Special Focus: Sino-Tibetan Languages of Sichuan in their Areal Context
2-4 Sep 2013 Paris (France)
Monday 2
Muya
Chair: Jonathan Evans
› 17:20 - 18:00 (40min)
Verb predicate Structure in the Mu-nya language
Takumi Ikeda  1@  
1 : Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University  -  Website
Yoshidahonmachi, Sakyo-ku. Kyoto 606-8501 -  Japan

The basic Verb predicate structure in the Mu-nya Language can be described as follows:

DirPFX- STEM =AspSFX (/=ModAUX) DEC.

DirPFX: Directional prefix

AspSFX: Aspect suffix

ModAUX: Modal Auxiliary verb

DEC: Declarative

Mu-nya has six kinds of DirPFX, which show the directionality of the verb, but they do not express aspect. AspSFX comes after a verb stem and expresses perfect/imperfect of the action or behavior, but the aspects do not express tense directly. ModAUX appears at the position of AspSFX when necessary. And DEC is an independent part of speech, which expresses evidentiality of the sentence. The Mu-nya Verbs are classified as three groups: controllable verbs, uncontrollable verbs, and stative verbs according to the connection with DEC. In addition, Mu-nya has a vowel alternation system according to the corresponding person of the subject in Vp. However, so far it was difficult to explain on which element in Vp the vowel change would occur. We analyze the vowel alternation system in the Mu-nya language, and try to clarify the issue in regard to the agreement with its subject in number and person.


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