The cis- and translocative suffixes in Jinghpaw

Abstract

The goal of the present paper is to investigate spatio-directional categories in Jinghpaw, a Tibeto-Burman language mainly spoken in northern Burma, especially focusing on the cislocative and translocative directional suffixes that occupy an important position in the verb complex. The cislocative suffix -r, typically marking a spatial motion toward the deictic center, has developed into a suffix marking other grammatical categories, such as aspect and tense. The translocative suffix -s, marking a spatial motion away from the deictic center, has also developed into an aspect marker. These historical developments are not arbitrary given that spatial motions are semantically parallel to temporal motions. The cis- and translocative suffixes have their sources in deictic motion verbs meaning ‘to come’ and ‘to go, ’ respectively, which are common lexical sources of cis- and translocative markers cross-linguistically. An asymmetrical distribution of the cis- and translocative suffixes suggests that the translocative suffix first reduced its distribution, followed by the cislocative suffix under analogy.