A. Research Papers (Peer-Reviewed)

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    Lexical Comparisons between Proto-Kuki-Chin and Jinghpaw: Evidence for a Central Branch of Trans Himalayan
    ( 2022-01-25) DeLancey, Scott
    This paper presents a set of lexical correspondences between Jinghpaw and Proto-Kuki-Chin as reconstructed by VanBik (2009) which have no attested comparanda outside the hypothesized Central branch of Trans-Himalayan/Sino-Tibetan suggested by Bradley (1997) and DeLancey (2021). Jinghpaw and South Central/Kuki-Chin represent two hypothesized groupings, Sal and Kuki-Naga, which are the major constituents of this proposed branch, so these comparisons are adduced as potential evidence for the Central hypothesis. Included in these lexical comparisons is a substantial number of sets where there are Jinghpaw comparanda for one or the other, or both, of the alternating verbal stems reconstructed for PKC. It is argued that these represent particularly strong evidence for a special genealogical connection between the languages.
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    Expressions of Caused Motion in Vietnamese: A Perspective from Cognitive Linguistics
    ( 2022-01-25) Ly, Ngoc Toan
    This paper examines how Vietnamese speakers express caused motion by applying cause verbs. The theory of cognitive linguistics is adopted to shed light on the properties of semantics and syntax of Vietnamese expressions of caused motion. The data consists of expressions of caused motion, verbs and spatial prepositions taken from twelve Vietnamese stories. The results of this study present numerous lexicalization patterns of motion with the different causes that show the conflation of semantic components into verbs and spatial prepositions. Furthermore, this study presents the construction grammar of expressions of caused motion in Vietnamese referring to speakers’ knowledge about caused motion. More importantly, this paper shows how ideas of caused motion are expressed in different ways in Vietnamese based on the comparison with ones in English. Therefore, this study is expected to provide a background for identifying the typologies of caused-motion patterns in Vietnamese.
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    Thai Sentence­Final Imperative Discourse Particles
    ( 2022-01-25) Rutherford, Attapol T.
    The Thai imperative discourse particles include sì, ná, nâa, tɤ̀, nɔ̀i, and dâi. The distribution of these imperative discourse particles depends on the illocutionary forces and Searlean felicity conditions that constitute the forces. sì and tɤ̀ appear in a wide range of illocutionary forces but in a complementary distribution. sì signals the preparatory condition in which the speaker is socially or epistemically superior to the hearer. In contrast, tɤ̀ indicates that the speaker does not have control over the hearer and assumes that the act might not be fulfilled. ná is found with illocutionary forces that part of face-threaten acts to make them more polite. nɔ̀i and dâi signal request and permission respectively.
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    The Diachrony of hǎa…mây as a Bipartite Negative Construction in Thai
    ( 2022-01-25) Sun, Xuefeng
    The present study investigates the diachronic development of the bipartite negative construction hǎa…mây in Thai, aiming to account for its syntactic and semantic peculiarity. Based on the historical data from the Sukhothai period to Modern Thai, I suggest that the development of hǎa…mây construction relates to the grammaticalization of the expression hǎa NP míɁ dây ‘fail to find something’. From around the mid-14th century, hǎa NP míɁ dây came to gain a new function as an irregular negative existential construction under the pressure of the recession of the anterior negative existential form bɔ̀ɔ mii ‘not have, not exist’. This function is especially prominent in the 17th century during which the old negator bɔ̀ɔ shows a continuous decrease in the frequency of use and the newer negator mây was not widely used. When the newer negative existential form mây mii emerged around the early 18th century and eventually prevailed over hǎa NP míɁ dây in the 19th and 20th centuries, hǎa NP míɁ dây gradually lost its function as a negative existential form but survived its evolution into a negative adverbial construction through a syntagmatic change (from hǎa NP to hǎa VP), accompanied by a phonetic reduction (from hǎa…míɁ dây to hǎa…mây ) and a semantic reinterpretation(from ‘fail to find something or not exist, not have’ to ‘not VP as one thought’).
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    A Classification of the Nicobarese languages
    ( 2022-01-25) Sidwell, Paul
    In this paper, I report the results of a computational phylogenetic experiment based on a modified Swadesh 100 list intended to provide indications of the internal branching of the Nicobarese languages. To date, little work has been done on the classification of the small Nicobarese group, which appears to consist of approximately seven distinct languages spoken across an island chain. Three of the languages have published dictionaries and partial descriptions, while the others are fragmentarily documented, and the materials can be highly problematic to work with. The findings of the experiment suggest three principal sub-groups: Northern and Southern groups consisting of single languages (Car and Shompen, respectively) and a complex Central group that includes all other documented lects and may be regarded as a dialect chain. The Central languages appear to be rather close lexically and grammatically, although some phonological diversity is evident. There are textual claims that the various islands have been in mutual contact historically, and the phylogenetic results perhaps provide some indications of the patterns of this contact. The data supporting the study, and Nexus file used to generate the analyses, are made available as a Zenodo archive for transparency and reproducibility (10.5281/zenodo.5508350).