Yunfan Lai

Max-Planck-Institut für Menschheitsgeschischte · Department of linguistic and cultural evolution

Gyalrongic languages exhibit a series of non-trivial nasal-plosive (or approximant) correspondences, which so far lack an explanation. Some nasal consonants, mainly found in West Gyalrongic languages, correspond to plosives or approximants in their East Gyalrongic cognates. Long considered irregular, these correspondences have never been studied wi...

There are four distinct forms conveying the meaning of ‘human, person, man’ across Gyalrongic languages. The default type (Japhug tɯ-rme), the rounded type (Khroskyabs vɟú ), the Stau type (Geshiza vdzi) and the uvular type (Geletuo taˈʁap ). Except for the default type, which has cognates in many other Sino-Tibetan languages, the origins of the ot...

This paper proposes an internal reconstruction of the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs by analysing bound state apophony in modern Siyuewu Khroskyabs. While most modern Khroskyabs dialects do not exhibit sufficient variations of bound state apophony, Siyuewu Khroskyabs is conservative in this regard. The internal reconstruction deals with the differe...

This paper offers new evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs to address the question of directionality in valency-changing derivations in Sino-Tibetan. Examining Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs causative and anticausative verb stem pairs adds to the evidence that in Proto-Sino-Tibetan, a number of intransitive stems are derived from transitive s...

This paper describes the ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs, an understudied Gyalrongic language. Ablaut is only found in verbs containing closed syllables, and ablaut patterns in Siyuewu preserve Proto-Khroskyabs patterns relatively well. After providing a synchronic description of verb-stem functions and ablauting patterns, implicative entr...

In this paper, I describe the morphology as well as the uses of the basic motion verbs, ‘to come’ and ‘to go’, in Khroskyabs based on two of its varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, before analyzing the evolutionary pathways of their stem alternation patterns. The meanings of the basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs originally were not ‘to come’ or ‘to go’; i...

This paper focuses on the verbal inflection chain of Siyuewu Khroskyabs, a Gyalrongic language (Trans-Himalayan). Siyuewu Khroskyabs goes against two general typological tendencies: first, as an SOV language, it shows an overwhelming preference for prefixes, which is rarely reported typologically; second, the inflectional prefixes in the outer slot...

This paper describes the ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs, an understudied Gyalrongic language. Ablaut is only found in verbs containing closed syllables, and ablaut patterns in Siyuewu preserve Proto-Khroskyabs patterns relatively well. After providing a synchronic description of verb-stem functions and ablauting patterns, implicative entr...

This paper proposes that Tangut should be classified as a West Gyalrongic language in the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan family. We examine lexical commonalities, case marking, partial reduplication, and verbal morphology in Tangut and in modern West Gyalrongic languages, and point out nontrivial shared innovations between Tangut and modern West Gyal...

Sami Honkasalo: A Grammar of Eastern Geshiza: A Culturally Anchored Description. 889 pp. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, 2019. ISBN 978 951 51 5732 4. - Volume 83 Issue 2 - Lai Yunfan

This paper describes the inverse marking systems of two closely related Khroskyabs varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, and hypothesizes the historical development of the Khroskyabs inverse marking system. I propose that a hypothetical prefix, * Cə- , which is probably related to the second person markers attested in many Trans-Himalayan languages, existe...

This paper offers new evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs to address the question of directionality in valency-changing derivations in Sino-Tibetan. Examining Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs causative and an-ticausative verb stem pairs adds to the evidence that in Proto-Sino-Tibetan a number of intransitive stems are derived from transitive s...

Advances in computer-assisted linguistic research have been greatly influential in reshaping linguistic research. With the increasing availability of interconnected datasets created and curated by researchers, more and more interwoven questions can now be investigated. Such advances, however, are bringing high requirements in terms of rigorousness...

Significance Given its size and geographical extension, Sino-Tibetan is of the highest importance for understanding the prehistory of East Asia, and of neighboring language families. Based on a dataset of 50 Sino-Tibetan languages, we infer phylogenies that date the origin of the language family to around 7200 B.P., linking the origin of the langua...

Based on Early Modern Southern Min texts from Ming and Qing dynasties, this paper studies the different functions of liàh in Southern Min and the grammaticalisation pathways that led to the polysemantism. The morpheme liàh could appear as a content verb meaning 'to catch' or a polyfunctional case marker in Early Modern Southern Min; while in Contem...

This paper focuses on the morphosyntax as well as the semantics of relativisation in Wobzi Khroskyabs, a Rgyalrongic language spoken in Sichuan, China. Different strategies of relativisation are presented, especially the nominalisation strategy. Wobzi Khroskyabs exhibits an innovative relativisation strategy with the genitive marker =ji , which is...

Le khroskyabs de Wobzi (rgyalronguique, sino-tibétain), avec environ 350 locuteurs, est parlé au canton de Wobzi, comté de Chuchen, préfecture tibétaine et qiang de Rngaba, au Sichuan, en Chine. Notre thèse, une description linguistique du khroskyabs de Wobzi, est la première grammaire de référence du khroskyabs basée sur un corpus de textes recuei...

Mainly basing on first hand data, this paper deals with the causative constructions in the Khroskyabs language (Rgyalrongic, Sino-Tibetan), focusing on the Wobzi dialect. Causative prefixes, anti-causative, analytic causative and labile verbs are described. In addition, comparative analyses within Rgyalrongic as well as the Sino-Tibetan family are...

This article offers a description of the person agreement system of Wobzi Lavrung, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Sichuan, China. The Lavrung language is still imperfectly described, and the aim of this paper is to contribute to the documentation of one of its dialects. The analysis follows the terminology proposed in Dryer (1986), Haspelmath (...