<div dir="ltr"><div>Dear Marius (and all),</div><div><br></div><div>On second thought, my suggestion about locative>comparative>superlative might not make much sense, since of course it is not the standard, but the first term of the comparison that may come to be used as a superlative.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>R<br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Riccardo Giomi <<a href="mailto:rgiomi@campus.ul.pt">rgiomi@campus.ul.pt</a>> escreveu no dia segunda, 28/02/2022 à(s) 20:48:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Dear Marius,</div><div><br></div><div>I cannot think of any direct parallel in other languages, but a few processes of grammaticalization that eventually lead from locative to a meaning somehow similar to the one you illustrate do come to mind. The problem is I have no idea whether the relevant intermediate stages also exist (or can be reconstructed) for Tibetan, so what follows may well be totally useless..<br></div><div><br></div><div>In the first place, locatives (of various types) are a well-known source for standard-of-comparison markers, and the latter are often(ish) found to turn into superlative markers; in turn, superlatives are used in various languages to express high degree (with no strictly 'superlative' or comparative implication). For examples of locative>comparative and comparative>superlative, see Kuteva et al. (2019).</div><div><br></div><div>That said, a good part of the answer to your question depends on how exactly you would characterize the function of the Tibetan construction. From the examples you give, a pragmatic meaning of emphasis, exclamation or perhaps mirativity would seem to be involved; if this is the case, another development that might perhaps be relevant is that of Chinese <i>di>de</i>, which according to Yap, Choi and Cheung (2010) started out as a lexical noun meaning 'bottom', then turned into a locative marker, and through a series of further developments eventually acquired a discourse-marker use of reinforcing the speaker's stance (which is a type of emphasis, as I interpret it).</div><div><br></div><div>Finally, Radetzky (2002) discusses the developmet of Huallaga Quechua <i>-qa </i>from locative to topic and contrast marker -- a function that is of course different from emphasis or mirativity as such, but still falls within the vast realm of (linguistically encoded) pragmatics; contrast markers, in particular, are prone to acquire emphatic meanings (e.g. Italian <i>ma</i>, 'but'). By the way, Radetzky mentions Ancient Greek <i>de </i>and Japanese <i>wa </i>as cross-linguistic parallels to the Quechua case.</div><div><br></div><div>As I said, I have no idea whether this can be helpful at all!</div><div><br></div><div>Best wishes,</div><div>Riccardo</div><div><br></div><div><font size="2"><i>References</i></font></div><div><font size="2"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="2"><i>Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee. 2019. </i>World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, <i>2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</i></font></div><div><font size="2"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="2"><i>Radetzky, Paula. 2002. </i>The functions and evolution of topic and focus markers.<i> Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California.</i></font></div><div><font size="2"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font size="2"><i>Yap, Foong Ha, Pik-ling Choi & Kam Siu Cheung. 2010. Delexicalizing di: How a Chinese noun has evolved into an attitudinal nominalizer. In An Van linden, Jean-Christophe Verstraete & Kristin Davidse (eds.),</i> Formal evidence in grammaticalization research<i> (Typological Studies in Language 94), 63-92. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.</i></font></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">zemp marius <<a href="mailto:zemp.marius@gmail.com" target="_blank">zemp.marius@gmail.com</a>> escreveu no dia segunda, 28/02/2022 à(s) 14:26:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Dear colleagues,<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">the two Written Tibetan examples (from Beyer 1992:
384) presented below illustrate the construction I’m interested in:<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">khyi che-ba-la<span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">dog big-<span style="font-variant:small-caps">nlzr</span>-??<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">‘That dog is really big!/How big that dog is!’<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">gnam sdug-pa-la<span></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">sky beautiful-<span style="font-variant:small-caps">nlzr</span>-??<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">‘The sky is so beautiful!/What a beautiful sky!’<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">According to Beyer (ibid.), this construction “consists
of a nominalized proposition followed by the locus particle -<i>la</i>,
yielding an extreme degree of some variable factor, which is expressed by the
nominalized verb, usually stative.”<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">While I think an adequate label for the function
served by -<i>la</i> in these examples might be ‘ostensive’, my hypothesis is
that this -<i>la</i> derives from the goal case -<i>la</i> of the same
language. Unfortunately, I am unable to back this with any cross-linguistic
parallels – Have any of you come across a goal case (or perhaps also a postposition meaning ‘to’) being used in a similar way
in any of the languages you work with?<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Thanks in advance for your help!<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Best,<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Marius<span></span></span></p><br></div>
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</blockquote></div>
</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Riccardo Giomi, Ph.D.<br></div>University of Liège</div><div dir="ltr">
Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et traduction</div><div dir="ltr">Research group <i>Linguistique contrastive et typologie des langues</i></div><div>F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral fellow (CR - FC 43095)</div><div><i></i></div></div></div>