Tibeto-Burman

"Oh foglia appassita del Fiume Mekong ed altre poesie"
Antologia poetica di Htilar Sitthu (U Soe Nyunt)
Libera traduzione di Htilar Sitthu, 1988 "O withered leaf from the River Mekong and other poems"  Innwa Pub. House, VII edizione.
Recensioni ed introduzione

16/03/2017

The study explores the grammatical means employed for the expression of information structure in standard colloquial Burmese on the basis of a corpus of written and spoken texts. It analyses the morphosyntactic and prosodic devices identified as relevant for its goals, namely the differential subject and object marking, constituent order, particles used to create a range of interpretations related to the notions of topic, focus and contrast, stand-alone sentence nominalisations and prosody.
The study argues for the existence of a grammatical system of informational PACKAGING in Burmese that has no direct linking to information structural categories like topic, focus and contrast. Expressed by various morphosyntactic means, it segregates information into separate informational units (PACKAGES) and establishes structural relations between them. This partition shows a robust correspondence to prosody.
The PACKAGING system is mobilised for creation of diverse information structure-related interpretive effects through its different configurations and interaction with the context. Concepts like topic, focus, contrast and apparent contrast-degrees observed in Burmese are interpretive outcomes of this interaction and have no immediate expression in the language. Furthermore, the usage of PACKAGING is not restricted to information structural effects and the system plays a crucial role in discourse structuring and content management in Burmese.
Analysis of stand-alone nominalised sentences along the lines of a speaker’s subjective channel of communication suggests the resemblance with the function of similar phenomena in many other Tibeto-Burman languages. It proposes PACKAGING motivations for this function and shows how this can be mobilised for information structure-related interpretations.
Hence, the study rejects the view of a direct expression of information structural categories by linguistic means. Instead, similarly to many other linguistic categories, it proposes an indirect interpretive link between a pragmatically-semantically underspecified grammatical system and the derived interpretation.

This paper presents an appraisal of the most influential genetic classifications that have been proposed for the Tibeto-Burman languages of Nagaland, north-east India, and weighs up the evidence for the validity of a ‘Naga’ branch within Tibeto-Burman. The survey concludes that while phonological and lexical correspondences might be generally useful for establishing the affiliation of these languages to the Tibeto-Burman family, such criteria shed limited light on the problem of establishing lower level sub-groupings. Apart from the Konyak languages, which have been convincingly grouped with Jinghpaw and the Bodo-Garo languages on the basis of lexical innovations, sub-grouping within the languages of Nagaland remains inconclusive for want of robust diagnostic criteria. The paper presents new evidence for an intermediate grouping of languages of the central and southern regions of Nagaland (i.e. the Ao and Angami-Pochury clusters), the historical-comparative basis for this being typologically rare overcounting numeral systems documented in the languages of these two regions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The complexity of overcounting numeral systems lessens the likelihood of their being borrowed, and such patterns have never been reported in contiguous Konyak, Karbi, Zeme, Kuki or Tangkhul languages. The paper concludes that the erstwhile presence of overcounting patterns in Tibeto-Burman languages of central and southern Nagaland must therefore represent an inherited innovation indicative of a close genetic relationship.

What can be downloaded here is the Second edition. The first edition was published in India by the Tura Book Room. Reference: van Breugel, Seino. 2009. Atongmorot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.
Atongmorot Balgaba Golpho is a book of texts in Atong recorded during my fieldwork in India for my PhD. The stories are written in the Roman alphabet, which I adapted to write Atong. The book contains 37 texts on a variety of topics from Atong speakers.

This work, prepared by Dpal ldan bkra shis, has 19 chapters, a section on verb conjugation, three appendices, and a bibliography. Numerous exercises, dialogues, texts, and special phrases are also provided. Each chapter consists of course texts, language notes, exercises, a vocabulary list, examples, and supplementary grammar. The texts focus on daily Tibetan life. Sentences are short and syntactically not overly complex. Exercises provide focus-related examples to reinforce chapter contents and include dialogues, sentences, and phrase completion. Dialogues are a major focus and provide a backdrop of communication for practice. Language notes deal with various grammatical, syntactic, and semantic points. A Tibetan-English wordlist is at the end of each chapter. The supplemental grammar section addresses unique grammatical concepts, new phrasal words, and function words and phrases.


《ཨམ་སྐད་ལམ་འཇུག》ཅེས་པ་ཨམ་སྐད་སྤྱི་མཚན་ཁོལ་ཕྱུང་མ་འདི་ནི་ས་བཅད་བཅུ་དགུ། བྱ་ཚིག་འགྱུར་ལྡོག་ཚན་པ་གཅིག  ལེ་ལག་གསུམ་དང་དཔེ་ཆའི་ཐོ་གཞུང་གཅིག་བཅས་ཀྱིས་གྲུབ་ཅིང་། གཤར་སྦྱང་། ཁ་བརྡ། སློབ་ཚན་དང་ཡིག་ཚོགས་ལྷག་པོས་མཚན་ཡོད། ས་བཅད་རེ་རེ་ལ་སློབ་ཚན། བརྡ་དོན་གནད་འགྲེལ། གཤར་སྦྱང་། ཐ་སྙད་ཤན་སྦྱར། དཔེར་འཇོག་དང་བརྡ་སྤྲོད་ཁ་གསབ་བཅས་བྲིས་ཡོད། སློབ་ཚན་གྱིས་བོད་པའི་རང་གའི་འཚོ་བ་བྲིས་ཡོད། ཚིག་ཀ་ཐུང་ཞིང་ཚིག་སྡེབ་མི་ཉོག གཤར་སྦྱང་གི་ནང་དུ་མདོ་རྩ་གཟས་པའི་དཔེར་བརྗོད་བཞག་སྟེ་ས་བཅད་ཁག་གི་དོན་ཁོག་ཞིབ་རྒྱས་སུ་བཏང་ཡོད་ལ། ཁ་བརྡ་དང་ཚིག་ཀའམ་ཡིག་ཚོགས་ཁ་སྐོང་སོགས་ཤོང་ཡོད། ཁ་བརྡ་ནི་ཆེད་དམིགས་ཅན་ཏག་ཏག་ཡིན་པ་དང་ཤུགས་ནས་ཁ་བརྡའི་རྒྱབ་ལྗོངས་གོ་ཐུབ། བརྡ་དོན་གནད་འགྲེལ་གྱིས་བརྡ་དོན། ཚིག་སྡེབ་དང་ཚིག་དོན་ལྡེམ་པོ་བསེད་ཡོད། ས་བཅད་རེ་ལ་མཇུག་ན་བོད་དབྱིན་ཐ་སྙད་ཤན་སྦྱར་རེ་ཡོད། བརྡ་སྤྲོད་ཁ་གསབ་ཀྱི་ནང་དུ་བརྡ་དོན་སྒྲ་སྤྱི་ལྷག་པོ་དང་ཡིག་ཚོགས་ལྷག་པོ། རྐྱེན་ཡིག་དང་རྐྱེན་གྱི་ཡིག་ཚོགས་ཁན་འཇོག་བྱས་ཡོད།

《安多藏语导教》这本规范性的安多藏语专著由十九章、一节动词的时态变化、三个附件和一个书目提要组成，包含大量课文、会话、特殊用语和词组以及相关的练习。专著每章由课文、语法注解、练习题、单词表、例句和补充语法组成。课文以描述藏人日常生活的文章为主，句子简短、句法不甚复杂。练习题以会话、句型和词组的练习题为主，通过有针对性的例句来加强和丰富章节的内容。会话练习在强调内容的针对性的同时， 提供了会话的背景知识 。语法注解针对语法、句法和语义上的难点进行了解释。每一章的末尾有一个藏英词条对照。补充语法部分则强调一些藏语特有的语法概念和一些词组、助词和助词短语的用法。

Probabilmente perché in Italia mancano scuole a livello universitario idonee a stimolare – come avviene per l'India, il Tibet, la Cina, il Giappone, per non citare che i paesi che più richiamano l'attenzione dei nostri orientalisti – l'interesse e lo studio della Birmania, delle sue genti, della sua civiltà, è già arduo attendersi di reperire, anche nelle migliori biblioteche, un minimo di opere fondamentali per iniziare una ricerca seria nel campo della birmanologia. Per ovviare a questa carenza, altrimenti inspiegabile, ho pensato di far cosa utile pubblicando la bibliografia che segue per offrirla al lettore interessato a questi studi, perché in poco tempo possa avere a disposizione un panorama bibliografico ch'io ho potuto ottenere soltanto a prezzo di non pochi anni di ricerche, soprattutto all'estero, spesso per la cortesia di autorevoli amici che mi hanno inviato a prestito opere della loro biblioteca o fornito utili indicazioni per poterle consultare.
Mi sembra, oltre a ciò, che in lavori simili non esista un corredo bibliografico così ricco e, credo, anzi, che molte opere qui citate siano state talvolta del tutto trascurate, forse perché ritenute superate dal tempo, mentre a parer mio, sono da ritenersi basilari per uno studio documentato.
Perciò mi auguro che il seguente “contributo ad una bibliografia generale sulla Birmania” sia accolto come il coronamento di tutto il lavoro, addirittura la base di esso.

Renzo Carmignani,  1971 “Birmania storia arte civiltà”: 303

A preliminary annotated bibliography of Nungish, a group of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in northern Myanmar and southwest China. Based in part on the larger Rawang-Dulong-Anong bibliography by Randy LaPolla and Stephane Gros. Includes academic papers, wordlists, and literature written in various dialects of Rawang, Dulong, and Anong.

Presented at the International Consortium for Eastern Himalayan Ethnolinguistic Prehistory; La Trobe University, 7th to 9th February 2017

This paper will explore what information about their prehistory might be gleaned from a careful study of the traditional songs and stories of the Tangsa community. The study will focus on the Pangwa Tangsa, a name given in India to a group of around 30 subtribes, each with their own linguistic variety. British maps from the early 20th century show that the ‘home villages’ of each of these subtribes were on the highest parts of the Patkai range, on the India-Burma border.
Probably the single most important traditional songs of the Pangwa Tangsa is the Wihu song cycle, which tells the story of humanity from creation up to the present, and involves the movement of the singers from a far location to the place where they are singing in the present.
The verb used in the song for movement is always wang which means ‘move upwards’ rather than ka ‘move downwards’. In combination with references to the starting point of the Wihu song being ‘the end of the river’ (jɯ²ja¹ in Mossang Tangsa), this suggests that in the past the Tangsa people lived in areas much lower down in what is now Burma, or perhaps further afield.
This paper will examine the references in the Wihu song that can give further enlightenment on the prehistory of the Tangsa.

We expect linguistic areas in geographically delimited regions because, as has been seen universally, languages tend to influence each other when in contact. In linguistic areas we expect to see shared distinctive traits between some of the languages in the area. This paper reflects on why it is that Manipur (Northeast India), which hosts within its 22,347 square kilometers approximately 29 languages, does not exhibit a greater sharing of linguistic traits. This article discusses some distinctive key features between four representative languages of Manipur: Lamkang, Meitei, Tangkhul, and Thadou. Cross-language influence is limited due to dissimilar religious and socio-economic factors.

This document is a dictionary of Kman [=Miju], a language spoken around Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh. Miju is a complex tone-language of an isolating type, similar to Tibeto-Burman languages. A separate grammar sketch deals with phonology and morphology in detail and includes a review of existing literature.

Undertaking a broadscale experiment in theory and praxis, this book demonstrates grounds for insisting on a more integrational approach to dialectology while simultaneously demonstrating grounds for defining the hidden Phula languages of the Sino-Vietnam borderlands. The modern languages and their ancestral lineage are defined dialectically, through dynamic syntheses of correlative perspectives. [pdf includes Preface, TOC and Chapter 1]

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Hakhun Tangsa. Hakhun Tangsa is one of around eighty ethnic and linguistic communities called Tangsa or Tangshang. Hakhuns live mostly in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Sagaing Division, Myanmar. The number of speakers is estimated at around ten thousand. Hakhun is a Tibeto-Burman language, and it forms a subgroup with Nocte, Wancho, Phom, Konyak, Chang, and Khiamngan called Konyak or Northern Naga.
Hakhun is a tonal language with twenty-two consonants, six vowels, and a simple syllable structure. Open word classes include Nouns and Verbs; property concept terms form a subclass of verbs. Noun roots are mostly monosyllabic, and most multisyllabic nouns are compounds. Nominal morphology includes prossessive prefixes and a set of semantically specific suffixes. Case is coded by postpositions.
Verb roots are also mostly monosyllabic. A few verbs have suppletive stems. Verb serialization is common, and expresses complex events like resultative and sequential. A few grammaticalized verbs/elements contribute abstract meanings like phase, associated motion, causative, benefactive, etc. Typical verbal categories are expressed by independent particles. The most extensive and grammatically obligatory set consists of single syllable particles called operators, which express verbal categories like tense, mood, deixis, negation, inverse, and argument indexation. The typical argument indexation pattern is hierarchical. Deviations from this pattern is used to express certain pragmatic effects like affectedness and politeness.
Non-verbal clauses may take overt copulas depending on tense and polarity. Most semantic distinctions, such as equation, property-concepts, quantification, simulation, and location are expressed by the nominal strategy. Existential and possession are expressed by a distinct strategy. Typical verbal clauses include intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive; less typical ones include weather condition, sensation-emotion, reflexive, reciprocal, and ‘need’ constructions. Person-based split-ergativity is seen in case marking, where first and second person singular arguments follow accusative, and the rest ergative alignment. Accusative alignment is also found in argument indexation in non-final clauses. The object alignment is indirective in case marking.
Complement clauses include sentence-like, non-finite, and infinitive complement clauses. Adverbial clauses include various kinds of temporal clauses, temporal/conditional clauses, counterfactual, concessive, purpose, and substitutive clauses. Clause chaining (medial-final) is prevalent. Independent sentences are linked through tail-head linking and through connectives.

Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Burmese is usually analysed as directly related to the expression of information structure. Yet, this corpus-based study of DOM and the associated prosody finds that DOM is not based on information structure alone, but is also additionally motivated by discourse structure and content management.
The suggested analysis proposes that DOM in Burmese provides a grammatical structure of information PACKAGING: a system of separating information into units (PACKAGES) and establishing relations between them. Different configurations of PACKAGING are employed to create an array of context-dependent interpretive effects related to information structure, discourse structure and other factors. Hence, it is argued that information structure is not directly expressed in the language. Instead, it stems from an interpretation of the interplay between information PACKAGING and various pragmatic-semantic factors, and is but one of the possible effects created by PACKAGING.

Section 2 - theoretical aspects of the Question Under Discussion approach

Section 3 - language-specific analysis of the concept 'question'/'interrogative' (Anal Naga, Trans-Himalayan/Tibeto-Burman); its typological and theoretical implications

The paper critically examines principles of the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework and ultimately explores the concept of ‘question’, central to QUD-models. It demonstrates how fine-grained, interactionally informed analyses of language-specific categories both discover building blocks of interaction and explain the sources of the observed information- and discourse-structuring interpretations (such as update, contrast and more). Employing data from Anal Naga (Trans-Himalayan, India), it proceeds to a fine-grained analysis of the notion of ‘question’. The decomposition of ‘questions’ into smaller building blocks similarly reveals how diverse categories and discourse processes can trigger the interpretation of an information request. These findings and additional theoretical arguments suggest that QUD-models are problematic for various reasons: such models are non-parsimonious as they add superfluous extra layers to explain the observations; the explanatory apparatus is circular, as the extra layers are derived from within the explananda but regarded as underlying explanatory factors; and the models gloss over the actual factors by channelling them into cover terms prematurely regarded as primitive. Finally, since ‘question’ does not constitute a primitive concept but is a product of diverse discourse processes, discourse cannot be modelled on this foundation.

The Rawang ethnic group of Northern Myanmar has a complex kinship system, which has never been formally described in English in any great detail, although some hints are given in Barnard 1934:114. (The closely-related Dulong group in China is analyzed in Gros 2005:316-341 in French, and a few customs are mentioned in Sun & Liu 2009:6 for Anong.) Sarep 1996:95 describes Rawang kinship as Iroquois-type in the north, with some features of the Omaha type in the central and southern areas due to influence from Jingpho. In this system, cross-aunts and cross-uncles are called by the same terms as parents-in-law, and parallel-aunts and parallel-uncles are called by the same terms as step-parents. Similarly, siblings and parallel cousins sometimes share the same terms, and terms for nieces and nephews are typically split by sister's vs. brother's side. Such affinities can be explained by reference to patrilineal and matrilineal concerns, and to certain marriage customs that affect both lifestyle and language even today. Data for this paper is drawn from published wordlists and personal interviews with speakers of several Rawang dialects.

Works cited:

Barnard, Joseph Terence Owen. 1934. A handbook of the Răwang dialect of the Nung language. Rangoon: Superintendent of Gov’t. Printing and Stationery.

Gros, Stéphane. 2005. La part manquante: échanges et pouvoirs aux confins du Yunnan (Chine). Ethnologie des Drung dans leurs relations à leurs voisins. [The Missing Share: Exchange And Power In Yunnan’s Borderlands. Ethnology Of The Drung People In Their Relations With Their Neighbors.]. Nanterre: University of Paris X - Nanterre PhD in Ethnology.

Sarep, Hpung. 1996. A study of the morphology of verbs and nouns in the Sinwal dialect of the Rawang language. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 19(2). 93–184.

Sun Hongkai & Liu Guangkun. 2009. A Grammar of Anong: Language death under intense contact. (Ed.) Li Fengxiang, Ela Thurgood & Graham Thurgood. (Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region 9). Leiden & Boston: BRILL.

Key terms: Rawang, Nungish, Tibeto-Burman, Kinship terms, Marriage customs, Ethnography, Polysemy

There have been challenges to the received view of the structure of the Sino-Tibetan language family. This is all well and good, as we should constantly challenge our most basic assumptions. In this paper I look at the arguments presented with a view to convincing us to change our conception of Sino-Tibetan and to change the name of the family to " Trans-Himalayan " , and find them less than convincing, due to problems of fact and argumentation.
This is a prepublication draft. Comments greatly appreciated!

In some Tibeto-Burman languages we find a distinction, in the pronouns and/or in verbal agreement forms, between exclusive and inclusive 1 st person plural forms – a category which has come to be known as CLUSIVITY (Filiminova 2005). This distinction is absent in many other languages of the family (LaPolla 2005). Until recently we had very few examples of this distinction in the " Naga " and Kuki-Chin languages of the Indo-Myanmar border region. Recent research has uncovered the exclusive/inclusive distinct in several more of these languages, and correspondences between the forms make it clear that we must reconstruct this distinction for the common ancestor at least of Kuki-Chin and the Ao group, and probably of the other languages of the Naga Belt. This then offers a likely explanation for the innovative 1 st person singular pronouns found in most of these languages, as we will see in Section 2. The Kuki-Chin and Naga forms further correspond to forms in Kiranti languages, suggesting that they can be reconstructed for Proto-Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan). Nevertheless, the similarities among the exclusive, inclusive, and 1 st person singular forms in the various Kuki-Chin and Naga Belt languages provide an argument for a Kuki-Naga branch of the family.

The study of hierarchical argument indexation systems shows that while the ranking of both 1st and 2nd person over other arguments is robust and reliable, it is impossible to find any compelling crosslinguistic evidence for one or the other ranking of the two Speech Act Participants, and rare to find a consistent ranking even within a single language. This paper assembles and reviews historical changes in the indexation of the "local" categories (1→2 and 2→1) in a number of Tibeto-Burman languages. We see that the fundamental deictic ranking SAP > 3 is conservative, and inverse marking to emphasize that ranking has been reinvented several times in the family. Changes in the marking of local categories are more diverse, but two phenomena recur independently in different languages and branches: a tendency for the 1→2 form to be uniquely marked, sometimes with forms which are not synchronically relatable to anything else in the paradigm, and a contrasting tendency for the 2→1 form to merge with the marking of 3→1. I propose that these tendencies reflect what I call sociopragmatic effects, i.e. the socially delicate nature of any and all natural utterances involving both the speaker and the addressee.

This paper presents the first documentation and analysis of a typologically remarkable process of verbal triplication in the Stau language (Sino-Tibetan). Moreover, Stau’s triplication of verbs to index multiple agents (S/A) is also used pragmatically to highlight those agents. Stau’s verbal triplication, although unique in many regards, falls into a broader typological linguistic pattern of iconicity, demonstrating that there is often a strong tie between form and function.

Rvmøn/Rvmøl [ɹəmɨn /ɹəmɨl], a variety of Rawang (a Nungish language) spoken in the Nokmong area of Kachin State in Myanmar, has never been documented before in a published paper. It has some distinct differences from Mvtwang [mətwɑŋ], the standard variety of Rawang, including the deictic system. And although Benedict (1983) and DeLancey (1980) have looked at deictics in Tibeto-Burman as a whole, not much has been said about deictics in Nungish.

THIS and THAT are indicated in Rvmøn by ya (proximal) and ku (medial or distal) respectively, giving a two-way distinction, whereas Mvtwang has a three-way distinction between ya (proximal), we (medial), and ku (distal). If a distal distinction is needed, ku is changed to high tone and other pragmatic signals are given to show the distance is greater than normal. Thus, the three-way system seems to have merged to a two-way system in Rvmøn.

In this paper, we will discuss the uses of THIS and THAT in Rvmøn in naturally-occuring narrative texts, and the pragmatic principles behind this usage.

We will also compare the Rvmøn deictic system with those used in other Nungish varieties and in Tibeto-Burman as a whole, partially corroborating Benedict‘s findings of a sound symbolism between i and THIS, and between u and THAT for Tibeto-Burman.

Works cited
Benedict, Paul K. 1983. <This> and <that> in TB/ST. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 7(2). 75–98.
DeLancey, Scott. 1980. Deictic categories in the Tibeto-Burman verb. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.

The deictic system of Lisu is complex, and includes deictics expressing distance, height and anaphora. Most dialects have a system which includes proximal, medial (by addressee), distal same level, distal higher level and  distal lower level forms. There are also expressive forms with different tones and some initials for the three distal forms, and reduplicated and triplicated forms combining basic and expressive distals.

Also available on YouTube
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Antologia poetica "Oh foglia appassita del Fiume Mekong ed altre poesie" di U Soe Nyunt - Htilar Sitthu

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Among the world’s languages fricatives are the rarest types of rhotics. They are found in a few African and European languages [13] and as allophones in some Romance languages [4, 8, 9, 12, 17]. Data from Nusu demonstrate the presence of rhotic alveolar fricatives in Asia. Even though they have sometimes been transcribed as retroflex sibilants in earlier studies [11, 20], phonotactic patterns suggest an interpretation as rhotics. A spectrogram comparison of Nusu alveolar sibilant and non-sibilant fricatives shows that the sibilant criterion of increased spectral intensity for higher frequencies is not met for the postulated rhotic. The tradition of interpreting alveolar fricatives as sibilants might at least partially be caused by the gap for non-sibilant alveolar fricatives in the chart for the International Phonetic Alphabet. The Nusu data and evidence from other Tibeto-Burman languages provide further support for Whitley’s [22] plea for a more comprehensive treatment of rhotics.

Among the Tibeto-Burman languages the importance of the marking of transitivity varies greatly, from transitivity not being a very useful concept at all to being extremely important to the understanding of the morphology of the language. In this paper an example of the latter type is discussed, the Rawang language of northern Myanmar (Burma). In this language all verbs are clearly distinguished (even in citation) in terms of transitivity by their morphology, and there are a number of different affixes for increasing or decreasing valency. A very interesting phenomenon related to the importance of transitivity differences that occurs in Rawang is the phenomenon of what I call "transitivity harmony". All auxiliary verbs in this language are transitive, and when they appear with a transitive main verb, they simply follow that verb and the two verbs together take one set of transitive-marking morphology. If instead the main verb is intransitive, then the auxiliary verb must be made intransitive by the reflexive/middle voice suffix to harmonize with the intransitive verb. This pattern holds even when the main verb is overtly nominalized. Aside from establishing transitivity harmony as a typological phenomenon, this paper will also discuss some of the motivations for such a pattern of marking and its significance for understanding event profiling.

L'auteur s'interroge sur la nature des relations existant entre pratiques bouddhiques et cultes aux esprits à partir de l'examen des rituels d'éloignement de l'infortune chez une petite population bouddhiste du Nord-Laos, les Phounoy. Ces rituels, autrefois accomplis par les officiants en charge des cultes aux esprits, impliquent, depuis des réformes religieuses menées dans les années 1960, des officiants bouddhiques. L'article propose, au travers d'une ethnographie de ces rituels, de montrer la place qu'occupent désormais les esprits, le traitement dont ils font l'objet, ainsi que les qualités inhérentes aux officiants qui en sont responsables. L'analyse montre finalement que l'imposition d'un bouddhisme supposé orthodoxe n'a pas conduit à la disparition des éléments religieux antérieurs, ni à leur simple perpétuation derrière un "vernis bouddhique", mais a opéré une reconfiguration originale entre ces deux logiques articulées, ce qui amène l'auteur à défendre la prise en compte de la dimension diachronique pour saisir les logiques de transformation de l'articulation entre bouddhisme et cultes aux esprits.

Studies of narrative in various European languages analyzed the discourse structure as an elaborate system of oppositions based on complex paradigms of TAM categories. However, for obvious reasons this approach is not applicable for languages like Burmese, whose paradigmatic sets of TAM categories are very limited. Hence, although manifold discourse structuring devices are identified and described for this kind of languages, rarely do they form a coherently structured system. This study aims at representing discourse structuring strategies of narration in written colloquial Burmese as consisting of three principal categories, mobilized to reveal different aspects of the otherwise concealed presence of speech act participants. This results in a deviation of the narration from its typical form of untouched retelling of objectively represented events along three parameters: (a) remoteness vs. “here-and-now” relevance, (b) objective vs. subjective representation and (c) monologue vs. dialogic settings of communication. The fine structure of narrative in Burmese is shown to be an outcome of the interaction of these functions.

The aim of this article is to give a descriptive analysis of noun-modifying clauses in Atong, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the South Garo Hills district of Meghalaya state in Northeast India. When I set out to describe the phenomenon of noun-modifying clauses in Atong, I felt that neither the general typological literature nor the Tibeto-Burman literature on this subject provided a perfect framework for its analysis. In both the typological and the Tibeto-Burman literature the analysis of noun-modifying clauses is guided by syntax, whereas in Atong we will have to take semantics and pragmatics into account to understand the relationship between the attributive clause and the noun it modifies.

Au Laos, avant et pendant la période coloniale, les relations des nombreux groupes montagnards avec les riziculteurs taï habitant les plaines -Lao, Shan, Taï Lü -, politiquement comme démographiquement dominants, se réduisaient le plus souvent au paiement d'un tribut et à l'exécution de corvées pour leurs puissants voisins. Les groupes montagnards, de langue austro-asiatique, hmong-yao, ou tibéto-birmane, vivaient à la marge des entités politiques et territoriales taï (müang). Ils étaient considérés par les populations des plaines comme les sauvages et inquiétants habitants d'un monde forestier et non civilisé.