Grammaticalized verbs in Hayu

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the development of garamaticalted verbs (GV henceforth) of Hayu, one of the Tibeto-Burman languages that belong to the Bodic branch (Michailovsky 1988), from the viewpoint of current grammaticalization theories (e.g. Hopper 1987; Bolinger 1980; Heine et al. 199 la,b; Heine 1992, 1993; Hopper and Traugott 1993). GVs are a common characteristic of Tibeto-Burman languages (DeLancey 1991; Matisoff 1969, 1991; Smeall 1976; Lehman 1986; Park 1993, 1994). The development of GVs in Hayu is of particular interest in the study of the grammaticalization of verbs in Tibeto-Burman languages, because it provides the basis for comparison between languages like Hayu that have complex verbal morphology and complicated agreement paradigms and those that do not, for example, Burmese. It will be shown that as in other Tibeto-Burman languages, in Hayu GVs originated from two sources, clause chain constructions and complement clause constructions.