Directional Prefixes in Tiddim Chin

Abstract

This paper aims to explore how directional prefixes work in Tiddim Chin (ISO639-3: ctd), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the hilly border areas of Myanmar and India. In terms of form, Tiddim Chin has four verbal prefixes that are used to modify the direction or location of an event: a prefix ma¹- ‛in front, ’ a cislocative or venitive marker hoŋ¹-/oŋ¹- ‛hither’ (motion toward a deictic center), a translocative or andative marker va³- ‛thither’ (motion away from a deictic center), and a prefix na¹-/na¹(na²)- ‛in one’s absence’ (action without a personal deictic center or speech act participant). Each verbal prefix generally indicates the direction or location of an event in relation to a deictic center. Among them, the cislocative prefix hoŋ¹-/oŋ¹- plays an especially vital role in Tiddim Chin grammar, as it not only expresses deictic spatial direction or change of state but also functions as an inverse marker. In a transitive clause, for example, hoŋ¹-/oŋ¹- is always attached to a main verb if the object outranks the subject in the person hierarchy of “speech act participant>non-speech act participant” (1/2>3) or if both the subject and the object are speech act participants. This extended function of the cislocative marker is also attested in other Kuki-Chin languages. The latter part of this paper demonstrates the linguistic diversity across the Kuki-Chin languages by characterizing Tiddim Chin's directional affixes through a comparative study with neighboring languages.