The Encoding of Space in Sino-Tibetan Languages
Research Team: Carol Genetti, Kristine Hildebrandt, Nathaniel Sims
Our research on how Sino-Tibetan languages encode spatial semantics began in 2015, when Carol hosted the 48th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara. We convened a Pre-Meeting Workshop entitled “How Grammars Encode Space in Tibeto-Burman,” which then led to the publication of a Special Issue of Himalayan Linguistics (16.1). We started building a comprehensive database, using high-quality comprehensive reference grammars as our empirical base. Our first major article was Directionals and Associated Motion in Tibeto-Burman.
We have now expanded the database to fifty languages, including Sinitic, in order to cover the entire Sino-Tibetan (Trans-Himalayan) family. We are working on a book-length treatment, looking at the expression of spatial semantics in multiple lexical and grammatical subsystems across the clause, including demonstratives, adpositions, nouns, adverbs, particles, and verbs, as well as the unique locative word classes that are found in some languages. Our goal is to produce a typological study as called for by Bickel (2007), which answers the question of “What’s where, and why?” (p. 239). This requires a panchronic approach that sees synchronic patterns as resulting from diachronic processes. It also requires a multi-domain study, bringing into consideration not only linguistic properties of forms, but also cognition and culture. We stand on the shoulders of giants, drawing on such works as Talmy (1978, 1996), DeLancey (1980, 1985), Bickel and Gaenszle (1999), van der Zee and Slack (2003), Levinson (2004), Levinson and Wilkins (2006), Bohnmeyer et al (2007), Pederson (2012, 2017), Guillaume (2016), Zhang (2020), Jacques, Lahoussois, and Shuya (2021), and Post (2019, 2020, 2021), as well as on the remarkable works of countless grammar writers, whose perceptive and detailed studies underlie all that we do.
We have now expanded the database to fifty languages, including Sinitic, in order to cover the entire Sino-Tibetan (Trans-Himalayan) family. We are working on a book-length treatment, looking at the expression of spatial semantics in multiple lexical and grammatical subsystems across the clause, including demonstratives, adpositions, nouns, adverbs, particles, and verbs, as well as the unique locative word classes that are found in some languages. Our goal is to produce a typological study as called for by Bickel (2007), which answers the question of “What’s where, and why?” (p. 239). This requires a panchronic approach that sees synchronic patterns as resulting from diachronic processes. It also requires a multi-domain study, bringing into consideration not only linguistic properties of forms, but also cognition and culture. We stand on the shoulders of giants, drawing on such works as Talmy (1978, 1996), DeLancey (1980, 1985), Bickel and Gaenszle (1999), van der Zee and Slack (2003), Levinson (2004), Levinson and Wilkins (2006), Bohnmeyer et al (2007), Pederson (2012, 2017), Guillaume (2016), Zhang (2020), Jacques, Lahoussois, and Shuya (2021), and Post (2019, 2020, 2021), as well as on the remarkable works of countless grammar writers, whose perceptive and detailed studies underlie all that we do.