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Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 41:2 (2018) ► pp.219–262

Relativisation in Wobzi Khroskyabs and the integration of genitivisation

| Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

This paper focuses on the morphosyntax as well as the semantics of relativisation in Wobzi Khroskyabs, a Rgyalrongic language spoken in Sichuan, China. Different strategies of relativisation are presented, especially the nominalisation strategy. Wobzi Khroskyabs exhibits an innovative relativisation strategy with the genitive marker =ji, which is rarely found in other Rgyalrongic languages. Several hypotheses are put forward to account for the evolutionary pathway from genitivisation to relativisation, showing that genitive =ji probably followed an ergative pattern to enter the relativisation of core arguments.

Keywords: relativisation, genitive, complementation, Khroskyabs, Wobzi, Tibeto-Burman, Trans-Himalayan languages, Sino-Tibetan, morphosyntax, grammaticalisation
Article outline
  • 1.Background information
  • 2.Typological features
    • 2.1The noun phrase
      • 2.1.1Noun phrase structure
      • 2.1.2Argument flagging
    • 2.2The verb
      • 2.2.1Argument indexation
      • 2.2.2Stem alternation and TAM categories
      • 2.2.3Finiteness
    • 2.3Nominalisation
  • 3.Overview of Wobzi relativisation
    • 3.1Which arguments to relativise
    • 3.2Relativising strategies
    • 3.3Place of the head noun
      • 3.3.1Externally-headed relative
      • 3.3.2Headless relative
      • 3.3.3Internally-headed relative
    • 3.4Indexation in relative clauses
  • 4.Nominalised relative clause
    • 4.1S, A and possessor
    • 4.2P
    • 4.3Instrument and place
    • 4.4Time
    • 4.5Ditransitive constructions
  • 5.Interim summary
    • 5.1Syntactic pivots
    • 5.2Comparative remarks
      • 5.2.1Overview of the nominalisers
      • 5.2.2Modal distinction of the P
      • 5.2.3Prefixing relativisation/nominalisation in Khroskyabs
  • 6.Correlative-like constructions
  • 7.Genitive as relative marker
    • 7.1Overview of genitive relativisers in Trans-Himalayan
    • 7.2Genitive relativiser in Wobzi Khroskyabs
  • 8.From genitive to relative marker: The evolutionary pathway
    • 8.1Hypothesis 1: Calque of Chinese relatives
    • 8.2Hypothesis 2: Spread from lower-ranking arguments
    • 8.3Hypothesis 3: The ergative pathway through analogy of noun complementation
      • 8.3.1Ergative pivots
      • 8.3.2Analogy of noun complementation
      • 8.3.3Comparative remarks
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.17015.lai
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