calls “verb-frame” versus “satellite frame” languages. English tends to encode the Motion and co-event in a verb-frame form and to represent Path in an external satellite.
8 a. He went by plane to Dallas. b. He flew to Dallas
The satellite constructions are the places for degraded verbs that have lost their main lexical function and been reduced to a more closed-class function similar to prepositional
functions. While the origin of the postpositional particles in Burmese is not within the scope of
this study, it may be noted that many of the postpositions have derived from verbs. An interesting future study would be to examine the various diachronic pathways of Burmese
postpositions.
1.6 Nominal Constructions of Predications
The basic elements of a sentence in this analysis are minimal word forms, of which there are three types—verb V and noun N as lexical, free, open classes, and particles P as the
dependent, ordered class. A minimal sentence can consist of either a single noun or a single verb, but not a single particle. The structural representation of such constructions is a
bifurcating tree, as is demonstrated in the following figures of three different types of constructions, the clause, the compound nominal, and the particle nominal construction.
a| rsm:
re mya: water many
N V
N
Figure 6. Clausal pattern of noun and verb – Clause: ‘There is a lot of water.’
mwf rD:
dhat mi:
element fire N
N N
Figure 7. Compound noun pattern – Compound noun: ‘flashlight’
aps: rSm
jhe: hma
market Loc N
P N
Figure 8. Particle nominal phrase – Locative phrase: ‘at the market’
In each case, the patterns are regarded as a type of low-level predication, in the sense that the same cognitive operation of blending is required. That is, a relationship predication
is posited for an item—for figure 6, the N + V, ‘There is a lot of water’, for figure 7 N + N ‘flashlight’, and for figure 8 N + P ‘at the market’.
The whole unit which results from the predicative operation signaled via juxtaposition is here hypothesized to be a nominal in the sense of an ontological unit, a whole set of
blended elements into a new whole. In metaphorical blending, the process takes place within the mind and we expect very little overt linguistic structure to indicate that this blending
process has taken place.
One particularly striking piece of linguistic evidence that a blending process has taken place in referential structure is the behavior of some cases of anaphora. This type of anaphora
is inter-textual and links the “objects” created within the text via linguistic or metaphorical processes. Ontological objects are then referred to as “things” by the use of deictic pronouns.
They can be thoughts, arguments, evidence, procedures, points, and various types of analysis or perceptions that are presented as part of the build-up of the text, or are part of the work to
establish the ground from which argument or explanation is based. While this type of analysis is common within composition or creative writing classes, it is often missing from a linguistic
understanding of text processing. The linguist’s formation of “linguistic reality,” the structures of the text, will differ substantially from the worlds of argument or points that the
text itself creates. What is interesting in Burmese is that the creation process of linguistic reality is grammatically manifest and observable within the word, phrase, clause, sentence,
paragraph, and text structure. There is often a mapping of the processes that construct meaning. That map is the structured text.
The “objects” called into being by a text, here called nominals, are reified units having the sense of a whole. As reified linguistic units, often labeled as deverbal nouns,
nominalization has in the past been taken in reference to the clause Lees 1960, Chomsky 1970, Vendler 1967 or to embedded varieties of such. What sets this study apart from
previous views of nominalization is that this process is not restricted to clause-level grammatical units but encompasses sentences and paragraphs, extending to the text as a
whole as an object marked by postpositional particles whose scope is the whole text.
1.7 Bifurcation as the Preferred Burmese Pattern
