Demonstratives and the Noun Phrase Structure of Hakha Chin

Abstract

Demonstratives are linked to spatial deixis, definiteness, and other semantic and pragmatic functions. This paper looks at the demonstrative class in Hakha Chin, a Kuki-Chin language in the Tibeto-Burman family. Hakha Chin demonstratives exhibit several remarkable features, such as their ability to appear in prenominal, postnominal, and “circumnominal” positions (in which they appear concurrently in prenominal and postnominal positions). This analysis also examines Hakha Chin demonstratives as they relate to other elements in the noun phrase structure, such as case marking, numerals, classifiers, and adjectives. The paper also touches on the relationship between demonstratives and the expression of definiteness and familiarity in Hakha Chin, finding that bare nouns can be interpreted as either definite or indefinite and that there is a dedicated familiarity morpheme kha. The findings of this paper presents several questions for future research on the syntactic structure of Hakha Chin nominal phrases and their semantic interpretations.

Multi-functional deictics in South Central Tibeto-Burman

“…There are four MFDs, hii, tsuu, khaa, and khii, which can appear in pre-nominal (4, repeated from 1 above), post-nominal (5), and post-clausal positions (6). However, the post-clausal position is not reported by Wamsley (2019). In the pre-nominal case, MFDs are dependent on the existence of a post-nominal MFD when the noun phrase is in the absolutive case.…”

“…Multi-functional deictics are best described in Hakha Lai. In addition to Barnes' (1998) detailed account is the recent work of Wamsley (2019) and the corpus and syntactic approaches of Bedell (2001) and Hlaing and Hlun (2003). There are four MFDs, hii, tsuu, khaa, and khii, which can appear in pre-nominal (4, repeated from 1 above), post-nominal (5), and post-clausal positions (6).…”

“…King 2010: 93). Other authors follow suit, glossing all post-nominal demonstratives as topicalizers, even if they primarily mark spatial relations in a given example (e.g., Wamsley 2019).…”

Issues of Lexicon in South-Central Tibeto-Burman (Kuki-Chin)

“…DX boy 3S-laugh-REAL 'This boy laughs.' (Baclawski 2012:51) Hakha Lai, which has four demonstratives, as seen in ( 21), has received the most scholarly attention, namely Barnes (1998), Bedell (2001), and Wamsley (2019 and2020)…”

The syllable in Kuki-Chin

“…3 Special thanks are owed to four language assistants who have contributed their voices and intuitions to this and other projects: Zai Sung for Lawngtlang Zophei; Thomas Thawngza for Tlawngrang Zophei; Sui Hnem Par for Hnaring Lutuv; and Peng Hlei Thang for Hakha Lai. See also our other publications on Zophei (Lotven and Berkson 2019;Lotven et al 2019a), Lutuv (Lotven et al 2019b), and Hakha Lai (Danaher 2019;Lee and Berkson 2019;Wamsley 2019). Van Bik ( 2009) uses "Kuki-Chin" rather than "Chin" to include Thado Kuki, which he considers part of the Northern subgroup.…”