Randy J. LaPolla

List of John Benjamins publications for which Randy J. LaPolla plays a role.

Journals

Titles

Ethnolinguistic contact across the Indo-Myanmar-Southwestern China mountains

Edited by Alexander R. Coupe, Randy J. LaPolla and Hideo Sawada

Special issue of Asian Languages and Linguistics 4:2 (2023) v, 218 pp.
Subjects Anthropological Linguistics | Cognition and language | Sociolinguistics and Dialectology | Theoretical linguistics

Studies in Transitivity: Insights from Language Documentation

Edited by František Kratochvíl, Alexander R. Coupe and Randy J. LaPolla

Special issue of Studies in Language 35:3 (2011) v, 266 pp.
Subjects Functional linguistics | Theoretical linguistics | Typology

Articles

Coupe, Alexander R., Randy J. LaPolla and Hideo Sawada 2023 Ethnolinguistic contact across the Indo-Myanmar-Southwestern China mountainsEthnolinguistic contact across the Indo-Myanmar-Southwestern China mountains, Coupe, Alexander R., Randy J. LaPolla and Hideo Sawada (eds.), pp. 113–118 | Introduction
LaPolla, Randy J. and Keita Kurabe 2023 Manifestations of Jinghpaw influence among Rawang speakersEthnolinguistic contact across the Indo-Myanmar-Southwestern China mountains, Coupe, Alexander R., Randy J. LaPolla and Hideo Sawada (eds.), pp. 273–290 | Article
Rawang and Jinghpaw, while both considered part of the larger Kachin ethnic group, are not seen to be closely related, though both retain proto-Tibeto-Burman forms relatively well. But as essentially all Rawang speakers speak Jinghpaw, there are a lot of loan words from Jinghpaw in Rawang, and… read more
This paper argues that linguistic typology, and linguistics more generally, got off to a good start in the 19th century with scholars like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Georg von der Gabelentz, where the understanding was that each language manifests a unique world view, and it is important to study… read more
This short note discusses the origin and development of the use of the term “pronomenalisation” (pronominalization) in Sino-Tibetan linguistics, pointing out that the concept was originally a typological one, and that the phenomenon was seen as the result of grammaticalization, i.e. the free… read more
After a short background introduction on Sino-Tibetan noun modifying clause constructions generally, this paper demonstrates, using naturally occurring data, that the Mandarin pre-head noun-modifying clausal construction is grammatically unlike a relative clause construction, as normally conceived,… read more
There have been challenges to the received view of the structure of the Sino-Tibetan language family. This is all well and good, as we should constantly challenge our most basic assumptions. In this paper I look at the arguments presented with a view to convincing us to change our conception of… read more
This chapter presents a view of communication not as coding and decoding, but as ostension and inference, that is, one person doing something to show the intention to communicate, and then another person using abductive inference to infer the reason for the person’s ostensive act, creating a… read more
Evidentiality is often defined as the grammatical means of expressing information source. This paper argues for a broader definition of evidentials, as close work documenting languages has shown that simply saying evidentials mark source of information does not capture all of the actual uses of… read more
This paper is an attempt to apply insights and methodologies from Nichols (1996) to help us resolve problems in determining genetic relatedness among Sino-Tibetan languages and in our efforts at reconstructing protolanguages of different time depths. The results from the application of Nichols’s… read more
LaPolla, Randy J. 2011 On transitivity in two Tibeto-Burman languagesStudies in Transitivity: Insights from Language Documentation, Kratochvíl, František, Alexander R. Coupe and Randy J. LaPolla (eds.), pp. 636–649 | Article
This paper presents the analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in two languages (Rawang and Qiang) that have been described using very different definitions of transitivity, with a view to showing that each language must be analysed on its own terms, and so the criteria used for… read more
LaPolla, Randy J., František Kratochvíl and Alexander R. Coupe 2011 On TransitivityStudies in Transitivity: Insights from Language Documentation, Kratochvíl, František, Alexander R. Coupe and Randy J. LaPolla (eds.), pp. 469–492 | Article
This paper critically discusses and contrasts some of the different conceptualisations of transitivity that have been presented in the literature, and argues that transitivity as a morphosyntactic phenomenon and effectiveness of an event as a semantic concept should be separated in discussions of… read more
LaPolla, Randy J. 2006 On grammatical relations as constraints on referent identificationVoice and Grammatical Relations: In Honor of Masayoshi Shibatani, Tsunoda, Tasaku and Taro Kageyama (eds.), pp. 139–151 | Article
LaPolla, Randy J. 2003 3. Evidentiality in QiangStudies in Evidentiality, Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. and R.M.W. Dixon (eds.), pp. 63–78 | Chapter
LaPolla, Randy J. 1996 Book Review (2)International Review of Chinese Linguistics 1:1, pp. 92–100 | Review
LaPolla, Randy J. 1995 Pragmatic relations and word order in ChineseWord Order in Discourse, Downing, Pamela A. and Michael Noonan (eds.), pp. 297–329 | Article