Burmese thii

[Pornsiri Singhapreecha]

(resend to the whole list)
Dear all,
Thanks a lot for your comments/suggestions.  I have a few notes in response
to the points you raised.

I.  Re: ungrammaticality of 'une pizza de chaude'  (attn: Joris, Alice and
A. Peansiri)
Sorry I wasn't explicit about this nominal phrase. I just wanted to
introduce our story quickly before jumping to
our query about Burmese 'thii'.
Right, the common nominal phrase for 'a hot pizza' is 'une pizza chaude'.
In our paper (available at http://glow.ling.nthu.edu.tw//proceed.html) in
the introduction section, we show three minimal pairs from
English, French, and Thai as in 1) to 3) below.

(1) a. that idiot doctor
    b. that idiot of a doctor

(2) a. une pizza chaude
    a-fem pizza hot-fem
    b. une pizza de chaude
    a-fem pizza de hot-fem
   both:"a hot pizza"

(3) a. khon kèng
       person smart
     b. khon thîi kèng
     person thîi smart
   both: "the/a smart person"

Let me do this briefly and abstractly for the time being.  We claim that
English of, French de, and Thai thii are linkers or copular elements.
There are semantic differences involved between the a- and b-examples.  The
b-examples show contrast readings; AP (Adjective Phrase) expresses old
information.  In particular, 2b) features a reading in which there is a
contrast between pizzas that are hot and ones that are not (cf. Lagae
1994), while the de-less counterpart 2a) doesn't have this reading; the AP
represents new information.  This interpretive effect shows up in 3b) as
well.

We argue that this semantic contrast is brought about during the course of
syntactic derivation in which a predicate (such as 'idiot/hot/smart' above)
inverts around its subject (assuming a small clause underlyingly), with the
linker facilitating the inversion.  English 1b) reflects the inverted word
order while in French 2b) and Thai 3b) we argue that the inverted word
order is undone later in the derivation.

II.  Re: 'chaude' in 2b) is Adj and not a predicate (Joris)

I use AP for Adjective Phrase.  So in NP de AP construction as in 2b), we
assume AP 'chaude' as the predicate of the subject NP   'pizza' in the
structure of a small clause.   Yes, 'chaude' is attributive adjective in
2a) but (arguably) predicative adjective in 2b).  And syntactically 2a) and
2b) are derived differently.  Our predicate notion isn't precisely
predicate in the sense of being a verb.  Rather, it refers to a
'property-assigning constituent' separated from the head noun by a linker
element. I agree with you that Thai 'keng' and 'roon' (meaning "being
smart" and "being hot") are verbal.

III. Re: thii as a copula needing more evidence (from negation and some
time-markers) (A.Peansiri)

We have used other types of evidence such as quantification and
interpretation restrictions in the constructions where de/thii occur.
These restrictions including their presence with wh-pronouns, indefinite
pronouns, a focus give us quite a close parallelism between French and
Thai.  Thank you for your suggestion; I'll think about this some more.

IV. Re: Burmese thii (Dr. Watkins and Alice)

I'd like to see if Burmese 'thii' can be a proximal demonstrative or not
since as far as I know it shows up as a possessive marker (in a different
morphological instantiation) and a complementizer as well.  As I gathered
from both of your replies, it seems so in both literary and modern Burmese
('di') and the distal demonstrative is hto/ho.

Alice, your colloquial French sentence and your intuition about additional
resultativeness, new state, etc. is very interesting! I think your idea
about the intrepretative effect is close to ours.

Just one thing.  May I confirm whether what I grasped from you is what one
says in LB/MB?

(i)  thii/di   sa-ouq   "this book"

(ii) hto/to   sa-ouq   "that book"

Thanks a lot for your helpful answers and the references.  Hope I can get a
hold of Allott&Okell's (2001) somewhere in Bangkok.

Pornsiri