Burmese thii (fwd Alice Vittrant <vittrant at vjf.cnrs.fr>)

[Doug Cooper]

[Forwarded from  Alice Vittrant <vittrant at vjf.cnrs.fr> ]


Dear  Pornsiri and Marcel,
I know nothing about Thai but I may be able to make some comments on
Burmese ... and French!
First about french , the example you give to illustratre "french nominal
construction" is really strange! I have trouble to figure out what "une
pizza de chaude" could mean, unless you put it in a colloquial sentence like
 	"Il y a une pizza de chaude pour celui qui en veut"
where the 'meaningless' DE would appear instead of "qui est (maintenant)",
with an idea of resulativeness, or new state, and expectations about the
context (others pizzas, or others hot items...)

However, even if in this phrase the noun pizza is linked with its
(kind-of-)predicate by DE -and I understoodd that it is what you are
interested in-, it is not a common construction for 'a hot pizza'. The
normal and common nominal phrase for 'a hot pizza' would be simply "une
pizza chaude".

I am not a specialist of literary burmese rather a specialist of
colloquial/moderne burmese (MD).
But it seems to me that /thii/LB (MB/di/) clearly has the meaning of
"démonstratif proche" opposed to /hto/LB (MB /ho/) "démonstratif éloigné"
as said by D. Bernot in her new "Grammaire birmane n°2",2001, Paris :
L'Asiathèque (p.111).

(You can also have a look on ALLOTT & OKELL 2001 "Burmese dictionary of
grammatical forms", London : CURZON (p.245))
Hope it will help you...

Best regards

Alice Vittrant