Grammaticalisation of extent in Mran-Ni

Abstract

There is a small subclass of verbs of dimensional extent within the stative verbs of various Mran-Ni (MN, generally known as Burmese-Lolo or Lolo-Burmese)2 languages. They comprise a small number of positive and negative pairs of verbs such as FAR and NEAR, LONG and SHORT, etc. In a number of cases the positive extentive is a MN or southeastern Tibeto-Burman (TB) lexical innovation, while in other cases both positive and negative extentives are derived from well-established TB etyma.