17 - Tibeto-Burman morphology and syntax (general)

Summary

The relationships that obtain among the several units of the TB sentence are indicated (a) through the relative positions of the units, and (b) through the employment of special relating morphemes, normally prefixes or suffixes. The syntactical factor tends to be the dominant one, however, hence one can describe Tibeto-Burman as ‘relatively isolating’. Throughout the TB area the invariable syntactical rule is that the verb must be placed at the end of the sentence, followed only by suffixed elements or sentence-final particles. The object normally immediately precedes the verb and follows the subject, though no invariable rule can be stated here (in Burmese the object is somewhat emphasized when placed before the subject). The concepts of ‘subject’, ‘object’, ‘indirect object’, ‘instrumentality’, and the like are reinforced or expressed in modern TB languages by morphemes suffixed to nouns. The subject is often found standing alone, or construed as an instrumental, as in T ŋa-s kho-la rduŋ ‘by-me to-him beat’ = ‘I beat him’, ŋa-s de śes (or ŋa-la in modern dialects) ‘by-me that know’ = ‘I know that’. Subordinated elements regularly precede rather than follow, although modifying elements are often suffixed; cf. Modern B tyìdέ; khwè ‘big dog…’ or ‘dog (that is) big…’ (-dέ with ‘creaky tone’, a morpheme of subordination), khwè tyìdε ‘dog is-big’, khwèdyì ‘big-dog’ (t<d in intervocalic position).