al., 445-467. London: Routledge Press.

Meesat, P. 1997. A study of auxiliary verbs developed from verbs in Thai. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Chulalongkorn University.

Morev, L. N. 1998. Expressing comparison in the Tai languages. Mon-Khmer Studies 28:91-100. Post, M. W. 2007. Grammaticalization and compounding in Thai and Chinese: A text-frequency

approach. Studies in Language 31(1):117-175.

Prasithrathsint, A. 1997. Emergence and development of abstract nominalization in Standard Thai. In Southeast Asian linguistics studies in honor of Vichin Panupong, ed. by Arthur S. Abramson. 179-190. Chulalongkorn University Press.

Prasithrathsint, A. 2004. The adversative passive marker as a prominent areal feature of Southeast Asian languages. In Papers from the 11th annual meeting of Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, ed. by S. Burusphat, Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Series Press.

Prasithrathsint, A. 2006. Development of the thùuk passive marker in Thai. Passivization and typology: Form and function. In Proceedings of the workshop on Passives at the 20th

Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, ed. by W. Abraham & L. Leisio [Typological Studies in Language]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Thepkanjana, K., & Uehara, S. 2008 Directional verbs as success markers in Thai: Another

grammaticalization path. In The Tai-Kadai languages, ed. by Diller, A. V. N. et al., 484-506. London: Routledge Press.

68

COMPOUND STRESS IN THAI