A Grammar of Guìqióng: A Language of Sichuan

Description

In A Grammar of Guìqióng, Jiāng Lì describes the grammar of Guìqióng, a hitherto undocumented language spoken by alpine people in Kāngdìng county, China. Guìqióng has a lot to offer in its phonology, verbal and nominal morphology, syntax and glossary, distinguishing itself from the neighbouring Tibetan, Chinese, Qiangic and Loloish languages. The newly discovered features of Guìqióng include breathy vs. modal voice, indefinite number, ablative, ergative, instrumental, dative and genitive case markers, topic and emphatic markers, the diminutive suffixes, the pronominal and deictic systems, demonstratives and numerals, a rich store of differentiated copular verbs expressing equationality, inchoative, animacy vs. inanimacy, dependent existence and negation, verbal affixes indicating directions, present tense of experienced perceptions, gnomic tense, perfective vs. imperfective aspect, modality and evidentiality. Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations List of Illustrations 1 Introduction 1.1 Location 1.2 The Names of the People and the Language 1.3 Guìqióng in the Documented History 1.4 Archaeological Findings of the Guìqióng Area 1.5 Lingering Memories 1.6 Life Styles 1.7 Demographic Data of Guìqióng Speakers 1.8 Literature Review 2 Guìqióng Phonology 2.1 Guìqióng Vowels, Nasalisation and Diphthong 2.1.1 Guìqióng Vowel Initials and Their Tones 2.1.2 Phonetic Description of Guìqióng Vowels 2.2 Phonetic Description of Guìqióng Consonants 2.2.1 The Uvular Fricatives /χ/, /ʁ/ and /ʁ’/ and the Glottal Fricatives /h/ 2.2.2 The Velar Plosives and Nasals /k/, /kh/, /g/, /g’/, /’ŋ/ and /ŋ/ 2.2.3 The Palatal Nasals /’ɲ/ and /ɲ/ 2.2.4 The Alveolo-palatal Fricatives /ɕ/, /ʑ/ and /ʑ’/ 2.2.5 The Alveolo-palatal Affricatives /ʨ/, /ʨh/, /dʑ/ and /dʑ’/ 2.2.6 Retroflex /ʈ/, /ʈh/, /ɖ/, /’ɳ/, /ɳ/, /ʂ/, /ʐ/ and /ʐ’/ 2.2.7 The Retroflex Affricates /tʂ/, /tʂh/, /dʐ/ and /dʐ’/ 2.2.8 The Alveolars /t/, /th/, /d/, /d’/, /’n/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /z’/ and /ɬ/ 2.2.9 The Alveolar Affricates /ts/, /tsh/, /dz/ and /dz’/ 2.2.10 The Bilabial Consonants /p/, /ph/, /b/, /’b/, /’m/, /m/, /φ/ and /β/ 2.2.11 The Lateral Continuant /lh/, the Glides /’l/, /l/, /’j/, / j/, /’w/ and /w/ 2.3 Guìqióng Tones and Initials 2.3.1 A General Description of Guìqióng Tones 2.3.2 Guìqióng Tones and Their Markers 2.4 Guìqióng Syllables and Consonant Finals 2.5 Assimilation 2.6 Regressive Vowel Harmony 2.7 Prosody 2.8 Variation 3 Morphology 3.1 Nominal Morphology 3.1.1 Definite versus Indefinite Number of Nouns 3.1.2 Case 3.1.3 The Diminutives 3.1.4 Personal Pronouns 3.1.5 Demonstrative Determiners and Pronouns 3.1.6 Numerals 3.2 Verbal Morphology 3.2.1 Guìqióng Bare Stem Sentences 3.2.2 Guìqióng Copulas 3.2.3 Guìqióng Derivational Verb Roots 3.2.4 Directional Morphemes 3.2.5 Tense Marking 3.2.6 Aspect Marking 3.2.7 Modality Markers and Modal Verbs 3.2.8 The Evidential Constructions 3.2.9 The Causative Markers 3.2.10 Negation, Adverbs and Adverbials 3.2.11 The Instrumental and Oblique Nominaliser -’ji 4 Syntax 4.1 Simple Clause 4.1.1 Verbal Clauses 4.1.2 Non-verbal Clauses 4.2 Complex Clauses 4.2.1 Coordination 4.2.2 Subordination 4.2.3 Serial Verbs 4.3 Basic Word Order 4.4 Interrogative Constructions 4.4.1 Polar Questions 4.4.2 Question-word Questions 4.4.3 Rhetorical Questions 5 Pragmatics 5.1 New versus Old Information 5.2 Topic-comment Constructions 5.2.1 Topic Marker 5.3 Focus-presupposition Constructions 5.3.1 Emphatic Marker Appendices Appendix 1: Sayings, Stories and Recollections Appendix 2: Guìqióng-English Glossary Appendix 3: English-Guìqióng Glossary References Index