[Lingtyp] ‘Ostensive’ use of a goal case

[Riccardo Giomi]

Dear Marius (and all),

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.

Best,
R

Riccardo Giomi <rgiomi at campus.ul.pt> escreveu no dia segunda, 28/02/2022
à(s) 20:48:

> Dear Marius,
>
> 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..
>
> 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).
>
> 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 *di>de*,
> 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).
>
> Finally, Radetzky (2002) discusses the developmet of Huallaga Quechua *-qa
> *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 *ma*, 'but'). By the way, Radetzky mentions Ancient Greek *de *and
> Japanese *wa *as cross-linguistic parallels to the Quechua case.
>
> As I said, I have no idea whether this can be helpful at all!
>
> Best wishes,
> Riccardo
>
> *References*
>
> *Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha
> Rhee. 2019. *World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, *2nd edition.
> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.*
>
> *Radetzky, Paula. 2002. *The functions and evolution of topic and focus
> markers.* Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California.*
>
> *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.),* Formal
> evidence in grammaticalization research* (Typological Studies in Language
> 94), 63-92. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.*
>
>
> zemp marius <zemp.marius at gmail.com> escreveu no dia segunda, 28/02/2022
> à(s) 14:26:
>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> the two Written Tibetan examples (from Beyer 1992: 384) presented below
>> illustrate the construction I’m interested in:
>>
>>
>>
>> *khyi che-ba-la*
>>
>> dog big-nlzr-??
>>
>> ‘That dog is really big!/How big that dog is!’
>>
>>
>>
>> *gnam sdug-pa-la*
>>
>> sky beautiful-nlzr-??
>>
>> ‘The sky is so beautiful!/What a beautiful sky!’
>>
>>
>>
>> According to Beyer (ibid.), this construction “consists of a nominalized
>> proposition followed by the locus particle -*la*, yielding an extreme
>> degree of some variable factor, which is expressed by the nominalized verb,
>> usually stative.”
>>
>>
>>
>> While I think an adequate label for the function served by -*la* in
>> these examples might be ‘ostensive’, my hypothesis is that this -*la*
>> derives from the goal case -*la* 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?
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance for your help!
>>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Marius
>>
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>>
>

-- 
Riccardo Giomi, Ph.D.
University of Liège
Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et traduction
Research group *Linguistique contrastive et typologie des langues*
F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral fellow (CR - FC 43095)
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