East and Southeast Asia and Oceania

1. East and Southeast Asia and Oceania

2. Where

3. Where

4. Families • Sino-Tibetan • Sinitic • Tibeto-Burman (probably not a single branch): Newari, Tibetan, Burmese…

5. Families • Tai-Kadai • Thai • Lao • …

6. Families • Austroasiatic • Munda (Santali, Mundari, …) • Mon-Khmer (Khmer, Vietnamese, …) • Nikobarese

7. Families • Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) • Andamanese (at least two families)

8. Families • Austronesian North Taiwan, Hawaii West Madagascar East Easter Island South New Zealand NB: + periphery (Surinamese-Javanese, Sri Lanka Malay, etc.)

9. Families • Austronesian

10. Families • Австронезийская • The largest best-established family in the world • Ethnologue: 1254 • Glottolog: 1274 • Comparative Austronesian Dictionary (1995): 1202 • Robert Blust, Ulo Sirk: 825 • The only large family which is spoken mostly on islands • 3-10 primary branches in Taiwan + 1 branch outside of Taiwan (Malayo-Polynesian) • Tagalog, Malagasy, Malay, Javanese…

11. Structural types within the Austronesian family • Philippine type • Indonesian (Malay) type • East Indonesian type? • Oceanic type? • Other types?

12. Oceanic languages • Basic typological characteristics • Relatively small phoneme inventories, yet often with complex vowel sytems • Marquesan • Analytical tendencies • Agglutination closer to isolation

13. Oceanic languages • Basic typological characteristics • Mostly head marking, but analytical cases in Polynesian languages • Mostly accusative alignment, but ergative alignment in Polynesian languages • Word order • SVO, (SOV), VSO,VOS, TVX • prepositions, postposed attributes

14. Oceanic languages • Basic typological characteristics • Possessive constructions: inalienability, possessive/relational classifiers

15. Oceanic languages • Typologically interesting phenomena • Transitivization by means of a specific marker (even with typical transitive verbs – extraversive derivation) • Tolai (after Lehmann & Verhoeven 2006)

16. Oceanic languages • Typologically interesting phenomena • Syntactic incorporation / pseudo-incorporation • Tonga(Mithun 1984) a. Na’e inu ‘a e kava ‘e Sione PST drink ABS LNKkavaERG John ‘John drank the kava’ b. Na’e inu kava ‘a Sione PST пить кава ABS Джон ‘John kava-drank’

17. Oceanic languages • Typologically interesting phenomena • Multiple expression of negation • Lewo (Vanuatu) – 3 markers!!! • Also in serial constructions / complex predicates • Paamese (Vanuatu)

18. Philippine type • Predicate-initial sentences • Weak contrast between nouns and verbs Tagalog (Gil 1993: 394) (1) Pinatayangbangkero pt:pfv-kill nom boatman The boatman was killed. (2) pulubiangbumalik beggar nomat:pfv-return The one who returned is a beggar.

19. Philippine type • Multiple voices • Tagalog: at least four voices

20. Philippine type

21. Philippine type • Active as a marked voice • Is there subject? • Ergativity? Symmetrical system?

22. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • Consonant systems are not very rich, but rich vocal systems • Often due to complex tonal systems • Not only tones, but also other phonetic processes (creaky or breathyphonation or some kind of glottal constriction) • Tonogenesis: due to the loss of consonants • Kam/Dong (Tai-Kadai) is sometimes thought to have 15 tones

23. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • «Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den» - a poem in Classical Chinese which should be read in Modern Chinese as consisting word that differ only in their tones • « Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.Shì shì shì shì.

24. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • Monosyllabic • Typically one morpheme = one syllable • No morphemes smaller than a syllable • Close to the isolating ideal • Vietnamese, Classical Chinese are the canons of the isolating type • Exception: Munda (polysynthetic)

25. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • Analytical • SVO, right branching (with the exception of Sinitic) • Mostly accusative alignment (but ergativity in Himalayan languages)

26. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • Areal feature: numeral classifiers (correlates with the optionality of the number category) • Standard Indonesian duaekor buaya ‘two crocodiles’ two TAIL crocodile dua buah ekor buaya ‘two crocodile tails’ two FRUIT tail crocodile Noun classes? Нbut Burmese:

27. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • “Languages without grammar” • Word order does not help to distinguish between different roles/grammatical relations • Word order mostly correlates with the information structure. • Given information (including NPs denoting participants which are already known) is normally omitted. • The pervasive role of the context and lexical information in distinguishing between different participants.

28. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • “Languages without grammar” • Lao

29. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • “Languages without grammar” • No obligatory grammatical categories such as Number, Tense, etc. (grammatical markers are optional) • The same items may appear as full-fledged lexemes in some contexts and as grammatical markers in other contexts without overt traces of grammaticalization • In Khmer, the verb ‘give’ can be used as a marker of benefactive, causative or introduce an adverbial clause

30. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • “Languages without grammar” • Parts-of-speech often appear in unexpected functions, but not like in the Philippines. Widespread conversion?

31. China, Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochina)& beyond • “Languages without grammar” • Li, Thompson: Topic-prominence: Subject is not as important for the grammar as Topic is. Mandarin Chinese