Authored Books by Mark W. Post
2017. Leiden, Brill.
Tangam is a critically endangered Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) language spoken by
around 150 ... more Tangam is a critically endangered Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) language spoken by
around 150 hilltribespeople in the far Eastern Himalaya. A member of the Tani subgroup
of Trans-Himalayan, Tangam is mutually-unintelligible with other languages of this
otherwise relatively homogeneous subgroup. This is demonstrated to be a consequence of Tangam's early-branching status within the Western Tani subgroup, subsequent contact with Eastern Tani languages, and historical relationship with speakers of Bodic languages.
Based on three field trips to the Tangam-speaking area over two years, this work presents
a brief but comprehensive cultural, historical and grammatical introduction to the Tangam language, together with a trilingual lexicon in Tangam, English and Minyong, and
a collection of fully-analysed texts. It will be of interest to linguists and anthropologists of
the Himalayan region, as well as to historical linguists and language typologists.
2007. PhD Dissertation. Melbourne, La Trobe University Research Centre for Linguistic Typology.
This work is the first comprehensive descriptive grammar of the Lare dialect of Galo, a Tibeto-Bu... more This work is the first comprehensive descriptive grammar of the Lare dialect of Galo, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Tani branch spoken in central Arunachal Pradesh State, in the North-East Indian Himalaya. It is based on primary data obtained from original fieldwork conducted by the author in Galo towns and villages in Arunachal Pradesh. In addition to description of the synchronic phonology and grammar of Lare Galo, it contains a historical overview and preliminary reconstruction of Proto-Galo segmental phonology, in addition to a glossary of approximately 1,300 lexical roots with 4,000 lexical exemplars and three fully analyzed texts.
Rwbaa, Igoo, M. Post, Ilww Rwbaa, M. Xodu, K. Bagra, B. Rwbaa, T. Rwbaa, N. Aado and D. Keenaa 2009. Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, Galo Welfare Society.
Rwbaa, `Igoo, Mark W. Post, `Ilww Rwbaa, `Miilww `Xodu, `Kenjum `Bagra, `Bomcak Rwbaa, Toomoo Rwbaa, Notoo Aado and Dambom Keena, with Tado Karlo (2009). Itanagar, Galo Welfare Society.
Edited Books by Mark W. Post
Post, Mark. W., Stephen Morey and Toni Huber, Eds. 2022. Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya. [Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 52.] Leiden, Brill (ISBN: 978-90-04-51313-6)., 2022
The Eastern Himalaya holds perhaps the highest levels of ethnolinguistic diversity in all Eurasia... more The Eastern Himalaya holds perhaps the highest levels of ethnolinguistic diversity in all Eurasia, with over 300 languages spoken by as many distinct cultural groups. What factors can explain such diversity? How did it evolve, and what can its analysis teach us about the prehistory of its wider region? This pioneering interdisciplinary volume brings together a diverse group of linguists and anthropologists, all of whom seek to reconstruct aspects of Eastern Himalayan ethnolinguistic prehistory from an empirical standpoint, on the basis of primary fieldwork-derived data from a diverse range of Himalayan Indigenous languages and cultural practices.
2015. Canberra, Asia-Pacific Linguistics. (Paperback/eBook, 364 + xxvii pp., ISBN: 978-19-2218-5266/978-19-2218-5259)
In the greater Northeast Indian region, one of the richest and most diverse ethnolinguistic areas... more In the greater Northeast Indian region, one of the richest and most diverse ethnolinguistic areas in all of Asia, Robbins Burling stands out as a true scholarly pioneer. His extensive fieldwork-based research on Bodo-Garo languages, comparative-historical Tibeto-Burman linguistics, the ethnography of kinship systems, and language contact, has had a profound impact on the field of Northeast Indian ethnolinguistics and beyond, and has inspired generations of Indian and international scholars to follow his example. This volume of papers on the anthropology and linguistics of Northeast India and beyond is offered as a tribute to Robbins Burling on the occasion of his 90th birthday, his 60th year of scholarly productivity, and his umpteenth trip to Northeast India.
2013. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India (Hardcover, 303 + xvii pp.; ISBN: 978-93-8226-472-9)
2012. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India (Hardcover, 404 + xvii pp.; ISBN: 978-81-7596-930-8).
2011. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India (Hardcover, 253 + xxii pp.; ISBN: 978-81-7596-793-9), 2011
2010. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India (Hardcover, 256 + xii pp.; ISBN: 978-81-7596-714-4).
2008. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India (Hardcover, 270 + xiv pp.; ISBN: 978-81-7596-600-0).
Papers by Mark W. Post
In Clause Chains, Ed. by Hannah Sarvasy and Alexandra Aikhenvald, OUP., 2023
In Post, M. W., S. Morey and T. Huber, Eds. (2022). Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya. Leiden, Brill: 1-21., 2022
In Post, M. W., S. Morey and T. Huber, Eds., Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya. [Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 52.] Leiden, Brill: 25-64, 2022
The concept of “Zomia”—a transnational region centred on the greater Southeast Asian massif, inha... more The concept of “Zomia”—a transnational region centred on the greater Southeast Asian massif, inhabited primarily by putatively state-resisting “hill tribal” peoples—has gained considerable traction in the social sciences and area studies literatures over the past decade, particularly since the publication of Scott (2009). Yet there are at least two noticeable gaps in these literatures: first, linguists have hardly engaged with the idea of Zomia thus far. This is perhaps surprising, given the centrality of language to socio-cultural conceptions of Zomia as outlined in van Schendel (2002) and Scott (2009: 14, 21). Second, the literature on Zomia contains very few mentions of the Eastern Himalaya, its peoples and their languages. This is perhaps less surprising, given the relative lack of detailed information that has generally been available concerning Eastern Himalayan languages and cultures, but it is nevertheless unfortunate; as I will argue below, the Eastern Himalaya should feature centrally in considerations about what Zomia “is”, and why it is the way it is.
This chapter will work towards addressing both gaps, by means of a linguist’s rethinking of Zomia from an Eastern Himalayan perspective. In it, I will focus both on contemporary conceptions of Zomia, its peoples and their cultural-linguistic attributes, as well as on Scott’s proposed explanation for these cultural-linguistic attributes in terms of his concept of state evasion (Scott 2009: 174, Ch. 6). After demarcating an area, which I will label the “mid-Eastern Himalaya”, I will situate this area in terms of discourses about Zomia and Zomians, examine evidence from linguistic distributions, socio-historical context, and socio-cultural features, and suggest that, although the mid-Eastern Himalayan region shows clear and, in a sense, prototypically “Zomian” attributes (called “Zomianisms” for short), clear evidence that these attributes are best explained by means of a “state evasion” hypothesis seems to be lacking. I will therefore advance an alternative hypothesis: that mid-Eastern Himalayan Zomianisms are less likely to represent innovative reactions to the power of an expanding state than they are to represent conservations of adaptively successful survival strategies on their own terms (see also Lieberherr’s chapter in this volume). Although these survival strategies may indeed have fortuitously enabled mid-Eastern Himalayan Zomians to subsequently resist such states as they eventually came to encounter, they seem unlikely to have been motivated by state formation in any way. I will close by considering some implications of this analysis for the Zomia hypothesis more generally.
Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2022
Classifiers in Tani languages are similar in scale and semantic contents to the systems of better... more Classifiers in Tani languages are similar in scale and semantic contents to the systems of betterknown classifier languages such as Thai and Mandarin. Yet they are unusual in co-existing with an ancient and well-grammaticalised referential management system including both definite and indefinite articles, in lacking a generic classifier, in tending not to use a classifier with human referents, and in occurring exclusively to the right of head nouns, in the order [N CLF NUM]. They are also relatively more lexemelike, occurring less frequently and with more semantic control than do the classifiers of many other East/Southeast Asian languages. This article will present a basic description of Tani classifier systems, and argue for their relatively recent development through the mechanism of a repeater construction functioning within a pre-existing [A-B B-C] template for taxonomic compound formation. Although this development is similar to pathways attested for other Asian languages, Tani classifiers do not share the same set of functional and distributional outcomes.
In Jelle J. P. Wouters and Tanka B. Subba, Eds., The Routledge Companion to Northeast India. London, Routledge: 469-474. , 2022
Lange, Diana, Jarmila Ptáčková, Marion Wettstein and Marieke Wulff, Eds. Crossing Boundaries: Tibetan Studies Unlimited. Prague, Academia Nakladatelství., 2022
This chapter’s goal is to update the case for reconstructing the ethno-linguistic prehistory of “... more This chapter’s goal is to update the case for reconstructing the ethno-linguistic prehistory of “Tani” – a cluster of closely related ethno-linguistic groups found primarily in the mid-Eastern Himalayan region, in the modern Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. It aims to demonstrate that important aspects of Tani prehistory can be effectively reconstructed, and argues that such reconstructions can serve as useful counterweights to dominant, yet historically vacuous, "claims" over the Tani-speaking region by large regional nation-states.
Pacchiarotti, S. and F. Zúñiga, eds. "Applicative morphology: Neglected syntactic and non-syntactic functions". Berlin, deGruyter., 2022
This chapter discusses applicative constructions in Macro-Tani, a small group of Trans-Himalayan ... more This chapter discusses applicative constructions in Macro-Tani, a small group of Trans-Himalayan languages spoken in northeastern India and Tibet. We first present a background discussion of Macro-Tani grammatical relations and predicate structures. We then outline some basic properties of Macro-Tani applicatives, focusing more closely on less-commonly identified applicative properties. We find that: (a) there is no "promotional" relationship between base and applied phrases in Macro-Tani languages; Macro-Tani applicatives do not function to "promote" an oblique to core argument status, but instead add an argument which in most cases could not otherwise be expressed in the clause at all. (b) While Macro-Tani applicatives principally add grammatical (indirect) Objects, some applicatives add oblique phrases such as Goals and Instruments. (c) Macro-Tani applicatives form an unusually large class (at least dozens), and include semantically rich and typologically rare functions such as "Territive" (addition of an object that is "shocked" as a result of the predicate) and "Eruditive" (an object that is "educated" or "shown how" by means of the predicate). (d) Macro-Tani applicatives are closely aligned to Macro-Tani causatives, and could be argued to constitute a single formal and functional class. The chapter closes with our reconstruction of the origin of Macro-Tani applicatives via morphologization of an earlier serial verb construction.
Linguistic Typology, 2021
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the little-known "bare classifier phrase" const... more This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the little-known "bare classifier phrase" construction in Modern Standard Thai. It describes the syntax, semantics and discourse functions of Thai bare classifier phrases, and further proposes a diachronic account of their origin in reduction of post-posed numeral 'one'. Following this synchronic and diachronic description, this article attempts to locate Thai within a working typology of bare classifier constructions in mainland Asian languages, and further argues for the importance of bare classifier constructions to the theory of classifiers more generally. Following Bisang (1999) and others, it argues that bare classifier constructions reveal the core function of classifiers in Asian languages to be INDIVIDUATION-a referential function. It therefore cautions against some recent proposals to merge classifiers and gender markers within a single categorical space defined on the semantic basis of nominal classification , and in favour of continuing to treat classifiers as a discrete linguistic category-in mainland Asian languages, at least.
Linguistics, 2022
Middle voice constructions are generally understood as syntactically detransitivizing and as sema... more Middle voice constructions are generally understood as syntactically detransitivizing and as semantically characterized by a “low degree of event elaboration” (in Kemmer’s terms) involving a relatively affected subject. Middle voice constructions thus characterized have been identified in several Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages, in particular by LaPolla. In Macro-Tani languages, we find a seemingly cognate construction with a similar distribution; however, Macro-Tani middle-like constructions are not detransitivizing, and do not mark subject affectedness. Instead, their primary meaning appears to be one of highlighting subject autonomy: a heightened degree of autonomy, volition and/or responsibility over an action on the part of the clause subject. In this article, following an analysis of Macro-Tani subject autonomy marking, we will argue that its similarities to and differences from middle voice marking in other Trans-Himalayan languages is consistent with Zúñiga and Kittilä’s view of middle voice as a “network of meanings,” whose properties derive not from their reflection of a unified underlying
cognitive category, but rather from a heterogeneous set of developments from similar diachronic source forms.
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Authored Books by Mark W. Post
around 150 hilltribespeople in the far Eastern Himalaya. A member of the Tani subgroup
of Trans-Himalayan, Tangam is mutually-unintelligible with other languages of this
otherwise relatively homogeneous subgroup. This is demonstrated to be a consequence of Tangam's early-branching status within the Western Tani subgroup, subsequent contact with Eastern Tani languages, and historical relationship with speakers of Bodic languages.
Based on three field trips to the Tangam-speaking area over two years, this work presents
a brief but comprehensive cultural, historical and grammatical introduction to the Tangam language, together with a trilingual lexicon in Tangam, English and Minyong, and
a collection of fully-analysed texts. It will be of interest to linguists and anthropologists of
the Himalayan region, as well as to historical linguists and language typologists.
Edited Books by Mark W. Post
Papers by Mark W. Post
This chapter will work towards addressing both gaps, by means of a linguist’s rethinking of Zomia from an Eastern Himalayan perspective. In it, I will focus both on contemporary conceptions of Zomia, its peoples and their cultural-linguistic attributes, as well as on Scott’s proposed explanation for these cultural-linguistic attributes in terms of his concept of state evasion (Scott 2009: 174, Ch. 6). After demarcating an area, which I will label the “mid-Eastern Himalaya”, I will situate this area in terms of discourses about Zomia and Zomians, examine evidence from linguistic distributions, socio-historical context, and socio-cultural features, and suggest that, although the mid-Eastern Himalayan region shows clear and, in a sense, prototypically “Zomian” attributes (called “Zomianisms” for short), clear evidence that these attributes are best explained by means of a “state evasion” hypothesis seems to be lacking. I will therefore advance an alternative hypothesis: that mid-Eastern Himalayan Zomianisms are less likely to represent innovative reactions to the power of an expanding state than they are to represent conservations of adaptively successful survival strategies on their own terms (see also Lieberherr’s chapter in this volume). Although these survival strategies may indeed have fortuitously enabled mid-Eastern Himalayan Zomians to subsequently resist such states as they eventually came to encounter, they seem unlikely to have been motivated by state formation in any way. I will close by considering some implications of this analysis for the Zomia hypothesis more generally.
cognitive category, but rather from a heterogeneous set of developments from similar diachronic source forms.
around 150 hilltribespeople in the far Eastern Himalaya. A member of the Tani subgroup
of Trans-Himalayan, Tangam is mutually-unintelligible with other languages of this
otherwise relatively homogeneous subgroup. This is demonstrated to be a consequence of Tangam's early-branching status within the Western Tani subgroup, subsequent contact with Eastern Tani languages, and historical relationship with speakers of Bodic languages.
Based on three field trips to the Tangam-speaking area over two years, this work presents
a brief but comprehensive cultural, historical and grammatical introduction to the Tangam language, together with a trilingual lexicon in Tangam, English and Minyong, and
a collection of fully-analysed texts. It will be of interest to linguists and anthropologists of
the Himalayan region, as well as to historical linguists and language typologists.
This chapter will work towards addressing both gaps, by means of a linguist’s rethinking of Zomia from an Eastern Himalayan perspective. In it, I will focus both on contemporary conceptions of Zomia, its peoples and their cultural-linguistic attributes, as well as on Scott’s proposed explanation for these cultural-linguistic attributes in terms of his concept of state evasion (Scott 2009: 174, Ch. 6). After demarcating an area, which I will label the “mid-Eastern Himalaya”, I will situate this area in terms of discourses about Zomia and Zomians, examine evidence from linguistic distributions, socio-historical context, and socio-cultural features, and suggest that, although the mid-Eastern Himalayan region shows clear and, in a sense, prototypically “Zomian” attributes (called “Zomianisms” for short), clear evidence that these attributes are best explained by means of a “state evasion” hypothesis seems to be lacking. I will therefore advance an alternative hypothesis: that mid-Eastern Himalayan Zomianisms are less likely to represent innovative reactions to the power of an expanding state than they are to represent conservations of adaptively successful survival strategies on their own terms (see also Lieberherr’s chapter in this volume). Although these survival strategies may indeed have fortuitously enabled mid-Eastern Himalayan Zomians to subsequently resist such states as they eventually came to encounter, they seem unlikely to have been motivated by state formation in any way. I will close by considering some implications of this analysis for the Zomia hypothesis more generally.
cognitive category, but rather from a heterogeneous set of developments from similar diachronic source forms.
1. ŋorumme paasan geaabikumaape, ahan dadaabikumaape.
ŋoru=me paasa=en ge-aŋ-bi-ku-ma(ŋ)-pe
1. pl=nagt firewood=def.acc carry/wear-dir:inward-appl:ben-cmpl-neg-sjnc
aha=en dat-aŋ-bi-ku-ma(ŋ)-pe
sago=def.acc remove.skin.from.plant-dir:inward-appl:ben-cmpl-neg-sjnc
‘You’re not bringing us firewood, you’re not getting us sago...’ (Tangam, Tani; NEIndia)
Tani applicatives can also add non-objects, such as goal obliques. In the absence of -lək (2), hɨɨ would have the status of an adjunct location. Still, this is not “promotion”, as an adjunct location could again be added to (2).
2. hime loorəəpara…hɨ ahi birəəra.
hi=me lok-lək-pa-la prx=nagt carve-dir/appl:into.goal-mod:achv-nf
hɨɨ ahi bi-lək-la
prx.loc water give-dir/appl:into.goal-nf
‘(We) carve this out….and put [the pigs’] water into here.’ (Tangam, Tani; NEIndia)
Applicative functions in Tani include Causative (erstwhile A is added O), Benefactive, Comitative, Instrumental, and Comparative (Comparand is added O). Applicative functionality is also found in predicate derivations otherwise devoted to manner, result and direction (e.g. -lək in (2)). In (3), the result derivation -lom adds an experiencer object.
3. homénə́ rɨgîilò umlôm dagèe.
homen¹=ə¹ rɨgii²=lo² um¹-lom²-dak²=ee¹
tiger=def field.boundary=loc grunt-res/appl:startle.O-stat.antr.altr ‘The tiger at the field’s edge roared, frightening (us).’ (Galo, Tani; NEIndia)
We will next discuss the relationship of applicatives to other types of valence- changing derivation in Tani languages, including passive and middle-like constructions, and finally provide an account of the historical origin of Tani applicatives in earlier clause union through verb serialization.
However, data from Tani and Milang, at a minimum, indicate that Sun (1982) and Liu (1988) were on the right track, and that data sets that have been used to justify a “middle” analysis are in at least some cases incomplete in key respects. Specifically, they fail to show clear evidence of de-transitivization - evidence which we will argue cannot be found, at least in some Tibeto-Burman languages. We thus argue for the recognition of a distinct type of “subject autonomy” marking in Tibeto-Burman, and urge scholars whose languages appear to show evidence of “middle” marking in a reflex of *-si/*su (or anything else) to attend closely to the transitivity properties of the resulting stems.
However, if one focuses the lens more narrowly, we find a perhaps surprisingly consistent geographical clustering of linguistic subgroups within “Zomia”, evidence of grammatical de-complexification in several of these areas, and a perhaps correlated prevalence of regional lingua francas. These outcomes – a drift toward simplification and convergence at the local scale, and the appearance of complexity only emerging at more broadly – are argued to be more suggestive of the interaction of two contextual factors – geo-topographical complexity and significant time-depth – than they are of any “deliberate” strategy for state-evasion.
In this paper, we will examine data from two closely related Tibeto-Burman languages, Galo and Tangam. We will see that while grammatical words are almost identical in Galo and Tangam, phonological evidence for “wordhood” diverges radically. While a substantial range of prosodic, segmental and morphophonological processes converge on identification of a “word” unit that is closest to the “foot” level of analysis in Galo, the same types of criteria when applied in Tangam identify a unit that is much larger, and closer to the “phrase” level of analysis.
Two questions thus naturally raise themselves: one, is it actually necessary, or even helpful, to identify a phonological unit “word” in Galo or in Tangam (distinct from “foot” and “phrase”)? Two, if we do identify a phonological “word” in Galo and Tangam, does its seemingly quite radical difference between the two languages actually signify anything substantial concerning differences in the languages themselves - in other words, is the phonological word, as distinct from grammatical word, as important to languages as it seems to be to linguists?
As various Trans-Himalayan-speaking groups have moved around within and out of montane environments, their topographical-deixis systems have undergone changes. When hill languages have moved into plains areas in which large rivers are found, the systemic “anchor” has been found to shift from topographic to riverine orientation, and systems have been found to remain grammatically intact for several generations at least; such a change is attested in plains-area Tani lects (Post 2011). However, topographical-deixis systems are also prone to erosion and decay in plains-area languages; this appears to have happened in Singpho, in which pale shadows of the Proto-Jingphoic system are now retained in song poetry only (Stephen Morey, personal communcation April 2016, Kurabe 2017). In some plains-area subgroups, topographical deixis was completely lost at the meso-language stage, as appears to have been the case in Proto-Bodo-Garo. And in the few clear instances that we can find of plains-area languages spreading up to (new) hill areas, we find that topographical dexis is not re-innovated, at least within a small number of centuries (Burling 2004).
The picture that emerges is one in which topographical deixis, once established, readily fluctuates and changes in direct response to speaker-group interaction with a changing environment as a result of migration events; these observations seem basically supportive of Palmer, Gaby et al. (2016)’s SocioTopographic model, and would generally support a view of language in which at least some aspects of grammatical structure are directly shaped by discourse patterns resulting from speaker interactions in particular types of environment.
What does the “Zomian” hypothesis tell us about prehistory? In Scott’s view, that the people currently inhabiting the Zomian region are where they are, and live how they do, for the precise reason that their ethnolinguistic ancestors fled the expansion of rice-growing valley states at some time within the preceding 2000 years. If it is persuasive, Scott’s thesis would argue in favour of viewing hill groups in the Eastern Himalaya, and perhaps also the languages that they speak, as essentially secondary, and attributable to precursor populations who at one time inhabited either the Brahmaputra Valley floodplain or the Tibetan Plateau, and who were effectively pushed into the areas they currently inhabit as a result of in-principle specifiable state expansion events within something like the past 2000 years.
In this paper, I will argue that although historical state expansion conditions in the Brahmaputra Valley and/or the Tibetan Plateau are in principle available within the time period specified, evidence from ethnographic observations and language distributions in the mid-Eastern Himalayan region suggest that Scott’s “state evasion” argument is fundamentally misguided in a large number of its aspects, at least with respect to these populations. We find better support for the likelihood that Eastern Himalayan populations fundamentally practice a set of successful adaptations to a specifiable social-physical environment, which neither require nor are in most ways illuminated through references to a state. Better support is found for the likelihood that Eastern Himalayan populations - and, by implication, at least some Zomian groups elsewhere - exhibit cultural and linguistic archaisms (i.e., conservative features) that predate the emergence of states in this region – even if they may, indeed, have eventually (and perhaps fortuitously) assisted these populations in retaining relatively high degrees of independence from neighbouring states. In all likelihood, at least some and perhaps many “Zomian” groups have been who they are, where they are, and speaking many of the languages that they do, for considerably more than 2000 years – not because they are refugees from a historical state, but rather because their way of life has proved to be successful on its own terms.
The results are as follows: although Sun's Proto-Tani reconstruction appears to remain valid in that it is supported by data from all known Tani languages, the overwhelming majority of Tani phonological innovations which have been identified - including Sun's original four - identify distinct sets of languages with at best partial obedience to Sun's primary Eastern/Western split. In other words, all identified phonological innovations cross at least one branch which is established by another innovation. The implication is that it may be simply impossible to subgroup Tani languages on a strictly genealogical basis. Instead, what we find is a network of innovations spreading areally across languages both mutually intelligible and not - a counterintuitive but entirely plausible outcome given the facts of widespread multilingualism and population exchanges throughout the Tani region. An adequate "classification" of the Tani languages, therefore, might be best represented as a schematic of areal clusters, diffusion zones, and their boundaries - a forest rather than a tree.
Here’s the basic overview: Tani languages have two underlying (or basic) tonemes, which can be called H and L, Level and Falling, Toneless and Toneful or Unmarked and Marked, depending on how one feels about the balance between theoretical implications and descriptive clarity. The point is that there are two categories, one of which is associated to a relatively mid-to-high and level pitch contour, and the other of which is associated to a low, falling, rising, or rising-falling pitch contour, depending on a number of contextual factors. The second category is more “marked” than the first, on phonological, perceptual, and phonetic grounds.
All lexical morphemes are underlyingly specified for one of these two tones. If a word is monosyllabic and monomorphemic, the specified tone will be projected directly onto the surface pitch contour. However, the overwhelming majority of words in Tani are in fact disyllabic or larger, and generally dimorphemic, or larger. In these more complex words, certain derivations apply. These derivations are slightly different from language to language, but all obey a similar set of principles requiring reference to the structure of a word’s constituent syllables: light or heavy, i.e. monomoraic (V rhyme) or bimoraic (VV, Ṽ or VC rhyme) - as well as, to some extent, the rhythmic template of a language (generally trochaic) and some morphophonological processes (such as syncope) which are associated with it.
Due to the interaction of all of these factors, it can be a real challenge to unify one’s account of the relationship between the underlying tones of morphemes and the phonetic pitch contour of words in which they are expressed. By the same token, it can be a real challenge, from a fieldworker’s perspective, to work one’s way from the quite complex surface pitch contour of a string of morphemes all the way down to the underlying (and quite simple!) set of tonal categories that ultimately motivate it. My main hope in writing this paper is that I’ll be able to outline a set of procedures to render the discovery and representation of tones in Tani languages less painful, less time-consuming and less error-prone, and - ideally - maximize the chances that other fieldworkers will be able to expand our Tani language tonal database, so that we can get ourselves on a more solid comparative-historical footing!
(1) use of both The Ethnologue as the basis for ISO 639-3’s “three-letter codes” and of SIL as its registration authority is problematic for a number of reasons
(2) in-principle “arbitrary” (but in fact not arbitrary) “mnemonic” labels of ISO 639-3 have the potential to enshrine offensive designations for language communities, and in fact currently do so
(3) decision-making processes in ISO 639-3 are currently excessively centralized and privilege the views of a minority of the linguistics community
(4) the in-principle “permanency” of language codes such as those of ISO 639-3 is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of human languages, which are demonstrably impermanent
(5) the structure of ISO 639-3 has a serious potential to be misunderstood, misused, and in fact abused by decision-making bodies (such as arms of government in various political contexts)
(6) ISO 639-5, which attempts to catalogue the genetic affiliations of the world’s languages, is highly premature, since there is nothing approaching agreement among specialists in a great number of cases
(7) ISO 639-6, which attempts to catalogue language variation, is in principle impossible, unless it aims to extend to an analysis of the language use of every human being on Earth, living or dead
On the basis of these observations, which we will illustrate by means of three detailed “case studies” from the Eastern Himalaya, the Burmese/Indian border region, and the Balkan region, we will argue that ISO 639 must be substantially re-conceived and re-organized before it can be supported by linguists. "
In recent work, Post and Modi (2011) and Post (2013) have shown that intensive language contact in the Tani area has led to considerable “cross-branch” sharing of phonological features, as well as to massive lexical and grammatical borrowing and convergence. In both cases, the authors had the conservative goal of interpreting certain problematic outcomes in relation to the established background of Sun’s (1993) subgrouping proposal. However, more recent work on Tangam (Tani > Eastern?) has forced a wholesale re-examination of phonological innovations in the Tani area from an agnostic perspective, and preliminary results suggest that Sun’s subgrouping proposal may not in fact be tenable as a model of branching genetic descent. Instead, the best we may currently be able to do is to locate overlapping clusters of areally-shared innovations - mini-spread-zones of contact and convergence which, in their most radical construal, challenge the very concept of genetic linguistics."
In any language, it is possible to refer to things as being located upward, downward, or on the same level as an observer. In some languages, it is all but impossible not to. Such languages with “topographical deixis”, systems of distal reference which require an observer to locate an entity’s geo-physical location within a montane landscape, are endemic to Indigenous languages of the Himalayan region and reflect centuries and indeed millennia of cultural-linguistic co-evolution in a topographically varied environment. This seminar will introduce the form and functions of Himalayan topographical-deictic systems, outline their distribution within the Trans-Himalayan region, and show how the presence/absence and characteristics of topographical-deictic systems can be used to reconstruct some aspects of Trans-Himalayan ethnolinguistic prehistory.
Within the same subgroup of Tibeto-Burman, the more recently-described language Tangam presents an interestingly different picture. In Tangam also, phonological and grammatical words are independently definable in terms of robust and highly similar sets of criteria. However, unlike in Galo, Tangam phonological and grammatical words nearly always correspond.
Whatever the motivation for this difference, the outcome is a pair of languages that may "look" very different from the perspective of a linguist, but "feel" almost identical as far as speakers are concerned. So why is the grammatical/phonological word "disconnect" apparently so much less important to speakers than it is to linguists? And what can this teach us about the role and importance of wordhood (or its representation) in linguistic analysis?
Post, Mark W, Stephen Morey and Scott DeLancey (eds). 2015. Language and culture in Northeast India and beyond: in honour of Robbins Burling. Canberra, Australia-Pacific Linguistics, Language and Peoples of the Eastern Himalaya Region (series). Downloaded at https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/38458 ISBN: 9781922185266 (print book); 9781922185259 (ebook)