Collaborative research: Using the structure of verbal complexes to assess linguistic relationships

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Understanding natural processes of change that human languages undergo is challenging in the absence of long-term written records. While there are centuries of such records for Indo-European languages like English, this is not the case for all languages. The study of language change informs, confirms, or disputes theories of population movement and contacts--that is, it provides insights into prehistory. Its study also contributes to our appreciation of how language change proceeds more generally. Tibeto-Burman, along with the Sinitic or Chinese languages, constitutes the larger Sino-Tibetan family, including hundreds of languages stretching from Pakistan to the Pacific. Most of these languages have no written record. This award will investigate as many as six Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Chin State, Myanmar, which up to now have only been recorded in fragmentary wordlists. This project will expand our understanding of: development of tone and other aspects of tonal phenomena; sound changes and the position of these languages in the larger Tibeto-Burman language family; the grammatical behavior of nouns and verbs. Broader impacts include the mentoring of a junior faculty member and a graduate student at a Hispanic-Serving Institution; undergraduate training; capacity-building in linguistics and language documentation in Myanmar, and materials support for community language preservation and revitalization goals. This project has the potential to strengthen U.S.-Myanmar engagement and empowering local communities, both of which are important U.S. State Department objectives. Materials collected under the project will be archived with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures.By careful investigation and analysis of the structure of verbal complexes (verbs plus specific meaningful elements associated with them) for the languages in question, the investigators will test the extent to which understanding these structures contributes to a proper classification of languages with respect to related languages. Previous attempts to classify languages are based primarily on developments of specific sounds in individual words, a method which often fails to provide unambiguous classification; the current project will place greater emphasis on the consideration of specific grammatical phenomena for purposes of classification. Access to Chin State has been highly restricted for the last several decades, preventing fuller data collection which would illuminate the languages' history. Currently, there is a window of opportunity for access to the region by foreign scholars. This collaborative project pairs a PI with extensive experience running language documentation projects in neighboring countries and a PI originally from the area and thus a cultural insider; both PIs are established specialists in the languages of Chin State and the adjacent areas of Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.