Language Variation: Papers on Variation and Change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in Honour of James A. Matisoff ; [edited By] David Bradley ... [et Al.].David Bradley Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2003 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 320 pages This volume discusses the nature of variation and change in a number of East, Southeast and South Asian languages, especially of the Sino-Tibetan family, also extending to other languages, even as far afield as English. The papers honour the work of James A. Matisoff, in celebration of his 65th birthday. There are nineteen papers by twenty authors concerning issues in phonology, morphology, syntax, language contact, orthography and language documentation. Randy LaPolla provides a paper with broad theoretical implications, 'Why languages differ: variation in the conventionalisation of constraints on inference'. Martha Ratliff writes on Hmong secret languages. Graham Thurgood and Fengxiang Li give an account of contact-induced variation and syntactic change in the Austronesian Tsat language of Hainan. Benji Wald's contribution considers verb compounding in English and East Asian languages. |
Contents
themes and variations | 21 |
Variegated tonal developments in Tibetan | 35 |
Some case studies on linguistic variation and their implications | 53 |
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agreement appears Area argument borrowed Cantonese Chinese classifier clause communication comparative complex consistent consonants constrain construction context contrast correspondences demonstrative dialects discussion distinction elements English ergative example expressed final functional given grammatical hanzi head influence initial interpretation involved Kiranti Lahu languages lexical Limbu Linguistics Lisu loans loanwords Mandarin marker marking Matisoff meaning morphemes names Nepali Northern Note noun object occur onset original Oroqen particular pattern person phonetic phonological plural position possible prefixes present Press productive pronouns referent relative represented result seen semantic sentence similar Sino-Tibetan sound Southeast speakers split structure Studies suffixes syllables symbols syntactic T/+N T/+N T/+N Table tautomorphemicity third Thulung Tibetan Tibeto-Burman tonal tone topic Tsat typological University variation verb compounding voiced vowel