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chapter 7

Description of reciprocal situations in Lao
N. J. Enfield

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University Nijmegen

This chapter describes the grammatical resources available to speakers of Lao fordescribing situations that can be described broadly as ‘reciprocal’. The analysis isbased on complementary methods: elicitation by means of non-linguistic stimuli,
exploratory consultation with native speakers, and investigation of corpora of
spontaneous language use. Typically, reciprocal situations are described using asemantically general ‘collaborative’ marker on an action verb. The resultant meaning is that some set of people participate in a situation ‘together’, broadly construed. The collaborative marker is found in two distinct syntactic constructions,which differ in terms of their information structural contexts of use. The chapter
first explores in detail the semantic range of the collaborative marker as it occurs
in the more common ‘Type 1’ construction, and then discusses a special pragmatic context for the ‘Type 2’ construction. There is some methodological discussion
concerning the results of elicitation via video stimuli. The chapter also discusses
two specialised constructions dedicated to the expression of strict reciprocity.

1.

Introduction

Reciprocal situations – as in They gave each other diamonds – are among thosesituation types whose description is handled less straightforwardly by the world’s
grammars than more canonical types like simple transitives (‘see’, ‘hit’) and intransitives (‘sneeze’, ‘walk’). In describing less canonical situation types, grammars
go for work-around solutions, more complex and sometimes less obvious ways ofstructuring the description of events and other states of affairs. Examples include
situations with three or more participants (Hudson 1992, Newman 1996, 1997,
Narasimhan et al. 2007), with unusual configurations of transitivity parameters(Hopper & Thompson 1980), and with actor and undergoer arguments that do
not show the standard asymmetrical alignment, as in reflexives (where actor andundergoer are one and the same entity; Frajzyngier & Curl 1999a, Kemmer 1993,
Geniušienė 1987) or reciprocals (where distinct entities map onto multiple semantic roles; Dalrymple et al. 1998, Frajzyngier & Curl 1999b).

130 N. J. Enfield

The present volume is partly about the range of ways in which languages distinguish the grammatical encoding of reciprocal situations from the encodingof other types of situation. Each language should have a formal way of distinguishing the description of symmetrically reiterated events like They saw eachother from asymmetrical ones like He saw her. A second issue is cross-linguistic
variation in the (extensional and intensional) semantics of constructions which
may be used for the description of canonical reciprocal events. The broader theoretical issues concerning comparative research on how languages cope with the
non-canonical argument structure configurations that reciprocal situations giverise to are dealt with in the introduction to this volume (cf. also Frajzyngier &Curl 1999b, ­Dalrymple et al. 1998). This chapter contributes to the comparative
project described in the introduction, with an account of the lexico-grammaticalresources which Lao speakers possess for the description of reciprocal situations,as well as the broader expressive functionality of those resources.
To preview the descriptive content of the chapter, Lao speakers have two main
lexico-grammatical resources for describing reciprocal situations. One of these isa narrowly specialised, relatively seldom occurring construction, which I call thereciprocal mirror construction. It has the structure ‘I Vα you, you Vα me’, typicallyappended to a differently worded description of the event. The reciprocal mirror
construction is confined to the description of events that are strictly reciprocal;that is, where for some predicate for which A and B are participants, A acts upon
B and B acts upon A (see Section 4.2, below). The other of the two main constructional means for describing reciprocal situations in Lao is far more common andis the main focus in this chapter. This construction, featuring the nominal particle
kan3 occupying an (erstwhile) object slot in the verb phrase, is more general inmeaning than strict reciprocity of action or orientation. The kan3 construction
is used for the description of a range of situation types in which multiple participants map onto multiple roles of a single predicate. This covers reciprocal situations (They saw each other) as well as situations in which people carry out some
activity together (They celebrated together), or are inherently or properly complementary in action or orientation (One gives while the other receives, One is a cloneof the other). The data are consistent with an analysis of the kan3 construction as
having a single, general meaning applying across this range of situations (as opposed to a polysemy account whereby kan3 would entail strict reciprocity in somecases and something else in other cases).
The findings are the combined result of two distinct complementary procedures of data collection and analysis: (1) showing prepared, focused stimuli to
consultants for description, and eliciting a set of linguistic types which target thedescription of these tokens (a set of videoclips; see introduction to this volume
for a description of these stimuli); (2) searching existing texts (narratives, conversations collected for general grammatical description) for the range of token© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Laosituations in which the target types are used (the target type being the particlekan3). These are complemented by interviews with native-speaker consultants ina fieldwork setting, probing possible descriptions of possible situations (to test
hypotheses suggested by 1 and 2). This combination of multiple methods is theideal approach to semantic typology (Enfield, Majid & Van Staden 2006: 138–
139). Each method can shed light on the problem which the others may not.1
In the context of this volume, procedure 1 forms a basis for comparison acrosslanguages, and contributes to the formation of hypotheses of language-specificmeaning. Procedure 2 and the interviews with consultants target the intensional
analysis of language-specific types.
2.

Lao

Lao is a Southwestern Tai language, spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. It
is the national language of Laos (Enfield 1999, 2007). It is closely related to Thai
(Iwasaki & Horie 2005) in all structural respects. Lao is isolating and analytic
in morphological organisation, with no case-marking, and no cross-referencing
or verbal agreement. Grammatical relations in a transitive clause are canonicallysignaled by constituent order (SV/AVO):(1) dèèng3 cuup5/phop1 sèèng3
		 Deng kiss/meetSeng		 ‘Deng kissed/met Seng.’

Widespread zero anaphora (almost any contextually retrievable argument canbe ellipsed) along with heavy topic prominence (fronting) and common postplacement of arguments means that surface constituent order varies a lot. This,
combined with the fact that there is no morphological marking of grammatical
relations (whether on clausal heads or dependents), results in significant contextdependence for mapping of arguments onto semantic roles. These morphosyntactic features are highly characteristic of languages of the immediate mainland
South East Asia area (Enfield 2005).

1. The methodological critique leveled at an earlier draft of this chapter in an otherwise useful article by Wierzbicka (2009: 162–4) misrepresents my view (and misquotes it; the draft was
not final), implying that I and colleagues privilege ‘objectivist’ and ‘neo-behaviourist’ stimulusbased elicitation methods, thereby failing to tap into the native concepts under study. This isbaffling, as I am at pains in this chapter to stress the opposite, namely that while stimulus-based
techniques are a useful comparative tool, they alone are not sufficient for semantic analysis (the‘Nijmegen School’ has never proposed otherwise), hence my heavy reliance on non-elicited
examples, and my attention to methodological limitations (see Sections 3.3.4 and 3.4).

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132 N. J. Enfield3.

‘Reciprocal’ marking with kan3

The key resource in Lao for describing the kinds of situations included under
the reciprocal rubric is the particle kan3.2 I refer to it as a collaborative marker(glossed coll), since its meaning is more general than ‘reciprocal’. This is an independent word and does not belong in a larger form class. It appears in an object slot, typically immediately after a verb (though there are some occasions inwhich it may appear after a noun, for example when the noun is incorporated; cf.
Examples (5), (22), below).
Verbs with inherently reciprocal meanings require explicit marking using
kan3. Thus, while English has reciprocal readings of objectless strings like John
and Mary met (Ø) at the park and They kissed (Ø), these zero objects in Lao aretaken to be contextually retrievable, tracked arguments. Example (2) is interpreted as having an ellipsed object argument whose referent is not (included in) theplural subject khacaw4:(2) khacaw4 cuup5/phop1
		 3pl.p
kiss/meet		 ‘They kissed/met him/her/them.’ (NOT: ‘They kissed/met each other.’)

For the reciprocal reading, kan3 is required:(3) khacaw4 cuup5/phop1 kan3		 3pl.p
kiss/meetcoll		 ‘They kissed/met each other.’

The marker kan3 conveys a general idea that a predicate is true of multiple individuals ‘together’, covering not only actions done to each other but also thosedone with each other, and even entirely asymmetrical relations (where one of theparticipants does not correspond to the actor role of the verb at all), as long as thepeople involved are consensually or otherwise rightfully playing their part in theactivity or state of affairs as a whole.
There are two main types of kan3 construction, which I shall call Type 1 andType 2.

2. There is a complex variant sùng1 kan3 lèq1 kan3, made up of sùng1 a relative marker ‘which’,and two instances of the reciprocal marker kan3, in coordination marked by lèq1 ‘and’ (see Example (46) in this chapter). It is a stylistically high form of expression, suitable for writing andfor more formal speech such as in traditional narratives. There is a homonym, the verb kan3
‘hold back, constrain, resist, block’. In the closely related language Thai, there is an ‘intimate’
third person pronoun kan3 (presumably cognate).

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

3.1

Type 1 kan3 construction: ‘A and B V kan3’

The most common type of kan3 construction involves (a) a single subject argument whose meaning is plural (either inherently plural like the plural pronounkhacaw4 in Example (3), or a compound of more than one noun conjoined bykap2 ‘with/and’ as in Example (4)), (b) a main verb, and (c) kan3 in postverbal
position:(4) dèèng3 kap2 sèèng3 hên3/vaw4/tii3/khaa5 kan3
		 Dengwith Seng see/speak/hit/killcoll		 ‘Deng and Seng saw/spoke-to/hit/killed each other.’

If an incorporated object of the verb is expressed (usually a body part such asnaa5 ‘face’ in the following example, see also Example (22), below),3 it comes in
the immediate postverbal slot, with kan3 in the main object slot:(5) dèèng3 kap2 sèèng3 hên3 naa5
		 Deng with Sengsee
face		 ‘Deng and Seng saw each other’s faces.’

kan3
coll

Of the four example verbs shown in the Type 1 construction in (4), vaw4 ‘speak’is intransitive and does not allow another human participant as a direct complement in a transitive construction (cf. (1), above):(6) dèèng3 hên3/khaa5/tii3 sèèng3
		 Deng see/kill/hit
Seng		 ‘Deng saw/killed/hit Seng.’(7) *dèèng3 vaw4 sèèng3
		 Deng
speak Seng		 ‘Deng spoke Seng.’

For vaw4 ‘speak’ in a regular two-place expression, the second argument is marked
by kap2 ‘with’:(8) dèèng3 vaw4 kap2 sèèng3
		 Deng
speak with Seng		 ‘Deng spoke with Seng.’

3. On the status of the post verbal body part term as incorporated and thus distinct from a
regular, full object noun phrase, see Enfield (2006: 195, 2007: 356ff).

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134 N. J. Enfield

3.2

Type 2 kan3 construction: ‘A V kan3 with B’

A second type of kan3 construction features separation of otherwise conjoined
subject arguments, where the second of the two – marked by kap2 ‘with/and’, asin the subject of Example (4), above – is moved into a postposed, peripheral position. The key difference between the two types of kan3 construction is the separation of the noun phrase conjuncts. The verb remains marked by kan3:(9) dèèng3 vaw4/tii3 kan3 kap2 sèèng3
		 Deng speak/hit coll with Seng		 ‘Deng spoke-to/fought each other with Seng.’(10) *dèèng3 hên3/khaa5 kan3 kap2 sèèng3
		 Deng see/killcoll with Seng		 ‘Deng saw/killed each other with Seng.’

Most discussion in this chapter concerns the more common Type 1 construction.
The Type 2 construction is treated separately, in Section 3.4, below. It is more
restricted in scope, partly because it does not allow most transitive verbs. Thoseverbs that may occur in the Type 2 construction can all also occur in the Type 1(compare vaw4 ‘speak’ and tii3 ‘hit, fight (with)’ in Examples (4) and (9)). Moresignificantly, the alternation between the two constructions is associated with different information structure construals (see Section 3.4, below).
3.3

Semantic range of the Type 1 kan3 construction

The particle kan3 has a strikingly wide range of use over situation types. This isrevealed both by observation of its range of occurrence in natural texts, and by
its very liberal use across video stimulus materials developed for the comparative
field research documented in this volume. As the chapters of this volume show, it
is typical for a grammatical resource which is used to describe a canonical reciprocal situation to also be extended to refer to other types of situation which are
not literally reciprocal in a strong sense, but which relax certain defining components (cf. Langendoen 1978, Dalrymple et al. 1998, introduction to this volume).
For the purpose of organising the Lao data in this section, I use the following
informal categories of situation type associated with the use of kan3:(11) a. 	Strict reciprocal (e.g. They hugged each other, They gave each otherdiamonds): where for some multiple of participants, all map onto both
actor and undergoer roles of the predicate (with some logical variations
depending on quantitative and temporal relations between multiplied
events, etc.).

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

		 b. 	Loose reciprocal (e.g. The dogs ate each other, The plates were stacked on
top of each other): where for some multiple of participants, multiple participants map onto the actor role and multiple participants map onto theundergoer role, but strict reciprocity does not apply.
		 c.	Collective (e.g. They celebrated together, They ate dinner together): where forsome multiple of participants, all map onto the same role of the predicate.
		 d.	Complementary (yet asymmetric) (e.g. She gave him a watch, One of themis a clone of the other): where for some multiple of participants, some participant maps onto one role, and the other maps onto a complementaryrole. The respective roles are not the same, but they properly complement
each other to make the situation complete.

In the rest of this section, I describe the range of application of the Type 1 kan3
construction (for the more restricted Type 2 kan3 construction, and the reciprocal mirror construction, see Section 3.4 and Section 4.2, below).
To give an idea of how surprisingly broad the extension of kan3 is, in three
speakers’ descriptions of the full set of 64 reciprocal stimulus clips (Evans et al.
2004), there was only one clip whose target situation was unanimously describedwithout using kan3. In this clip (#60), three people who are sitting side by sidewatch a fourth person walk by. For only a few other clips did one or more speakers
omit kan3 from the description. For example, in describing a clip in which one
actor walks along and bumps into another, one speaker omitted kan3. The others
described it as ‘people bumping into each other’ (although they acknowledgedthat only one actor bumps into the other; i.e., they would not break it down into
two events, A bumped B and B bumped A). Most clips in the full stimulus set were
spontaneously coded by all three speakers using a Type 1 kan3 construction.
3.3.1 Strict reciprocal
The kan3 marker may be used for describing situations which are strictly reciprocal, in the sense defined in (11a), above. Here are two text examples:4(12) qaw3 hua3 laan4 son2 kan3
		 take head bald
butt coll		 ‘(They’d) butt each other with (their) bald heads.’(13) jaan4 pajø
phop1 kan3 kòòn1		 afraid dir.abl meetcoll before		 ‘(We’re) afraid (they’ll) meet each other before (the appointed time).’4. These cases are types of multi-verb constructions (Enfield 2007: 337ff), which act effectively
like single verbs for the purposes of the syntax of kan3 – that is, kan3 is placed in the object slotof the whole verb complex.

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136 N. J. EnfieldKan3 is also applicable where the reciprocated actions are separated in time. The
following text example refers to two schools whose students would occasionallymake visits to the other school – that is, at one time, students of School A would
visit School B, at another time, students of School B would visit School A:(14) nakø-hian2 tòò1
nakø-hian2 naø
pajø
jaam3 kan3
		 ct.agt-study connect ct.agt-study top.periph dir.abl visitcoll		 ‘Student to student, (they’d) go (and) visit each other.’

Verbs of interpersonal communication and social relations are expressed using
kan3, as in the following text examples:(15) ngùk1
hua3 saj1 kan3 lèkaø lèèw4
		 toss.head head put coll c.lnk finish		 ‘(We’d) toss our heads at/towards each other, and that’d be it.’(16) tèè1 vaa1 mii2
ñang3
kaø lom2
		 but comp there.is indef.inan t.lnk talkkan3 paj3 daj4 juu1
coll gocan fac.weak		 ‘But whatever the (problems), (we) could talk (to) each other (about them).’(17) man2 mak1 duu3-thuuk5 kan3 lùang1
saa3sanaa3
		 3.btend look.down.on coll concerning religion
		 ‘They tend to look down on each other concerning religion.’(18) hêt1
siaw1
kan3
		 make best.friend coll		 ‘(We) became best friends (with) each other.’

Verbs of exchange encode a reciprocation of transfer. If She and John exchanged
diamonds, then she transferred diamonds to John and John transferred diamonds
to her.5 Events of this kind of reciprocal exchange such as the compound lèèk4pian1 in the following example, are expressed using kan3:(19) khaa5 maa2 lèkaø maø
lèèk4- pian1
kan3
		 killcome c.lnk dir.all exchange-change coll		 ‘(We’d) kill (the cattle) and then (we and the other villagers would) exchange(the food) with each other.’

5. Verbs of exchange are therefore distinct from verbs of transfer such as haj5 ‘give’ in Example (40), below, which encode a one-way event. If She gave John diamonds, only she corresponds
to the actor role of the predicate ‘give’: Unlike in They exchanged diamonds, it doesn’t mean thatJohn gave her diamonds in return.

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

3.3.2 Loose reciprocal
Events which are loosely reciprocal in the sense defined in (11b), above, are readily described with kan3, as in these two examples from texts:(20) phuak4 daj3 kaøhum4 kan3 qaw3 vaj4
		 group indef t.lnk cover coll takekeep		 ‘They were all on top of each other, unrestrainable.’

bòø
neg

fang2
listen(21) bòòk5 haj5 huu4 kan3 thua1 thang2 mùang2		 tellgive know coll allwhole city		 ‘(They) told each other all across the city....’

The following example (overheard in context by the author) was shouted by an
adult to a group of children playing boisterously with long sharp sticks. The
speaker warns that someone could get their eye pierced. Despite the asymmetry of the situation described, kan3 is used. The speaker is not saying that
A will pierce B’s eye and B will pierce A’s eye. It doesn’t matter which of themultiple participants would be actor and which would be undergoer, it could
be any of them:(22) lavang2
suat5 taa3 kan3 dee4		 watch.out pierce eye coll fac.onrcd
		 ‘Watch out for piercing each other’s eyes, y’hear!’

A chaining type reciprocal relation (cf. They followed each other in to the room)
may also be described by kan3:(23) saam3 sop2
lian2
kan3
		 three corpse be.in.a.row coll		 ‘(I saw) three corpses (lying) in a row.’

In a sub-category of this type, the subject is a singular noun, and the use of kan3
coerces a plural reading of the subject participant, where multiple parts of theparticipant are in loose reciprocal relationship:(24) sùak4 kòòng3 kan3
		 string heaped coll		 ‘The string is heaped on itself.’ (From a director-matcher task, describing amess of twine)

3.3.3 Collective
Kan3 may convey the sense that each participant performs the denoted action orsituational role in the same way, quite distinct from any sense of reciprocity (asper (11c), above):© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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138 N. J. Enfield(25) khacaw4 salòòng3 kan3		 3pl.pcelebrate coll		 ‘They celebrated (together).’ (overheard by author)(26) phanan2 kan3 kaølêkø-lêk1nòjø-nòòj4		 gamble
coll t.lnk rdp.A-little rdp.A-small		 ‘(They) gamble (with each other) a little here and there.’(27) pan3 kan3 kin3
		 divide coll eat		 ‘(They) divide (the goat meat amongst each other) to eat.’(overheard by author)(28) hoom2
ngen2 kan3 phuu5 lêkø-lêk1nòjø-nòòj4		 assemble money coll person rdp.A-little rdp.A-small		 ‘(They’d) pool their money together, a little each.’

Similarly, kan3 marks togetherness in spatial orientation:(29) kaj1phùùn4-mùang2 man2 ñèè5 kan3 kaø
daj4
		 chicken traditional
3.bstuff coll t.lnk can		 ‘Free range chickens, it’s okay for them to be stuffed in together(in their pens).’(30) mii2
thahaan3 laaw2 thahaan3 falang1 pon3 kan3
		 there.is soldierLaosoldier
French mix
coll		 ‘There were Lao soldiers (and) French soldiers mixed together.’(31) taw4-hoom2
kan3
		 converge-assemble coll		 ‘to assemble (together)’(32) phuak4 qaaj4 pòk2 qaaj4 ñang3 nang1 kan3
		 groupeBr
Pok eBr
indef sitcoll		 ‘(Brother) Pok and company sat together.’

Relatedly, a verb marked by kan3 can serve as an adverbial adjunct referring toactions or qualities being somehow the same, done equally, at the same time, or
together:(33) man2 ñòòn4
man2 khaj1phòòm4
		 3.bbecause 3.blay.eggs be.simultaneous		 ‘It’s because they lay eggs at the same time.’(34) haj5 dùng3 khêng1 samee3
		 give pullbe.tight be.equal		 ‘Pull (the ropes) equally tight.’

kan3
coll

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kan3
coll

Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

Similar adverbial expressions with kan3 can appear in preverbal position:6(35) phaa2
kan3 khùn5		 lead.along coll ascend		 ‘(They) went up (the bank) together.’ (lit. ‘led each other up’)(36) khaw3 ñaat4 kan3 kin3 khaw5
		 3pl.b snatch coll eat
rice		 ‘They fought with each other to eat the meal.’

In the next examples, kan3 denotes a kind of general applicability of the predicate’s meaning across a collective of individuals:(37) bòø phòò2
kan3 kin3
		 neg be.enough coll eat		 ‘(It’s) not enough (for everyone) to eat.’(38) khòòng3 man2 niñom2
kan3 nèèw2
nan4 dêj2
		 owing.to 3.bbe.popular coll manner dem fac.news
		 ‘Since that sort of thing was popular (with everyone), you know.’(39) kaan3 nap1 khanèèn2 caø nap1 kan3 bèèp5
nan4
		 nmlz count score
irr count coll manner dem		 ‘(In the Lao sport katòò), regarding the counting of scores, (everyone)
counts like that.’

3.3.4 Complementary (yet asymmetric)
So far we have encountered descriptions of situations in which multiple participants(or some coerced equivalent, such as the multiple parts of a single participant; Example (24), above) are participating in the same way. By contrast, in the next classof cases, kan3 describes situations in which participants contribute in unalike yetcomplementary ways (as per (11d), above). Consider this description of a simple
transfer scene: a videoclip in which one actor gives another actor a watch:(40) qaw3 moong2 haj5 kan3
		 takewatch
give coll		 ‘(They’re) giving “each other” a watch.’

Only one actor gives. The other only receives. While the receiver does in a sense
do something which rightfully contributes to the event as a whole (i.e., receive
the gift), the two participants play distinct roles with respect to the predicate haj5
6. These cases are not distinct kan3 constructions, but incorporate verb+kan3 units in adverbial functions; see Enfield (2007: 477).

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140 N. J. Enfield‘give’. What this kan3-marked description of an unequivocally asymmetrical event
seems to have in common with the categories we have examined so far is that itconveys the idea that the participants are taking part together in the event. Giving
is an event type which lends itself well to this construal, since there is a rightfulcomplementary action: receiving.
While the responses to video stimuli clearly show that kan3 may unproblematically mark events of non-reciprocated giving, this kind of response is morecommon in the stimulus descriptions than in natural texts. Perhaps the decontextualised nature of the watch-giving scene (the videoclip is only a few secondslong) makes the event look like it is part of a game the actors are playing. If informants surmise that there is no purpose to the depicted act of giving other than its
being acted out for the camera, or more importantly that this moment of action
is not embedded in a trajectory of narrative action, perhaps it doesn’t matter who
actually gave and who received (cf. Example (22), above). One way of putting itis that together the two actors engage in a joint activity of giving a watch – the‘together’ notion licensing a kan3 construction in describing the videoclip.
Following are examples from spontaneous language use where kan3 is usedin description of clips in which a true reciprocal meaning is clearly not intended,
nor is the idea that the participants each perform the same action or contribute to
the situation in the same way. Rather, in these cases, they ‘together’ take part in asituation defined by the action of a single participant, where the other’s contribution is complementary.
Here is an example from a description of an accident on a wide country roadin which a truck flattens a motorcycle (and the motorcycle does not flatten thetruck in any sense):(41) khaw3 kaøñang2 pajø
jiap5
kan3 daj4
		 3pl.b t.lnk still
dir.abl flatten coll can		 ‘(The road was 15 metres wide, and) they were still able to flatten each other.’

Next, the single defining action is telling a story. This activity is rightfully complemented by a consenting listening audience:(42) haw2 caø ñok1 qaw3 nithaan2 siang2-miang5 maølaw1 kan3
		 1.fa irr raise take tale
Siang Miang
dir.all tell coll		 ‘I’m going to offer the story of Siang Miang to tell “each other”.’

The next example (overheard by the author) describes a situation in which a movie actor is extracting the someone’s sore tooth with pliers, and the two are rollingaround, tussling. While the action is distinctly asymmetrical, the tooth-pulling
activity rightfully involves a consenting jaw:

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao(43) lok1
khèèw5 kan3
		 pull.out toothcoll		 ‘(They’re) pulling each other’s teeth out.’

One evening in Vientiane, I telephoned B’s house, trying to locate a friend A, who
was visiting the city, and who I knew was dining with B that evening. A third
person answered the phone. I asked for A, and was told he had already left. Then
I asked for B, and was told this:(44) khacaw4 paj3 song1kan3
		 3pl.pgosend.home coll		 ‘They’re sending “each other” home.’

While the predicated action song1 ‘to send somebody (home)’ is clearly asymmetrical – only one sends the other home – the two are equally collaborating in
the overall event.
In the next example, a Lao speaker was watching a movie in which one of thecharacters had been cloned. Having missed the beginning of the film, and puzzled
for a while as to why the same actor was playing two characters on the screen at
the same time, the speaker realised what was going on and said:(45) qoo4 khacaw4 khloon2 kan3
		 intj 3pl.p
to.clone coll		 ‘Oh, they’re clones of each other.’

One is the real character, the other is the clone. They are not literally clones ofeach other. Yet they are in a rightfully complementary relationship. Note that thisasymmetrical situation is also readily described with a reciprocal marker in English, as shown in the translation of (45).
Finally, a cow is accosted by a tiger, and agrees for the tiger to eat it, but asksthat it first be allowed to go home and bid farewell to its calf. Its resignation to theinevitability of being eaten is accompanied with this remark:(46) sùa3 kap2 ngua2 man2 pên3 qaahaan3 sùng1 kan3
		 tiger with cow
3.b
cop foodrelcoll		 ‘The tiger and the cow are food for each other.’lèq1 kan3and coll

The relation predicated here is portrayed as rightful, the way of the world – thecow and the tiger are in a symbiotic relationship defined by the cow’s being foodfor the tiger. In a sense, they each play an equal part.

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142 N. J. Enfield

3.4

Type 2 kan3 construction, and its information structure properties

The Type 2 kan3 construction is less common in texts than Type 1, and significantly,
was never once produced as a description of the video stimulus materials (despitekan3 being used in describing all but one of the 64 stimulus videoclips). This appears to be due to an information structure difference between the constructions.
In the Type 1 construction, the relevant participants are packaged into a single nounphrase either as an inherently plural noun or pronoun (including coerced plurals
such as the multiple-parts reading of ‘string’ in Example (24), above), or a conjunctnoun phrase. Irrespective of internal complexity of the subject argument, in theType 1 kan3 construction the members of this set of participants are expressed asa single information-structural unit. Members of the set therefore share a single
discourse status (focused/presupposed, given/new, topical, etc). This type of information packaging is fitting for description of the stimulus videoclips, which run
for just a few seconds, and which are devoid of any contextually framing trajectory or narrative action. Each clip is designed such that nothing in the situation,
beyond any inherent asymmetry of respective roles in the behaviour taking place,encourages differential treatment of the participants with respect to discourse-level
information structure. The reason the stimulus clips never elicited the Type 2 construction is because the Type 2 construction codes the participants in separate nounphrases and thereby construes the participants as distinct from each other in information status terms (e.g. with respect to reference-tracking).
In the text examples of the Type 2 kan3 construction, half were in descriptions of events of interpersonal communication:(47) phit2
kan3 jaang1 ñaj1 kap2 cêk2
		 disagree coll way
big with Chinaman		 ‘(He) disagreed in a big way with the Chinaman.’(48) haw2 kaøvaw4 kan3 kap2 phòò1-baan4
		 1.fa t.lnk speak coll with father-village
		 ‘I spoke with the village chief.’

Other examples of the Type 2 kan3 construction involved khùù2 ‘to be like’, expressing the notion of “like”, “same as”:(49) còq2 ngaa2 saj1 khùù2 kan3 kap2 tum4-paa3-khaaw3
		 insert tusk put be.like coll with “white fish basket trap”
		 ‘Tusks are inserted (in this type of trap) like (in a) “white fish basket trap”.’
		 (From a video-recorded interview about fish traps.)(50) suung3 khùù2 kan3 kap2
		 tallbe.like coll with		 ‘(She’s) tall like (her) boss.’

naaj2
boss

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

In each case, the subject (i.e. the noun phrase that appears before the verb) is adistinct, tracked participant in the discourse. Its reference is accessible, old, topical information relative to the other participant.
To summarise, there is one essential difference between the Type 1 andType 2 kan3 constructions: Type 1 refers to the multiple participants with a single,
continuous noun phrase, while Type 2 splits them up. In this way, Type 1 treats
the participants as a single unit for information structure purposes (e.g. focus,
reference-tracking), while Type 2 treats them as distinct units. The need for thisinformation-structural distinctness arises naturally in discourse, where a distinct
narrative trajectory can impose differential values for otherwise equivalently involved entities.

Ways to express strict reciprocity in Lao

4.

The previous section established that the kan3 construction does not entail reciprocity. Its meaning is more general, covering a broader range of situations, yetcompatible with reciprocal situations. Reciprocal situations are aptly described by
the kan3 construction because they fit the general description of being situations
in which multiple participants map onto multiple roles (and mostly, when eachargument maps onto the actor role of the predicate, though not necessarily onto
an undergoer role). When it is necessary to be more specific and unequivocally
depict the situation as strictly reciprocal there are also a couple of ways to do thisin Lao. Both ways involve the combination of a kan3 construction with anothertype of construction.
4.1

The suu1 NP suu1 VP construction

The following text example illustrates the suu1 NP suu1 VP construction, meaning ‘Each and every NP VP-ed’:(51) suu1 khon2 suu1 maw2
		 each person each intoxicated		 ‘Each and every person was drunk.’(52) suu1 hùan2 suu1 mii2 nam4-saang5		 each house each have water-well		 ‘Each and every house has a water well.’This construction can combine with the Type 1 kan3 construction to unequivocally express strictly reciprocal situations. Thus, a videoclip in which two actors
hug each other (A hugs B and B hugs A; #7) can be described with a simple Type 1© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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144 N. J. Enfield

kan3 construction (kòòt5 kan3 ‘hug coll’), and can also be combined with thesuu1 NP suu1 VP construction:(53) suu1 khon2 suu1
kòòt5 kan3
		 each person eachhugcoll		 ‘Each person hugged each other.’

The meaning of the combination of these constructions, illustrated in (53), is thatfor the set of actors, each acts upon the other in the way specified in the predicate.
That is, each participant maps onto both the actor and undergoer roles of thepredicate (regardless of whether the events are simultaneous or sequential). Thus,
while examples like a videoclip in which A hugs B but B doesn’t hug A may be described with a simple kan3 expression (i.e. kòòt5 kan3 “hug coll”), the combined
expression with suu1 in (53) would be inapplicable. The kan3-plus-suu1 construction cannot be used for any of the many less-than-strictly-reciprocal situations towhich kan3 alone may readily apply (see Sections 3.3.2–3.3.4, above).74.2

The reciprocal mirror construction: ‘I Vα you, you Vα me’

In describing the reciprocal video stimulus clips, speakers would occasionally add
to a simple kan3 construction an explicit spelling-out of the reciprocal relation,using 1st and 2nd person pronouns (though where these do not necessarily referto the speech-act participants). Here is a description of a videoclip (#3) in which
A hits B and B hits A (sequentiality or simultaneity is irrelevant to the expression’s
applicability):(54) khacaw4 tii3 kan3 – khòòj5 tii3 caw4 caw4
		 3pl.p
hit coll
1sg.p hit 2sg.p 2sg.p
		 ‘They hit each other – I hit you, you hit me.’

tii3
hit

khòòj5
1sg.p

As noted already, some clips which are not strictly reciprocal can nevertheless be
described using a kan3 construction, as in the following description of an asymmetrical scene (#51) in which one actor is delousing the hair of another:(55) khacaw4 haa3 haw3 haj5 kan3		 3pl.p
seek louse
give coll		 ‘They’re seeking lice for each other.’
7. To be clear, it is the combination of the suu1 construction and the kan3 construction thatnarrows the reading to strict reciprocity. It is not that the suu1 construction is used when kan3
has a more strictly reciprocal meaning, since I have argued that kan3 is general with respect
to symmetry of participation, and is compatible with stricter and looser senses of reciprocity.

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

If the mirror construction were added here, it could not describe the same event,
but would only felicitously describe an event in which A delouses B’s hair and B
delouses A’s hair. The next example describes a clip in which each acts upon theother, but it cannot describe a clip in which one participant is passive:(56) khacaw4 haa3 haw3 haj5 kan3		 3pl.p
seek louse give coll		 khòòj5 haa3 haw3 haj5 caw4 caw4 haa3 haw3 haj5 khòòj5		 1sg.p seek louse give 2sg.p 2sg.p seek louse give 1sg.p
		 ‘They’re seeking lice for each other – you seek lice for me, I seek lice for you.’

The mirror construction is a dedicated constructional strategy for expressing reciprocal event relations. Its meaning is not derived from simple composition of
distinct parts. This is clear from the fact that the pronouns meaning ‘I’ and ‘you’
do not refer to speech event participants, as they normally would.
5.

Conclusion

The particle kan3 is the standard tool for describing reciprocal situations in Lao,but it is not a dedicated marker of reciprocality. Events and situations which may
be felicitously described by kan3 feature a multiplicity of participants in someevent, possibly by acting equally upon each other as in strictly reciprocal type
events, possibly by doing the same action or being in the same state together (collectively or at the same time), or even just by co-participating in a situation inwhich the participants are equally committed or rightfully co-participating, despite a distinct asymmetry. These are not separate meanings of kan3, rather themeaning of kan3 is general across these types of situation. When it is necessary to
be more specific and encode a situation as strictly reciprocal, Lao speakers can dothis by using further resources in combination with a kan3 construction.
The semantic typology methodology adopted here has featured the complementary data collection tasks of (a) eliciting descriptions of a set of stimuli, a collection of token instantiations of distinct areas of the semantic space
under ­consideration (in this case, situations depicted in short videoclips), and(b) drawing examples of the target forms from corpora of natural language use
and discussing what they refer to, complemented by (c) focused consultation
with ­native speakers, exploring the limits of extensional applicability of the descriptive types. It is a two-way street, from token referents to type descriptions
and from type descriptions to token referents (onomasiology meets semasiology;
Geeraerts 1997). The combined approach supplies both an anchor for comparative work and a route to language-specific facts. In the case of the ­description of© 2011. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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146 N. J. Enfieldreciprocal events in Lao, the set of videoclip stimuli helped to establish that themeaning of Lao kan3 has a meaning more general than ‘reciprocal’, and subsequent consultation of spontaneous texts fleshed out the reach of the particle’s
broader, naturally occurring distribution. All components of the procedure
played a role in discovery of the facts reported.
Abbreviations
The transliteration of Lao used here follows IPA standard except for the following: e =schwa; ê = high-mid front vowel; è = low front vowel; ò = low back vowel; ù = highback unrounded vowel; ng = velar nasal; ñ = palatal nasal; q = glottal stop. Lexical tone
is indicated by syllable-final numeral, as follows: 1 = mid level (33); 2 = high rising(35); 3 = low rising (13); 4 = high falling (51); 5 = low falling (31); ø = unstressed/atonal. Abbreviations are:
1/2/3
abl
all
agt
b
c.lnk
coll
comp
cop
ct
dem
dir
eBr
fa
fac
foc

1st/2nd/3rd person
ablativeallativeagent
bareclause linker
collaborativecomplementiser
copulaclass term
demonstrative
directional particle
elder brotherfamiliarfactive particle
focus

indef
intj
irr
neg
news
nmlz
onrcd
periph
rdp
p
pl
rel
sg
t.lnk
top
weak

indefinite pronoun
interjection
irrealis
negation
new information
nominaliser
on record
peripheral
reduplication
politepluralrelativiser
singular
topic linker
topic
weakening position

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Steve Levinson, Nick Evans, Asifa Majid, and an anonymous reviewer for
helpful comments on a draft of this chapter. I gratefully acknowledge the research andfieldwork support of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.

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Chapter 7. Description of reciprocal situations in Lao

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All rights reserved