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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara A Grammar of Dongwang Tibetan A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Ellen Lynn Bartee Committee in charge: Professor Carol Genetti, Chair Professor Sandra A. Thompson Professor Bernard Comrie Professor Krisadawan Hongladarom September 2007 UMI Number: 3283776 UMI Microform3283776 Copyright2008 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 The dissertation of Ellen Lynn Bartee is approved. _____________________________________________ Sandra A. Thompson _____________________________________________ Bernard Comrie _____________________________________________ Krisadawan Hongladarom _____________________________________________ Carol Genetti, Committee Chair July 2007 A Grammar of Dongwang Tibetan Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Lynn Bartee iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS From my first trip to Dongwang in 2002 to the final completion of this dissertation in 2007, many people have befriended, housed, and helped me along the way. To all these people, I extend my thanks. I would like to thank the people of Pongding for welcoming me and my family into their village. Thanks to Tashi Tsering who first told me about Dongwang and who introduced me to his family in Pongding. Big thanks are due to Tashi's family for allowing us to stay in their house whenever we were there. Longchu, Danzen Chumpi, Danzen Norbu, and Hushing put up with our oddities and took us into their home with great ease. Thanks to Yishi Droma, Tashi Norbu, Losang Chutso and Chundzom for their friendship and help. Special thanks are due to my committee members: Carol Genetti, Sandy Thompson, Bernard Comrie, and Krisadawan Hongladarom. The difficulty of writing this dissertation far exceeded my expectations, as did the commitment and rigor my committee invested to see it to completion. They read countless drafts and made extensive comments throughout that resulted in a much higher quality work than would have existed without their insights. Special thanks to my Chair, Carol Genetti, who applied herself to this project with all the enthusiasm, professionalism and expertise that characterizes all her endeavors. Big thanks to Ken Hugoniot who spent many hours proofreading and editing this whole dissertation several times over. iv Filing this dissertation from China would have been impossible without the help I received from Karen Barteld and Mary Rae Staton. Mary Rae, linguistic department secretary extraordinaire, fielded many emails and filed forms on my behalf efficiently and cheerfully. To Ken and Isabelle—who make having more free time meaningful—now we have time for a long hike! v VITA OF ELLEN LYNN BARTEE July, 2007 EDUCATION June, 1986 Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics, Simpson College, San Francisco, California June, 1987 TESOL Certificate, San Jose State University, San Jose, California June, 1995 Master of Arts in Linguistics, University of Texas, Arlington, Texas September, 2007 Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, (expected) RESEARCH INTERESTS Languages: Mandarin Chinese, Lhasa Tibetan, Literary Tibetan, Khams Tibetan Topic areas: Morphology, syntax, discourse, grammaticization, language contact, field methodology PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Research Assistant, Panasonic Speech Technology Lab (Worked with a group on Speech Recognition and Speech Production software), 2000-01 Teaching Assistant, UC Santa Barbara, Linguistics Department (Introduction to Linguistics, Language and Gender, Syntax, Historical Linguistics), 1998-2001; Teaching Assistant, University of Oregon, (Syntax and Semantics), 1995, Summer Lecturer, University of Oregon, Linguistics Department (Language and Culture Acquisition), 1996, Summer Lecturer in China (English as a Second Language): Center for Tibetan Studies, Beijing, 1991-92; University of Tibet, Lhasa 1988-89; Hengyang Teacher's College, Hunan, 1987-88. FIELD RESEARCH Yunnan, CHINA. Cooperation between SIL and Yunnan Provincial Language Commission to conduct research on Tibetan dialects in Yunnan, 2004-present. vi Dongwang Tibetan, Yunnan, CHINA. One year researching a dialect of Khams Tibetan, sponsored by Fulbright, 2002-03 Lhasa, Tibet, CHINA. Various trips to collect discourse data, 1991-1998 PUBLICATIONS 2000 With Nyima Droma. A Beginning Textbook of Lhasa Tibetan. Beijing: National Press for Tibetan Studies. PAPERS PRESENTED Preliminary report on Dongwang Phonology. Tibetan Workshop. UCSB, January, 2003 'The role of animacy in the verbal morphology of Dongwang Tibetan'. Paper presented at The 11th Himalayan Languages Symposium and Workshop on Old Tibetan and Tibetan Dialectology. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, December 6- 9, 2005 'Relative Clauses in Dongwang Tibetan'. Paper presented at the 10th International Symposium on Language Typology and Structure in Minority Languages of China. Lijiang, Yunnan, PRC. September 24-25, 2006. vii ABSTRACT A Grammar of Dongwang Tibetan by Ellen Lynn Bartee This dissertation is a description of Dongwang Tibetan. It is based on personal biographies, narratives and procedural texts, as well as on elicited material. Dongwang is a Southern Khams Tibetan dialect spoken in Shangri-la County, Diqing Prefecture, Yunnan. There are about 6,000 speakers of Dongwang who live in fifty- seven villages that are scattered on the steep hillsides along both sides of the Dongwang River. After an introductory chapter, a synchronic and diachronic description of the phonology is given. The synchronic section examines the segments, syllable canon and tone of Dongwang. The diachronic section focuses on comparing older forms of Tibetan, as reflected in Written Tibetan, with Dongwang speech in order to highlight the historical origins and development of Dongwang forms. Word classes including nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are described in Chapters Three through Six. Special attention is given to how new nouns are inducted into Dongwang and the various morphological processes required to do viii so. The semantic and pragmatic categories that typify verbs are described in Chapter Four with special attention given to categories of control, transitivity and intention. Two types of adjectives are described in Chapter Six as well as the semantic categories that adjectives depict. Constituent order and nominal morphology is discussed in Chapter Eight, in which the morphosyntactic organization of core arguments is described along with other casemarking clitics. Chapters Nine and Ten describe the verb phrase, focusing on pre-verbal and post-verbal elements and issues of grammaticization which typify the secondary verbs in Dongwang. Intention, evidentiality, and validationality are some of the issues contained in the discussion of final auxiliaries. Chapter Eleven describes simple clause types in Dongwang and Chapter Twelve discusses combinations of clauses such as relative clauses, complement clauses and clause chains. ix