Chinese Tibeto-Burman Causative Structure Research

This study is about causative usage in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages.In this paper,the causative usage is regarded as the syntactic projection of the causative event.A causative event is composed of two events:the reason event and the result event.The reason event makes the result event happen.The reason event consists of cause subject(CS)and causative verb phrase(CVP),and the result event consists of a subject which is considered as the object of the whole sentence(CO)and effective verb phrase(EVP).In Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages,the reason event is often less important than the result event,if reflected in the syntax,the reason event tends to omit a part or all of the elements,and we can speculate the reason event from the result event.In reason event,the CVP is often omitted,sometimes the CVP is replaced by a functional word(CAU),and sometimes the CVP and the EVP are merged into one predicative composition.If the CVP is omitted,the CS often represents the whole reason event.In this paper,we use the description method,the comparison method,typological method and the combination of synchronic with diachronic method.The description method is used to describe the varied causative forms of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages;the comparison method is used to compare the causative usage between Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages,the different causative usage forms in Chinese and the causative usage in Tibeto-Burman languages.The typological method is used to find the general Characteristics of the causative usage in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages.The combination of synchronic with diachronic method can help us to detect the trace of each causative usage.For Tibeto-Burman languages,every language is on the different stages of development,so when we study the causative usage of one language while referencing other languages,we are actually using the combination of synchronic with diachronic method.In language materials selection,as for Chinese,we rely on the network of the center for Chinese linguistics PKU(CCL)that has 780 million words of Chinese material(580 million words for the modern Chinese,200 million words for the ancient Chinese).For Tibeto-Burman languages,in order to improve the accuracy and reliability of language materials,we mainly use the materials from the Collection of Descriptions of Chinese Minority Languages,Reference Grammar books,and published papers and so on.Through the research,the conclusion of this thesis is that the analysis syntactical structure of causative usage is the most active and productive structure in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages.This is mainly because the analysis syntactical structure is more intuitive and can be copied as long as the meaning permitted,while there has no use for complex inflectional forms.There has a typological characteristic about the syntactical structure of causative usage in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages.The distance between the CO and the EVP is always the closest in structure.In the specific structures,to adapt to the Chinese SVO characteristics,the word order of analysis causative usage is:CS-CVP-CO-EVP.While in Tibeto-Burman Languages the word order is CS-CO-EVP-CVP,adapting to their SOV characteristics.There have no morphological markers on CS and CO in Chinese because they are separated by CVP or CAU.In Tibetan Burmese Languages,the CS and CO often have morphological markers because they often adjacent to each other.So the word order of CS and CO is relatively free,even if one of them omitted,it cannot affect the sentence meaning.In Tibeto-Burman Languages we can see clearly that the result event is often more important than the reason event,this is why some elements are often omitted in the reason event.The very important feature of the analysis syntactical structure is that the CO cannot be omitted.The animacy of CO is very important to the IVP.If the level of the CO's animacy is high,the IVP always means a new action or the psychological change of the CO.If the level of the CO's animacy is low,the EVP always means the change of the CO.In addition to the analysis of causative usage,Tibeto-Burman languages still have agglutinative form and inflectional form.The two forms of causative usage are reflected in words' transformation,which belong to the lexical category.In structure,the difference is also mainly reflected in the verbs(proto-form or causative form).In causative usage,it can increase one valent than proto verbs'general use.In understanding,there is also one more substantive element than the general use.Agglutinative form mainly exists in ancient Chinese,inspired by the Tibeto-Burman family,now the general view is that there is a causative prefix s-in ancient Chinese.The prefix is added in the prototypical verbs and thus,making them into causative verbs.This is a prevalent prefix form in Tibeto-Burman languages.In development time,the agglutinative form is the oldest causative usage form;the next form is the inflectional form.There are still so many inflectional forms in Tibet-Burmese Languages and Chinese.Inflectional forms are diversity in Tibeto-Burman languages,from proto-verbs to causative verbs,some go through turning voiced consonants into voiceless consonants,some go through turning aspirated consonants to consonants,some go through the tones' change,others go through the vowels' lax to tight.For Chinese,as the tool of recording language is Chinese characters,we cannot see the development and changes from the characters.But referring to Tibeto-Burman Languages,we find that in Chinese,there have lots of inflectional causative forms.Apart from the tones' form,others need to analysis carefully.Generally speaking,we see the proto verb and causative verb in different Chinese characters as word form,not as inflectional form.Some inflectional forms in Chinese dialects cannot be distinguished in mandarin;it's the proof of the dying of inflectional forms.We say that inflectional form goes after agglutinative form,because from Tibet-Burmese Languages we can see clearly that some voiceless consonants in inflectional form came from voiced consonants with prefix s-in adhesion form.In Chinese,the systematic voiced consonants in mid-ancient changed to voiceless consonants in near ancient,this is another proof.In the process of voiced consonants to voiceless consonants,the tones as another inflectional form came out.We can see a clear context of causative usage from the comparison of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman Languages:the first stage is agglutinative form,then,some compound consonants grew into single voiceless consonants,in the process of voiced consonants to voiceless consonants and compound consonants to single consonants,the tones came out.The consonants change made the vowels change.It's the second stage,inflectional form stage.In this development process,analysis form has always played a role as a supplementary form,and it'll be the last causative form.