• contrastive ‘but’, ‘nevertheless’, • concessive ‘howevereven so’, ‘in any event’, ‘anyway’, and
• cautionary ‘lest’.
2 à mù, ph
�̂ šā câ p
�́ à
lest dog meat eat able assertive
‘You must take care lest the dogs eat the meat.’ Matisoff 1973:400
1.2.3 Lalo conjunctions
Lalo has two coordinating conjunctions Björverud 1998:147: • a commonly used conjunction meaning ‘and thenthereafter’
• a correlative conjunction for contrasting clauses of the ‘neither…nor’ type [ǹ̩]
See examples in section 11.2
. There are six Lalo subordinating conjunctions that include the following meanings Björverud
1998:148–151: • critique positive for 1
P
subjects and negative for non-1
P
subjects, • concessivecontrastive ‘although’ or ‘but’,
• temporal ‘after’ with six allomorphs, • conditional ‘if’,
• temporal ‘not yet’, • temporal ‘the time when’.
See examples in
section 11.3 .
Lalo compound clause particle-locative particle combinations are • temporal future, using one of three such compounds: [dì à], [di á], and [dì tjhí]; and
• temporal past, using one such combination: [kú a]. For both types of compound clause particle-locative particle combinations, exceptions from the normal
time frame have been found for the opposite time frame Björverud 1998:151–152.
1.2.4 Nuosu conjunctions
Fu lists the Nuosu conjunctions ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, and ‘if’ for the Nuosu dialects known to him, except for the Sikang dialect, which hashad none. The conjunction ‘and’ in the various Nuosu
dialect forms can only connect words, but does not connect clauses. The variety between the dialects allowed ‘and’ to sometimes be placed between the words joined, and sometimes following them. The
forms of the word for ‘but’ are all placed between the joined clauses. The word ‘because’ is placed at the end of the initial clause, except in one dialect where it is used in coordination with ‘therefore’, in which
case each word begins one of the two clauses in this combination. The syntactic variety of the conditional clauses is extreme: in the Ch’a-tsu dialect the conditional clause has specific initial and final
particles; in the Ta-t’un dialect one particle follows the subject and another ends the clause; in the Pa- mei dialect a single particle begins the conditional clause Fu 1997:206.
2 Nouns
Definitions
• A noun is a lexical item or phrase that can be modified by a following “number + classifier” combination Matisoff 1973:50.
• Nouns are words that may immediately precede a noun particle Björverud 1998:50. Note that in Lalo “noun particles” mark nouns as either “oblique” or “locative” Björverud 1998:117, 124, 126;
Björverud also agrees with Matisoff’s definition, but only for common nouns. • Nouns and pronouns are words that cannot be negated by the common adverb of negation,
3
a Fu 1997:91.
Noun typology
• Typology A Fu 1997:92: common nouns, which take the general numerative
other nouns, which take a specific numerative • Typology B Matisoff 1973:49
“autonomous” nouns may occur with Numeral + Classifier “limited” nouns combine first with
N
-morphemes, then Numeral + Classifier
Special groupings of nouns
• Kinship terms and forms of address: Both Lahu and Nuosu have vocative particles that are used in direct address Matisoff 1973:65,154; Fu 1997:93,194. In Bisu, the forms used for third-person
reference are also used for direct address without a vocative particle Xu 2001:71. • Locative nouns: These include nouns such as ‘side’ when used to mean ‘beside’ and ‘back’ to mean
‘behind’ Xu 2001:72. • Quantifier
NP
s: The numerals used are ‘1–9’ and their compounds, ‘several’, and ‘how many’ Matisoff 1973:44.
• Numeral-classifier
NP
s: These occur always and only following numerals Matisoff 1973:45.
2.1 Noun types, compounding, and derivation 2.1.1 Bisu noun types, compounding, and derivation
