Situation Aspects and Their Transformation in Gexi Horpa

Abstract

Horpa is a relatively obscure Sino-Tibetan language group with an abundance of noteworthy grammatical phenomena, among which are those related to situation aspect, or Aktionsart and lexical aspect. Situation aspect can be divided into five types—state, activity, accomplishment, achievement and semelfactive, according to dynamicity, telicity, and durability. This paper analyzes situation aspect distinctions in the Gexi dialect of Central Horpa, based on first-hand fieldwork data. Semantic features and morpho-syntactic encoding of the situation aspect are explored and illustrated, focusing on the rules and mechanisms by which the situation aspect categories are derived from one another. In this process the conditioning factors of lexical versus morphosyntactic realization of situation aspect are recognized, and several important morpho-syntactic innovations are discovered. The concrete contributions in this work include the elucidation of the typological properties of verbal situation aspect in Gexi Horpa grammar and their interconnections with grammatical aspect, and an account of the way the language transitions in morphology.