BURMESE FINITE VERB PHRASE OPERATORS:

TENSE OR MODALITY?

Mathias Jenny

Department of General Linguistics, University of Zurich

jenny@spw.uzh.ch

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BASIC FACTS ABOUT BURMESE

› Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman

› Only official language of Burma (Myanmar), ca. 45 million speakers

› Oldest documents 11th century

› Indian script

› 3-4 tones, no final consonants

› Strictly verb-final syntax

› Isolating with agglutinating tendencies

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THE VERBAL SENTENCE IN BURMESE

Periph.

ARGn

PrVOpn

Vn

PoVOpn

FVO

SP

dJenÁ c>k mcj,kiu Tpj e\p. \p r xJ, m l.,

di.né ŋa =ká mi =ko thaʔ pyɔ pyá yá ʔou mə= là

today I =SBJ you =OBJ pile.up speak show OBL again FVO= Q

‘Do I have to tell you [this story] again today?’

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THE VERBAL PREDICATE IN BURMESE (PRVOP) V (POVOP) FVO

ASPECT DIRECTIONALITY MANNER OTHER NOTIONS: V ALONG, HELP V, V

AFTER , LET V

(any lexical VERB or SERIAL VERB

CONSTRUCTION)

MODALITY MANNER DIRECTIONALITY ASPECT PLURALITY POLITENESS

tɛ mɛ pi phù nɛ Ø

NON-FUTURE FUTURE NEWSIT NEG PROH IMPER

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THE FINITE VERB PHRASE OPERATORS (FVO) Basic form Attributive Nominalised Clitic Function

tɛ tɛ ta θə= NON-FUTURE

mɛ mɛ hma mə= FUTURE

pi pə= NEWSIT

phù tɛ, mɛ ta, hma NEGATION

nɛ PROHIBITIVE

Ø IMPERATIVE

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EXAMPLES OF THE MAIN FVOS (1) a. ʨənɔ thəmi sà tɛ. b. ʨənɔ thəmi sà mɛ. 1m rice eat FVO 1m rice eat FVO ‘I eat rice.’ / ‘I ate rice.’ ‘I will eat rice.’ c. ʨənɔ thəmi sà pì pi. d. ʨənɔ thəmi mə=sà phù. 1m rice eat finish NSIT 1m rice NEG=eat NEG ‘I have eaten rice.’ ‘I don’t/didn’t/will not eat rice.’ e. thəmi mə=sà nɛ! f. thəmi sà (pa) Ø! rice NEG=eat PROH rice eat (POL) Ø ‘Don’t eat!’ ‘Eat!’

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THE MARKERS tɛ AND mɛ

Indigenous Burmese Grammars on tɛ (LB θi, ʔí) and pi:

θi, ʔí and pi cannot be used on their own as present tense or past tense verbal suffixes. The [temporal] meaning of the sentence depends on the temporal phrases in the same sentence to distinguish past and present meanings. (Myanmar Language Commission 2005:15)

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Indigenous Burmese Grammars on mɛ (LB myi, ʔa )

an.gtjk.lkiuVänj,eq.sk.,lu·,

ʔənagaʔ-kalá ko hɲu θɔ zəgà-lo u

‘word indicating future time’

(Myanmar Language Commission 1999:242)

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Western Scholars’ explanations

Judson (1852): θi, simply assertive, as θwà θi, he goes. ʔí, same as θi. ʔa , future, as θwà ʔa , he will go. myi, future.

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Anna J. Allott (1965) AFFIRMATIVE-ASSERTIVE-REALIZED tɛ AFFIRMATIVE-ASSERTIVE-UNREALIZED mɛ

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John Okell (1969)

tɛ: Verb-sentence marker. Non-future; translatable by English past or present tenses in general narrative and descriptive statements.

mɛ: Verb-sentence marker. Future, or assumptive; hence translatable by ‘shall, will, going to, may, must, would’.

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Comrie (1985) based on Okell (1969) The main function of mɛ is not time reference, as “[i]t can be used with present or past time reference provided the reference is not restricted to our actual world, i.e. provided there is a modal value to the particle” (2) məʨì.θì sà phù mɛ thĩ tɛ. tamarinds eat EXPER FVO think FVO ‘I think he must have eaten tamarinds before.’

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Justin Watkins (2005) Yanson, Vittrant:

tɛ = REALIS, mɛ = IRREALIS FVO express modality Gärtner:

Burmese does have tense. The marker mɛ marks FUTURE but can also be used to express EPISTEMIC MODALITY.

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Definitions

FUTURE: “Prediction on the part of the speaker that the situation in the proposition, which refers to an event taking place after the moment of speech, will hold.”

(Bybee et al. 1994:244) IRREALIS: Non-actual events, unrealised events, events distant

from the present reality: Negative, future, imperative, counterfactual, etc. (Bybee et al. 1994:236ff, Bybee 1998)

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SOME MORE BURMESE DATA 1. tɛ (3) ʔəwuʔ ɕɔ ne tɛ. PRESENT clothes wash stay FVO ‘I am washing my clothes.’ (4) di mənɛʔ tou ká ʨənɔ sa pó tɛ. PAST this morning TEMP ABL 1m text send FVO ‘I sent (you) an e-mail this morning.’

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(5) ʨənɔ θu thɛʔ ʔəθɛʔ ʨì tɛ. GENERAL 1m 3 COMP age big FVO STATEMENT ‘I am older than he.’ (6) khəlè twe né ta i ʨa u tɛʔ tɛ. HABITUAL child PL day every school go.up FVO ‘The children go to school every day.’

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PAST-COUNTERFACTUAL (7) ʨənɔ me i.má yu ʨhĩ yĩ yu laiʔ ta ʨa pi. 1m woman take DES COND take FOLLOW FVO:NML long NSIT ‘If I wanted to get married, I would have married long time ago.’

FUTURE-REFERENCE (8) mənɛʔ.phyã ʨənɔ ʔà tɛ. tomorrow 1m free FVO ‘I am free tomorrow.’

(8´) *mənɛʔ.phyã ʨənɔ ʔà mɛ.

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(9) mənɛʔ.phyã mè-səya ɕí θè tɛ. (*mɛ) tomorrow ask-thing exist still FVO ‘I’ll still have questions tomorrow.’ BUT: (10) mənɛʔ.phyã ʨənɔ ʔəlouʔ θwà mɛ. tomorrow 1m work go FVO ‘I am going to work tomorrow.’ (10´) *mənɛʔ.phyã ʨənɔ ʔəlouʔ θwà tɛ.

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2. mɛ FUTURE (11) mənɛʔ.phyã mè-səya ɕí ʔou mɛ. tomorrow ask-thing exist again FVO ‘I’ll have more (new) questions tomorrow.’ RELATIVE FUTURE (12) mi məné ká la mɛ (ló) thĩ tɛ. 2 yesterday ABL come FVO (SUB) think FVO ‘I thought you would come yesterday.’

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SPECULATIVE (13) ho tou ká ʨənɔ ʔəθɛʔ shɛ.ŋà lauʔ ɕí mɛ thĩ tɛ. that TEMP ABL 1m age fifteen as.much.as exist FVO think FVO ‘Back then I was/must have been about fifteen, I guess.’

(14) θu nãi.ŋã ʨhà yauʔ phù mɛ thĩ tɛ. 3 country other arrive EXPER FVO think FVO ‘I think that he has been abroad before.’ (14´) θu nãi.ŋã ʨhà yauʔ phù tɛ thĩ tɛ. 3 country other arrive EXPER FVO think FVO

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IS mɛ AN IRREALIS MARKER? FACTS ABOUT tɛ AND mɛ:

1. tɛ occurs in counterfactual expressions 2. mɛ in future contexts does not confer a notion of uncertainty 3. mɛ can be used in relative-temporal contexts 4. mɛ is optional in assumptive contexts, but obligatory in future contexts 5. mɛ does not indicate epistemic modality on its own; mɛ can be used to

express epistemic modality together with some overt modal expression (‘I think’, ‘certainly’)

6. mɛ is not used in IMPERATIVE and OPTATIVE contexts 7. mɛ is not used to mark deontic modality 8. both tɛ and mɛ occur in negative contexts (attributive, nominalised clauses)

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- mɛ does not occur in all events that can be labelled IRREALIS, but it

can be used to express a personal (subjective) prediction about the truth of the proposition

- FUTURE tense is inherently PREDICTIVE

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→ mɛ is basically a future tense marker; the use as epistemic modal marker (assumptive) is derived from

the exploitation of the predictiveness of future markers → tɛ marks non-future situations, i.e. situations that do not require a

prediction about the truth value of the proposition

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DEVELOPMENT FROM FUTURE TO ASSUMPTIVE OR ASSUMPTIVE TO FUTURE?

Deontic Modality → Future: English: will (‘want to V’ > ‘will V’) Greek: θa (< θelo ina ‘want that’) Romance: V + ‘have’ (‘have to V’ > ‘will V’)

Deontic Modality → Epistemic modality German, English, Thai, ...

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Future → Epistemic Modality German, Romance languages, etc.

*Epistemic Modality → Future Subjectivisation as unidirectional process

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Conclusion: • Burmese does have obligatory tense marking with a FUTURE vs.

NON-FUTURE distinction in verbal predicates in main clauses • The FUTURE marker can be used to express a personal

prediction/assumption in modal contexts (epistemic modality) • The NON-FUTURE marker is used in past and present contexts,

irrespective of the realisation of the event described in the proposition

• The NON-FUTURE marker can be used in some contexts with future reference (very restricted)

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REFERENCES Allott, Anna (1965) Categories for the description of the verbal syntagma in Burmese.

In Lingua 15, 283-309. Bernot, Denise (1980) Le prédicat en Birman parlé. Paris: SELAF. Bybee, Joan (1998) “Irrealis” as a grammatical category. In Anthropological Linguistics

40:2. 257-271. Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins and William Pagliuca (1994) The evolution of grammar.

Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: UCP. Comrie, Bernard (1985). Tense. Cambridge: University Press. Ebert, Karen H. (1994) The structure of Kiranti languages. Zurich: ASAS. Gärtner, Uta (2005) Is the Myanmar language really tenseless? In Justin Watkins (ed.)

Studies in Burmese linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 105-124.

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Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva (2002) World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.

Jenny, Mathias (forthcoming). Modality in Burmese: ‘may’ or ‘must’ - grammatical uses of yá ‘get’. (to appear in JSEALS 1)

Judson, A. (1883) [1952] Dictionary Burmese and English. Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press.

Myanmar Language Commission (1999) khəyì shãu myãma ʔəbídã (Myanmar pocket dictionary). Rangoon: Ministry of Education.

Myanmar Language Commission (2005) myãma θaʔda (Myanmar grammar). Rangoon: Ministry of Education.

Okell, John (1965) Nissaya Burmese – a case of systematic adaptation to a foreign grammar and syntax. In Lingua 15, 186-227.

Okell, John (1969). A reference grammar of colloquial Burmese. Oxford: University Press.

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Okell, John and Anna Allott (2001) Burmese/Myanmar dictionary of grammatical forms. London: Curzon.

Palmer. F. R. (2001) Mood and modality. Cambridge: CUP. Romaine, Suzanne (1995) The grammaticalization of irrealis in Tok Pisin. In Joan L.

Bybee and Suzanne Fleischman (eds.) Modality in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 389-427.

Romeo, Nicoletta (2008). Aspect in Burmese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Thieroff, Rolf (1992) Das finite Verb im Deutschen. Tempus – Modus – Distanz.

Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1995) Subjectification in grammaticalisation. In Dieter

Stein and Susan Wright (eds.) Subjectivity and subjectivisation. Cambridge: CUP, 31-54.

Ultan, Russell (1978). The nature of future tenses. In Joseph H. Greenberg et al. (eds.) Universals of human language, vol. 3, pp. 83-123. Stanford: University Press.

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Vittrant, Alice (2005) Burmese as a modality-prominent language. In Justin Watkins (ed.) Studies in Burmese linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 143-161.

Yanson, Rudolf A. (2005) Tense in Burmese: a diachronic account. In Justin Watkins (ed.) Studies in Burmese linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 221-240.