Group 2: Sino-Tibetan Languages

1. Group 2: Sino-Tibetan Languages Working Group II: Sino-Tibetan Languages Session Report July 2, 2005

2. Parts of Speech: General Issues • Nature of definitions: semantically based or morphosyntactically-based? • Need to allow for language-specific definition of classes based on morphosyntactic criteria in that language

3. Parts of Speech: General issues • Consider separating out issues of morphological boundedness and track as a separate feature of lexical categories e.g., Problems with classifiers; concepts of grammatical vs. phonological word possibly useful

4. Issues & Suggestions • Do we want to build implicational universals into the ontology? e.g., existence of dual number implies existence of plural number

5. Issues & Suggestions • Do you want to put together a working group that builds a particular COPE based on common grammaticalization patterns? In other words: What is inventory of relations between grammatical classes as exemplified in historical change?

6. Numeral ‘1’ + classifier --> indefinite article • Verb ‘stay’ -> progressive aspect • 3rd-person singular pronoun -> distal demonstrative • People will at times be wondering whether a particular element is a X or Y. Is it an auxiliary verb or is it a lexical verb? Ideally there would be one-many linking. (Necessary). As with other cases of polyesemy, the status of a particular instance will be determined by context (or even will be unresolved in certain contexts) – how can you come up with a context-dependent assignment of a particular mapping to the ontology when multiple mappings are specified? • State that relation between two concepts in ontology are likely to be expressed together by the same morpheme • Note that certain types of grammaticalization patterns do not occur. E.g., as far as we know, no attested examples of first- or second-person pronouns grammaticalizing into distal demonstratives.

7. Issues & Suggestions • Comments on various parts of speech: • Articles • Coordinating conjunctions • Demonstratives • Classifiers • Particles • Serial verb constructions, auxiliary and copula • Interjections, Ideophones

8. Summary of Basic Points from Saturday (a.m. meeting) • Nature of definitions: semantically-based or morphosyntactically based • Recommendation that morphological boundedness be treated independently of other categories • Discussed building implicational universals into the GOLD architecture • Recommended development of COPE based on grammaticalization patterns • More detailed recommendations on particular parts of speech

9. What to do with “hybrid” classes? • Manange (T-B language, Nepal) • Lexical class of “verbal adjectives” or “adjectival verbs” in addition to well-defined verb and adjective classes • Morphology of verbs but syntax of adjectives • How do we treat this in GOLD • New class? -- Category “other”? • Intersection of classes? • Cross-referencing? • Map to both (but not a super-class) • Define by relation to other classes (relation: “morphology of X”, relation: “syntax of Y”

10. Constructions • Need an ontology of constructions • For example: ontology of constructions of verb/“VP”/clause sequencing • Serial verb constructions • Verb-Auxiliary constructions • Converb/clause-chain constructions • Reduplication • All syntactically distinct but cover overlapping functional domains • Demonstrates the need for separation of formal and functional levels, with links between them

11. Reduplication • Complex structure • Has phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic dimensions • Need to be able to link between these different levels • Certain meanings common, e.g., iterativity, durativity, plurality, distributive • Do we want to predefine a “reduplicant” with pre-association to the meanings? Open World Assumption allows other relations to occur

12. Aspect • Semantic categories look sufficient, but possibly add viewpoint and situational aspect • Must independently specify the meanings and formal devices by which they are coded • Serial verbs, auxiliary verbs, affixes, particles, tones, constructions • Any could potentially map to any meaning

13. More on form-function independence • Need mechanisms to link between features and form • Helpful to have a list of tendencies of which type of feature links to which type of form • Form-function independence was repeatedly mentioned, for example, evidentials can be realized by many formal types

14. Discussion of larger theoretical issues • To what extent is the goal to produce a description of what is possible in natural language or to provide interoperability between different language resources? • Are there tensions between these different goals? • Is GOLD a metalanguage for doing linguistics or a metalanguage for finding language resources? • How theory-neutral is GOLD? • Didn’t resolve these questions, but feel they are important to be asked iteratively in the process of developing GOLD

15. Languages carve up functional space in slightly different ways • How can we allow for this? • Ergative case in one language is not necessarily used for the same set of expressions in another language • Discussed various ways of handling this • Prototypes • Templates • Following diagram represents one conceptualization

16. GOLD Meanings: Prototype or template Agent of transitive predicate P-mean Ergative Case_Class Mean What ERG really means in each language ERG-1 ERG-2 INSTANCES