A typological study of the experiential aspect in Tibeto-Burman languages

Abstract

Experiential functions as one of the uses of the Perfect aspect in some languages, but also serves as an independent category in some other languages, especially languages in east Asian and Africa. This paper tries to discover the patterns in which the Experiential category is marked in Tibeto-Burman languages. This paper takes 113 Tibeto-Burman languages as samples, and inspects grammatical markings of the Experiential category in those languages. Based on the criteria of grammaticalization, the Experiential marking forms a hierarchy from finite auxiliary, non-finite auxiliary to particle and suffix. Some languages have clear, traceable lexical origin of the Experiential marker, which can be categorized into three types: sensory, activity and state verbs. The Experiential further can be syncretized with other TAME (tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality) categories; in Tibeto-Burman languages, the Experiential mainly syncretizes with Perfective, Past, Perfect, Imperfective and Modal categories to form polyfunctional Experiential or weak Experiential. It is also common for the Experientials to have constraints on the TAME environment it accepts. It generally prefers Perfective, Egophoric and remote Past. In the last section, by marking languages that have no Experiential, weak Experiential and Experientials on the map, it was shown that languages in southwest China and Indo-China Peninsula is more likely to have Experiential, and is possibly the core Experiential area. Also, a quantitative analysis of the genetic distribution reveals that subgroups like Tibetan, Qiangic, rGyalrongic and Lolo-Burmese predominantly have the Experiential category; the use of Experiential in some languages is possibly influenced by the contact with Sinitic languages.