[Tibeto-burman-linguistics] request to post a message

[Katarzyna Janic]

Dear Madam/Sir,

I would like to post the following message:

Dear all,

In my crosslinguistic studies, I am interested in how languages code  
(i) auto-benefactive (or ‘self-benefactive’) events and (ii)  
other-benefactive events. The English pair: ‘Mary bought a book for  
herself’ vs. ‘Mary bought a book for Tom’ reflects this opposition.   
Most languages did not develop distinct forms to signal these two  
grammatical meanings except for some language families spoken mainly  
in Asia (e.g. Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Iranian,  
Mongolic and in *Turkic).

Typically, the verbs ‘to take’ and 'to give’ serve this purpose i.e.  
they encode auto- and other- benefactive meanings respectively.  I am  
looking for some Sino-Tibetan languages that make a formal distinction  
in expressing these two meanings in question. I would be grateful for  
any references that would help me to extend my language sample.

The aim is to evaluate the length of self- and auto-benefactive forms  
to check whether they build coding asymmetry and to explain it.

Thank you in advance for your help,

Best,

Katarzyna





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Katarzyna JANIC

ERC Project "Grammatical Universals"
Post-doc researcher

Universität Leipzig (IPF 141199)
Nikolaistraße 6-10
04109 Leipzig

http://www.katarzynajanic.com/