Studies in Asian
Geolinguistics
VIII

ILCAA Joint Research Project 2015 - 2017 “Studies in Asian Geolinguistics”
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

Studies in Asian Geolinguistics VIII
Report of ILCAA Joint Research Project 2015–2017“Studies in Asian Geolinguistics”
First published 2018
Edited by Satoko Shirai & Mitsuaki Endo
Copyright © 2018 Individual Contributors

ISBN 978-4-86337-279-5
This is an electronic publication in PDF format.
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Languages and Cultures ofAsia and Africa (ILCAA)
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
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Table of Contents“Rice” in Asian Languages
Yoshihisa TAGUCHI, “Rice (rice plant)” in Hmong-Mien…………………………………… 01

Atsuko UTSUMI, RICE: Austronesian languages ……………………………………………… 03“Milk” in Asian Languages
Shiho EBIHARA, “Milk” in Asia……………………………………………………………… 05

Yoshihisa TAGUCHI, “Milk” in Hmong-Mien ………………………………………………… 07“Iron” in Asian Languages
Yoshihisa TAGUCHI, “Iron” in Asia …………………………………………………………… 09
Hidetoshi SHIRAISHI, Wind and Iron in Nivkh (revised) ……………………………………… 11
Tone and Accent in Asian Languages
Ray IWATA, Tone and accent in Asia …………………………………………………………… 13
Atsuko UTSUMI, Accent: Formosan and West Malayo-Polynesian languages (Austronesian) … 17
Noboru YOSHIOKA, Tone/Accent in South Asia (Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Dravidian,Andamanese, and Isolates) …………………………………………………………………… 19“It rains” in Asian Languages
Satoko SHIRAI, ‘It rains’ in Asia……………………………………………………………… 21

Mika FUKAZAWA, “It rains” in Ainu………………………………………………………… 23

Hidetoshi SHIRAISHI, ‘It rains’ in Nivkh ……………………………………………………… 25
Shinsuke KISHIE, Yukako SAKOGUCHI, and Nanami SHIOKAWA, It rains in Japanese …… 27
Fumiki SUZUKI, “It rains” in Sinitic …………………………………………………………… 29
Yoshihisa TAGUCHI, “It rains” in Hmong-Mien ……………………………………………… 31
Mitsuaki ENDO, “It rains” in Tai-Kadai……………………………………………………… 33

Satoko SHIRAI, Keita KURABE, Hiroyuki SUZUKI, Kazue IWASA, and Shiho EBIHARA,‘It rains’ in Tibeto-Burman………………………………………………………………… 35

Mika KONDO, ‘It rains’ in Austroasiatic ……………………………………………………… 39
Atsuko UTSUMI, “It Rains”: Austronesian languages ………………………………………… 41
Ryo MATSUMOTO, “It rains” in Uralic and Tungusic ………………………………………… 43
Yoshio SAITÔ, “It rains” in Mongolic and Turkic ……………………………………………… 45
Youichi NAGATO, “It rains” in Arabic ………………………………………………………… 46
Noboru YOSHIOKA, It Rains: South Asia (IE [Aryan, Iranian],Dravidian, Andamanese,and Burushaski)…………………………………………………………………………… 48

References ……………………………………………………………………………………… 50

ArticlesHiroyuki SUZUKI, Remarks on ‘Rain’ in Tibetans’ Languages in Lithang County …………… 56
Satoko SHIRAI, Hiroyuki SUZUKI, and Keita KURABE, Semantic shifts in expressionsfor ‘it rains’ in Tibeto-Burman ……………………………………………………………… 62
Satoko SHIRAI, An Overview of Typological Studies on ‘it rains’ …………………………… 77

Cover photo:https://www.photo-ac.com/main/detail/485027

“Rice (rice plant)” in Hmong-Mien

Other groups, designated as Type B through H, show
a root that is not cognate with that of Type A. Some ofthem indicate a complex form.

1. Classification of word forms
Some of the data sources do not have the item “riceas a plant” distinguished from the item “rice as a grain”.
In this case, we look up the forms for “early-ripeningrice” and “late-ripening rice”, and identify the part for“rice” in the word-form. In such a case, the part that we
use might not be a word, but a bound morpheme.
Most of the forms for “rice plant” in Hmong-Miencome from a single etymon, reconstructed as *mblәu in
Ratliff (2010). The initial consonant of the form is aprenasalized plosive, where the nasal part and theplosive part are always homorganic. The tone of themodern reflexes is Tone 2 (Tone A in some lects). We
designate all the forms cognate with this proto-form as
Type A. Type A lects are divided into several subgroups,
depending on the development of the prenasalized
initial. First, Subgroup A-1, represented by mple,
retains both the nasal part and the bilabial plosive part.
Subgroup A-2, represented by blau, has lost the nasal
part with the plosive part voiced. Subgroup A-3,
represented by plau, has also lost the nasal part but
does not have the plosive voiced. Subgroup A-4,
represented by mjo, does not have the plosive part andthe following lateral changes into j. In subgroup A-5,
represented by ndli, the plosive part has the place ofarticulation assimilated to that of the following lateral.
Subgroup A-6, represented by nɯ, only retains thenasal part. These various forms observed in Type A are
the result of regular sound changes.

B: pui4
C: lei1 bo3
D: kɛ3 sa1
E: tsoA ŋkuAF: kjoŋ3
G: ku6/7/8 thu2
H: su7

2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
Type A has the widest geographical distribution. Since
this form also exhibits the widest distribution in termsof the phylogenetic tree of the Hmong-Mien languages,
it can be interpreted as a preservation of the oldest state.
In terms of the place of articulation, the bilabial placeof articulation of the initial (A-1 to A-4) seems to be anolder state, exhibiting an A-B-A distribution with adental-alveolar place of articulation (A-5 and A-6),
although the northern part and the southern part of thedental-alveolar area have probably developed
independently. This interpretation supports the initialpart of the reconstruction *mbl-.
What is remarkable in the complex forms is that oneof them (A-1+X) includes pui4 as a constituent. This
form is a root for “rice as a grain” in this Hmongic lect.
The cognate forms of pui4 are also used as the form for“rice as a grain” distinguished from the form for “riceas a plant” in some Type A Hmongic lects. This factsuggests that the form pui4 originally means “rice as agrain”, and has expanded to include the meaning of“rice as a plant” in the Type B lects. Some othercomplex forms have a root for “cooked rice”, forexample, njaC (X+A-1), e7 (A-4+X), kɛ3 (D) as aconstituent. The Type F form kjoŋ3 also means “cookedrice”. Not surprisingly, the main concern that the
Hmong-Mien people have with rice is its use as food;
thus the word for “rice as a grain” or “cooked rice” hasbecome a part of the word designating the meaning of“rice as a plant”, and has further replaced the original
word for it in some lects.

A-1: mple
A-2: blau
A-3: plau
A-4: mjo
A-5: ndli
A-6: nɯSome lects indicate a complex form that comprises
one of the Type A forms as a constituent. As isindicated below, one of the Type A forms is coupledwith another form X.
X+A-1: njaC- mple
A-1+X: mple-pui4 (X=B)
X+A-2: gjiŋ2-blau
A-4+X: mjo-e7

1

"Rice (rice plant)" in Hmong-Mien
Type A
A-1: mple

B: pui4

A-2: blau

C: lei1 bo3

A-3: plau

D: kɛ3 sa1

A-4: mjo

E: tsoA ŋkuAA-5: ndli

F: kjoŋ3

A-6: nɯ

G: ku6/7/8 thu2
H: su7

Other Types
X+A-1: njaC- mple
A-1+X (X=B): mple-pui4
X+A-2: gjiŋ2-blau
A-4+X: mjo-e72

RICE: Austronesian languages

second syllable: padi, pare, pala, etc. Some languages
in Sulawesi show Type A-3 form, which consists of
only one consonant /p/. Eastern Indonesia and alanguage in Mindanao show Type A-4 forms: fɔli, fɔs,voǰa.

1. Classification of word forms
The word form for “rice” can be categorized into
five main types: Type A consists of “pati, padi, pajay,
pagay” and similar forms. The Proto-Austronesian(PAN) form for rice plant is assumed to be *pajay, andType A forms are clearly reflections of PAN. Forms
that belong to Type B are reflections of PAN andProto West Malayo-Polynesian (PWMP) *beRas,
which means husked rice. Type C consists ofreflections of *hemay, the PAN word for cooked rice.
These words have the bilabial nasal /m/ or half-vowel/w/. Types D and E are loaned forms from English“rice” and Japanese “kome” (husked rice),
respectively.

3. Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands: Somelanguages show type A-2 forms (padi), but others
adapt English loan words and belong to Type D-1(rais). Type A-2 forms might also be loan words from
Malay “padi.”
4. Oceania: Most Oceanic languages adapt loan words
from English (types D-1 and D-2). Type D-1 forms(rais, ŗaic, te raiti) are found more than Type D-2(with /l/ as the first consonant: laisi, lait, lāyi). A D-2
form with an added vowel /a/ (alaisa) is found in
Samoan.

A. “pajay” type
A-1. Consonants are /p/-/g/: pagoy, pagay
A-2. Beginning with /p/ and the alveolar consonant(/t, d, r, l/): padi, patiʔ, pari, palay, etc.
A-3. “pay” type (No other consonant than /p/): pae,pai, pāyA-4. The first consonant is a fricative, /f/ or /h/: fɔli,
fɔs, hade, haidou, hāri, ɓae, vari, etc.
B. “bəras” type: bəras, bilod

3. Word Forms for “rice”
Rice has been the most important grain in mostareas where Formosan (Taiwan) and West
Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken (Philippines
and Indonesia). Languages spoken in those regions
normally have more than one word for the crop—atthe least words for “rice plant” and “rice grain.” In thiscase, most languages reflect PAN *pajay forms for theformer and PWMP *beRas for the latter. Many
languages distinguish between “husked rice” and“cooked rice”; some have a special word for “riceseed” and distinguish “husked rice” from “unhusked
rice,” and so on. Rice has long history in this area: It
arrived in Taiwan at least 5,000 years ago, spreading
to the Philippines and Indonesia after that. The
richness of terms for rice in different forms reflects its
cultural importance and long history in the area.
In contrast, languages in Papua New Guinea andOceania do not have many words for “rice,” in fact,
usually only one word. In many cases, that word is aloan form from English and, in some instances, fromJapanese. In these areas, the staple food hashistorically been various kinds of potato; rice has only
relatively recently become part of the diet, and the useof loan words suggests that shorter history.

C. “hemay” type, containing /m/ or /w/: ɛmɛ, ammay,
ummay, mojīʂ, waway
D. Loan forms from English “rice” typeD-1. Containing the consonant /r/: rais, raisi, raiti,
ŗaic, te raiti
D-2. Containing the consonant /l/: alaisa, laisi, lāyi,
lait
E. Loan forms from Japanese “kome” type: kosu,
kōmē
F. Other forms: ase, ɸasə, kokulu-keru
2. Geographical distribution
2-1. Formosan languages and languages in the North
Philippines (Luzon) are of two different types: Type
A-1 (pagay, pagoy), A-2 (paday, pālay), and A-3 (pai),
all reflections of *pajay, and Type C, reflections of*hemay (mojīʂ, ummay, ammay).
2-2. Philippine and Indonesian languages: Almost all
languages in the area take forms belonging to Type
A-2, A-3, and A-4. In the Philippines, all threesubtypes are found. Western Indonesia, including
Sulawesi, Jawa, and Sumatra mostly show Type A-2,
which has an alveolar consonant as the onset of the

Keywords: forms for “rice”: “rice plant,” “husked
rice,” “cooked rice,” loan word type.
References: Tryon, Darrell T. (eds.) 1995.
Comparative Austronesian Dictionary. Berlin and New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
(Atsuko Utsumi)3

pāgoy, pagoy, pagay

patiʔ, padi, paɖi, pade, paday, padoy,parɔy, pari, pare, palay, pāɬay.

pae, pai, pāyfɔli, fɔs, hade, haidou, hāri, ɓae, varibəras, bilodɛmɛ, ammay, ummay, mojīʂ, waway
rais, raisi, raiti, ŗaic, te raiti
alaisa, laise, laisi, lāyi, lāçi, laitkosu, kōmēase, ɸasə, kokulu-keru
Map 1: Taiwan and Northern Philippines

Map 2: Indonesia

Map 3: Papua New Guinea and Pacific4The word forms for “milk” in Asia vary greatly.
The following data are based on the publications ofEndo (2016) and Taguchi (2018).

“Milk” in Asia
1. Introduction
Milk is an important part of pastoralism; as Umesao(1976) insisted, “invention of milking and milk
processing made it possible for humans to depend on
livestock.” For over ten thousand years, pastoralists
have been using milk for drinking and making dairy
products, such as cheese, butter, and yogurt. The aimof this geolinguistical study on the word “milk” is todetermine the relation between milk itself and the
expansion of milk culture (milking and milk
processing). Therefore, this study focuses on raw milk
produced by livestock. However, the distinction
between livestock milk and (human) mother’s milk is
not clear in some languages.

Table 1: Main word forms for “milk” in each language group

Language group

milk culture

ArabicSA

Mongolian

2. Origin and expansion of milk culture
Milking started in West Asia ten thousand years ago,
and the techniques of milking spread acrossneighboring areas to form a foundation of milk
processing in the world. Figure 1 shows the origin andexpansion of milk culture.

TurkicTB(Tibetic)

non-milk culture

TB(non-Tibetic)

Sinitic(SN)
Figure 1: West Asian origin of milk culture (milking
and milk processing) and its bipolarization in theEurasian continent (modified from Hirata 2013)

Word form

laban
hali:bdugdhaksīram
pāl
paya
pāččí
kam réis
mama
sün
üsən
süt
ü᷈t
WT ’oma
WT numa (“breast”)
PTB *s-nəw, *s-nya-n(“breast, milk, to suck”)
WT zho (“yogurt”)
PTB *tsyuk⪤ *dzyuk,*m-ts(y)(u/i)p, *dzy(ə/o)w(“to suck, to kiss, breast”)
PQ *s-lu
PTB *pa (“breast, nipple”)
PLB *pat (“chest”)
nai 奶
nin
mama 妈妈 (“mother”)
tsa 砸 (“to suck”)
peAsian areas of each language group can be divided
into milk and non-milk cultures. Roughly speaking,Arabic, South Asia (SA), Mongolian, Turkic, andTibetic of Tibeto-Burman (TB) are classified as milk
culture, and the other remaining cultures are
categorized as non-milk culture. However, even in
non-milk culture, wherein they subsisted by othermeans, such as agriculture, fishing, or hunting, milk
spread as a luxury and nutritive product.

Tai-Kadai
(TK)

nom
u
n- type (ne:n, ne, ne:u)tsi type

Hmong-Mien(HM)m- typen- typeva4, si4, wo7, kəŋ5, pɛ̃1
t- typem- (ʔ-) typeb- typeɲ- typesusu
gatas

Austronesiatic(AA)

Austronesian(AN)

3. Word forms

5

Tungusic
UralicKoreanuku (“to suck, to sip”)*ńim (“to suck”)*jal (“sap, tree juice”)
lavso-lofca
piimä
maito
motʃ(k) (“breast”)mɨz-, mɨN (“breast”)
cec (“breast”)

Ainu

tópe (“breast+juice”)

Japonic

titi (“breast”)

Nivkh(TB) and Khasi (AA), the Malay word susu in
Semnam and Jahai (AA), and the Thai (TK) word nom
in Kui (AA). All are inland or in nearby areas
surrounded by major languages. Furthermore, theEnglish word milk and French du lait can be seen in
Fiji (AN).
Reduplication is found in some groups: SA, SN, AN,
Japonic, etc.
Other than the word forms above, we can findseveral types of compounds: cow (sheep)+milk(Loloish and Qiangic from TB, Ainu); milk+water(Loloish and few Tibetic from TB, SN); breast+water(soup) (HM, AN, Ainu); water+milk, breast+milk(TK); water+breast (AA); milk+cow+milk (Turung
from TB); milk+fruit (Ganan and Kadu from TB).

4. Classification
By looking at SAG articles on the words for “milk”
of each language group, we can find some common
word origins, though it is sometimes difficult todistinguish cognate words from loans.
The Old Chinese words *ńi̯ u (乳) for “breast” and*niər (奶) for “mother; breasts, milk” (STEDT) arecognates of PTB *s-nəw and *s-nya-n (“breast, milk,
to suck”) in TB, which belongs to the Sino-Tibetan
microfamily. The SN word nin probably originatedfrom the TK ne:n since there is no Chinese characterfor nin. Furthermore, ne:u and pe6 in TK are found inSN, spoken in the vicinity. They therefore might havecommon origins.
The Mongolian words sün and üsən and the Turkic
words süt and ü᷈t have common origins, respectively.
Though Japonic (titi) and Korean (cec) resemble
one another superficially, there is a problem inproving them to be cognate. One reason is that theJapanese form was monosyllabic (ti), and titi is a
reduplicated form; whereas, the Korean form
originally had a CVC structure. The other reason isthat the initial consonant was a plosive in Japanese,but it was an affricate in Korean.

5. Conclusion
In this study, we found over 58 roots that designate“milk” in Asian languages as well as some tendencies
in these words, such as semantic change, loan,
reduplication, and compound.
From the perspective of milk and non-milk culture,
semantic change, loan, and compound occur in
non-milk culture more frequently than they do inmilk culture. Referring to semantic change, thechange “breast > milk” is widely seen in non-milk
culture. This suggests that mothers’ milk is more
important than livestock’s in non-milk culture. Loanand compound offer collateral evidence that
consumption of livestock milk is not important in
non-milk culture because they do not have a native
word for “milk.”
Keywords: pastoralism, milk culture, non-milk
culture, semantic change, loan, reduplication,
compound(Shiho Ebihara)

5. Etymology and classification
It is noteworthy that many roots of Table 1
underwent semantic changes (“breast,” “to suck,”“mother,” “to squeeze,” “yogurt,” “sap, tree juice,”
etc. > “milk”).
In not a few cultures, loan words can be seen. The
Chinese word nai (奶) is loaned to Dongxiang; Bonan(Mongolic) and N-type in HM might be loans from
Chinese. The Russian word moloko is loaned to Nanay(Tungusic), Samoyed (Uralic), and Nivkh. The
Indo-Aryan (SA) word dugdha is found in Newar

REFERENCES
Endo, Mitsuaki (ed.) (2016) Studies in Asian
Geolinguistics, vol. 3. ILCAA.
Hirata, Masahiro (2013) Milk Culture in the EurasianContinent. Iwanami Shoten.
STEDT (The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary
and Thesaurus). Online: http://stedt.berkeley.edu/
Taguchi, Yoshihisa (2018) “Milk” in Hmong-Mien(this volume).
Umesao, Tadao (1976) The World of Hunting andNomadic. Kodansha.

6

“Milk” in Hmong-Mien

G: pɛ1̃

1. Classification of word forms

2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
Many lects have a word beginning with a nasal. This
fact needs to be viewed with caution, since Chinese, alanguage that Hmong-Mien is in deep contact with, haswords with a nasal initial for MILK, e.g., 乳 Old
Chinese *noʔ, Middle Chinese nyuX (Baxter and Sagart2014), or Mandarin Chinese nai 奶. Thus, if the initialof the word in question is a dental-alveolar nasal, we
should be aware of the possibility that the word might
be a loanword from Chinese. Compared with limited
variety in the initial, we can observe a huge variety intone. This may also be related to the possibility thatsome lects acquired the word form in question throughrecent borrowing.

In most Hmong-Mien languages, “milk” is expressed by acompound consisting of a morpheme designating “breast”
and another morpheme designating “water” or “soup.” Weclassified the lects by paying special attention to the part
designating “breast” (the part of the compound other thanthe part designating “water” or “soup”). This decision wasmade because of the following two reasons. First, theformation of the compound is probably a recent calque ofa Chinese compound with the same meaning, naizhi 奶汁;
thus, it might not indicate meaningful signals about the past.
Second, presumably this part of the word by itself can alsomean “milk” although we have evidence for this only insome of the lects.
We found 19 cognate word forms, and classified theminto two major types and the rest. The first major typecomprises the forms beginning with a bilabial nasal, further
divided into several subtypes: ma1, mi4, me5, and me7(the number denotes a tone). The second major typecomprises the forms beginning with a dental-alveolar (oralveolo-palatal) nasal, further divided into several
subtypes: ne1, ni2, nen3, ni4, ne5, ȵo5, ni6, no6, ne6/7/8,
and ne7/8. Note that the cognacy among these subtypes is
not clear.

Keeping the above points in mind, we make thefollowing observations. Among the Hmongic lects weobserve that some lects, including North Hmongic
distributed in Hunan and Pa-hng distributed in Hunan
and Guizhou, indicate a cognate morpheme, which canbe reconstructed as *ʔmŭaA based on Ratliff (2010)’s
Proto-Hmong-Mien reconstruction. This form may be
the most archaic form in the Hmongic branch, since it isdistributed the widest in terms of geography andphylogeny. The fact that some lects belonging to thesame genetic group of North Hmongic indicate Type B7suggests that the Type B7 form ne7/8 is an innovation,

A: forms a bilabial nasal
A1: ma1
A2: mi4
A3: me5
A4: me7probably through borrowing.

B: forms a dental-alveolar nasal
B1: ne1B2: ni2
B3: nen3
B4: ni4
B5: ne5
B6: ȵo5
B7: ni6
B8: no6
B9: ne6/7/8
B10: ne7/8
C: va4
D: si4
E: wo7
F: kәŋ5

7

"Milk" in Hmong-Mien
A: forms with a bilabial nasal

C: va4

A1: ma1
D: si4

A2: mi4
A3: me5
A4: me7

E: wo7

B: forms with a dental-alveolar nasal

F: kәŋ5

B1: ne1
G: pɛ̃1

B2: ni2
B3: nen3
B4: ni4
B5: ne5
B6: ȵo5
B7: ni6
B8: no6
B9: ne6/7/8
B10: ne7/8

8

“Iron” in Asia

Sinitic

tie < tʰiet (Middle Chinese) < *l̥ˤik (OC:Old Chinese)

1. Preliminaries“Iron” in general denotes some kind of iron alloy that is
produced by smelting iron ore. It denotes various forms
that iron alloy can take depending on the temperature andthe amount of carbon. Steel, which is an iron metal
containing 0.1-2% carbon, is one such form. Iron can also
refer to meteoritic iron, which is a native iron obtained
from meteorites. The first iron implement is thought tohave been produced using meteoritic iron. Althoughhumans knew about iron metal since ancient times, iron
artifacts became widespread after humans acquired thetechnology of smelting iron.
While the time and place of the technologicalbreakthrough is yet to be identified, it is in generalmaintained that the Iron Age, where iron replaced bronze
in the production of implements, began in about 1200 BCE.
The areas that had advanced in ferrous metallurgy of theancient times are near East and Northern India. Recently, it
has been argued that the technology of smelting iron andmanufacturing iron artifacts was already established in
1800 BCE both in Central Anatolia (Souckova-Siegolová
2001) and Northern India (Tewari 2003). Concerning East
Asia, a recent archeological study suggests that thetechnology of iron working came from West Asia to
Xinjiang, where we can find evidence of iron working
from 1000 BCE, and then spread to Central China (Tanaka
2013).

TibetoBurmanɕam (Burmish, Loloish, Naxi, Nungic,
Qiangic, rGyalrongic) < *syam (PTB:
Proto-Tibeto-Burman)
syaːl (Kuki-Chin, Central Naga,
Tangkhulic, Northern Naga, BodoGaro, Luish, Kiranti languages) <*syaːl/*syiːr (PTB)ltɕak(s) (Tibetic, Karenic, Tani
languages) < *l-tsyaks (PTB)

HmongMienl̥ɔ5# (Hmongic) < probably from OC
hlje7# (Mienic) < probably from OC

Tai-Kadai

lek7# (Central and Southwestern Tai) <*hlek# (Proto-Tai) < probably from OCkhjãk7# (Lakkia) < probably from
Chinesekhwət7’# (some Kadai languages) <probably from Chinesethiːt9# < Yue or Hakka dialect ofChineseva2 (Poai, Northern Zhuang)goːi1 (Hlai languages)
maa4 (Saek)

Austroasiaticbəsiʔ (Aslian)maːm (Bahnaric)lɔːs (Bahnaric)tɑːʔ (Katuic, Bahnaric, khmeric, Pearic)tamɨː (Bahnaric)nar (Khasic)pəsɔa (Monic)
karaw (Nicobaric)
hlek# (Khmuic, Palaungic) < probably
from OCrŋaŋ (Palaungic)
hrɛm (Palaungic)siː (Bahnaric, Palaungic)kahɔːŋ (Pearic)kʰlat7# (Vietic) < probably from OC

Semitic

parzillu# (Hebrew, Modern Mandaic,Urmi) < Anatolian languages
ħadiːd (Classical Arabic, Maltese, KiNubi, Berber)

2. Classification of word forms
Representative word forms denoting the word “iron” insome Asian language families are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1 (#: loanwords from other languages)
KoreanRepresentative word formssø < soy (Middle Korean) [< possibly
from Chinese 鎖]
cʰer# < Chinese

Ainu

kani# < Japanese
teci# < Japanese

Turkictemir, demir < temir (Old Turkic)

Mongolic

tötör# < Turkic
kasō (Dagur)

9

brāt (Amhara, Chaha, Harari)ħaṣin (Ge’ez, Tigrinya, Tigre, Soqotri)wəzːāl (Berber)benipe (Coptic)
3. Geographical distribution and interpretation
In general, word forms denoting the word “iron” exhibit
greater variety in Southeast and Southwest Asia than in
East and Central Asia. In East Asia, most language
groups—Korean, Ainu (via Japanese), Hmong-Mien, andTai-Kadai—borrowed Chinese (Sinitic) words fromseveral different sources. Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai tend
to express more archaic word forms than Korean or Ainu.
This suggests that Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai have had alonger contact history with the Chinese language in termsof iron metallurgy than the other languages have. Some
Tibeto-Burman languages also have word forms thatsuggest contact relationship with Chinese, that is, ltɕak(s),but the details are yet to be clarified.
In Central Asia, the word form derived from Old Turkic,
temir, is prevalent in the area. In Southwest Asia, several
word forms of different origins are used, although wordforms derived from the Classical Arabic word, ħadiːd, aremore widely distributed than other forms. The situation inAustroasiatic is interesting. In this language family,
although some language groups found near China use
Chinese loanwords, most sub-groups have their own
indigenous forms. This might suggest that there has been a
considerably long history of iron metallurgy in Southeast
Asia.
[References]
Souckova-Siegelová, Jana. 2001. Treatment and usage ofiron in the Hittite empire in the 2nd millennium BC.
Mediterranean Archaeology. Vol. 14, The Origins of Iron
Metallurgy: Proceedings of the First International
Colloquium on The Archaeology of Africa and theMediterranean Basin held at The Museum of Natural
History in Geneva, 4–7 June, 1999, pp.189-193.
Tanaka, Yuko. 2013.「中央ユーラシア東部における初期鉄器文化の交流」早稲田大学文学学術院博士論文.
Tewari, Rakesh. 2003. The origins of iron-working inIndia: new evidence from the Central Ganga Plain and theEastern Vindhyas. Antiquity, 77: 536-544.

10

2.

Wind and Iron in Nivkh
1.

Classification of word forms‘Wind’ is /la/ in all dialects. No otherforms are reported.
The Nivkh word for ‘iron’ is /βɨʧ/ or /wat/.
The correspondence of each sound is fairly
wellestablishedinliterature.
The
correspondence between /ɨ/ and /a/ is often
observed between the dialects in Amur andSakhalin (e.g. /tɨɸ/ vs. /taɸ/ ‘house’) as wellas those between /β/ and /w/ (e.g. /βɨɲ/ vs.
/waɲ/ ‘iron pot’). The consonants /β/ and /w/
are contrastive in the Sakhalin dialect, e.g.
/βad/ ‘to apply a bandage’ and /wad/ ‘to fight’.
This contrast is neutralized in the Amur
dialect, e.g. /βaʤ/ meaning both ‘to apply abandage’ and ‘to fight’ (Kreinovich 1979:297). As compared to the Amur dialect, theSakhalin dialect is regarded as
beingarchaic, retaining older traits. The
maintenance of /β/ - /w/ contrast can be
regarded as one such example. In the Amur
dialect these two sounds have merged into /β/(Austerlitz 1984).
Finally, the correspondence between a
final affricate and a stop can also be observed
elsewhere, e.g. indefinite suffix /-ʧ/ vs. /t/ as
in /lɨrkʧ/ (Amur) vs. /larkt/ (Sakhalin) ‘tofloat’.
According to Austerlitz (1984), /wat/ canbe analyzed as composing of *wa and *-tti.
As for the etymon of *wa, Austerlitz provides
the following two hypotheses: 1) “animported borrowed artefact from a society inNortheastern Asia with a tradition ofsiderurgy (Austerlitz 1984: 43), 2) a nativeroot meaning ‘molten metal’ or ‘malleable
substance’. There are putative semantic
cognates such as /waɲ/ ‘iron pot’, /wa/‘sword’ and /wa-d/ ‘to fight’. As for *-tti,
Austerlitz reconstructs the etymon ‘hard’
from the semantic parallel with cognates suchas /et/ ‘ski-trace’ and /pet/ ‘armor’.

Geographicaldistribution
andinterpretation
The geographic distribution of /βɨʧ/ and/wat/ corresponds fairly well with the
Amur-Sakhalin dialect border.
Type A

Place (Source)

1.

βɨʧ

2.

βɨʧ
βɨʧ
βɨʧ
βɨʧ

Kal’ma (Savel’eva & Taksami
1965)
Chikalov (Shiraishi & Lok 2008)
Ten’gi (Shiraishi & Lok 2008)
Machula (Lanina 2006)
Kal’ma (Pukhta 2002)

3.
4.
5.

Type B

Place (Source)

6.

wat

7.

wat

8.

wat

Poronaisk (Yamaguchi & Izutsu
2004)
Tygmyc (Tangiku, Tanzina &Nitkuk 2008)
Poronaisk (Austerlitz 1984)

The geographic distribution of Type A and
B follows the classic taxonomy of Nivkh
dialects which dates back to Shternberg(1900) and Kreinovich (1934): the Amur
dialect, spoken in the lower reaches of theAmur River and the west coast of northern
Sakhalin, and the Sakhalin dialect spoken on
the rest of Sakhalin. 1 The geographic
distribution of Type A and B forms agrees
with this taxonomy: Type A – the Amur
dialect and Type B – the Sakhalin dialect.
Keywords: Nivkh,
Sakhalin dialect

iron,

Amur

dialect,(Hidetoshi Shiraishi)

1

Kreinovich (1934) reported the number of speakers to
be 3,200 for the Amur dialect and 850 for Sakhalin.

11‘iron’ in Nivkh

12

Tone and accent in Asia

the tradition of each linguistic field.
Under such perspectives, this group is divided into
three subgroups.
A. Fixed accent
A-1 Bearer of accent: Initial syllable
Uralic, Nivkh, Mongolic
A-2 Bearer of accent: Final or penult syllable
Tungusic, Turkic, Arabic, Austronesian
B. Lexical accentAinu, Proto Austronesian, some Korean dialects
For the fixed, hence, non-distinctive accent, A-2 isthe type in which accent falls on the rear part of theword, i.e. either final (Tungsic, Turkic, Austronesian),penult or antepenult (Arabic, Austronesian), while A-1
is the type in which accent falls exclusively on theinitial syllable. Note that this is merely a rough sketch,focusing on the majority of types of accentual
phenomena for each language group, with exceptional
phenomena observed as well. For example, some
Mongolian, Turkic, Arabic and Austronesianlanguages have developed lexical accent or tonal
contrasts.
Accents in the languages of the outer group are
generally characterized by association with syllable
weight: a heavy syllable, typically long vowel, bears
the accent while a light syllable is accentless, e.g.,
Ewen and Evenki (Tungsic), Tagalog (Austronesian).
Along with this tendency, quantitative accent in Ainu
is assumed to have been converted to pitch accent in
Hokkaido.
Lexical accent of the outer group came into being incompensation for the loss of segmental elements. For
Ainu, an open long vowel was reduced to a short one
once the given syllable carried an accent. Japanesepitch accent may probably have come into being
through the same process (Hattori 1979, Uwano 2017).
Korean tonogenesis is said to be created due to “vowel
syncope and apocope and the resulting syllable crasis”(Ramsay 2001). Such a trade-off relationship between
segments and suprasegments is similar to but different
from the tonegenesis prevalent in the inner group, in
which creation of lexical tone is the event of laryngeal
strategies instead of supra-laryngeal activities such as
vowels and consonants. A seemingly exceptional casein this respect is the creation of tonal contrast in Tuvan(Turkic), which, according to Saito’s commentary, is acompensation for the loss of laryngealization orpharyngealization in vowels.

Based on the maps and commentaries included in
SAG-7, this summary proposes a division between
inner group and outer group to deal with thegeographical distribution of suprasegmental featuresin Asian languages.
The inner group includes Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien,
Austroasiatic,
Lolo-Burmese
andSinitic.
Macroscopically these languages are surrounded by
the languages of the outer group which consists of
Uralic, Altaic, Ainu, Arabic, Korean and Austronesian(languages in India may probably be included in thisgroup). This dichotomy generally corresponds to‘tonal’ vs. ‘accentual’. However, the distinction
between these two notions are not clear-cut. One
reason is that Sinitic, Tibetan and Japanese dialects
can have tones on polysyllabic units, instead ofmonosyllables, and tonal realization is affected bystress. For example, metrical phonology usuallyaccounts for the tonal rightward spreading of Northern
Wu dialects in terms of left (or initial) stress existentin polysyllabic units (Chen 2000). Such tones arereferred to as ‘word tone,’ in which ‘the invariable
number of tones is realized irrespective of the lengthof tone bearer’ (Hayata 1999). Similar phenomena areobservable in a number of Tibetan dialects. Also, theaccentual system of Japanese Kyoto dialect is deemed
as a coexistence of pitch accent and word tone.
The proposed dichotomy, inner vs. outer, isconceived from a historical perspective: languages of
the inner group are defined as those characterized bylarynx-based tonogenetic properties: ‘phonation type’or ‘register’. Those lacking such properties areclassified as belonging to the outer group. In thisdichotomy, Tibetic and Japanese may stand at anintermediate status.
1. Outer group
In the commentaries for the languages of this group
included in this volume, the term ‘accent’ generally
refers to the location of a higher pitch, while ‘stress’refers to that of an intensity elevation. Vowel length,
including an elongation in accented or stressedsyllables or a reduction in unaccented / unstressedsyllables, is a relevant cue for predicting the locationof accent or stress. Although the heading is unified as‘accent,’ the phonetic substance of this term is notunique depending on the authors, probably reflecting

13

2. Inner group
Tai-Kadai, Hmong-mien, Lolo-Burmese, Sinitic andVietnamese all exhibited a 4-syllabic tone system inthe original stage: A (Ping), B (Shang), C (Qu), D (Ru).
According to the theory of tonogenesis (Haudricourt
1954, Matisoff 1973, Sagart 1999), this tone system
was created in compensation for the loss of a
distinction in the syllable final laryngeal segments orphonation types: modal, creaky and breathy. Note that
this hypothesis presupposes the toneless status of allthese languages in the proto stage. The particular
4-tone system later experienced successive tonal splits
under the following conditions.
(1) Voiced/ voiceless contrast in initial consonants(2) Aspirated/ unaspirated contrast in initialconsonants(3) Long/ short contrast in vowels
Remarkably, a series of parallel changes occurredamong genetically unrelated or less-related languages
in East Asia. Contact induced change from tonelessstatus to the birth of distinctive tone is very likely, as
Shimizu’s commentary affirmatively mentions forAustroasiatic. However, since the triggers of changes
all relate to laryngeal features, that is, every languageof the inner group possessed a prerequisite for
evolving into a tone language, it is also probable thatchanges progressed independently in each language
without the inducement of language contact. Theremay have been a chronological gap in a language’s
evolving into a tone language, so that some languages
such as Sinitic and Tai-Kadai were first to have atonalized process, while Austroasiatic caught up withthem later.
Tibetosphere is a crucible of various tonal andaccentual phenomena as exhibited on the maps by
Iwasa et al., as well as those appearing in Suzuki’s
independent article. This latter article points out thatsyllabic tone and phonation tends to be coexistent inthis language group, indicating that Tibetic as a wholeis in a transitional status.
An assumption proposed here is that Tibetic wasoriginally an accentual language, hence, belonging tothe outer group. The hypothesis by Caplow (2016a, b),
who argues for the existence of stress in Old Tibetan,
is attractive in this sense (refer to p. 42 in Suzuki’s
article). If this hypothesis points to the truth, Tibetic
must have experienced the process of acquiring alarynx-based tonogenetic property such as register orphonation type, which, then, developed into the pitch

distinction, i.e., tone. This process must have been
induced by contact with tone languages found in theeast or southeast of Tibetosphere. However, theconversion from accent to tone probably was notstraightforward. A probable scenario of change ispresented here:(1) Polysyllabic lexical accent (stress)(2) Acquisition of the larynx-based tonogenetic
property, i.e., registeror phonation type
distinction(3) Formation of polysyllabic word tone (WT),
presumably conditioned by trochaic stress.
(4) Creation of syllabic tone (ST), presumably due
to deletion or fusion of syllable(s).
As for (3) and (4), WT tends to distribute in thenorthern and western area within Tibetosphere,
whereas distribution of ST contiguously extends to thearea of Lolo-Burmese, Tai-Kadai and Hmong-mien(refer to Maps 1 & 2 in the commentary by Iwasa etal.). The hypothetical change from WT to ST is
actually contradictory to a prevailing view argued for
Chinese Northern Wu, in which WT was formed on
the basis of ST due to the deletion of non-initial
tone(s) in the trochaic prosodic structure. This issue
waits for detailed theorization based on evidence.
3. Sinitic
Chinese may be one of the earliest ones, which
evolved from register or phonation distinction into
pitch distinction. Larynx-based tonogenetic properties,
such as phonation type and checked vs. unchecked
distinction in syllables, are still retained in southerndialects, especially in Wu, while Mandarin dialects innorth china have lost them and tones are distinguishedsolely by pitch height and contour. The fact that the
Tibetic Kam dialects have generally no register
distinction may be explained in terms of the contact
with northwestern Sinitic dialects in which only pitch
plays a role in tonal discrimination.
Yagi maps the number of phonological tones byconsidering the interaction between tones and suchsegments as initial consonants and syllable final stops.
This treatment succeeds in showing a clearer transition
from Southern Chinese to Northern Chinese than asimple mapping of phonetic tones.
Iwata’s article describes and maps tone sandhi
patterns. From a historical point of view, tone sandhi
may originate from positional variants of tones: toneof edge syllables (initial or final syllable) remained

14

unmodified, while those of non-initial or non-final
syllables tended to change in their pitch shapes. The
initial- vs. final- accented contrast introduced in
Iwata’s article refers to this status.
The term ‘tone sandhi’ generally refers to thephonologized variety of tone, such as Mandarin 3rd
tone sandhi and South Min tone sandhi known as tonal
chain shift or tone clock, in which the changed tone is
identical with any base tone existent in the given
tonemic inventory. Although there have been disputes
about the homonymity of changed tone and specificbase tone (refer to Hocket 1947 for Mandarin 3rd tone
sandhi), what is relevant is if they are perceived as one
tone, in which case, the particular tone sandhi belongs
to the type of ‘categorical alternation.’ This type isquite prevalent in both north and south China, forming
a majority in Sinitic. However, there is a trend of tonal
neutralization in the dialects of inland Fujian,Southwest Zhejiang and their neighboring areas, withthe tones in non-final positions strongly tending tolose their contour feature to give a tonal system of twoor three level tones. This means that in these dialects
the changes were directed toward the merger of tones
in non-final positions; meanwhile South Min chose theway of avoiding the merger, eventually producing thechain-shift type of alternation. These two trends are
merely opposite sides of the same coin.
In line with the analysis mentioned in the lastparagraph, the level-tone system found in Xiang(dialect group distributing in the southern reaches of
Yangtze River) may be a reflection of the tendency of
tonal merger occurring in unstressed positions. In
Northern Wu dialects, the change has progressed
one-step further, and non-initial tones are realized as adefault tone (this process is usually explained in termsof tone deletion). A contributing factor to the changes
in these Yangtze dialects may have been a trochaicstress. Presumably, formation of trochee was not an
original characteristic in Yangtze dialects; instead it
may have been acquired through contact with northerndialects. Meanwhile, these dialects as well as somedialects in Fujian, e.g., East Min dialects, indicate a
trace of iambic stress, which has been fossilized but
manifests itself in the default tone appearing in
non-final positions, mostly in the initial position.
In northern Chinese dialects, both trochaic andiambic stress are vital, the former contributing to
producing an increasing number of colloquial
polysyllabic words with suffixing a neutral (light) tone,

and the latter contributing to forming phrasal stress.
Tone sandhi types can also be divided into
conditional and unconditional types. The term
‘condition’ here refers to a syntagmatic context, i.e.,
before or after any tone, hence, this dichotomy is also
referred to as ‘context-dependent’ vs. ‘contextindependent.’ A general statement in this respect is that
northern dialects are generally sensitive to the context
while southern dialects are generally blind to it. An
exception is East Min dialects, in which any tone in
the penultimate syllable is affected by the following
final tone and categorically alternates with any othertone.
Though no one has ever proved or disproved it,
common sense among researchers is that the birth oftone sandhi phenomena is far later than the birth ofmonosyllabic tone. However, considering theexistence of hundreds of bisyllabic compounds
referred to as Lianmian words in Old Chinese, one
may not exclude the possibility that register orphonation distinctions tend to neutralize in non-initial
or non-final position.
4. JapaneseJapanese dialects exhibit a tidy ‘concentric
distribution’ with respect to tonal and accentualfeatures: the most complex Keihan (Kinki) type(‘Central type’ hereafter) distributing in the innermost
area (old capital Kyoto and its surrounds), the simplest
accentless type and N-type distributing in theoutermost area, and Tokyo type distributing in a broadintermediate zone. A feasible historical explanation forthis distribution is propagation theory: the proto type
was Central type, as documented in Ruiju Myōgishō(11th to 12th century); it later propagated over the entire
Japan archipelago, and then underwent a successive
process of simplification. It is actually the process ofmerger of accent/tone classes (categories) from theprototype to the simplest one through the intermediate
type. However, it is questionable how the mostcomplex Central type propagated all over Japan, andmore crucially, how was the proto system created?
While the concentric type of distribution is striking,important evidence seemingly missing in related
discussions is that the so-called ‘N-pattern accent’seldom appears in the dialects of eastern Japan. The
article by Kishie et al. mentions, “Accent tends to be
distributed in eastern Japan, whereas tone tends to be
distributed in western Japan. In the Kinki district these15

are intersecting.” The term ‘tone’ here refers to the
N-pattern accent, which can be considered word tone
(WT), and accordingly Central type can be interpreted
as the combination of word tone (high and low tones)
and distinctive pitch accent (Hayata 1999).
An assumption proposed here is that there once
existed a western vs. eastern opposition of distribution
in the pre-middle Japanese period: dominance of word
tone in the west and that of pitch accent in the east.
This division implies an encounter of the inner groupand the outer group occurring in the Japan
Archipelago. Under this assumption, the birth ofCentral type may owe to the contact of tonal dialects
in the west and accentual dialects in the east. However,a question again is how the tonal languages acquired
pitch accent, or reversely how the accentual language
acquired tone.
Besides the contact-induced change, it is worth
examining the possibility of internal conversion fromtonal language to accentual language or vice versa.
Chinese evidence from some Northern Wu dialects
indicates that word tone language could evolve into
equipping accentual features (Iwata 1999, 2001). For
example, word tones in Hangzhou (one of Wu
dialects) are actually discriminated in terms of thelocation of ‘H’ tone (indicated in bold), thus
possessing the feature of pitch accent.
Pitch accent system in Hangzhoust
1 syllable accented T3 [53] → [55+22+21]
2nd syllable accented T5[45] → [34+55+21]
T6 [113] → [11+55+21]rd
3 syllable accented T1 [334] →[33+34+53]
T2 [23] → [22+34+53]

tons en vietnamien. Journal Asiatique, 242.
----------1961. Bipartition et tripartition des systèmesde tons dans quelques langues d'Extrême-Orient.
BSLP 56(1).
Hayata, Teruhiro 1999. Onchō no taiporojī. Tokyo:
Taisyūkan.
Hockett, Charles 1947. Peiping phonology. Journal of
Asian and Oriental Studies 67.
Iwata, Ray 1999. Lun Beijing Fangyan he
Lianyungang Fangyan de Gaojiang Qingsheng jiqi
Lishi Hanyi [On the high-falling light tone in the
dialects of Beijing and Lianyungang and its
historical implications]. Samuel wang et al. eds,
Selected papers from the Fifth International
Conference on Chinese Linguistics, The Crane Press,
Taipei.
---------- 2001. Tone and Accent in the Chinesedialects. Sigeki Kaji ed., Proceedings of the
Symposium, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Tonal
Phenomena, Tonogenesis,Japanese, and Other Topics,
ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Matisoff A. James 1973. Tonogenesis in Southeast
Asia, Consonant Types and Tone. Southern
California Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 1
Ramsay, Robert 2001. Tonegenesis in Korean. S.Kaji
ed. Proceedings of the Symposium, Cross-Linguistic
Studies of tonal Phenomena, Tonogenesis, Japanese
Accentology and Related Topics, ILCAA.
Sagart, Laurent 1999. The Origin of Chinese Tone.
S.Kaji ed. Proceedings of the Symposium,
Cross-Linguistic Studies of tonal Phenomena,
Tonogenesis, Typology and Related Topics, ILCAA.
Uwano, Zendo 2017. Chōboin no tanshuku kara kaku
ga shōzuruka. Hattori kasetsu o megutte [OnHattori’s hypothesis. Does Shortening of Long
Vowels Produce an Accent Kernel?]. Journal of
Asian and African Studies, No.94.
(Ray Iwata)

Keywords: Tone, Accent, Stress, Phonation, Register,
Laryngeal feature, Inner group, Outer group
REFERRENCES
Caplow, Nancy 2016a. Reconstructing stress inProto-Tibetan: Evidence from Balti and Rebkong
Amdo. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 39.2.
Caplow, Nancy 2016b. Stress patterns and acoustic
correlates of stress in Balti Tibetan. Himalayan
Linguistics 15.2:1-49.
Chen, Matthew 2000. Tone Sandhi: Patterns acrossChinese Dialects. Cambridge University Press.
Hattori, Shiro 1979. Nihon Sogo nit suite [On Proto
Japanese]. Gekkan Gengo 21 &22.
Haudricourt, André-Georges 1954. De l'origine des16

Accent: Formosan and West MalayoPolynesian languages (Austronesian)No single pattern is prevalent, nor is it possible toconclude that the majority oflanguages areparoxytone (accent falling on the penult).
No single pattern is prevalent, nor is it possible toconclude that the majority of languages areparoxytone (accent falling on the penult).

1.

Stress/Accent in Proto-Austronesian (PAN)
In descriptions of Austronesian languages, both“stress” and “accent” refer to the last high-pitchedsyllable.
In some languages, vowel quality
differs—in which case the term “stress” is adequate.
In other languages in which vowel quality does notdiffer between stressed and unstressed syllables, theterm “pitch accent” seems better.
Wolff (1993) cites fairly strong evidence that PAN
roots had a stress contrast in the final two syllables of
the root. The first kind of root had a long vowel inthe penultimate syllable, and the second kind had one
in the ultimate syllable. The syllable with the longvowel seemed to be stressed.
The contrast in stress/accent has disappeared inmany languages, but has left traces in other areas ofphonology, for instance, weakening of loss of vowels
in Formosan languages, and *t changed to an affricate/c/ under certain accentual conditions of the root
(Wolff 1991). Morphological category influenced
the process of historical change in stress placement.
As Wolff (1993) states: “1) The stress patterns ofnouns and some other forms which occur unaffixed
other than stative adjectives tend to remain unchanged.
2) In the Philippine languages in verbal roots the stresspattern of the actor focus verbs tends to reflect theinherited stress pattern. Verb forms in the Formosan
languages rarely provide evidence.”
Some Chamic languages, such as Utsat in South
Hainan and Phan Rang Cham in Viet Nam, underwent
historical tonal development. Chamic words haveword-final stress, resulting in a distinction between
so-called pre-syllables and the main syllable, due totheir intimate and long interaction with neighboring
Austroasiatic languages (Thurgood 1993).

3. Stress/Accent and vowel length in Philippine
languages
Presumably, PAN root stress or length is stillretained only in Philippine languages. In most cases,
the contrast consists of vowel length so that stressplacement is predictable in terms of length. In
Tagalog, stress falls on the long vowel nearest the endof the word, and if there is no long vowel, then stress
falls on the end. Final syllables are always short(Wolff 1993).
Stative adjectives in the Philippines tend to havestress on the final syllable: In Tagalog, this is fairly
intact, but in Cebuano, it has been lost as a marker for
the word class.
There is inherited length in Bisayan, Bikol, Tagalog,
Ilokano, Sambal, Kapamangan, Ifugao, Isneg, Bontok
Hanunoo, etc. Secondarily introduced phonemic
stress is found in Ibanag, Casiguran-Dumagot, andPangasinan (Zorc 1993). PAN *e influences stress ina different way from other vowels in
Sarangani-Manobo and Tiruray.
4. Stress/Accent in Indonesia
Languages in Western Indonesia usually do not showphonemic stress contrasts. In Toba Batak, a majorityof roots show penultimate stress, but a few
high-frequency forms have final stress.
Themorphological category also influences stressplacement. Adjectives show final stress. Stress
falls on ultima in languages such as Javanese, Balinese,and Aceh, whereas it falls on penult in Malay and
Makassar. Some languages show phonemic contrast
in stress placement; this is not a reflection of PAN, butof a secondarily introduced feature, generally due toconsonant loss, analogical leveling, or borrowing as in
Old-Javanese and Malagasy.
Stress placement can vary among closely related
languages or through changes in the historical process.
Old-Javanese has phonemic contrast in stress, whereas
today’s Javanese has stress on ultima.
Among
Sangiric languages, Talaud has stress on penult
whereas stress is phonemic in Bantik and Ratahan.

2. Stress/Accent Patterns in Formosan and WMP
Formosan and WMP languages can fundamentallybe divided into two groups: The first group consists oflanguages with predictable stress placement, and thesecond consists of those with unpredictable andphonemic stress. The group with predictable stressplacement is divided into three subgroups: languages
that have stress on the ultimate syllable, those thathave it on the penultimate syllable, and those that haveit on the antepenult syllable.

17

Wolff, John U. 1993. Proto-Austronesian Stress. In
ibid.
Wolff, John U. 1991. Was there a contrast between
PAN *C and *t? In Robert Blust (ed.), Currents in
Pacific Linguistics: Papers on Austronesian
Languages and Ethnoloinguistics in Honor ofGeorge W. Grace.
Pacific Linguistics C-117.
Canberra: The Austronesian National University.
Zorc, R. David. 1993. Overview of Austronesianand Philippine Accent Patterns. in Edmondson and
Kenneth (eds) 1993.

In Malay, stress usually falls on penult, but when apenultimate syllable has a schwa, it moves to ultima.
Keywords: stress, pitch accent, phonemic accent,vowel lengthning.
References: Edmondson, Jerold A. and Kenneth J.
Gregerson 1993.
Tonality in Austronesian
Languages. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Thurgood, Graham. 1993. Phan Rang Cham and
Utsat: Tonogenetic Themes and Variants.
inEdmondson and Kenneth (eds) 1993.

Map 1: South China, Taiwan, Viet Nam and Northern Philipines (Luzon)

stress/accent falling regulary on ultima
stress/accent falling regulary on penultstress/accent falling regulary on antepenultstress/accent falling on penult, but influence by
PAN *e (present day predominantly schewa)
phonemic accent (secondarily introduced)
phonemic length contrast, stress/accent falling on
the last long vowel
phonemic tone

Map 2: Central/southern Phillipines and Indonesia

18Tone/Accent in South Asia (Aryan, Iranian,general, stressed vowels tends to get even high-pitched,lengthened, and peripheral for some. Many oldfashioned grammars written by European scholars use
the terms “stress” or “accent” for the description foraccent systems of South Asian languages. Languages ofthese types can be seen all over the area.
All the Type A2 languages, Gojri, Indus Kohistani,and Pashto, distinguish words with 3-way pitch accent
systems, that is having trichotomous distinction among
High, Middle, and Low pitches. This pattern cannot be
explained with a simple, dichotomous stress accentpattern. These languages distribute around lat. 34° N in
Pakistan and India.
Type B1, of languages with 3-way tone, consists ofPanjabi, Hindko, Ushojo, Shina, and Dameli. They
distribute around the Type A2 languages above. It canbe just by chance, or can be that there is some confusion
or difficulty to judge whether pitch or tone. Many ofthem distinguish three kinds of tone: Rising, Falling,
and Even (Level / Flat). About the tonogenesis in SouthAsia, at least in Panjabi and Hindko languages, see thenext chapter.
The only Type B2 language is Kalami (Aryan), also
known as Gawri or Bashkarik. An older discription(Edelman 1983) says that this language has a composite
system with three tones and two stress accents for word
distinction, while a newer one (Baart 1997) describes
there are just five tones: High Level, High-to-Low
Falling, Low Level, Delayed High-to-Low Falling, and
Low-to-High Rising. Anyway, both of them claim thelanguage has five different patterns. Geographically thelanguage is put just on the crossing area between tonal
languages and pitch ones.

Nuristani, Dravidian, Andamanese, and Isolates)
1. Classification
To discuss the tone or accent systems of languages inSouth Asia, there is a large problem that most grammarsof the languages contain any description about such
systems. Because the majority of SA languages do nothave a distinctive tonal/accent system, it seems thatmany scholars on SA languages have not tended towrite about the point. And even though some goodscholars describe it in their grammars a bit, they often
have not discussed whether the accent system oflanguages concerned is pitch or stress. Thus, note thatthe distinction between stress and pitch is not so strict
here that we understand they are different each other.
I classify languages in SA by two axes: (1) distinctive
or not, and (2) written as the pitch, stress, or tone type,or not identified, or not available in the descriptive
grammar. Pitch accent system includes two kinds (2way or 3-way), and tonal system also has two subtypes(3-way or 5-way) in this area.
(1) DistinctivenessYes [Overlapped ]No[](2) Types
A1. Pitch, 2-way (H / not H)
A2. Pitch, 3-way (H / M / L)
B1. Tone, 3-way (R / F / E)
B2. Tone, 5-way (see below)
C.
StressD.
Not identified wellE.
Not written on accent

[
[
[
[
[
[
[

]
]
]
]
]
]
]

3. Tonogenesis in South Asia
So-called “Panjabi language group” of Northwestern
Aryan subbranch, including individual Panjabi and
Hindko langauges, have got tones at a respectively later
date. Most Aryan languages systematically distinguishfour series of stop consonants: Voiceless-Unaspirated,
Voiceless-Aspirated, Voiced-Unaspirated, and VoicedAspirated (a.k.a. Murmured). After division of thesubbranch, many “Panjabi” languages lost the lastseries Murmured consonants totally, instead of getting
tonal distinction. When they got the tone pattern, theyalso changed the articulation of a word-internal [ɦ] intoa tonal element. In this way the languages established
3-way tonal patterns, such as Rising, Falling, and Even
(i.e., toneless).

2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
Languages with the distinctive tone/accent system inSouth Asia concentrate in the northwestern part of thesubcontinent, see Map 2. They contain Aryan (Panjabi,
Gojri, Hindko, Indus Kohistani, Kalami, Dameli,Ushojo, Shina, and Domaaki), Iranian (Pashto), andBurushaski. These languages show a variety ofsuprasegmental patterns including both pitch and tone,
while some of the grammatical descriptions of thelanguages may remain confusing these different
systems.
Type A1 (2-way pitch), Type C (stress), and Type D(n.i.w) languages would be categorised as one group.
The 2-way pitch means that vowels always have either
high pitch or non-high pitch in an A1 language. In

19

Losing of the aspiration of [ɦ] or consonants being
Murmured historically gives the preceding syllable afalling tone (V́), while the [ɦ] was after a short vowel
and before a long vowel, then its losing does not give a
falling tone but makes the long vowel with a rising tone(V̀), rarely accompanying a glottal stop. If any
historical Murmured consonant is at the word-initial
position, it changes into a tenuis consonant as getting
the syllable with a rising tone. See examples in (1, 2).
(1) spelling

(2)

kōɽā
ɡʱōɽā

[kōɽā] E.E[kṑ(ˀ)ɽā] R.E‘whip’‘horse’t̪ uɦāɖā[tuā̀ ɖā] E.R.E ‘your’On the one hand Panjabi and Hindko have became tonal
languages, on the other hand some “Punjabi” languages
have not developed so. For example, Saraiki has no
tonal system, and is keeping Murmured consonants.
This language has newly got the implosive series of
consonants as well as its southern neighbouring
language Sindhi has obtained them.
(YOSHIOKA Noboru)

transcrb. pronun. tone meaningkōɦɽā[kṓɽā] F.E ‘how’

Map 1. Tone/Accent in South Asia (Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Dravidian, Andamanese, Burushaski, Isolates)

Map 2. Distinctive tone/accent languages in northwestern South Asia

20

‘It rains’ in Asia

[4]
[5]

+(D)
+(D)

-

-

-

±
-

1. Introduction
This volume presents a geolinguistic analysis of thesentence structure of expressions in Asian languages
that mean ‘it rains.’ Its main point of concern isconstituent types; that is, which constituent, or
combination of constituents, are principally
responsible for conveying the meaning of rainfall. We
also discuss the areal diffusion of constituent order.
2. Classification of the constituent types
Expressions for ‘it rains’ in Asian languages can inmost cases be classified into the following constituent
types (Shirai, this volume; see also Malchukov andOgawa 2011: 24-27 and Eriksen et al. 2010): [A] theargument type, where the argument is primarily
responsible for expressing the rain phenomenon, whilethe verb is a dummy or rather versatile; [B] thepredicate type, where the predicate is primarily
responsible, while the noun is zero, dummy, or only
somewhatrelevant
totheweather/naturalenvironment; and [C] the argument-predicate type,where the argument and predicate are more or lessequally responsible. Type [C] is further divided into
three subtypes: [C-i] the cognate type, [C-ii] thesynonymous type, and [C-iii] the split type.
3. ‘It rains’ in each language group
Table 1 surveys the situation in each language group
described by the articles in this volume: [1] Ainu
(Fukazawa), [2] Nivkh (Shiraishi), [3] Japanese(Kishie, et al.), [4] Sinitic (Suzuki), [5] Hmong-Mien(Taguchi), [6] Tai-Kadai (Endo), [7] Tibeto-Burman(Shirai, et al.) [8] Austroasiatic (Kondo), [9]Austronesian (Utsumi), [10a] Uralic, [10b] Tungusic(Matsumoto), [11a] Mongolic, [11b] Turkic (Saitô),[12] Arabic (Nagato), and [13] South Asian (Yoshioka).
“+” means the type is usually found in the language
group, “±” means the type is peripheral or limited in
distribution, “-±” means the type is so rare that isfound only in one or two varieties, “-” means that thetype is not found, and “(D)” means the type isdominant or commonly found.

[6]
[7]

+(D)
+

-±
±

±

+

±

[8]

+

+

-

+

-

[9]
[10a]

+

+(D)
+

+

-

-

[10b]
[11a]

±
+(D)

-

+(D)
-

-

-

[11b]
[12]

±
±

-±
+(D)

+(D)
-±

-

-

[13]

+(D)

±

+

-

-±

Some examples are difficult to classify into thetypes listed above. For example, in Amur and West
Sakhalin dialects of Nivkh, the argument primarilymeans “weather,” while the predicate consists of averb that exclusively expresses precipitation; thus, themeaning ‘it rains’ seems to depend largely on thepredicate. However, I classified this pattern in [C-iii],
since neither the argument nor the predicate means
rainfall exclusively. Moreover, certain Sinitic varieties
in Shandong use the onomatopoeia dida, which I
regard as an exceptional type.
It is often found that a language has more than one
type of expression for ‘it rains.’ A number oflanguages, including Vietnamese (Austroasiatic),
Finnish (Uralic), and Northern Qiang (Tibeto-Burman),
have both [A] and [B]. Sakha (Turkic) has both [A]and [C-i]. Great Andamanese (South Asia) has both[B] and [C-i].
4. The geographical distribution of constituent
types
The [A] argument type is predominant in East andSouth Asia. It is most common in [1] Ainu, [2] Nivkh,[3] Japanese, [4] Sinitic, [5] Hmong-Mien, [6]Tai-Kadai, [11a] Mongolic, and [13] South Asian
languages. Moreover, the [7] Tibeto-Burman and [10a]Uralic languages also often have this type, and it isperipherally found in [10b] Tungusic (Sibe, in Western
China), [11b] Turkic (Sakha and Dolgan, in Siberia),and [12] Arabic (in Central Africa). The fact that Sibe
has this type suggests the influence of language
contact with Chinese (Sinitic). This type is not foundin [9] Austronesian and rarely found in Central Asia.
The [B] predicate type is mainly distributed inSoutheast, West, and Northwest Asia. In [9]Austronesian, this is the only pattern for ‘it rains.’ This

Table 1: Types of ‘it rains’
[A]

[B]

[C-i]

[C-ii][C-iii]

[1]
[2]

+(D)
+(D)

-±
-

-

-

+

[3]

+(D)

-

-

-

-

21

which is known for its intensive language contact with
Chinese. Among the 17 dialects, three have the V + N
order, while the rest have the N + V order, as do theother Tibeto-Burman varieties that use the [A]argument type.
6. Conclusion
This study clarifies that sentence structure may be
diffused beyond a genetic group, through geolinguistic
analysis of expressions in Asian languages that mean
‘it rains.’ Map 1 demonstrates the areal tendencies indominant constituent types. Additionally, a shift oftypes for certain languages is hypothesized. Cases ofongoing shifts of constituent order due to instances oflanguage contact were also found.

type is also predominant in [12] Arabic, and iscommonly found in [8] Austroasiatic and [10a] Uralic.
Although the [7] Tibeto-Burman languages with thistype are mostly limited to Southwestern China, it isalso found in a few remote Tibeto-Burman spots in
Nepal and Southern Burma, the latter of which isadjacent to the Austroasiatic area. It is scarcely foundin East Asia: [2] Nivkh, [3] Japanese, [4] Sinitic, and[5] Hmong-Mien do not have this type. However, Old
Chinese had this type; a single verb 雨 ‘rain (v.)’ byitself meant ‘it rains.’ This is substantial evidence forthe shift from the [B] predicate type to the [A]argument type. In Tai-Kadai, there is a parallel
hypothesis posed for a historical study.
The [C-i] cognate argument-predicate type ismainly found in Northeast and Central Asia: [10b]Tungusic and [11b] Turkic languages have this as the
predominant type. Among Arabic dialects, only
Bukhari (in Uzbekistan) has this type, and it isobviously influenced by Turkic languages. Moreover,[8] Austroasiatic, [10a] Uralic, and [13] South Asian
languages (Aryan, Iranian, and Great Andamanese
language groups) also commonly have this type.
The [C-ii] synonymous type is only found in [7]Tibeto-Burman and [8] Austroasiatic languages. In theformer, however, it is the predominant type in
Myanmar and Southern border area of China.
Examples in Austroasiatic (i.e., Riang and T’in)
languages are also found in and around this area. For
this reason, I contend that this is an areal feature.
The [C-iii] split type is rare. It is found in [4] Sinitic
and [7] Tibeto-Burman, but both show limited
distribution.
Map 1 roughly illustrates the main distribution of
constituent types for saying ‘it rains’ in Asia.
5. Constituent orderInterestingly, the dominant constituent order of theexpressions for ‘it rains’ is V(erb) + N(oun) in Chinese(Sinitic; Type A), although the basic constituent orderis S(ubject) + V(erb) + O(bject). It is possible to findthe areal diffusion of this constituent order.
Most Tai-Kadai varieties in China have the V + N
order, while N + V is dominant in those outside China.
Moreover, certain varieties of Tai-Kadai, such as
Zhuang in Jingxi Guolexiang (Type A), show Chinese
influence: although speakers there originally used the
N + V order, the younger generation uses V + N,
which is similar to Chinese.
A similar shift is found in Bai (Tibeto-Burman),

Keywords: meteorological expression, areal feature,
language contact, geolinguistics, linguistic typology(Satoko Shirai)

Map 1: Types of ‘it rains’ in Asia

22

“It rains” in Ainu

distributed in the western Hokkaido and Sakhalin. The
forms ruyánpe and ruanpe for “rain” are used in theeastern Hokkaido dialects, while they mean “storm” inthe western Hokkaido. Moreover, the form weni for“rain” is distributed in the westernmost Hokkaido
dialects, Yakumo and Oshamambe, and it may bederived from the word wen for “bad.”
Keywords: rain, fall, stand, strong, stormy, blow

1. Classification of Types
The expression for “it rains” in Ainu is basicallyconstructed with the noun for “rain” and an intransitiveverb. This is categorized as the “dummy (auxiliary)verb” construction (Mulchukov & Ogawa 2011; 26)
and “argument [precipitation] encoding” (Eriksen et al.
2010: 588-589). There are four dialectal forms for “itrains.”
A. RAIN (N) + STAND (V)A1. ápto ás
A2. ruyánpe/ruanpe as
A3. wení ás
B. RAIN (N) + FALL (V)B1. ahto/atto ran
C. RAIN (N) + STRONG (V)C1. ápto rúy
C2. ruyánpe rúy
D. LAND-BAD (V)D1. siriwin
2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
Type A is widely distributed in Hokkaido and Type
B is covered in Sakhalin. Type C is found in the Tokachi
and Mukawa dialects. Comparing to “wind blows,” theWIND (N) + STRONG (V) construction is more widelydistributed in the central Hokkaido than the RAIN (N)+ STRONG (V) construction, see the signon
Figure 2 and 3. Type D is classified into “theintransitive predicate type” (Eriksen et al. 2010: 589),
which is functionally different from the other three
types. Torii Ryūzō (1903) reported the term siriwin, as
the Shumshu dialect in Kuril. It probably corresponds
to the zero-argument verb sírwen for “the weather isbad” in the Hokkaido dialects, which is constructedwith the noun root sir and the intransitive verb wen anddoes not take an argument anymore.
There are three types of the intransitive arguments
for “rain,” wení, ápto (,ahto, atto), and ruyánpe (,ruanpe). In “Moshiogusa 藻汐草” (1792), a first AinuJapanese dictionary by Kumajirō Uehara, these words
were also recorded as follows: アプト [aputo], ルア
ンベ [ruanbe], ベニ[beni] or [veni], ウヱニ [uweni],
for which I estimate that the phonologicalrepresentations are /apto/, /ruanpe/, and /weni/.
Moreover, the word “あふと” /apto/ is recorded as“rain” in “Matsumae no Koto 松前の言,” which is theoldest Japanese manuscript, estimated to date back to
the 17th century.
The form ápto (ahto and atto in Sakhalin) is

Map 2. “(Rain) falls” in Ainu

Map 3. “(Wind) Blows” in Ainu
a. ás/as “stand”
b. ran “fall”
c. rúy “strong”
d. án/an “exist”
e. yúpke “strong”

23Map 1. “It rains” in Ainu
A. RAIN (N) + STAND (V)A1. apto as
A2. ruyanpe/ruanpe as
A3. weni as
B. RAIN (N) + FALL (V)B1. ahto/atto ran
C. RAIN (N) + STRONG (V)C1. apto ruy
C2. ruyanpe ruy
D. LAND-BAD (V)D1. siriwin(Mika Fukazawa)

24Interestingly, la has a homonym meaning‘wind’. Wind is la in all dialects investigated sofar. The form-meaning correspondence isillustrated in the table below (see also Map 2.).

‘It rains’ in Nivkh
1. General description
There are three dialectal forms reported for‘rain’ in Nivkh: lɨx, nɨx and nux. When used in a
sentence ‘It rains’, one of these forms is followed
by a special verb kɨ, which is used exclusively formeteorological phenomena, e.g. lɨx kɨ-ʧ. ‘It israining.’ ŋaqr̥ kɨ-ʧ. ‘It is snowing.’ This word
order is common to all intransitive sentences in
Nivkh. In the Amur and West Sakhalin dialects,
the use of kɨ is crucial to avoid semantic
ambiguity, as the same form lɨx refers to ‘weather’,
which is the usual interpretation when it is used inisolation (see § 2 for details).
As concerns the form, the dialectal
correspondence of the initial consonant [l] vs. [n]is rare; another such case is lund (Nogliki) vs. nud(Poronaisk) ‘what’ (Itsuji Tangiku, p.c.).

Dialects

rainweatherwind

Amur/West Sakhalin

lɨx

lɨx

la

Sakhalin (North)

lɨx

la

la

la

la

Sakhalin (South)

nɨx,
nux

Table 1. Form-meaning correspondence:‘rain’, ‘weather’ and ‘wind’

3.

Geographic distribution
While lɨx is the predominant form, fivesources exhibit a form with an initial [n]. These
are recorded from speakers born in the following
settlements: Trambaus, Chir-unvd, Nyivo, andPoronaisk (two sources).
The n-initial forms are distributed in thesouthern half of the Sakhalin dialect area. In thestandard taxonomy, these dialects are classified as
subdialects of the Sakhalin dialect. In the northernarea of the Sakhalin dialect, lɨx is recorded in
Tygmych and Chaivo.
The geographic distribution of lɨx and nɨx isdifferent from the cases reported in the current
research project so far; it is not separated by the
dialectal border between the two main dialects
Amur and Sakhalin. Generally speaking, thesouthern subdialects differ from the rest in thenumber of borrowings from Sakhalin Ainu
(Shiraishi and Tangiku to appear). This is not thecase though, as rain has a different form in
Sakhalin Ainu: apto~ahto (Piłsudski 1998 [1912]:
403). The dialectal border which separates thesouthern subdialects from the others requires
further investigation (cf. Tangiku 2013 fordiscussion).1
Keywords: Nivkh, semantic ambiguity, Amur
dialect, West Sakhalin dialect, Sakhalin dialect(Hidetoshi Shiraishi)

2.

Semantic ambiguity
In the Amur and West Sakhalin dialects, lɨxdoes not only mean rain but also weather. Thus lɨx
ur- means ‘The weather is fine.’ not ‘The rain isgood.’ (ur- ‘good’) Savel’eva and Taksami (1970)
give two lexical entries for lɨx: I) погода ‘weather’and II) дождь ‘rain’. Most consultants of theAmur and West Sakhalin dialects give lɨx kɨ-ʧ. ‘It
is raining.’ when translating the Russian дождь.
As mentioned above, the verb kɨ is added todisambiguate rain from weather, as lɨx in isolationrefers primarily to weather. In contrast, theconsultants of the Sakhalin dialect give lɨx or nɨx
for дождь without the verb kɨ (Nakagawa, Satoand Saito 1991). In the Sakhalin dialect, weather
is referred to by a different word la, thus there is
no ambiguity unlike the Amur and West Sakhalin
dialects (see Table 1 and Map 2 below).
Other means of disambiguation is the use of an
attributive or a compound. Savel’eva and Taksami(1970) list the following examples: lax lɨx ‘cloudy
weather’ (lax ‘cloud’), pɨi̯ urla lɨx ‘weather
suitable for flying’ (pɨi̯ - ‘to fly’), mangla lɨx‘downpour’ (mangla ‘fierce’), lɨx kespi ‘raindrop’(kespi ‘drop’), lɨx muɣʋ ‘rainy day’ (muɣʋ ‘day’).
In fieldwork we have recorded lɨx saχ ‘rain water’(ʧʰaχ ‘water’).

I would like to thank Prof. Itsuji Tangiku (Hokkaido
University for Ainu and Indigenous Studies) for providing
information on the Sakhalin dialect.
125

Map 1. ‘rain’ in Nivkh

Map 2. ‘weather’ in Nivkh

26

It rains in Japaneseshows that the omission of ga can also be seen to occur

1. Introductionin the Tohoku region and Kansai region indicating theThis paper aims to present a description on theusage of ga particle to be a country-wide phenomenon.

characteristics of weather related expressions inOn the other hand, the particle no is found to be

Japanese from the lexical and syntactic viewpoint.

distributed in Shizuoka/Yamanashi, the southern tip ofJapanese languages as with the other world languages

the Kii Peninsula, the southwestern part of Shikoku,

are rich in variety of weather related expressions. Thereand the western part of Kyushu. In addition, n which

are specific words such as ame (rain) and yuki (snow)

seems to have been derived from the particle no isfor different weather related expressions, which mark the

distributed throughout the Ryukyu Archipelago.

characteristics of Japanese.

3. Lexical features of ame (rain) and furu (to fall)

The sentence like ame ga furu in Japanese carries the

As shown in Fig.1, there is little dialectal variation,

sentence pattern with personal subject rather than thewhich exists only with phonological distinction and,sentence pattern, i.e. It rains with impersonal subject astherefore, is not of worth to mention. However, there isin the Indo-European languages.

practice to finely distinguish the different kind of ame

Japanese being a SOV language follows the order of(rain) and, therefore there exists distinctive words tosubject + object+ verb in the kernel sentence. In thesignify the different types of ame (rain). For example,

sentence of ame ga furu (It rains.), rain is a intransitive

shigure= winter shower, yudachi = evening shower,

verb which constitute a structure of ame (rain: subject)+

samidare = early summer rain, gou = cataracts of rain,

furu (fall: verb) resulting in a SV constituent. Likewise,

shuu = a shower of sooty atoms etc.

all the Japanese dialects including the dialect of the

Likewise, vocabulary exists abundantly also for yuki

Ryukyuans carry the same word order.

(snow) as well. Hence, it can be said that Japanese has

2. Case particle representing a Nominative Caseabundant vocabulary about weather. On the other handIn modern Japanese sentence, the case particle ga

furu means `to fall rain`, `to fall snow`, `to hail` and `torepresenting Nominative case connect the subject andhail chilly rain` from the sky. The verb `to fall` is not

the predicate. In ancient Japanese, however, the caseusually used to convey the the meaning of those above-

particle ga as in ame ga furu is rarely used as a Nominate

said vocabularies. The difference between 'furu' andcase marker and the case particle no was used instead.

'ochiru' is that while 'furu' means the falling in

According to GAJ (Grammar Atlas of Japaneseabundance in greater area from the sky, 'ochiru' means

dialects) VOL.1 No.1, Ame ga Futtekita (It has started

the falling of one or several things from the top.

raining), there are regional variation in the distribution

Since ame (rain), yuki (snow), arare (hail) and hyoof Nominative case particles. The case marker ga is used(chilly rain) do not receive any derived verb, the verb

in some regions and no is used in other regions, while nofuru as in the sentence ame ga furu (rain falls) iscase particle is used in some other regions as Nominative

exclusively used to mean the falling of all of thosecase marker. The tendency to omit the ga as Nominative

above-said natural things.

case particle was previously thought to be occurred in(Shinsuke Kishie/ Yukako Sakoguchi/ Nanami

the dialects of Western Japan. However, the data of GAJ

Shiokawa)

27

Fig.1 Distribution of Rain “Ame” in the Japanese dialects

Fig.2 Distribution of Fall “ Furu” in the Japanese dialects

28

“It rains” in Sinitic

differentiated by the amount of precipitation: A luo 落
type only refers to a light rain; B xia 下 type is used
as a general term (Iwata 2012: 138).
C dang 盪 type has several orthographies. However,there are similarities in phonetic forms, such as initial(voiced) and tone (yangqu 陽去 or yangshang 陽上).
Therefore, these forms can be regarded as cognates (Li1992). C dang 盪 type is distributed in southwestern
Zhejiang 浙江 and eastern Fujian 福建, a distribution
divided by D zuo 做.
As for nominal constituents, besides yu 雨 (rain),shui 水 (water) is concentrated in Guangdong 広東
and Guangxi 広西 provinces (See A-3 luoshui 落水).
E-3 dida 滴哒 in Shandong 山東 province is a kindof onomatopoeia and tends to collocate with moregeneral forms such as B xia 下 type. Usually, dian 点
is combined with the verb diao 掉, distributed adjacentto E-3 dida 滴 哒 . E-1 Diaodian 掉 点 is possibly
related to the onomatopoeia of rain.
In Old Chinese, the lexical form for “it rains” is yu
雨 (v.); it belongs to the “predicate type.” In oraclebones, the morpheme yu 雨 had both verbal andnominal functions (Xu 2003: 16): 之 夕 雨 ？ thisevening rain(v.) “Will it rain in this evening?” (Luo,Zhenyu. Yinxu shuqi xubian); 不遘大雨？不遘小雨？
neg. encounter heavy rain(n.) neg. encounter lightrain(n.) “Will there be a heavy rain or a light rain?”(Guo, Moruo. Buci tongzuan)Tone distinguishes these two functions: the shang 上
tone in the noun and in the intransitive verb; the qu 去tone in the transitive verb (Sun 2001: 105-110). Later,
the verbal use of yu 雨 became exclusive to literarylanguage, and colloquial forms for “it rains” shifted to
the verb + noun construction.
References
Iwata, Ray. (2012) The Interpretative Maps ofChinese Dialects Volume Two. Tokyo: Kohbun
Shuppan.
Li, Rong. (1992) Fuzhouhua “xiayu” de benzi,
Fangyan 1992(2): 112-114.
Liu, Danqing. (2001) Hanyu fangyan de yuxu leixing
bijiao, Gendai chugokugo kenkyu 2: 24-38.
Sun, Yuwen. (2001) Hanyu biandiao gouci yanjiu.
Beijing: The Commercial Press.
Xu, Zhaohua. (2003) Shanggu Hanyu cihuishi.
Beijing: The Commercial Press.
Keywords: verb + noun (object) construction, northsouth opposition, Yangtze line
(Fumiki Suzuki)

1. Classification
The lexical forms of “it rains” in Sinitic essentiallycomprise verb and noun. The lexical meaning of“rain” is carried by its nominal constituents, primarily
yu 雨. According to the verbal constituents, weclassified lexical forms into four types: A luo 落, B
xia 下, C dang 盪, and D zuo 做.
A luo 落 type
A-1 luoyu 落雨
A-2 yuluo 雨落
A-3 luoshui 落水 A-4 luodian 落点
B xia 下 type: xiayu 下雨, xiayur 下雨儿, xiaryu
下儿雨C dang 盪 type: dangyu 盪(逿)雨, duanyu 段雨,dong yu 洞雨, tengyu 騰雨, tunyu 屯雨, tongyu
同雨
D zuo 做 type: zuoyu 做雨
E others
E-1 diaodian 掉点, diudian 丢点, dongdianr 動点
E-2 diuyu 丢雨
E-3 dida 滴哒, dige 滴个, didadianr 滴答点儿E-4 others: 口雨[ʣu ua]
2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
The lexical forms for “it rains” in Sinitic belong to
the “argument type”. Although SVO is dominant in
Sinitic, the constituent order is verb + noun (object),like other meteorological expressions, such as guafeng刮風 (wind blows) and dalei 打雷 (it thunders),
while lexical forms for “it has stopped raining” takethe structure of noun (subject) + verb: Tianjin 天津:
下雨 fall rain “it rains”; 雨停了 rain stop perfectaspect “it has stopped raining.”
A-2 yuluo 雨落 is a solitary instance of noun
(subject) + verb construction. According to Liu(2001), A-2 is also seen in Taizhou 台州, Leqing 楽清, and Wenzhou 温州 of Zhejiang 浙江 province.
This phenomenon suggests that the object isdiminishing in these dialects (Liu 2001: 30).
In the northern area, the dominant lexical form is B
xia 下 type, which tends to form a north-south
opposition with A luo 落
type. Its isogloss
corresponds to the Yangtze line in the east. In the west,
however, the distribution of A luo 落 type crosses the
Yangtze line to the north, and shows a scattered
distribution in Sichuan 四 川 and Shanxi 陕 西provinces. In these dialects, A luo 落 type collocateswith B xia 下 type. In dialects along the Yangtze in
Anhui 安 徽
province, these two types are

29

30

“It rains” in Hmong-Mien“rain” (see Map A below) is determined by thephylogenetic status of the lect. Most Hmongic lects
indicate noŋ6, and all Mienic lects indicate bluŋ6. In
between the form moŋ6 is located (one data point in
Vietnam must be due to later immigration). Since thelects that show this form belong to Pa-hng, which isconsidered the first split-off from the Hmongic branch,bilabial place of articulation in the onset might be an
archaic feature. The two data points of in Guangdong(near the sea) belong to the She language (aka, Ho-ne),which is also one of the Hmongic lects. The location of
the She language is considered as the result of
immigration.
Turning to The distribution of the forms for “(rain) tofall”, if we can assume that forms with a lateral onset(Type C) are a loanword from Chinese, Type A, ta2,
must be the most archaic one in Hmongic. This form isin some lects is homophonous with a verb denoting “tocome”. Presumably, this form originally is a venetive
verb “to come”, so that the lects that use this form
express a rainfall event in the form of “a rainfall
comes”. Interestingly, some Hmongic lects that indicate
Type A do not have a venetive verb homophonous withta2. Thus, we can assume that in these lects the original
venetive verb is replaced but is retained as a verb for“(rain) to fall”. Tui2 in Type B is considered to be aloanword from Chinese. Since most Mienic lects show
this form, the borrowing could have occurred in thestage of Proto-Mienic.
(Yoshihisa Taguchi)

1. Classification of word forms
In the Hmong-Mien languages, the expression of
rainfall is composed of a verb denoting “(rain) to fall”
and a noun denoting “rain”. As far as the data that wehave at present indicate, the word order of these twowords is V-N in most lects, which is the same as in the
Sinitic languages. Hmong-Mien has three forms for“rain”: a form with a dental-alveolar nasal onset(designated by noŋ6), a form with a bilabial nasal onset(designated by moŋ6), and a form with a bilabial
plosive onset (designated by bluŋ6). These three forms
must ultimately have come from the same etymon,
although the sound correspondence of the onset isirregular.
Concerning to the verb denoting “(rain) to fall”, thesituation is somewhat complicated. We found elevendifferent forms, which are classified into three major
types and the rest. The first major type (Type A)
comprises forms with a dental plosive onset. The
second major type (Type B) comprises forms, which
are probably a loanword from Chinese “頽” (Ratliff
2010). The third major type (Type C1-3) comprises
forms with a lateral initial, which are possibly related toChinese “落”.
A:

ta2

B:

tui2

C1:
C2:
C3:

lo4
lo5
lo7

D:

ʔjoD

E:

nto3

F:

ljeu2

G:

puŋ1

H:

ɬjhuə1

I:

Map A

noŋ6
bluŋ6
moŋ6

ʨhɤ7/8

2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
The geographical distribution of the three forms for31

"(Rain) to fall" in Hmong-Mien
A: ta2
B: tui2
C1: lo4
C2: lo5
C3: lo7
D: ʔjoD
E: nto3
F: ljeu2
G: puŋ1
H: ɬjhuə1
I: ʨhɤ7/8

32

“It rains”in Tai-Kadai

rarely uses this form.
Type E is distributed in Southwestern Tai,
including Surat in southern Thailand which is notincluded in the map.
Type F is distributed in the rest of the areas, all ofwhich are inside China.
Nishida (2000: 157) infers that type A should be
the primitive form, and the verb "to fall" was added
afterwards; those languages under strong Chinese
influence became type F, the others became type E.
Also, Nishida (2000: 183) says that type B2 with"sky" is a Chinese-like expression.
On the other hand, there is also the possibility thattype F replaced type E under the influence of Chinese,
as seen in the Jingxi Guolexiang dialect which Ms. Li
Xiuhua reported.
The word for rain almost uniformly goes back to*fon A in proto-Tai. The verb means "go down,

1. Classification of forms
There are 6 major types for "it rains" in Tai-Kadai:
A. V typefun53 (to rain)
B. "sky" + V type
B1. fa11 (sky) + fun53 (to rain)
B2. fa11 (sky) + fun53 (to rain) + be53 (perfective
particle)
C. "sky" + N + V type
fa5 (sky) + fɯn1 (rain) + tok2 (to fall)
D. "sky" + V + N type
fa4 (sky) + lɔŋ2 (to fall) + phɔn1 (rain)
E. N + V typefon1 (rain) + tok1 (to fall)
F. V + N typetok7 (to fall) + fɯn1 (rain)
2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
Type A is found in the Li language in Hainan
Island and the Gelao language around theVietnamese-Chinese border. In this type, the sameword meaning "rain" can serve as both a noun and averb.
Type B occurs with type A in many cases.
According to Ms. Wen Zhen 文珍 of the Li tribe,
there are some parallel forms for "it rains" in her
Ledong 乐东 dialect: fun53; fa11 fun53; fa11 fun53 be53.
In the last sentence, "be53" is similar to Chinese "le 了". The sentence can have two meanings: "it is raining
now" and "it will rain". For her, thok53 fun53 (to fall+ rain, type F) and lui53 fun53 (to fall + rain, type F) arealso acceptable. The verb lui53 is similar to Siameseləəy meaning "pass, go through". Also, in her
dialect fun53 be11 (to rain + perfect particle, type A) isused. According to her, there is an expression ke.fun53(ke is a perfective prefix, fun53 is a verb "to rain") in
Shihan 什 寒 village, Qiongzhong 琼 中 county,
where the habitants are bilingual in both the Li and
Miao languages. Also, there is a place in Hainan
Island where pha11 phun53 , type B is used.
Type C is used in Red Tai in Baan na ngon, Laos.
Type D is used in Zhuang according to Ms. Li
Xiuhua 李秀华 from Jingxi Guolexiang 靖西果乐乡,Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. However,
the most frequently used expression for her is type E"phɔn1 lɔŋ2". She reports that type F "lɔŋ2 phɔn1" isalso used among younger generation, although sheเลยdescend". Although "tok" is dominant
across the area, the other verbs are also
used in the northern area. Among them,Lei is seen in Jinxiu 金 秀 Lakkia.
About the chronological order of long, tou andtau, it
depends on whether tou and tau are cognate or not. If
so, they are distributed in the outer area where long isused, so they should be older. Otherwise, the order ofthese forms is difficult to infer based on thegeographical distribution. In any case, tok should be
the oldest, and the others emerged later, and used inparallel.
(Mitsuaki Endo)33

fun53 (to rain)
fa11 (sky) + fun53 (to rain)
fa11 (sky) + fun53 (to rain) + be53 (perfective particle)
fa5 (sky) + fɯn1 (rain) + tok2 (to fall)
fa4 (sky) + lɔŋ2 (to fall) + phɔn1 (rain)
fon1 (rain) + tok1 (to fall)
tok7 (to fall) + fɯn1 (rain)34

‘It rains’ in Tibeto-Burman- RAIN(n)+COME: Geshitsa məʕ55 ʑe53; Kathmandu
Newar wā waye; Athpare wet ta(y)-e; Lisu mɯ33 xa55
li53; Lahu mû-yè là ve; etc.
- RAIN(n)+SEND/GIVE: Zangskar T. tɕʰarpa taŋ,etc. (only found in four Tibetic varieties)- RAIN(n)+RETURN: Qiongshan Chuchen təmonagus, etc. (only found in three rGyalrongic varieties)- RAIN(n)+DO: Trung si31 wɑ53; Dzongkha châpcap (only these two).
- RAIN(n)+V: Neshu a55 xo55 xɪ55, etc. The
meaning of the verb itself is difficult to identify.
- RAIN(n)/SKY+FALL: Puxi sTodsde mo ni-ɫdzə
(only found in two rGyalrongic varieties)- FALL+RAIN(n): Xishanshalang Bai ɣuo42 vu33,
etc. (only found in three Bai dialects)[B] Predicate type: In this type, the predicate is
primarily responsible for expressing the rain
phenomena. Most varieties except two show the same
pattern that consists of a noun that means ‘sky’ and averb that means ‘rain’ (SKY+RAIN(v)).
- SKY+RAIN(v): Mawo Northern Qiang mə da-ʁeʴ;
Takale Kham nəm wa-; Naso mu33 ho33; Lalo ɑ55-m̩21hɑ55; etc.
- THAT+RAIN(v): Pwo chə chə̀ɴ, etc. (only foundin two Karenic varieties.) The word chə has abstract
usages such as to indicate natural phenomena (A. Kato
2004: 110).
[C] Argument-predicate type: In this type, both theargument and predicate (more or less) equally carry
the meaning associated with rain. In this paper, we
divide this type into the following three subtypes:[C-i] Cognate argument-predicate type: Both theargument and predicate have the same or apparently
relevant form.
RAIN(n)+RAIN(v)[cognate]:
Mazi
sTau
24 h 55
55
22
55
33
21
mə -q e rqe rqe ; Yi Southern ʌ -xo xo ; etc.
[C-ii] Synonymous argument-predicate type: Boththe argument and predicate primarily express the rain
phenomena, like [C-i], though their etymologies aredifferent.
- RAIN(n)+RAIN(v): Bianer Geshitsa mə qhi; Lizuɣuæ33 ʑu35; Rawang shø zaq; Myitkyina Jinghpaw
məraŋ thùʔ; Geba w̥ɛ̄ zū; Tiddim guaʔ zu:; etc.
- RAIN(n)/SKY+RAIN(v): Lhaovo mukL ɣuF;
Yangon Burmese mo: jwa; etc. (In our data, all
Burmish languages have this pattern.)- RAIN(n)/WEATHER+RAIN(v): Youle Jinuo
mi33tha55 xo42-. The noun mi33tha55 may mean
‘weather’ in different contexts. The verb xo42- means

1. Classification of types
Our data consist of 494 examples of expressions
that mean ‘it rains’ in Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages
from both primary and secondary sources. We classify
them into three major types from a typologicalperspective: [A] argument type, [B] predicate type,
and [C] argument-predicate type. Further, theargument-predicate type is divided into three subtypes:[C-i] cognate type, [C-ii] synonymous type, and [C-iii]
split type.
The classification in this paper is based on thesynchronic meanings of the elements involved in each
expression. When we use the secondary data, we
follow the original glosses, except in some instances:
For example, when a noun equally refers to both ‘rain’
and ‘sky’ at least synchronically, we gloss it as ‘rain(n.)/sky.’ Moreover, we may gloss the word as‘sky/rain (n.)’ if we can confirm that it primarilymeans ‘sky’ from the synchronic perspective.
Below, we survey features of each type with
examples.
[A] Argument type: In this type, the argument isprimarily responsible for expressing the rain
phenomena. In TB, all examples of this type aremonovalent, that is, they require only one argument:‘rain (n.),’ even though in some cases the predicate is
originally a transitive verb such as ‘send.’ The
argument exclusively means ‘rain (n.),’ except in somecases where it is identical with ‘sky.’ The constituent
order is mostly ‘rain (n.)’ + verb, with the exception of
three Bai dialects that show the reverse order. Below,
the detailed patterns and examples follow. (In thelabels of patterns, a noun meaning ‘rain’ is indicatedas RAIN(n); a verb ‘rain’ as RAIN(v); other words too
are indicated with their representative meaning in
capitals. The examples of Tibetic (T.) varieties, except
for Lhasa, Dzhongkha, Leh, Khapalu, Zangskar,
Chabcha, and Pema, are shown in their equivalent
Written Tibetan forms transcribed using the Wylie
style):- RAIN(n)+FALL: gSerpo T. etc. gnam 'bab;Nyagrong Minyag mo55 fɬha53-re22; Yongning Na hi11gi15; Duleng məlaŋ khàt; Talu a55 hu55 dʑu33; Mechenoka haa; etc.
- RAIN(n)+RELEASE: Jiaomuzu Situ tə24-mu53
22kə -lɛʔ55; Yadu Northern Qiang me:ʴ ɕe; Yelong
Khroskyabs mu55 lat33; etc.

35

diverse. Moreover, this type is also found in somespots in the center (Qiang, Shihing (Qiangic) andGeshitsa (rGyalrongic)).
The split argument-predicate type (rectangles) ismainly found in the northern and central areas. Most
such spots are of Tibetic varieties in which the noun
gnam primarily means ‘sky’; however, such spots also
involve other languages such as Trung (Nungic) andLamo (affiliation unidentified) spoken in theneighboring area. The noun is na ‘sky’ in Lamo andnəm31 ‘sun’ in Trung, which suggests the influence
from the neighboring Tibetic varieties.
From the maps, we may conclude that the predicate
is more likely to encode the event substantially in theeast, but it is less likely in the west and north. In
addition, all types are found in the central area.
The chronological order of each type cannot beeasily demonstrated. One may assume that thepredicate type is the oldest because logically rainfall
phenomena do not involve a participant, as Van Valinand LaPolla (1997: 150) labeled the argument
structure of weather verbs as atransitive, that is, ofzero-valency. This cannot be confirmed, however, atleast from the distribution of each type. It should also
be noted that, at least in Karenic, the predicate type issecondary as opposed to the argument-predicate type,which is more widespread (Atsuhiko Kato, p.c., 2018).
Thus far, we have not been able to ascertain therelative time-depth of the types in TB.
We can find several semantic shifts of theconstituents that have caused the change of types: For
example, words derived from PTB *r-məw‘sky/heavens/clouds’ (STEDT) mean ‘rain (n.),’ ‘sky,’etc., according to language varieties. This point will be
examined in another paper (Shirai et al., this volume).

rainfall exclusively (N. Hayashi p.c.).
[C-iii] Split argument-predicate type: Neither theargument nor the predicate expresses the rain
phenomena by itself, but they come together toexpress it.
- SKY/RAIN(n)+FALL: The noun is identical with‘rain (n.),’ but synchronically its primary meaning is‘sky.’ gYangkhyung T. etc. gnam 'bab; Sangdam T. etc.
gnam babs (only found in Tibetic varieties).
- SKY+FALL: Chabcha T. hnem nbep; Gewa Lamonɑ53 tsho24; etc.
- SKY+V: Polo mɤ13 ŋo33
- SUN+FALL: Buer Trung nəm31 zɑʔ53, etc. (onlyfound in Trung; note that the noun nəm31 ‘sun’ iscognate with Tibetan gnam ‘sky (/rain (n.))’)- WATER+FALL: Lhagang T. chu 'bab.
2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
Maps 1 and 2 illustrate the geographical distributionof the types of ‘it rains’ in TB.
The argument type (indicated with squares in themaps) is predominant in the western spots (Tibetic
varieties, Newar, Kiranti, Galo, etc.), although it isalso scattered in the southeastern spots (Lahu, YiSouthern, Nesu (these three are Loloish), Bai, etc.). It
is found in many spots in the center as well (Qiangic,rGyalrongic, Yi Northern, many Tibetic varieties, etc.).
The ‘FALL+RAIN(n)’ pattern, in which the verb
precedes the noun, is found only in Bai. It isapparently loan translation of Chinese xià yǔ (fall rain(n.)), since Bai is in an intensive language contact
situation with Chinese.
The predicate type (circles) shows limited
distribution. It is found in the eastern and central spots(Loloish and Qiangic), except for one in Nepal (Kham(Kham-Magar-Chepang)) and two in Southern Burma(Karenic).
The cognate argument-predicate type (star) mainly
concentrates in the eastern spots (Loloish varieties
such as Yi, Alo, Nasu, and Lisu); however, it is also
found in a few spots in the center (sTau and Zbu(rGyalrongic)).
The
synonymousargument-predicate
type(rhombuses) is predominant in the southern spots:
Burmish, Karenic, Kuki-Chin, Jingpho-Luish, and also
Rawang (Nungic) and some Loloish varieties spoken
in the southern border area of China. This is a good
example of the areal feature, since the distribution isgeographically concentrated but genealogically

3. Conclusion
In this study, we examined the geographicaldistribution of typologically classified types of theexpressions that mean ‘it rains’ in TB. It is significant
that all major types are found in TB. Throughgeolinguistic analysis, we found several tendencies ofthe distribution, although it is difficult to ascertain thechronological ordering among the types.
Keywords: meteorological expression, Tibeto-Burman,
semantic shift, language contact(Satoko Shirai, Keita Kurabe, Hiroyuki Suzuki,
Kazue Iwasa, and Shiho Ebihara)

36

Legend
A. Argument type

C. Argument-predicate typeC-i Cognate argument-predicate typeC-ii Synonymous argument-predicate typeC-iii Split argument-predicate type

B. Predicate type

Map 1: ‘It rains’ in Tibeto-Burman, the whole area

37

Map 2: ‘It rains’ in Tibeto-Burman, enlarged38

‘It rains’ in Austroasiatic
In Vietnamese, an Austroasiatic language, theword for ‘rain’ is mưa. This word can be used bothas a noun and as a verb. The expressions for ‘It rains’
in Vietnamese are as follows:A) trời ‘sky, heaven’ (n) + mưa ‘to rain’ (v)B) (Noun phrase for place or time) + mưa ‘to rain’ (v)C) mưa ‘rain’ (n) + rơi ‘to fall’ (v)Like Vietnamese, there are many Austroasiatic
languages in which the distinction between verbs andnouns is ambiguous.
1. Lexical features
The word forms for ‘rain’ in Austroasiatic
languages can be classified into 10 categories asfollows:A) CmVh type < *miʔ (& *miiʔ?); *mih; *miiw‘rain, to rain’ (Shorto, 2006:99)
gəmaːh (Aslian: Mah Meri), mɨː (Bahnaric:Brao), bəi (Bahnaric: Tampuan), etc.
B) Cle type < *kleh ‘to fall’ (Shorto, 2006:527)
le (Palaungic: Son), kleʔ (Palaungic: Lawa),chəlɪː́ ʔ (Palaungic: Lamet), etc.
C: daʔ typedaʔ (Munda: Mahali [Matindor]), hoidaˀ(Munda: Santali), etc.
D) phɤ̀j typephrə̀j (Monic: Nyah Kur), phɤ̀j-dáak (Monic:
Nyah Kur), etc.
E) br- type < *briiʔ ‘sky’ (Shorto, 2006:110)pròa (Monic: Mon), bray (Monic: Middle Mon),etc.
F) gur type < *guur ‘to fall’ (Shorto, 2006:420)
gur (Monic: Old Mon), guriaˀ (Munda: Gta'), etc.
G) cuŋ type < *juuŋ ‘rain, to rain’ (Shorto,
2006:187)ɟuŋ (Palaungic: Palaung), cuŋ² (Palaungic:
Riang), etc.
H) hVc typehĩc (Aslian: Jahai), hɛc (Aslian: Tonga), etc.
I) pliəŋ type < *pliɲ; *[p]liiɲ; *[p]liəɲ ‘sky’ (Shorto,
2006:271)
priaŋ (Katuic: Ngeq), pliəŋ (Khmeric: Khmer), etc.
J) təŋ typetʌŋ (Katuic: Katu), prah təŋ (Katuic: Ta'Oi), etc.
Others
The forms of A) CmVh type are widely seen
across all Austroasiatic languages, so it is quite likelythat this is the oldest form. We can see that in somelanguages of E) br- type and I) pliəŋ type, the wordfor ‘sky’ and the word for ‘rain’ have the same form.
2. Syntactic features
Here, we enumerate some data about the wordfor ‘rain’ or expressions for ‘It rains’ in some
Austroasiatic
languages.
However,further
investigation is necessary for details on the usage ofwords in each language.
A) (to) rain (n, v) (Brao language)
aməː ‘It rains’
aməː ‘rain’(Ferlus, 1969)B) sky (n) + to rain (v) (Sapuan language)briː mmɨə
‘It rains’briː ‘sky’ + mmɨə ‘rain’(Ferlus, 1969)C) rain (n) + to fall, to rain (v) (Riang language)
cuŋ˩ klɛ˥
‘It rains’cuŋ˩ ‘rain’ + klɛ˥ ‘to fall, to rain’(Shintani, 2014)D) to fall, to rain (v) + rain (n) (T'in language)leh miaʔ
‘It rains’leh ‘to fall, to rain’ + miaʔ ‘rain’(Filbeck, 2009)
E) NP[rain (n) + to fall (v)] + to fall (v)(Kengtung language)
glaae le coh ‘It rains’
glaae ‘rain’ + le ‘to fall, to rain’ + coh ‘to fall’(Shintani, 2008)
References
Ferlus, Michel (1969–1970), Lexique Cheng-LavehSapuan
Filbeck, David (2009), Mal (Thin)-Thai-English
Lexicon
Shintani, Tadahiko (2008), The Kengtung Language,
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures ofAsia and Africa
Shintani, Tadahiko (2014), The Riang Language,
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures ofAsia and Africa
Shorto, Harry L. (2006), A Mon-Khmer Comparative
Dictionary, edited by Paul J. Sidwell, Doug Cooper,
and Christian Bauer, Canberra: Australian National
University
SEAlang Mon-Khmer Languages Project,
http://sealang.net/monkhmer/index.htm
SEAlang Munda Languages Project,
http://sealang.net/munda/index.htm(KONDO Mika)

39Map: The forms for ‘rain’ in AustroasiaticA) CmVh typeB) Cle typeC) daʔ typeD) phɤ̀j typeE) bri typeF) gur typeG) cuŋ typeH) hVc typeI) pliəŋ typeJ) təŋ type …

40

already be.going.to rain
“It is certainly going to rain”(2) Hujan hebat
rain
heavy
“It is a heavy rain” or “It rains heavily”
Other Type A languages have features highly similar
to that of the examples above.

“It Rains”: Austronesian languages
1. Classification of expression
The expression “It rains” in West Malayo-Polynesianlanguages can be categorized into two types. Type A
involves conversion: a noun that means “rain” used asa verb that means “to rain.” Type B employs
verbalization: a noun that means “rain” takes averbalizing affix and a verb that means “to rain” isformed as a result of the affixation. The forms of theaffixes vary but their function is much moreconsistent—an affix that forms a stative verb or that
forms an intransitive active voice verb is used tocreate a verb that means “to rain.”

4.2 Type B languages
A verbalizing affix that attaches to the noun thatmeans “rain” varies in its form from language tolanguage. It is assumed that the word “rain” took astative affix *ma-, resulting in *ma-quzaN in the Proto
Austronesian language (PAN). Lun Daye, a languagein Kalimantan, takes an affix that is an innovation ofthis stative prefix *ma-, as shown in example (3). On
the other hand, Bantik, a language spoken in North
Sulawesi, takes an affix that is an innovation of *maR-.
The /R/ sound, as in Bantik, is sometimes realized as
the nasalization of the first consonant of the verb basein the later innovation as in example (4) (“Rain” inBantik is tahiti).
(3) m-udan cosini
AV-rain day this“It rains today” Lun Daye (Soriente, personalcommunication)(4) rou-i ma-nahiti
day-this AV-rain“It rains today” Bantik (Utsumi 2005)
In other Formosan and Philippine languages, the affix
attached to “rain” is the innovation of PAN *<um> asin Sedeq (example 5) and Tagalog (example 6).
(5) q<em>uyux sayaŋ
<AV>rain today“It rains today” Sedeq (Tsukida 2009)(6) ʔ<um>uʔulan<AV>rain“It rains” Tagalog (Hirano 2012)
In any case, the verb-forming affix that forms an Actor
Voice verb and the resulting verb is always anintransitive or stative verb.

2. Types and structural features
The groupings of languages that belong to Type A andthose that belong to Type B cannot be stated clearly.
However, there is a tendency for languages that haveIndonesian type voice alternation to belong to Type A.
Languages under this category have the active and thepassive voices and usually have a limited number ofverb-forming affixes. Most Penan-Kenyah languages
in Kalimantan are also Type A.
Formosan and Philippine languages that have morethan two undergoer grammatical voices, i.e., three ormore grammatical voices, tend be Type B. It is
assumed that languages with a rich verbal morphology
need a verbal affix attached to the noun that means“rain” in order to express “It rains.”
3. Geographical distribution
Malayic languages that belong to Type A are spoken
all over Malay Peninsula, South Thailand, Brunei,
Singapore, and on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra
and Kalimantan. Penan–Kenyah languages exist ininland Kalimantan.
Type B languages are mostly found in Taiwan andnorthern Philippines and North Sulawesi, where
Philippine-type languages are found.
4. Examples of languages and expressions
4.1 Type A languages
The Indonesian language belongs to the Type A
category. The noun for “rain” in it is hujan and thisform can be used to express “It rains,” as in thesentence (1) in which hujan is clearly used as a verb
because it is preceded by aspect markers. In contrast,(1) Sudah mau
hujan.

Keywords: expressions for “It rains”, conversion,
verbalized form, verb-forming affix, stative verb.

41

the University of Tokyo. (In Japanese.)
Tryon, Darrell T. (eds.) 1995. Comparative
Austronesian Dictionary. Berlin and New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.

References: Hirano, Takanori.
2012.
Tagalog
Grammar. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.
Tsukida, Naomi.
2009. Sedekku-go-no Bunpou(Grammar of Seediq). Ph.D. Dissertation submitted to(Atsuko Utsumi)
Type A expression: Conversion (Anoun meaning “rain” is also used as averb without any change in form)
Type B expression: Verbalization(An affix is attached to the noun
meaning “rain” to form a verb thatmeans “It rains”)

Map 1: Taiwan and Northern Philippines

Map 2: Indonesia

42”It rains” in Uralic and Tungusic

Pian tulee sade. “It will rain soon.”
Koko päivän oli sadellut.
“It was raining all day.”Ryo MATSUMOTO
1. Classification of the types
The construction of “it rains” is divided into two types
according to the words for “rain”. The languages ofType A have a dummy verb which means “to fall”. If alanguage of Type B has a cognate noun as the subject, it
is classified as Type C.

A1
B0

It has been observed that different
constructions are found in one language.

types

of

3. On other weather constructions
Sometimes there are a few types about other weather
than rain. In most of Type A, the same verb – mostly
meaning “to fall” – is used not only for “rain”, but“snow” or “hail”, for example in Estonian, and even in
Finnish.

the word for “rain”
subtypeA. NOUN in nominative . . . . . . . . . .
A1
in other cases . . . . . . . . . . . .
A2
B. VERB
with no subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B0
with the subject of a dummy form . . . B1/B21of the cognate . . . . . AB

Est.

Sajab
vihma/lund/rahet.
is_falling rain/snow/hailFinn. Eilen satoi lunta. “Yesterday snow was falling.”
However in Hungarian:In Uralic languages:
Finn. Tänään sataa. (cf. sataa “to rain”)
Kar.
Pihal vihmuu. (cf. vihmuo “to rain”)
Est.
Vihma sajab. (cf. vihm “rain”)
Mari. Jür jüreš.
Komi. Zer zerӧ.
Hun. Esik az eső.
Nen. Sarʲo хаʔmorŋа.

B0
B0
A22
C
C
C
A1

In Tungusic languages:Ev.
Tigdǝ tigdǝǰǝrǝn.
Sibe. aχa da-C
A1

Hun. Esik as aső.
Esik a hó.
Havazik.

“lit. The rain is raining.”“lit. Snow is raining.”“(It is) snowing.”

Type B should be considered to be closer to Type C
according to whether the subject is obligatory or not.
4. Typical C type – the Cognate construction
Evenki, a typical Type C language, has many kinds ofnouns for various weather conditions, and most of thesenouns are also used as verbs:
Ev. Imanna imannaǰaran.
Agdi agdiǰačan.
Ədin ǝdinǰǝrǝn.
Xunŋǝ xunŋǝrǝn.

2. Other expressions for “rain”
Some languages have a few expressions for rainy
weather, for example in Nenets:“It is snowing.”“Thunder was rolling.”“Wind is blowing.”“There is a blizzard”

Nen. Tʲuku jalʲa pixĭna sarʲo. “lit. Today outside rain_is”
Indeed, in the Tungusic languages quite a few words
are used both for a noun/adjective and a verb.

The copula verb “to be” is found in this expression, notthe verb meaning “(water is) falling”, and it is also avery popular expression. This uses a noun-predicate
construction. If the marked condition is expressed, averb is used;

5. Historical change of the types
Type C is widespread in the central area in Siberia, andthe type A and B are distributed in the peripheral area. It
is possible that there was a process of historical changeof the types (I >) II > III > IV, or I > II’.

Sarʲo sarʲobtirŋа. (мелкий дождь по временам)Sarʲo хаvna. (сильный дождь)

(I
II
III
IV

Finnish has such expressions below:
Finn.Sataa vettä. “It is training.”

B1 or B2?

1

B1 with absolutely dummy subject, B2 with intermediatenoun subject
2
Most Balto-uralic languages have the impersonal
construction with the “rain” noun in the partitive case (A2).

The noun-predicate construction)
A noun is also used as a verb = C
A subject noun is substituted by a dummy noun = B
One of the verbs is used generally and a noun forweather is needed as a subject = A

II’ A noun is used in the verb-predicate construction = A

43

44

“It rains” in Mongolic and Turkic

Chuvashśumăr śu- (śăv-)Tuvan

ča’s čag-Chulym
1. Mongolic

Sakha

The Mongolic languages have two types of words1
for “rain,” but they all use the same word or- “toenter” for “to rain.” E.g.:
Mongolborō or-Buriadborō oro-

Shera Yugur

xura oro-

Dagurhuar war-2

3

4

Dolgansuɣ čapardax/samï̄ r tüshamï̄ r tüs-

The forms jaɣmər, jamʁur, samï̄ r, śumăr, hamï̄ r, etc.
are cognates derived from Old Turkic jagmur “rain,”which is made from the verb jag- “to fall” 5 byattaching a nominal suffix -mur.
3. Distribution

2. Turkic

The distribution of the words for “to rain” is simple.
The verb meaning “to enter” is used in Mongolic6,
and the verbs meaning “to fall,” in Turkic.

The words jag- “to fall” and tüs- “id.” are used for“to rain” in Turkic languages. E.g.:Sarïg Yugurjaɣmər jaɣ-Uzbek

jomgir jog-

Bashkirjamʁur jaw-

Turkishjāmur jā-Keyword:to rain(Yoshio Saitô)3

Chulym uses suɣ “water” for “rain.”
Sakha also has a verb ardā- “to rain.” (Personalcommunication from Fuyuki Ebata)
5
There is no etymological connection between the nounfor “rain” and the verb for “to rain” in Mongolic.
6
The Mongolic-speaking people in the lower Volgaregion moved from West Mongolia in the 17th century.
4

1borōn-type and xur-type.
The form war- in Dagur is due to the breaking of avowel taken place in the first syllable.

245

“It rains” in Arabic

B. The subject type (“the rain”)
This is the type of expression in which the subject

1. Classification of “it rains” types of expressions
The expressions of “it rains” are classified as follows.

“the rain” takes the main role. The verb is used forsyntactic necessity and adds some grammatical
functions such as tense. This pattern is the only pattern

A. The verb type (“to rain”)

of the expression in some peripheral dialects. The

A-1. The no subject typeweather phenomena tend to be represented by nouns inbǝtṃaṭṭeṛ [raining], btiʃtiː [raining]areas in contact with other languages.

A-2. The dummy subject typeid-dunja bitmaṭṭar [the-world raining]B-1. With a lexical verb (the sub-argument type)

B. The subject type (“the rain”)

In some peripheral dialects such as in Central Africa

B-1. With a lexical verb

(Nigeria, Chad, Kenia, Uganda), the subject “the rain”

alxaríif názal [rain went-down]

is accompanied by a lexical verb such as “fall,” orB-2. With a dummy verb

“pour.” It can be called the sub-argument type becausemaṭǝr dʒaː [rain came]the lexical meaning of the verb remains.

taʕmel iʃ-ʃita [do the-rain]alxaríif názal [rain went-down] (Nigerian)B-3. As alternative expressions

mátará gí wága [rain being fall] (Nubi Kibera)

ǝl-ṃaṭaṛ naːzle [the-rain going-down]

sobou almé [pour rain] (Nubi)

C. The repeated cognate subject typealmi sabba [rain poured] (Chadian)máṭara máṭaret ‘rain rains’

mattra soub [rain pour] (S.O. du Tchad)álme ṣábba [rain pour] (Nigerian)

2. Geographical distribution and interpretation

B-2. With a dummy verb (the argument type)

A. The verb type (“to rain”) (the predicate type)

In some peripheral dialects, such as Anatolian andThis is the type in which the verb “to rain” takes the

Maltese, the subject “the rain” is accompanied by amain role; it is the primary pattern in Arabic. It is

dummy verb such as “to come” or “to do.” This type

distributed mainly in the core Arabophone areas, but acan be said to be the argument type.

peripheral dialect, Cypriot, also uses this type.

maṭǝr dʒaː [rain come] (Kozluk in Anatolia)
ʔed taamel iʃ-ʃita [being does the-rain] (Maltese)

A-1. The no subject type (the complete predicate type)The verbs “to rain” are usually used without a subject.

B-3. As alternative expressions

This can be called the complete predicate type.

Additionally, in the A type area, the subject “thebjǝʔmoṭ ʔalbi lamma bǝtṃaṭṭeṛ. [shackles my-heartrain” is sometimes used in alternative expressions.

when rains] ‘I get the blues when it rains’ (Syrian)ǝl-ṃaṭaṛ naːzle [the-rain going-down] (Syrian)laːkin il-joːm ma-btiʃtiː-ʃ. [but today not-rains-not]u ʃ-ʃta ka-ṭṭiħ bǝzzaf? [and the-rain being-fall a-lot](Palestine)‘And does it rain a lot?’ (Moroccan)

má kaniʃátti [not did-rain] ‘it didn’t rain’ (Cypriot)ṭṣǝbb ǝʃ-ʃtʃa [pours the-rain] (Jewish Arabic in
Tripoli Libya)

A-2. The dummy subject type (the sub-predicate type)
In A-1 type dialects, sometimes the dummy subject

C. The repeated cognate subject typeid-dunja ‘the world’ appears. This word is used in

In Bukhari, “it rains” is expressed as “(the) rain

weather expressions such as id-dinja bard [the-world

rains” with a repeated cognate subject. Bukhari is thecold] ‘it’s cold’, id-dinja baʔat ḍalma [the-world

only example of this type in Arabic.

became dark] ‘it got dark’ (Cairene).

ams máṭara máṭaret. [yesterday rain rained] ‘It

id-dinya bitmaṭṭar [the-world raining] (Cairene)rained yesterday.’kull marra nriːd niṭlaʕ tumṭur id-dinya. [every time

In some contexts, other subjects or verbs are used.

we-want we-go-out rains the-world] ‘It rains every

ʁeːm únṭur (< júmṭur) [cloud rains] ‘It rains.’

time we want to go out’ (Iraqi)

hamál sana kasiːr maṭaraːt ṣoreːn. [this year muchmuṭrat d-dinja. [rained the-world] (Gulf)

rain become] ‘It rained a lot this year.’maṭṭarat ad-dunja. [rained the-world] (Yemeni)(Youichi Nagato)

46

47

It Rains: South Asia (IE (Aryan, Iranian),

expression is of the Konkani, Tulu, and Kannada
languages and shows a partial distribution limited to
Goa and Karnataka in middle western India.
Type B1 languages belong to Aryan (Marathi,
Oriya, Panjabi, and Sinhala), Iranian (Balochi and
Persian), and Great Andamanese (Mixed GreatAndamanese). They distribute rather peripheral, but
northern Pakistan has no languages of this type.
Most of SA languages, which I treat here, areagglutinative (or somewhat inflectional) and haveenough verbal morphology, so that it is hard to findany language of these families showing thesynonymic argument-predicate pattern [‘rain’ (n.) +‘rain’ (v.)] as Tibeto-Burman languages do.
The only B2 language is Nepali. Schmidt (1994)
translate ‘rain (v.)’ into pānī āunu[‘water’ + ‘come’].
C – Predicate type is of three totally different
language groups. The first is Khowar, anorthwestern Aryan, particularly so-called Dardic
lanhguage. This language expresses ‘rain (v.)’ witha simple verb boṣík, surely derived from Sktvarṣakāla‘rainy season’. A neighbouring
language Kalasha does have the cognate, similar
word báṣik ‘rain’, but uses it as a noun only. The
second is Burushaski, which has the noun harált‘rain’ but also has the verb diáarc- ‘rain’ of adifferent root. The verb diáarc- is derived from theverbal root √gáarc which means ‘run, gallop’. The
third is Andamanese languages. For example,
Mixed great Andamanese expresses ‘rain’ with theverb cεr. This language has also B1 type expression
jicεr cεr which literally means ‘rainwater+rain rains’(ji ‘rainwater’, cεr ‘rain’). Khowar and Burushaski
are geographically rather close to each other, but noother neighbouring languages have a simple verb
meaning ‘to rain’. Andamanese in the Bay of
Bengal is located really far from the above two
languages in the Krakorum and Hindukush
mountian ranges.
(YOSHIOKA Noboru)

Dravidian, Andamanese, and Burushaski)
1. Classification of forms
In South Asian languages, there are three major
categories
of
forms
–
Argument,
Argument-Predicate, and Predicate –, andArgument-Predicate type can be divided into two
subtypes – Cognate and Split.
A. Argument type: expresses ‘it rains’ with theconstruction [‘rain’ (n.) + supportive V].
Supportive verbs can be ‘fall’, ‘pour’, ‘come’,‘do’, and so on.
B. Argument-Predicate type: expresses ‘it rains’
with either B1 [‘rain’ (n.) + ‘rains’ (v., cognate
to ‘rain’)], or B2 [N (not ‘rain’) + supportive V(not ‘rains’)]. The only N of B2 type is ‘water’in this paper, amongst other possibility like‘waterdrop’ and so on.
C. Predicate type: expresses ‘it rains’ with theconstruction [(N) (empty or expletive) + ‘rains’].
For my regret, I have not yet gathered muchinformation about how South Asian languages
express ‘it rains’ for this report. Many grammars I
browsed do not treat any meteorologicalexpressions in particular. Thus I could get
information only on some respectively major
languages here.
2. Geographical distribution and interpretation
The most major type is A – Argument type inSouth Asia. And then, B1 and C. B2 – Split
Argument-Predicate type is detected just with one
language.
Languages of A type can be seen all over the area,
at least in India and Pakistan. I guess this type is themost common in South Asia. The languages employ
several kinds of supportive verbs: FALL (12 of 24),
POUR (3), COME (3), BECOME (3), DO (2), and
PUT (1). Among them, the [‘rain’ + ‘pour’]48Map 1. ‘It rains’ in South Asia

49

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55

Remarks on ‘Rain’ in Tibetans’ Languages in Lithang County
Hiroyuki Suzukiaa

IKOS, University of Oslo / National Museum of Ethnology

Abstract
This article describes the expression ‘it rains’ in three Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in
Lithang County: Khams, Amdo, and Choyu, and discusses the word form for ‘rain’ appearing
there. There are two semantic types for ‘rain’: ‘rain’ and ‘rain/sky’. For Khams and Amdo, two
WrT forms appear: char pa and gnam, of which the distribution is geographically divided.
Choyu uses the ‘rain’ type, but sometimes also uses the word form for ‘sky’ instead of ‘rain’,
which can be analysed as influence from Amdo.

1

Introduction

In Lithang [Li-thang] County, located in the central area of Kandze [dKar-mdzes] Tibetan Autonomous
Prefecture of Sichuan Province, three Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken: Khams Tibetan, Amdo
Tibetan, and Choyu (Suzuki 2018, see Map 1; cf. Litang Xianzhi 1996). The first two languages are
Tibetic, and the last one is Qiangic. These three languages are not directly contacted with each otherexcept for the county seat; however, there has been mutual contacts for a long time.

Map 1: Language distribution of Lithang County

56

Looking at the form ‘it rains’, which is the main topic of SAG-VIII (see Shirai et al. in thisvolume-b) in the three languages, we can find an interesting phenomenon concerning language contact
and semantic change. This article focuses on examining the word form of ‘rain’ in the languages spoken
in Lithang County.
Before beginning the discussion, I introduce the major cases of the form for ‘rain’ in Khams andAmdo with a transliteration of Written Tibetan (henceforth WrT). As Shirai et al. (in this volume-b)
present, the majority of Khams uses a form corresponding to WrT char pa (cf. Suzuki forthcoming),
whereas that of Amdo uses WrT gnam. WrT char pa is a noun denoting ‘rain’ or ‘raindrop’, and WrT
gnam designates ‘rain (phenomenon)’, which is the same form as ‘sky’ in several dialects.1 Shirai et al.
(this volume-a, b) pay attention to the semantic development concerning the latter type because it isrelated to the construction of weather expressions (Malchukov and Ogawa 2011:24-27).

2‘It rains’ and ‘rain’ in the varieties of Lithang

I present principal examples of the expression ‘it rains’ in the languages of Lithang as in Table 1. All thedata were obtained and described by the present author through the fieldwork conducted in 2017.
Table 1: List of word forms for ‘it rains’
Language
Dialect
Form for ‘it rains’ (with glossing and WrT)
Khams
Lithangˉɦnɑ̃ ´mbəʔ
[rain/sky fall]; WrT gnam ’bab
Khams
Gyongbaˉtɕha ɦba ´mbɔʔ
[rain fall]; WrT char pa ’bab
Khams
dGakhogˉtɕha ɦba ´mbɔʔ
[rain fall]; WrT char pa ’bab
Khams
Jowo
ˉtɕha hpa ´mbɔʔ
[rain fall]; WrT char pa ’bab
Khams
nJawa
ˉɦnɔ̃ ´mbɔʔ
[rain/sky fall]; WrT gnam ’bab
Khams
Dewo
ˉɦnɑ̃ ´mbɔʔ
[rain fall]; WrT gnam ’bab
Khams
sNapo
´tɕhwaː ´mbɔʔ
[rain fall]; WrT char pa ’bab
Khams
dBrarikha
ˉɦnɑ̃ ´mbɑʔ
[rain/sky fall]; WrT gnam ’bab
Khams
nGramnaˉɦnɑ̃ ´mbəʔ
[rain/sky fall]; WrT gnam ’bab
Khams
rDzipaˉtɕhaː ba ´mbəʔ
[rain fall]; WrT char pa ’bab
2
AmdogYongrutɕhar wa wap(Tshonkhor)[rain fall]; WrT char pa babsʁAmdosDegzhungma
nam wap(mChodrten)[rain/sky fall]; WrT gnam babs
ɦAmdogYongru
nam wop(Horra rNyingba)[rain/sky fall]; WrT gnam babs
Choyu
Gayibuliˉhu ´lə-tu[rain prefix-fall]
Choyu
Atsongˉhu ˉtu[rain fall]
1 See also Suzuki (2013).
2 For the dialect name of Amdo Tibetan, I follow tshowa’s names suggested by Tsering Samdrup & Suzuki (2017).

57

For the Tibetic languages spoken in Lithang, the forms of ‘it rains’ are derived from WrT charpa ’bab or gnam ’bab (babs).3 The construction of weather expression for ‘it rains’ is either ‘rain+fall’or ‘rain/sky+fall’. We should note that some dialects of Khams4 use WrT gnam for ‘rain’ whereas a
dialect of Amdo uses WrT char pa. This situation is against the general tendency of the use of the lexical
form for ‘rain’ in Khams and Amdo stated earlier. I will examine this issue by drawing a linguistic map
later.
Regarding the word form corresponding to WrT gnam, the gloss has two types: ‘rain’ and ‘rain/sky’.
The former means that the word form corresponding to WrT gnam is reserved just for ‘rain’, and thelatter means that the word form for ‘rain’ and ‘sky’ is a homonym derived from WrT gnam. For example,
the word form for ‘sky’ in the Dewo dialect is /ˊnɑ̃ ŋ̊kha/, which corresponds to WrT nam mkha’. This
form is not widely used in Khams; however, its use in the Dewo dialect might be in order to avoid asemantic conflict between ‘rain’ and ‘sky’. In this case, since there are more than one word for ‘sky’ inthe language, another word form but gnam has been employed for ‘sky’. Another manner is also
attested: derivation from gnam. In the Jowo dialect, the word for ‘sky’ is /ˉɦnɔ̃ ŋ̊õ/, which corresponds to
WrT gnam sngon, literally meaning ‘blue sky’. However, this dialect uses /ˉtɕha hpa/ for ‘rain’; thus, thisderivation has not occurred for the same reason as the Dewo dialect.5
Two dialects of Choyu display the same structure of the expression ‘it rains’, which takes a‘rain+fall’ type. In addition to this, there is another expression for ‘it rains’, which is used lessfrequently: /ˉmu ˉtu/ ‘sky+fall’. The speakers always correct this way of expression because it is notconsidered as an adequate use of Choyu but as a calque of the Tibetic languages.

3

Geolinguistic analysis on the form for ‘rain’ in the varieties of Lithang

In order to examine how we can explain the situation attested in Table 1 from a geolinguistic viewpoint,
I display two maps below. Map 2 is based on the word form and language:

3 For the inflection of the verb ’bab ‘fall’, many varieties of Khams do not have a stem alternation of verbs between
perfect and nonperfect.
4 For details and a classification of Khams Tibetan spoken in Lithang, see Suzuki (2018).
5 The phenomenon to avoid a semantic conflict by using different word forms for ‘rain’ and ‘sky’ is also attested in
Tibetic languages of Eastern Section (Tournadre and Suzuki forthcoming) such as Sharkhog, Khodpokhog,
mBrugchu, and Thewo-smad (see Shirai et al. this volume-b).

58

Legend: CA: char pa in Amdo; CK: char pa in Khams; NA: gnam in Amdo; NK: gnam in Khams;
HC: /hu/ in Choyu
Map 2: Word forms for ‘rain’ and languages
In Map 2, the colour of the symbols represents the difference of lexical forms (Black: char pa;
Purple: gnam; Yellow: /hu/) and their shape does that of languages (Square: Amdo; Rhombus: Khams;
Star: Choyu). Paying attention to the distribution of the colours, we find that Purple is located in thecentral and western area of the region, and Black surrounds it. Then, Types CA and NK should be noted.
Type CA is attested in just one example: the gYongru dialect practised to the north of the county seat of
Lithang. This area is close to another Khams-spoken region to its north. The distribution of Khams
continues further to the north, and the part of northern Lithang is just a tip of the greater Khams-spoken
zone. Hence, the use of Khams might have influenced a part of the gYongru dialect. Type NK is attested
in a wider area, in the county seat as well as on the border zone between Amdo and Khams. Interestingly,
in the western area of Lithang (dBrakhog district), two dialects use Type NK, and the rest one uses TypeCK. This area is mountainous, and the traffic condition is not convenient even within the district. The
form for ‘rain’ suggests that the eastern part of dBrakhog has had a stronger connexion with theAmdo-spoken area on its north because there has been a principal traffic route before.6 To the south ofthe county seat, Type NK is distributed in line. This area is a prairie-like scenery along the main trafficroute. Most residents there are half-farmers-half-pastoralists, and they have frequent communications
with Amdo-speaking communities. If this lifestyle influences their language, Type NK has developedby an influence from Amdo.
Some dialects with Types NA and NK also use a form corresponding to WrT char pa for ‘raindrop’.
They distinguish the object ‘raindrop’ from the natural phenomenon ‘rain’.
Next, I examine the semantic field regarding the word for ‘rain’. See Map 3 below:
6 At present, the main traffic route from/to dBrakhog is directly connected to the county seat on its east.

59Legend: A: rain; B: rain/sky
Map 3: Semantic field of ‘rain’
Type A means the existence of a specific word form reserved for ‘rain’, whereas Type B
demonstrates polysemy. Type B corresponds to Types NA and NK in Map 2 except for one dialect:
Dewo. Although the Dewo dialect has Type NK, its word forms for ‘rain’ and ‘sky’ are different fromeach other, and the dialect is thus classified into Type B on Map 3.
Regarding Choyu, even based on the cases shown in Maps 2 and 3, we cannot point out any clear
reason why Choyu speakers use the ‘sky+fall’ type for ‘it rains’ in an incorrect way instead of the‘rain+fall’ type. However, referring to the case and history of Lhagang Choyu, a sister language spoken
by descendants of the migrants from the Choyu-spoken are more than 200 years ago (cf. Suzuki &Sonam Wangmo 2016a), we can also find the use of the ‘sky+fall’ type for ‘it rains’ (Suzuki & Sonam
Wangmo 2017). The migrants might have been together with an Amdo-speaking group from that area
(Suzuki & Sonam Wangmo 2016b, forthcoming), and this suggests that Choyu people have also had aconnexion with Amdo-speakers. If this is the case, the phenomenon attested in Choyu is influenced by
Amdo.

4

Conclusion

In this article, I presented a microscopic analysis of the word for ‘rain’ in three languages in Lithang
County. Khams and Amdo use word forms for ‘rain’ derived from WrT char pa or gnam. The former
principally appears in Khams, and the latter in Amdo. However, in some dialects on the Khams-Amdo
contact zones, the word form is replaced. The word form corresponding to gnam is originally ahomonym of ‘sky’, and most dialects have both the meanings. However, the Dewo dialect uses different
forms by changing the word form for ‘sky’. Choyu distinguishes a word ‘rain’ from ‘sky’; however, the“sky+fall” pattern is to a lesser extent used for ‘it rains’. This might be because of influence from Amdo.

60

Acknowledgements
The present study is funded by two Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science: “International Field Survey of Tibeto-Burman Link Languages” (headed by
Yasuhiko Nagano, No. JP16H02722) and “Investigation of Undocumented Languages in the Eastern
Tibetosphere and their Geolinguistic Research” (headed by the present author, No. JP17H04774).
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Suzuki, H & Sonam Wangmo. 2017. Lhagang Choyu wordlist with the Thamkhas dialect of Minyag Rabgang
Khams (Lhagang, Dartsendo). Asian and African Languages and Linguistics (AALL) 12, 133-160. Online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10108/91144
Suzuki, H & Sonam Wangmo. forthcoming. Migration history of Amdo-speaking pastoralists in Lhagang, Khams
Minyag, based on narratives and linguistic evidence. Archiv Orientální, Supplementa.
Tournadre, N. & H. Suzuki. forthcoming. The Tibetic Languages: An Introduction to the Family of Languages
Derived from Old Tibetan. (with the collaboration of Xavier Becker and Alain Brucelles for the cartography)
Tsering Samdrup & H. Suzuki. 2017. Migration history and tsowa divisions as a supplemental approach todialectology in Amdo Tibetan: A case study on Mangra County. Studies in Asian Geolinguistics VII —Tone
and Accent—, 57-65. Online: https://publication.aa-ken.jp/sag7_tone_2017.pdf

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Semantic shifts in expressions for ‘it rains’ in Tibeto-BurmanabSatoko Shirai , Hiroyuki Suzuki , and Keita KurabecaJapan Society for the Promotion of Science/University of Tsukubab

IKOS, University of Oslo/National Museum of EthnologycTokyo University of Foreign Studies

Abstract
This paper discusses the semantic shifts found in the expressions that mean ‘it rains’ inTibeto-Burman. All such expressions in Tibeto-Burman consist of one argument and one
predicate; moreover, all three possible elements—argument, predicate, and combination ofargument and predicate—show semantic shifts. We conducted a geolinguistic analysis of theforms and meanings of the arguments of rainfall expressions in Tibeto-Burman. Geolinguistic
analysis suggests a chronological order among their forms. Furthermore, we analyzed thesemantic shifts (such as from ‘sky’ to ‘rain’) found in the arguments of rainfall expressions.

1

Introduction

This study examines the semantic shifts of the components of expressions that mean ‘it rains’ (rainfall
expressions) in Tibeto-Burman (TB).
Shirai et al. (this volume) surveyed the types of rainfall expressions in TB and analyzed theirgeographical distribution from a synchronic perspective. However, certain problems in analyzing such
expressions are not discussed in detail due to space limitations. The present paper aims to examine oneof such problems: the semantic shift. For example, in different Tibeto-Burman languages and dialects,
words derived from the Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) root *r-məw ‘sky/heavens/clouds’ (#24731) may
mean ‘rain (n.),’ ‘cloud,’ ‘fog,’ ‘sky,’ ‘weather,’ or more than one of them as a polysemy. Herein, we
will examine the semantic shifts of such words. Moreover, we will focus on the forms and meanings ofthe arguments of TB rainfall expressions and conduct a geolinguistic analysis.
The analysis of this study is based on the data of the rainfall expressions of 493 Tibeto-Burman
languages/dialects that were compiled by members of the TB team of the Asian Geolinguistic Project at
the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, that is, K. Iwasa, S. Ebihara, and I.
Matsuse, in addition to the three authors of the present paper. Additionally, we added words for ‘rain(n.)’ from 10 languages to our database.2 As for the genetic classification of TB, this study tentatively
follows Matisoff (2003) and STEDT.3
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 illustrates the variation of semantic shifts; Section 3
conducts the geolinguistic analysis on the arguments of rainfall expressions; and Section 4 summarizes
the study.

1 The PTB forms in the present paper are based on the database of the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and
Thesaurus (STEDT). The numbers preceded by a sharp mark indicate the identification numbers given to each
PTB root in the STEDT database.
2 Gurung, Tamang (Mazaudon 1994), Thulung (Allen 1975), Nocte, Konyak (Marrison 1967), Thado, Sizang, Lai(VanBik 2009), Ao (Bruhn 2014), and Leqi (Dai and Li 2007).
3 The genetic classification of TB is still controversial; thus, there are many other proposals such as Jacques andMichaud (2011) and Thurgood (2017).

62

2

Variety of semantic shift found in the rainfall expressions in TB

All the rainfall expressions in our data consist of an argument and a predicate. Interestingly, we can findexamples of each of the (i) argument, (ii) predicate, and (iii) combination of argument and predicate thathave undergone semantic shifts. In this section, we will introduce examples of each pattern.
2.1

Argument

As we mention in Shirai et al. (this volume), all the rainfall expressions in TB are monovalent, that is,each involves a single argument. We can find a variety of meanings in the arguments, such as ‘rain (n.),’‘sky,’ ‘sun,’ ‘water,’ ‘thing,’ or a set of more than one of them. We will make a detailed discussion on
the semantic shift of arguments in Section 3. Here, we are simply introducing one set of examples.
(1) shows examples of rainfall expressions in three Tibetic varieties. All expressions thereincorrespond to Written Tibetan (WT) gnam 'bab. Nonetheless, they are classified into two different types
in Shirai et al. (this volume), since the meaning of argument differs. The noun that corresponds to WT
gnam primarily means ‘sky’ but also means ‘rain’ in many Tibetic varieties, such as bLabrang Tibetan,
as shown in (1a). However, the cognate noun exclusively means ‘sky’ in Chabcha Tibetan4 (1b), while itmeans ‘rain’ in other varieties such as gZari Tibetan5 (1c). Consequently, (1a, b) are classified into thesplit argument-predicate type, while (1c) is classified into the argument type (Shirai et al., this volume).
(1) ‘It rains’ in Tibetic varieties
a. bLabrang (Suzuki, fieldwork):b. Chabcha (S. Ebihara, p.c.):c. gZari (Suzuki, fieldwork):

ɦ

m

nam
sky/rain(n.)
hnem
sky
ʔ
nɑ̃
rain(n.)

bap
fall
nbep
fall
m
bɑ
fall

For this type of semantic change and the acquisition of new lexical contrast, see Suzuki’s (this volume)
discussion on the case of Tibetans’ languages in Lithang County (Sichuan).
2.2

Predicate

We can also find semantic shifts of predicates, for example, in Nungic. Our data include three Nungic
languages: Anong, Rawang, and six dialects of Trung. These varieties show three different types of rain
expressions: Anong and Maku Trung display the argument type (2a, b), Rawang shows the synonymic
argument-predicate type (2c), Lula and the other four dialects of Trung have the split argumentpredicate type (2d) (Shirai et al., this volume).
(2) ‘It rains’ in Nungic varieties
a. Anong (Sun and Liu 2009: 279):tsʰɿ31rain(n.)b. Maku Trung (L. Qin, p.c.):si31
rain(n.)c. Rawang (LaPolla and Sangdong 2015: 277): shørain(n.)d. Lula Trung (L. Qin, p.c.):
nəm31
sun

dzɑŋ55
fall
wɑ53
do
zaq
rain(v.)
zɑʔ53
fall

4 The independent noun for ‘rain’ in Chabcha is tɕʰar (wa), which is completely different from hnem in (1b) (S.

Ebihara p.c., 2018).
5 In gZari Tibetan, the word for ‘sky’ is ̊ nã ŋ̊kha, which corresponds to WT nam mkha'.

63

Note that the verbs in Anong (dzɑŋ55 ‘fall’), Rawang (zaq ‘rain (v.)’), and Lula Trung (zɑʔ53 ‘fall’) are
related diachronically, but synchronically, their meanings differ from each other. The verb zaq
specifically means ‘rain (v.)’ in Rawang, which utilizes other verbs for ‘fall’ such as loq ‘fall,’ ja ‘drop,
fall from high to low,’ and dv̀m ‘fall, roll down.’ One of the factors of the semantic difference between‘rain (v.)’ (in Rawang) and ‘fall’ (in Anong and Trung) is language contact: Rawang is under the
influence of languages such as Burmese, Jinghpaw, and Shan (all of which belong to theargument-predicate type; see Shirai et al., this volume), while Lula Trung may be influenced by Tibetic
varieties that have the argument gnam ‘sky/rain (n.),’ since we can find at least two such varieties aroundthe Trung area: Sangdam Tibetan and Bodgrong Tibetan.
2.3

Clauses for ‘it rains’ which are identical to the independent noun for ‘rain’

In certain languages, each element found in the expression ‘it rains’ is different from the noun thatmeans ‘rain’ in the same language.
For example, in Sani, according to K. Iwasa (p.c., 2017), the sentence m̩11 hɒ33=tʂo33 ‘it rains’consists of the noun m̩11 ‘sky,’ verb hɒ33 ‘rain (v.),’ and the durative marker =tʂo33, as in (3). The verbhɒ33 is used exclusively for rainfall phenomena, as it cannot express even snowfall. The independent
noun m̩11 hɒ33 is a compound that consists of the noun stem and verb stem. A parallel pattern is found in
Darmdo Minyag, as in (4).
Interestingly, in all varieties with the pattern ‘SKY+RAIN(v)’ in our data, including Sani and
Darmdo Minyag, the noun that means ‘rain’ has the same form with the phrase ‘it rains,’ leaving aside
the morphological requirements of each word class.
(3) Sani (Loloish) (Kazue Iwasa p.c., 2017)a. m̩11hɒ33=tʂo33‘It rains.’skyrain(v.)=DUR
b. m̩11 hɒ33
‘rain (n.)’(4) Darmdo Minyag (Qiangic) (Suzuki, fieldwork)a. mə55 na55-qhʌ5‘It rains.’sky
DWN-rain(v.)
b. mə55 qhʌ55‘rain (n.)’(5) Shihing (Qiangic) (Sun et al 2014: 163)a. ɸui55
ɕe33ɕe33 zɑ35-ji55‘It rains heavily.’rain(n.)hardrain(v.)-PROGb. ɸui55 zɑ55
‘rain (n.)’
Shihing shows a slightly different pattern, as in (5). In the original data (Sun et al. 2014: 163), theargument ɸui55 is glossed as 雨 (rain (n.)). However, the independent noun collected in the wordlist isɸui55 zɑ55, as in (5b), that is, the compound of the noun and verb stem. Based on Sun et al. (2014: 163),
we tentatively give the gloss ‘rain (n.)’ to ɸui55 in (5a).63

A geolinguistic analysis of the argument of rainfall expressions

Here, we examine the semantic shifts of the arguments of rainfall expressions in TB, making ageolinguistic analysis of the etymologies and synchronic meanings of the arguments. We use the PTB
forms reconstructed by the STEDT project (http://stedt.berkeley.edu/) in the analysis of the etymologies.
Thus, if we cannot assume the corresponding PTB forms, such arguments are omitted from ouranalysis.7 Table 18 at the end of this paper shows representative nouns that are used as the argument of
rainfall expressions in each TB subgroup.
6 We can find its cognates in our data: for example, Lhagang Choyu hwi ‘rain (n.).’7 Examples follow: Pwo chə ‘thing’ (Kato 2004: 110, A. Kato p.c.); Newar noka ‘rain’ (I. Matsuse p.c.); Rawang

shø ‘rain’ (LaPolla and Sangdong 2015: 277); Zbu tərzi ‘rain’ (Nagano and Prins 2013); etc.

64

3.1

Classification of types

The etymologies of nouns include PTB roots *tshyar ‘rain(n)’ (#5902), *r-məw ‘sky / heavens / clouds’(#2473), *r/s/g-wa ‘water / rain’ (#2080),9 *g-nam ‘sun / sky’ (#2484), *m/s-raŋ ‘rain’ (#3571), *rəy‘water / liquid / bodily fluid’ (#1013), and so on, and compounds such as *r-məw plus *r/s/g-wa.10
The synchronic meanings of the arguments derived from such PTB forms include ‘rain,’ ‘sky,’‘sun,’ ‘rain/sky’ (that is, it means both ‘rain’ and ‘sky’), ‘sky/rain’ (it primarily means ‘sky,’ but alsomeans ‘rain’ in certain contexts), and so forth.
Note that we ignored general nominal affixes in the classification. For example, although Mulan Situtəmɔʔ ‘rain’ and Lhasa Tibetan ˉchaapa ‘rain’ contain a prefix (tə-) and a suffix (-pa), respectively, they
are simply classified as words derived from *r-məw and *tshyar, respectively.
We classify them as follows:[A] *tshyar. In this type, the arguments in our list that are derived from *tshyar exclusively mean
‘rain’ (labelled as “*tshyar : rain” in Map 1). Examples: Tielou Tibetan (WT)11 char, Daan Tibetan ʈʂhowa, Gochang tshɑŋ53, Anong tsʰɿ31, and so on.
[B] *r-məw. In this type, the argument is derived from *r-məw. We found three types of synchronic
meanings for this root: (i) ‘rain’ (*r-məw : rain), (ii) both ‘rain’ and ‘sky’ (*r-məw : rain/sky), and (iii)‘sky’ (*r-məw : sky). Examples: (i) Lisu mɯ33, (ii) Burmese mo:, (iii) Sani m̩11, and so forth.
[C] *g-nam. In this type, the argument is derived from *g-nam. We found four types of synchronic
meanings for this root: (i) ‘rain’ (*g-nam : rain), (ii) primarily ‘sky’ but also ‘rain’ in certain contexts(*g-nam : sky/rain), (iii) ‘sky’ (*g-nam : sky), and (iv) ‘sun’ (*g-nam : sun). Examples: (i) gSerpo
Tibetan ̊nɑ̃, (ii) Lithang Tibetan ˉɦnɑ̃, (iii) Chabcha Tibetan hnem, (iv) Buer Trung nəm31, and so on.
[D] *r/s/g-wa. In this type, the argument derived from *r/s/g-wa exclusively means ‘rain’(*r/s/g-wa : rain). Examples: Taoba Prinmi gui55, Nesu a55 xo55, Tiddim guaʔ, and so forth.
[E] *m/s-raŋ. In this type, the argument derived from *m/s-raŋ exclusively means ‘rain’ (*m/s-raŋ :rain). Examples: Jinghpaw məraŋ, Kadu həláŋ, and so on.
[F] *rəy. In this type, the argument derived from *rəy exclusively means ‘rain’ (*rəy : rain).
Examples: Mojiang Hani u31jɛ55, and so forth.
[G] Compound types. There are many varieties of compounds. Among them, the following fourtypes of compounds are found in a number of language varieties and are thus indicated in the map: (i)*r-məw+ *r/s/g-wa : rain, (ii) *tshyar+*s-nak : rain (*s-nak means ‘black’), (iii) *r-məw+*rəy : rain, and(iv) *r-məw+ : rain (compounds consist of *r-məw and other morphemes). Examples: (i) Xide Yi mɑ33hɑ33, (ii) bTsanlha rGyalrong tʃan44nak44, (iii) Mianchi Southern Qiang mʐì, (iv) Tujia mɯe35 tsie21, andso on.
3.2

Geographical distribution and geolinguistic analysis

Map 1 shows the geographic distribution of the abovementioned types. The etymologies are
distinguished by shapes: [A] a diagonal line, [B] triangles, [C] a circle, [D] rhombuses, [E] rectangles,and [F] an arrow. Moreover, colors indicate their meanings: blue indicates ‘rain,’ black indicates ‘sky,’
red indicates ‘sun,’ orange indicates ‘rain/sky,’ and green indicates ‘sky/rain.’
Below, we will provide a geolinguistic discussion on [A]-[F] and the compounds involving them.

8 In this section, the examples listed in Table 1 or collected in the authors’ fieldwork are cited without reference.
9 Both *r-məw and *r/s/g-wa involve the prefix *r-. According to Matisoff (2003: 127), the PTB prefix *r- is

attached to various roots including natural objects.
10 Lhagang Tibetan and Ganbao Situ have chu ‘water’ (PTB *tsyu ‘water’) and tɕhənak ‘rain’ (PTB *tsyu ‘water’ +*s-nak ‘black’) respectively. However, we omitted *tsyu from the geolinguistic analysis since it is found only inthese two varieties. Moreover, Lhagang Tibetan also uses char pa (< *tshyar).
11 Examples of some Tibetic varieties are shown in their equivalent Written Tibetan (WT) forms transcribed using
the Wylie style. In such cases, the name of each language variety is followed by “(WT).”

65

Legend:

Map 1: The argument of ‘it rains’ in Tibeto-Burman across the whole area66

3.2.1 *tshyar and *r-məw

Map 2: *tshyar and *r-məw as the argument of rainfall expressions[A] *tshyar and [B] *r-məw are the most broadly found forms from a geographical viewpoint, as shownin Map 2. However, the following facts suggest that [B] is considerably old while [A] is relatively new.
The distribution of [A] is mostly limited in the Tibetosphere (Tibetan cultural area), although it isless frequently found in the northeastern Tibetosphere, where [D] *g-nam is predominant in Tibetan
dialects. Moreover, in all such spots, the arguments of rainfall expressions derived from *tshyar can betraced back to Written Tibetan (WT) char (pa) and share a single meaning: ‘rain.’ The variation ofcompounds with *tshyar is also limited. The only pattern of such a compound is derived from WT charnag (*tshyar + *s-nak, that is, [G-ii] listed above), which is found in certain rGyalrongic varieties, suchas Miyaluo Situ rGyalrong tɕhanak ̚ (Nagano and Prins 2013), spoken in the northeastern periphery of
Tibetosphere.
[B] is found in the southern and eastern area of TB (except for Gyayu Manang mo2, a TGTM
[Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manang] variety spoken in Nepal), amongst multiple genetic
groups—Burmish, Loloish12, Qiangic, rGyalrongic, and Bai. There are at least three types of meanings:(i) ‘rain,’ (ii) ‘sky,’ and (iii) ‘rain/sky.’ The geographic distribution of the semantic variation is
illustrated in Map 3. (i) is distributed mainly in the central area with an exception of Manang, (ii) is
12 The forms in Burmish and Loloish can be traced back to Proto-Lolo-Burmese (PLB) : PLB *mo2 ‘sky’ (Bradley

1979: 324), PLB *məw2 ‘sky’ (Matisoff 2003: 183).

67

distributed mainly in the eastern area, and (iii) is found in Myanmar and the China-Myanmar border area,with the exception of Puxi sTodsde (a rGyalrongic variety spoken in Sichuan, China). Logically, we cantheorize that the words derived from *r-məw used to mean ‘sky,’ then came to be used in rainfall
expressions, and finally in part have come to mean ‘rain,’ even as an independent noun. This analysis
could be supported by the fact that *r-məw is also found as a constituent of compounds used as theargument of rainfall expressions, which are listed as [G-i, iii, iv] above. Most such compounds mean
‘rain.’ This suggests that the morpheme derived from *r-məw did not originally mean ‘rain’ on its own.

Map 3: Semantic variation of *r-məw as the argument of rainfall expressions683.2.2 *g-nam

Map 4: *g-nam and *tshyar as the argument of rainfall expressions
The spots of [C], that is, language varieties with an argument derived from *g-nam, are found in thenortheastern, central, and southwestern areas of TB. Compared to the distribution of *tshyar, as
illustrated in Map 4, we can find that the spots with *g-nam are divided into those north and south ofareas with *tshyar. This is a clear “ABA distribution,” which suggests that *g-nam is older than *tshyar.
Genetically, [C] is found in Tibetic, TGTM, and Nungic, although it is geographically concentrated in
the northeastern periphery and southern side of Tibetosphere. The meanings of [C] vary among ‘rain,’‘sky,’ ‘sun,’ and ‘sky/rain.’ Again, we can logically assume that *g-nam used to mean ‘sky,’ with latersemantic shifts toward either ‘rain’ or ‘sun.’13

13 Discussions on *g-nam with the meaning of ‘sun’ are found in Shirai et al. (2016) and Shirai (2017).

693.2.3 *r/s/g-wa, *m/s-raŋ, and *rəy

Map 5: *r/s/g-wa, *m/s-raŋ, and *rəy
Map 5 illustrates the geographical distribution of [D], [E], and [F], that is, language varieties with theargument derived from *r/s/g-wa, *m/s-raŋ, and *rəy, respectively.
[D] *r/s/g-wa shows a relatively broad distribution: eastern Nepal, India-Myanmar border, andsouthwestern China. Genetically, it is found in Loloish, Kuki-Chin, Qiangic, Naxi, Newar, and Lepcha.
Additionally, some of the Kiranti, Naga, and Northern Naga varieties also have a noun for ‘rain’ derived
from *r/s/g-wa, although we could not ascertain whether that noun is the argument of the rainfall
expressions. Semantically, all arguments derived from *r/s/g-wa in our list mean ‘rain.’ Moreover,compounds consisting of both *r-məw and *r/s/g-wa are found broadly in the southeastern and central
parts of the territory (cf. Map 3).
The distribution of [E] *m/s-raŋ is limited to northern Burma, northeastern India, and eastern
Bangladesh. Apparently, it divides the distribution of [D] *r/s/g-wa into an eastern and western side,
showing the so-called ABA distribution. Thus, we can assume that *m/s-raŋ is newer than *r/s/g-wa.
This is further supported by the fact that languages with *m/s-raŋ genetically belong to a single groupcalled “Sal”; thus, this is considered to be an innovation in this group, in contrast to languages with*r/s/g-wa, which include a wide range of TB groups. *m/s-raŋ is reflected with the meaning of ‘rain’ or‘sky’ (Burling 1983: 11, 20).14
Only certain dialects of Hani have arguments of rainfall expressions that have their diachronicsources in PTB *rəy ‘water,’15 suggesting a semantic shift from ‘water’ to ‘rain.’ This hypothesis is

14 Burling (1983) points out that the root raŋ independently means ‘sky’: “The syllable raŋ crops up in most ofthese languages as the first syllable of compounds that refer to celestial phenomena such as ‘sun’ and ‘rain.’ Whenrang occurs by itself, it seems always to have the meaning ‘sky.’” (Burling 1983: 11)
15 Written Burmese re ‘water’, PLB *re (Bradley 1979: 326)

70

supported by the fact that more varieties of Qiangic and Loloish have compounds that consist of *r-məw
and *rəy, for example, Taoping Southern Qiang ma31ʐi55 (Sun 1981) and Lahu mv53 ʑe31.

4Conclusion

In this study, we examined the semantic shifts found in the constituents of rainfall expressions in TB,
especially focusing on the nouns used as the arguments of rainfall expressions.
Most such nouns are classified into the following types:[A] the words for ‘rain’ derived from PTB *tshyar ‘rain(n)’ (#5902)[B] the words derived from *r-məw ‘sky / heavens / clouds’ (#2473) that mean either (i) ‘rain’; (ii)both ‘rain’ and ‘sky’; or (iii) ‘sky’[C] the words derived from *g-nam ‘sun / sky’ (#2484) that mean either (i) ‘rain’; (ii) primarily ‘sky’
but also ‘rain’ in certain contexts; or (iii) ‘sky’[D] the words for ‘rain’ derived from *r/s/g-wa ‘water / rain’ (#2080)[E] the words derived from *m/s-raŋ ‘rain’ (#3571), that mean either (i) ‘rain’ or (ii) both ‘rain’ and‘sky’[F] the words for ‘rain’ derived from *rəy ‘water / liquid / bodily fluid’ (#1013)[G] compounds
The geolinguistic analysis suggests the chronological order of them as shown in (6).
(6) Tentative chronological order among types [A]-[F][B] >[C] > [A][D] > [E]> [F]However, we found it difficult to analyze the chronological order of their semantic variations basedon their geographical distribution. For example, though the semantic variation of [B] shows a certain
areal tendency (Map 3), it does not suggest the relative time depth. We tentatively drew a conclusionfrom a logical perspective: the words derived from *r-məw once meant ‘sky,’ then came to be used in therainfall expressions, and finally, part of them have come to mean ‘rain,’ even as an independent noun.
The existence of compounds with morphemes derived from *r-məw supports this conclusion. We also
made a parallel analysis on the semantic shifts of *g-nam: it used to mean ‘sky,’ with later semantic
shifts toward ‘rain’ or ‘sun.’Abbreviations
DUR: durative; DWN: downward directional prefix; PROG: progressive; PLB: Proto-Lolo-Burmese;
PTB: Proto-Tibeto-Burman; TB: Tibeto-Burman; WT: Written Tibetan.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by KAKENHI Grants-in-Aid: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(A) (JP16H02722, headed by Y. Nagano), Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A) (JP17H04774,
headed by H. Suzuki), and Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellows (JP17J40087, headed by S.
Shirai). We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.jp) for English language editing.
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do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.321669, accessed on 2018-01-17>
Matisoff, J. A. 2003. Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction.
Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Mazaudon, M. 1994. Problèmes de comparatisme et de reconstruction dans quelques langues de la famille
tibéto-birmane. Thèse d'Etat, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Accessed via STEDT database.
Meche, S. L. and K. Kiryu (eds.). 2012. Meche–Nepali–English Dictionary. Jhapa, Nepal: The Council of the
Meche Language and Literature.
Michaud, A. 2015. Online Na-English-Chinese Dictionary (version 1.0). <http://himalco.huma-num.fr/
dictionaries/SelectDictionary.php?dict=na>. Paris: Projet HimalCo.
Nagano, Y. 1984. A Manang Glossary. Anthropological and Linguistic Studies of the Gandaki Area in Nepal II.
Monumenta Serindica, No. 12. Tokyo: ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Accessed via STEDT
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Ohno, T. [大野徹]. 2000. A Burmese (Myanmar) - Japanese Dictionary [ビルマ語(ミャンマー語）辞典].
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Pelkey, J. 2011. A Comparative Phula Lexicon: Phola, Phuza, Muji, Phowa, Azha. SIL Language and Culture
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Plaisier, H. 2007. A Grammar of Lepcha. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Post, M. W. 2007. A Grammar of Galo. Ph. D. Dissertation, La Trobe University.
Sawada, H. [澤田英夫]. 2004. A Tentative Etymological Word-list of Lhaovo (Maru) Language. In: Setsu
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Shirai, S., K. Kurabe, K. Iwasa, H. Suzuki, and S. Ebihara. 2016. Sun: Tibeto-Burman. In: M. Endo (ed.) Studies in
Asian Geolinguistics I, pp. 14-17. Tokyo: ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Shirai, S., K. Kurabe, H. Suzuki, K. Iwasa, and S. Ebihara. this volume. ‘It Rains’ in Tibeto-Burman.
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Suzuki, H. this volume. Remarks on ‘Rain’ in Tibetans’ Languages in Lithang County.
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Institute of Linguistics and Institute of Nepal Studies, Tribhuvan University. Accessed via STEDT database.
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Sino-Tibetan Languages. 2nd ed., pp. 3-39. London/New York: Routledge.
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Series 8. Berkeley: STEDT. Accessed via STEDT database.
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Watters, D. E. 2002. A Grammar of Kham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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search/>, accessed on 2018-02-21.

Table1: The argument of ‘it rains’ in Tibeto-Burman16
Group

Language(Place)

Form

*PTB

Meaning

Data source

North Assam

Galo (Siang)

ɲidóo

?

‘rain’

Post 2007

Kuki-Chin

Tiddim (Tedim)guaʔ

*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

K. Otsuka p.c.

Mizo (Aizawl)

rùah*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

VanBik 2009via STEDT

16 This table lists representative arguments of rainfall expressions in each group of TB, as far as possible. The

grouping follows STEDT. For the groups wherein we have not been able to find rain expressions, a word for ‘rain’
is listed instead, in gray-colored rows.

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Naga

Ao
(Mokokchung)tsəŋ¹lu¹? +*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

Bruhn 2014 via
STEDT

Meithei

Meithei(Manipur)chumthang?+*twaŋ17‘rain/rainbow’

Marrison 1967

Mikir

Mikir
(KarbiAnglong)arve*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

Marrison 1967

Bodo-Garo

Meche (Jhapa)

noka

?

‘rain’

Meche & Kiryu
2012

Northern Naga

Nocte (Tirap)

rangpat*m/s-raŋ+ ?

‘rain’

Marrison 1967

Konyak(Sibsagar)

wai*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

Marrison 1967

Jinghpaw(Myitkyina)məraŋ*m/s-raŋ

‘rain’

Maran 1978

Duleng(Machanbaw)məlaŋ*m/s-raŋ

‘rain’

Kurabe(fieldnotes)

Kadu (Banmauk)həláŋ*m/s-raŋ

‘rain/sky’Huziwara 2013

Western Himalayish

KanauriValley)tī / lăgĕt tī /lăgĕts tī?

‘rain’

Bailey 1910

Tibetic

Tibetan(Loshod)ˉtɕha: pa*tshyar‘rain’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Tibetan (gSerpo)̊nɑ
̃

*g-nam‘rain’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Tibetan(Lithang)ˉɦnɑ̃*g-nam‘sky/rain’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Tibetan(Chabcha)hnem*g-nam‘sky’

S. Ebihara p.c.

Tibetan(Lhagang)

ˉtɕhɯ

*tsyu

‘water’Suzuki(fieldnotes)

so*r/s/g-wa (?)‘rain’

Plaisier 2007

W.
Tamang(Sahu)'nam*g-nam‘rain’

Taylor 1972 via
STEDT

Manang (Gyayu)

mo2*r-məw‘rain’

Nagano 1984
via STEDT

Newar

Newar
(Kathmandu)wā*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

I. Matsuse p.c.

KirantiAthpare(Dhankuṭā)wet*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

Ebert 1997 via
STEDT

Kham-MagarChepang

TakaleKham(Rukum)nəm*g-nam‘sky’

Watters 2002

Mru: n.d.
SalJingpho-Luish

Tibeto-Kanauri

LepchaTGTM(Sătlăj

Lepcha(Kalimpong/Sikkim)

17 PTB *twaŋ ‘rainbow’ (#6002)

74Qiang-rGyalrong
QiangicrGyalrongic

NungicTujia

nDrapa(Zhongni)

mokku3*r-məw+*r/s/gwa‘rain’

Shirai(fieldnotes)

Prinmi (Taoba)

gui55*r/s/g-wa‘rain’Lu 2001

S.
Qiang(Mianchi)mʐì*r-məw+*rəy‘rain’

Evans 2001

Gochang (Shiji)tshɑŋ53*tshyar‘rain’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Darmdo Minyag(Shade)mə55*g-nam‘sky’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Geshitsa (Jiaju)məʕ55*r-məw‘rain’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Zbu (Ribu)

təɾzi

?

‘rain’

Nagano & Prins
eds. 2013bTsanlha rGyalrong(Qiaoqi)tʃan44nak44*tshyar+*s-nak‘rain’

Shirai(fieldnotes)

sTodsde (Puxi)mo*r-məw‘rain/sky’

Nagano & Prins
eds. 2013

Zbu (Rongan)təmu*r-məw‘sky’

Nagano & Prins
eds. 2013

Rawang (Putao)

shø?

‘rain’

LaPolla&Sangdong 2015

Anong
(Mugujia)tsʰɿ31*tshyar‘rain’

Sun & Liu 2009

Trung (Buer)nəm31*g-nam‘sun’

L. Qin p.c.

Tujia (Pojiao)mɯe35 tsie21*r-məw+?

‘rain’

Huang ed.1992

Lhaovo(Tsawlaw)mukL*r-məw‘rain/sky’

Sawada 2004

Burmese(Yangon)mo:*r-məw‘rain/sky’Ohno 2000

Yi (Xide)mɑ33 hɑ33*r-məw+*r/s/gwa‘rain’

Huang ed. 1992,
K. Iwasa p.c.

Nesu
(Yuanjiang)

a55 xo55*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

Chen 2010, K.
Iwasa p.c.

Lipo (Huaping)a55 mɯ21*r-məw‘sky’

Chen 2010, K.
Iwasa p.c.

Lisu (Kangpu)mɯ33*r-məw‘rain’

Suzuki(fieldnotes)

Lahu (Lancang)

mv53 ʑe31*r-məw+*r/s/gwa‘rain’

Huang ed. 1992

Jinuo (Youle)mi33tha55*r-məw+ ?

‘rain/weather’Hayashi 2009

BurmishLoloishN. Loloish

C. Loloish

S. Loloish

11

Sani (Lunan)m̩*r-məw‘sky’

K. Iwasa p.c.

Hani (Mojiang)

u31jɛ55*rəy‘rain’

Huang ed. 1992,
K. Iwasa p.c.

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Phola (Wadie)mɔ31 xi55*r-məw+*r/s/gwa (?)‘rain’

Pelkey 2011

Azha (Binglie)a̠45 xɔ21*r/s/g-wa (?)‘rain’

Pelkey 2011

Naxi

Na (Yongning)hi˩*r/s/g-wa‘rain’

Michaud 2015

Karenic

Geba (Leiktho)

w̥ɛ̄

?

‘rain’

Kato 2008

Pwo (Hpa-an)chə?

‘thing’

A. Kato p.c.

Bai (Dali)v33*r-məw‘rain’

Wang 2008

SE. Loloish

Bai
Legend? : The corresponding PTB form is unknown; C. : Central; N. : Northern; n.d. : no data; S. : Southern; SE. :Southeastern; W. : Western.
- Gray rows indicate that it is uncertain whether it is used as the argument of the expression ‘It rains.’ The forms
in such rows are nouns that mean ‘rain’ taken from secondary sources.

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An Overview of Typological Studies on ‘it rains’
Satoko Shirai
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science/University of Tsukuba

Abstract
In this study, I discuss the typological classification of expressions that convey the meaning ‘itrains’ or similar rainfall expressions. First, I survey previous studies that mention meteorologicalexpressions in various languages that convey this meaning. Then, I review Eriksen et al.’s (2010)
study on the classification of precipitation encodings. Finally, I propose a tentative classificationof these expressions in terms of the types of argument and predicate: (A) argument type; (B)argument-predicate type, which consists of (B-i) cognate type; (B-ii) synonymic type; (B-iii)
split type; and (C) predicate type.

1

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to provide introductory information that could be useful in the geolinguistic
study of ‘it rains’ in Asia. I will survey previous linguistic studies of weather/meteorologicalexpressions, in particular expressions meaning ‘it rains.’
The linguistic expressions of rain phenomena vary between languages; this is because rain is soessential to our life, while at the same time its exact process and substantial participants are extremely
difficult to grasp. This has been pointed out in many previous studies, including Ruwet (1986):“[Meteorological phenomena such as rainfall] are beyond our control and—apart from what we learn
from the science of physics—their causes are hidden from us.” (p. 202)“[I]t is extremely difficult for us to distinguish what would in our experience [of meteorologicalphenomena] correspond to a predicate on the one hand, and an argument (or several arguments) on
the other.” (ibid.)
The ‘impersonal verb’ [非人称動詞] in The Sanseido Encyclopaedia of Lingistics (Vol.6, Kamei etal. eds. 1996) also briefly mentions the correspondence between linguistic expressions and rain
phenomena:
Expressions such as it rains just mean the existence of rain phenomena. However, since no sentence
can exactly express the existence of such phenomena only, we need to borrow the form of a normal
predication [which consists of a subject and predicate]. [It rains. などの表出は、降雨現象についての存在判断を述べているだけであるが、存在判断だけを表す文がないので、普通の賓述判断の表出の形を借りて表わす外はない] (Kamei et al. eds. 1996: 1110)
The [Japanese] expression ame=ga furu [rain=SBJ fall] is also a pro forma construction that does not
fit the fact. It does not mean that there is substantial ‘rain’ and it falls but just expresses rain
phenomena. [雨ガ降ルという表現も事実にそぐわない形式的な構文である。というのは、これも降雨現象を述べているだけで、雨というものがあって、それが降るのではない] (ibid.)
Rain is a typical meteorological phenomenon. There are a number of linguistic studies on
meteorological expressions including ‘it rains,’ although rainfall by itself is rarely the main topic oftypological studies.

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2Studies on meteorological expressions in particular contexts

A number of previous studies briefly mention meteorological expressions including ‘it rains’ in thecontext of specific languages or specific linguistic theories. I will briefly survey such studies below.
2.1

Studies on meteorological expressions in specific languages/language groups

Impersonal constructions, including meteorological expressions, have attracted linguists’ attention,
particularly in languages with an elaborate argument structure and person-agreement system, such as
Latin.
Bauer (2000: 93-150) conducted a study on impersonal verbs in Indo-European languages, and, bycontrasting them with some weather expressions in non-Indo-European languages, she pointed out thesignificance of weather verbs in Indo-European languages as follows:In addition to etymological similarities, impersonal weather verbs in Indo-European share syntactic
characteristics as well: they typically do not feature argument structure. In this respect, they also
differ from the other impersonal verbs in Indo-European. (Bauer 2000: 100)
The impersonal construction was first studied in the context of Indo-European languages, and laterthe discussion was extended to non-Indo-European languages (Siewierska 2008, etc.). Thus, few
linguistic studies on meteorological expressions in Asian languages have been conducted in the lastcentury.1
However, since typological studies (such as Aikhenvald et al. eds. 2001 and Siewierska 2008)
extended the notion of impersonality to non-Indo-European languages, some studies have been
conducted in such contexts: e.g., Wang (2016) and Wu and Siewierska (2012) on Chinese impersonal
constructions; Hashimoto (2016) on Mongolian impersonal constructions; and Salo (2011) on
meteorological expressions in Uralic languages.
2.2

Studies on meteorological expressions in specific linguistic theories

Several studies have examined meteorological expressions in the context of impersonal constructions;for example, Ruwet (1986, 1989) and Malchukov and Ogawa (2011). In addition, we can find discussion
on meteorological expressions in such papers as Croft (1991: 141-142) on lexical semantics, Keenan(1987: 103) on subject-ness, and Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 150) on argument structure.
Here, I introduce some points from these studies.
Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 150) labelled the argument structure of weather verbs atransitive, thatis, zero-valency, since they take no arguments semantically.2
Croft (1991: 141-142) briefly discusses meteorological expressions in terms of lexical semantics andprovides a simple vision: “[T]here exists typological variation in the expression of weather events
between nounlike and verblike constructions (or unmarked forms that are both nominal and verbal)...”(i) nounlike constructions: e.g., Russian idët dožd’ (go.3SG rain); Lakhota wa-pa (snow-fall) ‘it issnowing’; Quiché š-ok aq̓ap̓ (PAST-come dew) ‘the dew has come [evening greeting]’ (“in allthese cases, the phrase itself uses a (processual) verb of motion in combination with a noun”)(ii) verblike constructions: e.g., Classical Greek hýei (rain.3sg)(iii) unmarked forms that are both nominal and verbal: English rain (v./n.), Lakhota p̓o ‘fog/befoggy’; Spanish llov- ‘rain (v.)’ lluv-i- ‘rain (n.)’

1 Aside from the context of impersonality, some studies mention the Chinese expression xià yǔ (fall rain): e.g., as“empty subject” in many grammars (Zhu 1982, etc.) and in the context of word order (LaPolla 1995).
2 Note that Eriksen et al. (2010 : 573) mentions that they use the term “atransitive” in a different sense ofsyntactically zero-valency.

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Croft’s attention on verb-like vs. noun-like types appears to be significant in typological studies.
Eriksen et al. (2010), who mainly investigate meteorological expressions, also employ this as the core of
their analysis (See 3.3).

3Typological studies on meteorological expressions

In this section, I will discuss three previous studies that examined meteorological expressions in detail. I
will also discuss how we can make use of these studies in our project.
3.1

Ruwet (1986, 1989)

Ruwet (1986, 1989) is probably one of the earliest studies on meteorological expressions that involves
non-Indo-European languages in the target. Ruwet (1986: 203-204) classifies the structural patterns that
languages employ to express rain phenomena:(i) The semantic content can be concentrated within the predicate, the subject being null or
expletive.
e.g. Italian piove; French il pleut.
(ii) Purely nominal sentences; something like thunder!
(iii) A lexical subject and an (almost) empty verb.
e.g., Basque urra da (rain is); Russian idet dožd (goes rain)(iv) The verb duplicates the semantic content of the subject.
e.g., Japanese ame=ga furu (rain fall); German der Wind weht (the wind blows)(v) The reduplication, in the verb, of the root of the subject noun. (an extreme case of (iv).)
e.g., French le tonnere tonne (the thunder thunders); Turkish yamur yayur (rain rains).
(vi) Analytical representation of the phenomena; something like water is descending from the sky.
Ruwet (1986: 204-205) analyses Japanese ame ga furu as a “beautiful case of (iv).” I will discuss
this later.
3.2

Malchukov and Ogawa (2011)

The meteorological construction has attracted attention as a typical impersonal construction: i.e.,
impersonal constructions with non-referential subjects. Malchukov and Ogawa (2011) provide atypological analysis of such constructions. Their analysis of meteorological constructions issummarized in Table 1. One of the main interests here is which constituent carries the lexical meaning of‘rain (n/v/other?).’ The types of non-lexical constituent are also notable.
Table 1: Types of constituents (cf. Malchukov and Ogawa 2011: 24-27).
Types of constituent
Examples that mean ‘it rains.’
weather verb
zero subject
Guaraní: O-ki. (3SG-rain(v.))(lexical)dummy subject
English: It rains.
intermediate type
Arabic: ɨd-dunya tɨ-shti. (the-worldsubject*1
3SG.MS-rain(v.))
weather noun
dummy (auxiliary) verb*2
Russian: Dožd’ idët. (rain goes)(lexical)cognate construction
Even: Udan udana-n. (rain(n) rain(v)-AOR.3SG)
regular subject-predicate structure(English: The sun shines.)*1 A construction between a dummy and lexical subject: a nominal meaning ‘world,’ ‘weather,’ or ‘sky’
appears as a formal subject (Malchukov & Ogawa 2011:26).
*2 The Japanese example Ame ga furu is classified as a “dummy (auxiliary) verb construction.”

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3.3

Eriksen et al. (2010)

Eriksen et al. (2010) conducted a comprehensive typological study on meteorological expressions basedon the data from various languages. Their paper also includes an introduction that surveys previous
studies on meteorological expressions.
They divide meteorological expressions into three major types based on the element primarily
responsible for coding weather: (i) predicate type, (ii) argument type, and (iii) argument-predicate type
(Eriksen et al. 2010: 571). These three types are further divided into subtypes as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Classification of meteorological expressions in Eriksen et al. (2010: 571)
Eriksen et al. (2010) also include a section that focuses on precipitation encoding (abbreviated as
p-encoding) (588-594); that is, linguistic encoding patterns that express precipitation events such as
rainfall or snowfall. According to them, this can be summarized as in Figure 2, where “argumentp-encoding and predicate p-encoding are presented as extreme oppositions” and where “generalizedp-encoding and argument-predicate p-encoding each constitute their own type of intermediate position.”

Figure 2: The scalar typology of p-encoding (Eriksen et al. 2010: 593)
Below, I will cite examples of the encoding patterns in Figure 2 from Eriksen et al. (2010: 588-594)
with brief expressions of the type in Figure 1 which corresponds to each p-encoding pattern.

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3.3.1 Argument p-encoding
The argument type is subdivided into three subtypes as in Figure 1. However, I will focus on theintransitive argument type in this section, since all examples of the argument p-encoding pattern from
Eriksen et al. (2010: 589) are of the intransitive type. In addition, according to Eriksen et al. (2010), “theintransitive argument type is attested in languages all over the globe” (ibid. 581), while the transitive
type (both predicate and argument) is rare (ibid. 583).
In the intransitive argument type, the argument of the construction refers to the denoted
meteorological event, while the presence of the predicate is grammatically required. In some cases, theverbs (e.g., ‘happen’ or ‘come’) have little semantic content of their own, and function as the expressionof features such as aspect, mood, or tense. Grammatically, the noun of the intransitive argument type isbest regarded as the subject in many languages. However, there are languages in which the only
syntactic argument present is best regarded as an object due to its morpho-syntactic features.
(1) Russian (Eriksen et al. 2010: 589)
idet
sneg
go.3SG.PRES snow
‘It is snowing.’
In (1), a precipitation event is expressed by an argument type, where the argument sneg ‘snow’ isresponsible for expressing the event. The “semantically bleached” supportive verb (Eriksen et al. 2010:589) idet (the third person present form of iditi ‘go’) is involved to form a sentence.
The following languages are mentioned as having this type of encoding for precipitation events in
Eriksen et al. (2010: 588-9): Russian, Albanian, Ainu, Khalkha Mongolian, Persian, Japanese, Korean,
Lhasa Tibetan, and Lezgian. They point out that this encoding is frequent in Eurasian languages.
3.3.2 Generalized p-encoding
The generalized type is not involved in Figure 1. In the general discussion on the argument-predicate
type (ibid. 583-6), examples of this type are included in the split type, as a subtype of theargument-predicate type (See Figure 1). In the split argument-predicate type, the argument and predicate“together describe the meteorological event, but each element encodes a different facet of the event”(ibid. 584). In the generalized p-encoding, “[the] supportive verb [like ‘go’ in Russian] has developed
one step further. Due to its association with precipitation, the verb has seemingly acquired ‘toprecipitate’ as one of its meanings, maybe even the only meaning, and it can also alone encode the mostunmarked type of precipitation, namely rain. If a more marked type of precipitation is to be expressed,
an argument occurs” (ibid. 589).
(2) Finnish (Eriksen et al. 2010: 589)
sataa
(vet-tä) /lun-ta
rain.3SG.PRES (water-PART) /snow-PART‘It is raining/snowing.’
The verb sataa in (2) originally meant ‘to fall’ in earlier Finnish. In modern Finnish, however, theoriginal meaning has been lost and sataa can only mean ‘to rain,’ or ‘to precipitate’ (Eriksen et al. 2010:589-590).
The following languages are mentioned as having this type of encoding for precipitation events in
Eriksen et al. (2010: 589-590): Finnish, Hungarian, Swahili, Polish, and Turkish (probably also
Romanian and Northern Akhvakh, which are exemplified in the discussion on the split type (ibid. 585)).
In my opinion, however, generalized p-encoding does not seem like a good classification. I will
discuss this later.

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3.3.3 Argument-predicate p-encoding
Eriksen et al. (2010: 583-6), in their general discussion on the argument-predicate type, distinguish two
subtypes: the cognate type and split type. All examples of argument-predicate p-encoding are of the
cognate type: the argument and predicate express more or less the same information. In (3), theargument and predicate are clearly of the same origin, and are phonologically identical. In (4), the twoelements are only semantically similar and seem to express the same information, although, formally,
their resemblance is not as obvious.
(3) Mwotlap (Eriksen et al. 2010: 592)
na-smalme-smalART-rain
PFV-rain‘It is raining.’(4) Ma’di (Eriksen et al. 2010: 584)
éjí
ō-dï
rá
rain 3-rain
AFF‘It did rain’
The following languages are mentioned as having this type of encoding for precipitation events in
Eriksen et al. (2010: 583-4, 591-2): Udihe, Ma’di, North Vanuatu languages (Mwotlap, Bislama, Araki
and Hpi), and Latvian.
However, I would like to suggest distinguishing the type in which the argument and predicate arephonologically different as in (4) from the “genuine” cognate type as in (3). I will discuss this later.
3.3.4 Predicate p-encoding“[Meteorological expressions] in which a predicate is responsible for denoting the given meteorologicalevent, are viewed in this paper as instances of the predicate type. [...] If a syntactic argument occurs, itdoes not refer to the weather phenomena itself, but has other (grammatically required) functions.”(Eriksen et al. 2010: 572).
(5) North Saami (Eriksen et al. 2010: 592)
arvá
rain.3SG‘It is raining.’
Eriksen et al. (2010: 592-3) mention that this type of p-encoding is found in the following language
groups: a few restricted subfamilies of European languages—Germanic, Romance, and Saami; andNorth American Indian languages such as Choctaw and Kwaza.

4

Discussion

In this section, I will discuss some problems found in the classifications of previous studies and suggest
alternative classifications. In general, intermediate types tend to involve problems.
4.1

Generalized p-encoding

The generalized p-encoding (Eriksen et al. 2010: 589-591) does not seem a good classification, at leastin respect of the following two points: [i] The difference between the argument p-encoding andgeneralized p-encoding is not clear-cut. [ii] It is not purely typological, since it requires a change fromthe earlier meaning of the “generalized” predicate. In addition, [iii] it can be divided into two existingtypes, since they recognize language-internal variation (ibid. 566).
Regarding point [i], Eriksen et al. (2010: 591) also point out the existence of an intermediate type
between argument p-encoding and generalized p-encoding: In the example of Turkish, (6), thegeneralized verb yağmak ‘rain (v.), precipitate’ rarely drops its argument when coding rain.

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(6) Turkish (Eriksen et al. 2010: 591)
yağmur / ka / dolu
yağ-iyor.
rain / snow / hailrain-PROG.PRES.3SG‘It is raining/snowing/hailing.’
We can recall Japanese expressions with the verb furu as another example. It is worth noting herethat Ruwet (1986: 204-205) (See 3.1) points out its characteristics as follows:“Apart from more or less metaphorical extensions, the subjects of furu are restricted to ame (rain)
and yuki (snow); the content of furu covers what is common to a rainfall and snowfall.”For example, “ishi ga furu would be appropriate in the case of a battle in which the armies use
stones as projectiles or, even better, in the case of a volcanic eruption; ishi ga furu would betranslated into French as il pleut des pierres (it’s raining stones).”
However, the Japanese expression ame ga furu is classified into the argument type. It is difficult tomeasure the degree of “generalization” in different languages. The criteria for not classifying Japanese
as generalized p-encoding are not clear.
Regarding point [ii], Eriksen et al. (2010: 589-590) refer to earlier Finnish, which has the argumentp-encoding with the verb that means ‘fall,’ to classify modern Finnish into this type. If this type assumes
such a semantic shift, it is at least difficult to use in our project of Asian geolinguistics.
According to point [iii], Finnish may have both the predicate p-encoding and argument-predicate
p-encoding, while Turkish may have both the split type and cognate type of the argument-predicate
p-encoding. Thus, I suggest the following classification:a) If the expression does not involve the argument, such as sataa (rain.3SG.PRES) ‘it is raining’ in(2), it comprises predicate p-encoding.
b) If the expression involves an argument that supports expression of the event, or “encodes adifferent face of the event” (Eriksen et al. 2010: 584), such as sataa vet-tä(rain/precipitate.3SG.PRES water-PART) ‘it is raining’ in (2), it comprises split argument-predicate
p-encoding.
c) If both argument and predicate equally encode the event and have apparently identical forms, suchas yağmur yağ-iyor (rain rain-PROG.PRES.3SG) ‘it is raining’ in (6), it comprises cognate
argument-predicate p-encoding.
4.2

Synonymic argument-predicate type

The cognate argument-predicate type in Eriksen et al. (2010: 583-584) does not require that theargument and predicate are really cognate. Therefore, expressions in which the argument and predicate
are not cognate but equally express the event (e.g., (4)) are involved in this type. This is probably
because only a few such expressions could be found. However, in our project, we found a number ofsuch expressions in Tibeto-Burman languages (Shirai et al., this volume):(7) Jinghpaw (Maran 1978: 837, compiled by Keita Kurabe)
məraŋ
thùʔ
rain(n.)rain(v.)‘It rains.’(8) Jinuo (Hayashi 2009: 123)
mi33tha55
xo42rain(n.)/weather rain(v.)‘It rains.’

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Both the argument məraŋ ‘rain (n.)’ and predicate thùʔ ‘rain (v.)’ in (7) are used exclusively for rain
phenomena. In (8), the primary meaning of the argument mi33tha55 is ‘rain(n.),’ although it may mean
‘weather’ in other contexts; The verb xo42- ‘rain (v.)’ is used exclusively for rain phenomena, thus it
cannot be used even for other precipitation events such as snowfall (Norihiko Hayashi p.c.).
It is misleading if we label expressions like (4), (7), and (8) as the “cognate” type. Therefore, I
suggest another subtype of the argument-predicate type: the synonymous type.

5

Conclusion

I tentatively use the following scale to classify the expression ‘it rains’ in terms of the types of argument
and predicate. The scale is revised from that of Eriksen et al. (2010: 593, see also Figure 2 above).
Another point of classification would be the constituent order, although I tentatively regard it as a
subdivision of each of the types shown in Table 2.
Table 2: The tentative classification of the expression ‘it rains’Argument typerain (n.) + falls (supportive v.)
Argument-predicate type
Cognate typerain (n.) + rains (v.)
Synonymic type
A (‘rain (n.)’) + B (‘rain (v.)’)
Split typewaterdrops (n.) + precipitates (v.)
Predicate type(it) (empty/expletive n.) + rains (v.)

Abbreviations
3: third person; AFF: affirmative; ART: article; n.: noun; PART: partitive; PFV: perfective; PRES:
present; PROG: progressive; SBJ: subject; SG: singular; v.: verb.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by KAKENHI, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (JP17J40087). I would liketo thank Editage (www.editage.jp) for English-language editing.
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Contributors
Shiho EBIHARA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Mitsuaki ENDO, Aoyama Gakuin University
Mika FUKAZAWA, The Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture
Kazue IWASA, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
Ray IWATA, Komatsu University
Shinsuke KISHIE, Tokushima University
Mika KONDO, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Keita KURABE, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Ryo MATSUMOTO, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies
Youichi NAGATO, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Yoshio SAITÔ, Tokyo Gakugei University
Yukako SAKOGUCHI, Shikoku University
Nanami SHIOKAWA, Tokushima University
Satoko SHIRAI, JSPS / University of Tsukuba
Hidetoshi SHIRAISHI, Sapporo Gakuin University
Fumiki SUZUKI, Nanzan University
Hiroyuki SUZUKI, University of Oslo / National Museum of Ethnology
Yoshihisa TAGUCHI, Chiba University
Atsuko UTSUMI, Meisei University
Noboru YOSHIOKA, National Museum of Ethnology

Acknowledgements
This volume is a part of the results of the project on “Studies in Asian
Geolinguistics” 2015–2017 at the ILCAA, TUFS. The articles are partially supported
by

JSPS

Grants-in-Aid

for

Scientific

Research

JP16J01055, JP16K16820, JP17J40087, respectively.

(KAKENHI)

JP15K02525,