Component Part of Speech
Sub-category
Lexical Words 1
Nouns 2
Pronouns 3
Attributes 4
Numerals 5
Verbs 6
Interjections Grammatical Words
1 Grammatical Prefixes
2 Numeratives
3 Rhyming
Syllables 4
Auxiliary Verbs
5 Verb Affixes
a Ordinary b
Emphatic c
Adjectival d
Adverbial 6
Interjection Affix
7 Postpositions
a Auxiliary
b —Proper
8 Particles
a Modification
b Syntactical
Table 8. Parts of speech in Burmese according to Minn Latt 1959 The distinction between bound and free forms appears to rely heavily on his
classification of lexical versus grammatical forms. This distinction is so striking in Burmese, that one might say “Grammar is in the particles.” They are the logical glue and the
manifestation of cognitive operations. They function like the skeleton of a text to which is attached the flesh of the lexicon.
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3.4.7 Pe Maung Tin
U Pe Maung Tin is a translator who worked with G. H. Luce translating the Glass Palace Chronicles, the early court histories of Burmese rule. He wrote a grammar in Burmese, which
unfortunately was not available for inclusion here. Nevertheless, in a published article he observed a number of relevant aspects of the Burmese language that are significant for a
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In an informal experiment conducted by the author to test the cognitive salience of the postpositional particles, a text was stripped of all lexical items, leaving only dashed line traces representing missing text, so that only the
postpositional particles remained—a kind of cloze test. Two speakers of Burmese were asked questions such as “What type of story is this? formal or informal?”, “What is the authors occupation? What ethnicity?”, “Why
was this written?”, “Was the author witness to the events?”, “What gives you that sense?”, “What is the author’s attitude—to the reader? to the topic?”, “Is there a point to the story?”, “Where in the text does this occur?”,
“What kind of story is this?”, “Do you feel that the writer is someone you would like to meet?”, “Where would you probably meet?”
The answers were surprisingly possible with such little information. From that informal investigation, it became obvious that postpositional particles in Burmese carry not only local logic of the sentence and information
structure, but also pragmatic information about the speaker-hearer interaction.
study of nominalization. First, he states, “There are really only two parts of speech in Burmese, the noun and the verb, instead of the usually accepted eight parts” Pe Maung Tin
1956:195. He adds, “Burmese nouns and verbs need the help of suffixes or particles to show grammatical relation.” It appears that for U Pe Maung Tin there are three classes of
grammatical forms: nouns, verbs, and postpositional particles.
Regarding information structure, he notes that nominals right-shifted to the position immediately before the verb and which are unmarked for their semantic-grammatical role,
i.e., without a postpositional, are regarded as “more emphatic” Pe Maung Tin 1956:193. This shifting can happen with subject or object nominals and results in a type of nominal
incorporation. If it is the subject that is right-shifted, then the fact that the object occupies initial position is epiphenomenal. It is not the result of explicit “fronting” as in European
languages. The normal order with the postposition in place is shown in 59 and with the subject shifted to the right in 60.
59
acG: onf ajumif udk udkuf
hkwe: sany kraung kui kuik e dog Nom cat Ob bite NomSf
‘the dog bites the cat’ 60
ajumif udk acG: udkuf
kraung kui hkwe: kuik e cat Ob
dog bite
NomSf ‘the dog bites the cat’
U Pe Maung Tin claims the right-shifted subject into Position 1 closest to the verb, when it occurs without postpositions, is no longer a grammatical subject but a construct he
calls a noun-verb. In this type of construction, the verb incorporates the meaning of the nominal and functions as a semantic whole. Okell refers to these as “tied nouns.” The sense is
that the shifting position, the loss of the postposition and the close proximity to the main verb results in the nominal being “pulled into” the sense of the verb. There is often a new meaning
that results from this process, and although the new meaning is not predictable on the basis of the component parts, it is predictable on the basis of the iconic principle of proximity
promoting conceptual blending.
Another example of a complex word form is where the process is reversed, according to U Pe Maung Tin, resulting in a form he calls verbal noun. These are of two types: a the
more typical deverbal nouns formed by postpositional particles such as
\cif:
krang:, an
action nominalizer, in word forms like
ppfaq:\cif:
cac hce: krang: ‘inspection’ inspect
+ clean + Nominalizer;
yGgap\cif:
pwa ca krang: ‘propagation’ swell + causative +
Nominalizer, and b the type of deverbal noun formed by the prefix nominalizer
t-
a- as in
the sentence
tqkdaumif:
a-hcui kaung: e ‘the saying is good’ Nom + saying good,
where
tqdk
a-hcui is the verb-noun from the verbal base of
qdk
hcui ‘to say’. This process
would rightly be called nominalization, whereas the former process would be the opposite— verbalization or denominalization.
U Pe Maung Tin’s overall observations about Burmese are that it is a highly verb- prominent language and that suppression of the subject and omission of personal pronouns in
connected text result in a reduced role of nominals. This observation misses the critical role of postpositional particles marking sentential arguments and also of the verb itself being so
marked
. Interestingly, his predisposition is to highlight the verb, whereas the perspective of
this study emphasizes the nominal. In constructions with postpositionals U Pe Maung Tin observed of the verb:
It makes the fullest use of suffixes to express not only the tenses but also other distinctive meanings, four or five suffixes being sometimes tacked on to the end.
It makes compounds with other verbs…enlarges its meaning by means of auxiliary or helping verbs…forms adjectives and adverbs…forms verbal nouns and noun-verbs
and verbal noun-verbs…forms some of the most commonly used conjunctions…the Burmese sentence is dominated by the verb and verb-formations. U Pe Maung Tin
1956:200
Given that there are basically two parts of speech as building blocks, and since much of the grammar is generated by compositional construction using the same two types of
building material, it is reasonable to champion the verb as the predominant form for it is present in many nominalizations. The key to the view of Burmese being structured by
nominals is found in the role of the particles.
3.4.8 Okell
