Topographical Deixis in Trans‐Himalayan (Sino‐Tibetan) Languages

Abstract

‘Topographical deixis’ refers to a variety of spatial‐environmental deixis in which typically distal reference to entities is made in terms of a set of topographically‐anchored referential planes: most often, upward, downward, or on the same level. Thus defined, topographical deixis is a pervasive feature of Trans‐Himalayan (= Sino‐Tibetan) languages. However, while there have been several descriptions of Trans‐Himalayan topographical deixis at the language or subgroup level, there has been as yet no account of its overall status and distribution within the family. The primary goal of this paper is to provide an account of topographical deixis from a pan‐Trans‐Himalayan perspective, to the maximum extent possible on the basis of existing descriptions. It discusses its formal coding, functions, distribution within the family, and environmental correlations. In addition to providing a benchmark account of the nature and distribution of topographical deixis within the Trans‐Himalayan family, this study thus contributes to cross‐linguistic typologies of spatial deictic systems and their environmental‐interactional motivations more generally.

The ups and downs of space and time: Topography in Yupno language, culture, and cognition

“…Such concepts are used on scales large and small, even when the setting is veridically flat, and even when-to an outside observer-terrain seems beside the point. A similar reliance on topographic distinctions is reported elsewhere in New Guinea's interior (e.g., Fedden & Boroditsky, 2012;von Heeschen, 1982), as well as in the broader Pacific region (e.g., François, 2004;Senft, 1997) and across the world's mountainous regions (Urban, 2020), including in the Himalayas (e.g., Post, 2019), the Caucasus (e.g., Forker, 2019), and Mesoamerica (e.g., Soto, 2011). Our notion of "topographic" bears unpacking 1 .…”

Mountain linguistics

“…A more robustly established typological property of many mountain languages is the grammaticalized encoding of elevational or topographic information in systems of spatial reference 7 . Such systems are prominently found in the Himalayas in Sino‐Tibetan languages (Post, 2019) and in the Caucasus in Nakh‐Daghestanian languages (Gunaev, 1977; Forker, 2019), but they are also reported from the Central Andes (Adelaar, 1987:81; Adelaar, Forthcoming), the New Guinea highlands (Heeschen, 1982), and the Hindukush (cf. also Forker, 2019, Forthcoming on the distribution).…”

“…There are other possibilities; prominent are also “geophysical systems” in Burenhult's ( 2008b:111) terms, where elevation is more tightly integrated semantically with the geophysical environment, for example, in an “uphill‐downhill” distinction (cf. Post, 2011, 2019).…”

“…Recent article‐length studies of deictic and other linguistic subsystems that involve elevation or topographic contrasts are Burenhult ( 2008b) on Jahai (Austroasiatic, Malaysia/Thailand), Post (2011) on Tani languages (Sino‐Tibetan, Indian Himalayas), Aikhenvald (2015) on Manambu (Ndu, Sepik river basin, New Guinea), Michailovsky (2015) on Limbu (Sino‐Tibetan, Himalayas), Cooperrider, Slotta, & Núñez (2016) on Yupno (Trans‐New‐Guinea, New Guinea highlands), Heegård & Liljegren (2018) on Palula and Kalasha (Indo‐European, Hindu Kush), Post (2019) on Sino‐Tibetan languages of the Himalayas generally, and Forker (2019) on Sanzhi Dargwa and other Nakh‐Daghestanian languages (Caucasus); see also Forker (2019:99–100) and Post (2019) for information enshrined in reference grammars; typological studies of deictic/demonstrative systems generally include Perkins (1992), Diessel (1999, 2014), and Dixon (2003).…”

“…This proliferated terminology is in part redundant, but in part also reflects actual differences between systems, as when for example, the term “topographical deixis” makes crucial reference to the fact that in Sino‐Tibetan systems the semantic distinctions indeed involve mountain topography rather than just altitude (cf. Post, 2019:237). Note that, as Diessel (2012) and Forker (Forthcoming) point out, the encoded information as to elevation in such systems is not always deictic in the sense that it is speaker‐centered.…”