Burmese thii

[Joris Goetschalckx]

From: "Pornsiri Singhapreecha" <pornsiri at alpha.tu.ac.th>
> We're writing a paper about linker elements in Southeast Asian languages.
> In this paper, we claim that Thai 'thii' (in constructions like khon thii
> keng "person THII smart") is not a complementizer but a copular element
> linking a subject (NP 'person') and its predicate (AP 'smart').  We argue
> that this word order pattern can be analyzed along the same line with
> French nominal constructions where a subject and its predicate are linked
> by a meaningless (but functional) element such as 'de' in "une pizza de
> chaude" 'a hot pizza'.

Sawat dii khrab Khun Pornsiri,

Hmmm, the problem is that this is not a correct construction. It would be
"une pizza chaude". Maybe you are mixing up with the partitive "du/de
la/des" constructions? Like "de la pizza chaude" (some hot pizza), "du lait"
(some milk), etc? But I don't see how this construction could fit into your
hypothesis.

Also I don't see a predicate in the French example you give. Adjectives are
not predicates (verbs) in Indo-European languages! One can interpret /kAng/
or /rOOn/ in Thai as verbs (predicate), with translations "being smart",
"being hot", but in FR these are adjectives.

A construction with noun/subject + de +
[predicate-in-the-sense-that-you-used-it] would then be noun+de+adjective.
An example would be "un homme de grande taille" (a tall man), and this may
very well be the construction you were referring to, only there always has
to be an added noun at the end then (literally: a man of a tall *size*). So
in fact it is: noun+de+adj+noun.

Is this of any help?

If you have any questions regarding French grammar, feel free to mail me:
joris at joris.nu

Kind regards,
Joris