Alexander Coupe | Nanyang Technological University (original) (raw)

Books by Alexander Coupe

The aim of this work is to provide a comprehensive description of the phonetic and phonological f... more The aim of this work is to provide a comprehensive description of the phonetic and phonological features of Ao, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the hill state of Nagaland, north-east India. The description is primarily based upon the data of three native speakers, and the language under study is a variety of the Mongsen dialect spoken in Waromung village, situated in the Mokokchung district.

This is the first extensive acoustic description of a language belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Naga branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. The study describes the phonotactic structure, phonology, articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and tone system of the Mongsen dialect of Ao, illustrating how instrumental techniques can be used to corroborate and quantify the auditory analysis of an undescribed language. Methodology is described in detail and the findings are correlated with what is known cross-linguistically about aspects of the language being investigated.

A Grammar of Mongsen Ao, the result of the author’s fieldwork over a ten-year period, presents th... more A Grammar of Mongsen Ao, the result of the author’s fieldwork over a ten-year period, presents the first comprehensive grammatical description of a language spoken in Nagaland, north-east India.

The grammatical analysis documents all the functional domains of the language and includes four glossed and translated texts, the latter being of interest to anthropologists studying folklore. Mongsen Ao is a highly agglutinating, mostly suffixing language with predominantly dependent-marking characteristics. Its grammar demonstrates a number of typologically interesting features that are described in detail in the book. Among these is an unusual case marking system in which grammatical marking is motivated by semantic and pragmatic factors, and a rich verbal morphology that produces elaborate sequences of agglutinative suffixes. Grammaticalisation processes are also discussed where relevant, thereby extending the appeal of the book to linguists with interests in grammaticalisation theory.

This book will be of value to any linguist seeking to clarify genetic relationships within the Tibeto-Burman family, and it will serve more broadly as a reference grammar for typologists interested in the typological features of a Tibeto-Burman language of north-east India.

Papers by Alexander Coupe

Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2023

This article reports on some outcomes of language contact and linguistic convergence involving Ti... more This article reports on some outcomes of language contact and linguistic convergence involving Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages in the Northeast Indian state of Nagaland. The major focus falls on Nagamese, a lingua franca of the region that is undergoing a change in its morphological alignment typology. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that cognitive schemas are most likely responsible for the spread of replicated case marking patterns from local Tibeto-Burman languages to Nagamese, and that this has triggered a change in the morphological alignment of Nagamese over the past fifty years. The data presented in the paper are significant for demonstrating how language contact and the replication of cognitive schemas can be plausible drivers of grammatical change, even for something as fundamental to the syntax of a language as its morphosyntactic alignment.

Critical conversations in Naga society, edited by Yanthan, Yanbeni and Hewasa Lorin Khing, 2022

This chapter discusses linguistic diversity, multilingualism and the consequences of intensive la... more This chapter discusses linguistic diversity, multilingualism and the consequences of intensive language contact situations in Nagaland, taking into account the historical factors that have contributed to an extremely high number of languages being spoken in this small northeastern state of India. The paper considers the origins of Sino-Tibetan and the impact of the agricultural revolution in northern China, as this has had a major influence on the geographical dispersal of the language family and resulting language contact scenarios. A number of reasons are proposed for why Nagaland is so linguistically diverse, taking into account its location in one of the planet’s biological hotspots, and the consequences of cultural practices such head-hunting minimising inter-village communication. The paper concludes with some examples of language convergence demonstrating the emergence of novel morphosyntactic structures.

Asian Journal of Sociological Research, 2021

The creation and dissemination of literacy materials supports the vitality of vulnerable language... more The creation and dissemination of literacy materials supports the vitality of vulnerable languages and is essential to the survival of more than half of the world’s languages that lack writing systems and literacy materials entirely. This paper evaluates an interdisciplinary collaborative project titled Visualizing Languages, focusing on four communities in South and Southeast Asia for whom literacy materials were developed within a university art educational program. The project involved a team of linguists, student illustrators, an artist mentor, and community members. This interdisciplinary team collaborated with native speakers to create bilingual children’s books representing important traditional narratives, with each story accompanied by rich illustrations incorporating the cultural heritage of the community. Our aim here is to describe and evaluate the workflow, in the hope that it might serve as a model for other teams considering a similar approach to preserving intangible cultural heritage.

Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Oct 2011

The innovative use of an oblique relational morpheme to disambiguate semantic roles or to signal ... more The innovative use of an oblique relational morpheme to disambiguate semantic roles or to signal the increased agency of the referent of a core argument can result in the reanalysis of a case marker that is employed in a new, purely abstract function of marking a core grammatical function. The extent to which such marking of a core argument becomes obligatory in the grammar of a language has implications for the development of case alignment patterns.

Language and Linguistics, Oct 2013

Ao demonstrates some typologically intriguing characteristics that shed light on the diachronic d... more Ao demonstrates some typologically intriguing characteristics that shed light on the diachronic development of its tense marking morphology. The paper proposes that the language originally had a binary mood system contrasting a zero-marked realis with an overtly marked irrealis mood. It then extended the functions of two of its nominalizers to encoding temporal distinctions, and the old zero-marked realis mood became integrated into the newly grammaticalized system of temporal deixis as the zero-marked past tense category. The irrealis marker occurs in paradigmatic opposition with these newly grammaticalized tense markers, but continues to encode an independent category of mood that is not constrained to any particular temporal deictic setting. Drawing on additional evidence from other languages, it will be demonstrated that nominalizing morphology turns out to be a rather commonly exploited source for the grammaticalization of tense markers.

Linguistics of the Tibet-Burman Area, 2020

This paper presents a comprehensive phonetic and phonological description of Northern Sangtam, an... more This paper presents a comprehensive phonetic and phonological description of Northern Sangtam, an essentially undescribed Tibeto-Burman language of central Nagaland belonging to the Aoic subgroup. It is a noteworthy language from a number of phonological perspectives, not least because its phoneme inventory contains two of the world's rarest phonemes: a pre-stopped bilabial trill, and a doubly-articulated labial-coronal nasal. These unique segments are described in detail, and an attempt is made to determine how they might have developed their phonemic status. The tone system is also of interest, as it demonstrates evidence of debuccalization resulting in the development of a new high tone. Following a systematic description of the syllable and word structure, the tone system, and the segmental phonology, some observed age-related differences in the phoneme inventory are discussed. The paper is linked to an online repository containing the audiovisual data and transcribed word lists of approximately 900 items, based on the recorded utterances of eight speakers.

The handbook of Asian Englishes, edited by Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha & Andy Kirkpatrick, 2020

This chapter describes the linguistic situation that existed in South Asia and Southeast Asia pri... more This chapter describes the linguistic situation that existed in South Asia and Southeast Asia prior to the European colonial expansion and the gradual adoption of English as an important lingua franca in the region. Drawing on geographical, archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence, our aims are to establish how South Asia and Southeast Asia were first populated, to identify what languages were used by various ethnic groups inhabiting the region prior to the arrival of European traders and then missionaries in the 16th century, to recognize historical evidence of language contact in the modern-day languages spoken in this region, and to summarize explanations for the types of borrowing and convergence that emerged in that contact.

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Canberra: ASSTA. ISBN 1 876346 17 5, 1998

The tonemes of the Waromung Mongsen dialect of Ao, a Tibeto-Burman of northeast India, are descri... more The tonemes of the Waromung Mongsen dialect of Ao, a Tibeto-Burman of northeast India, are described with respect to their auditory and acoustic features. Even though rather small FO differences are found to separate each contrasting toneme, the results of a perception test nevertheless demonstrate that these small differences are perceptually salient to a native speaker and are readily identifiable.

Linguistic Discovery, 2017

This paper discusses the diachronic development of non-structural case marking in Tibeto-Burman a... more This paper discusses the diachronic development of non-structural case marking in Tibeto-Burman and in computer simulations of language evolution. It is shown how case marking is initially motivated by the pragmatic need to disambiguate between two core arguments, but eventually may develop flagging functions that even extend into the intransitive domain. Also, it is shown how different types of case-marking systems may emerge from various underlying disambiguation strategies.

This chapter describes grammaticalization patterns in a broad selection of languages of South Asi... more This chapter describes grammaticalization patterns in a broad selection of languages of South Asia, a multilingual region of the world known to constitute a linguistic area in which unrelated languages demonstrate evidence of linguistic convergence. In addition to presenting representative examples of grammaticalization, the chapter specifically considers whether widely recurring patterns in unrelated languages could be induced by language contact. The investigation finds robust evidence for the transfer of seemingly identical cognitive schemas across the genetic boundaries of languages in contact. These target morphemes or constructions with identical meanings in unrelated languages, and they produce grammaticalization outcomes that are not attested in related languages located outside of South Asia. Such replicated patterns must cater to a multilingual community’s communicative needs, while at the same time reducing the cognitive burden imposed by multilingualism in a linguistic area.

In Ding, P. & J. Pelkey (eds.) Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia: New horizons for Tibeto-Burman studies in honor of David Bradley, 2017

This paper discusses the diachronic pathways by which clause-linking converbs develop in Tibeto-B... more This paper discusses the diachronic pathways by which clause-linking converbs develop in Tibeto-Burman languages. Central to this process is the reanalysis of converbal constructions from nominalizations functioning as post-head or headless relative clauses. Nominalization thus plays a crucial role in the development and diversification of increasingly complex structures in grammar.

Linguistics of the …, Jan 1, 2008

In Thurgood, G. & and R.J. LaPolla (eds.) The Sino-Tibetan languages, 2nd edn., 2017

This chapter presents a typological sketch of the Mongsen dialect of Ao, a Tibeto-Burman language... more This chapter presents a typological sketch of the Mongsen dialect of Ao, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland State, north-east India. The introductory sections discuss dialects of Ao, the distibution of villages in Mokokchung District, the salient differences between the major dialects, genetic affiliation, and historical factors that have influenced dialectal divergences. The remaining sections then outline the salient phonological, morphological and syntactic features of the language. Mongsen Ao is particularly rich for demonstrating grammaticalization processes that have shaped its grammar, and these are discussed in detail and illustrated throughout the chapter with judiciously selected textual examples.

In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: the University of Glasgow. Paper No 0734.1–5, 2015

This paper discusses the phonetic and phonological features of a typologically rare prestopped bi... more This paper discusses the phonetic and phonological features of a typologically rare prestopped bilabial trill and some associated evolving sound changes in the phonology of Sangtam, a Tibeto-Burman language of central Nagaland, north-east India. Prestopped bilabial trills were encountered in two dozen words of a 500-item corpus and found to be in phonemic contrast with all other members of the plosive series. Evidence from static palatograms and linguagrams demonstrates that Sangtam speakers articulate this sound by first making an apical- or laminal-dental oral occlusion, which is then explosively released into a bilabial trill involving up to three oscillations of the lips.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible historical sources of prestopped bilabial trills in this language, taking into account phonological reconstructions and cross-linguistic comparisons.

Language Documentation & Conservation, Dec 8, 2014

This paper outlines a method of auditory and acoustic analysis for determining the tonemes of a l... more This paper outlines a method of auditory and acoustic analysis for determining the tonemes of a language starting from scratch, drawing on the author’s experience of recording and analyzing tone languages of north-east India. The methodology is applied to a preliminary analysis of tone in the Thang dialect of Khiamniungan, a virtually undocumented language of extreme eastern Nagaland and adjacent areas of the Sagaing Division, Myanmar (Burma). Following a discussion of strategies for ensuring that data appropriate for tonal analysis will be recorded, the practical demonstration begins with a description of how tone categories can be established according to their syllable type in the preliminary auditory analysis. The paper then uses this data to describe a method of acoustic analysis that ultimately permits the representation of pitch shapes as a function of absolute mean duration. The analysis of grammatical tones, floating tones and tone sandhi are exemplified with Mongsen Ao data, and a description of a perception test demonstrates how this can be used to corroborate the auditory and acoustic analysis of a tone system.

"This paper compares referent tracking strategies encountered in the discourse of Mongsen Ao and ... more "This paper compares referent tracking strategies encountered in the discourse of Mongsen Ao and Chang, two Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in contiguous areas of central Nagaland, north-east India. The syntax of these languages is typical of dependent marking, head-final languages that use non-finite converb clauses to create chained structures in discourse. An integral feature of clause chaining is a type of construction known as tail-head linkage; this serves to link the propositional content of a sentence-final finite clause to the next chunk of discourse while maintaining the topicality of a referent. Associated with the clause chaining structure of Mongsen Ao and Chang is a distinctive rising intonation that overrides the lexical tones of syllables in polysyllabic words.
In addition to proximate and distal nominal demonstratives, Mongsen Ao has at its disposal an anaphoric nominal demonstrative that is used to signal the ‘given’ or ‘retrievable’ information status of a referent. In texts a common transition is for the distal demonstrative initially to predominate as the default determiner of noun phrases, but as a referent becomes more established in the discourse, the anaphoric demonstrative begins to overlap with the distal demonstrative and gradually supplants it as the primary means of determining the noun phrases of that referent. The deictic function of the anaphoric demonstrative is strictly non-spatial, in that it cannot be used if the referent is within sight of the speaker.
The various referent tracking strategies found in the two languages are illustrated using data from narrative texts and the analysis is supported by audio files demonstrating the prosodic features discussed.

Studies in Language, 2011

This paper investigates the extent to which the phenomenon of transitivity contributes to syntact... more This paper investigates the extent to which the phenomenon of transitivity contributes to syntactic organization in Ao, a Tibeto-Burman language of north-east India, by considering its manifestations from a pragmatic perspective. Agentive case marking is found to be the only formal correlate of transitivity in this language. This serves an obligatory marking function on actor arguments of verbal clauses expressing the habitual activity of a referent, and agentive marking is also consistently used to distinguish the causer argument of causativized predicates. However, in all other types of clause structures its use is pragmatically determined. Transitivity thus appears to be a construction-based phenomenon that has grammaticalized for only some aspects of Ao clausal syntax.

Language and Linguistics, 2012

This paper presents an appraisal of the most influential genetic classifications that have been p... more This paper presents an appraisal of the most influential genetic classifications that have been proposed for the Tibeto-Burman languages of Nagaland, north-east India, and weighs up the evidence for the validity of a ‘Naga’ branch within Tibeto-Burman. The survey concludes that while phonological and lexical correspondences might be generally useful for establishing the affiliation of these languages to the Tibeto-Burman family, such criteria shed limited light on the problem of establishing lower level sub-groupings. Apart from the Konyak languages, which have been convincingly grouped with Jinghpaw and the Bodo-Garo languages on the basis of lexical innovations, sub-grouping within the languages of Nagaland remains inconclusive for want of robust diagnostic criteria. The paper presents new evidence for an intermediate grouping of languages of the central and southern regions of Nagaland (i.e. the Ao and Angami-Pochury clusters), the historical-comparative basis for this being typologically rare overcounting numeral systems documented in the languages of these two regions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The complexity of overcounting numeral systems lessens the likelihood of their being borrowed, and such patterns have never been reported in contiguous Konyak, Karbi, Zeme, Kuki or Tangkhul languages. The paper concludes that the erstwhile presence of overcounting patterns in Tibeto-Burman languages of central and southern Nagaland must therefore represent an inherited innovation indicative of a close genetic relationship.

Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2023

Critical conversations in Naga society, edited by Yanthan, Yanbeni and Hewasa Lorin Khing, 2022

Asian Journal of Sociological Research, 2021

Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Oct 2011

Language and Linguistics, Oct 2013

Linguistics of the Tibet-Burman Area, 2020

The handbook of Asian Englishes, edited by Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha & Andy Kirkpatrick, 2020

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Canberra: ASSTA. ISBN 1 876346 17 5, 1998

Linguistic Discovery, 2017

In Ding, P. & J. Pelkey (eds.) Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia: New horizons for Tibeto-Burman studies in honor of David Bradley, 2017

Linguistics of the …, Jan 1, 2008

In Thurgood, G. & and R.J. LaPolla (eds.) The Sino-Tibetan languages, 2nd edn., 2017

In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: the University of Glasgow. Paper No 0734.1–5, 2015

Language Documentation & Conservation, Dec 8, 2014

Studies in Language, 2011

Language and Linguistics, 2012

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, Jan 1, 2006

The term converb is becoming increasingly used in typological literature to describe a type of de... more The term converb is becoming increasingly used in typological literature to describe a type of dependent verb form traditionally known in the literature by the labels gerund, adverbial participle, absolute construction, gérondif, conjunctive participle, absolutive participle and deepričastie. Converbs are clause linking devices. The clause containing the converb stands in a dependent relationship to a matrix clause and encodes a restrictive or non-restrictive proposition with respect to its matrix clause predicate. Converbs have a wide distribution and are found in languages spoken in Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, Far East Asia, Ethiopia and South America.

In Miestamo, M. & B. Wälchli (eds.) New challenges in typology: broadening the horizons and redefining the foundations, Jan 1, 2007

The Ao language of Nagaland (Tibeto-Burman, Northeast India) is particularly valuable for demonst... more The Ao language of Nagaland (Tibeto-Burman, Northeast India) is particularly valuable for demonstrating historical processes of grammaticalization because it often maintains the older lexical meanings of morphemes alongside of their newer grammaticalized functions. Good examples of this are found among nouns originally expressing spatial orientations or meanings such as ‘side’, ‘face’ and ‘stomach’; these now serve as case-marking clitics while retaining their older lexical meanings as nouns. These new case markers originally developed out of genitival N1-N2 constructions in which the N2 head of the compound lost its status as a lexical noun and cliticized to its host N1 as a dependent element. Such a development is consistent with cross-linguistically attested trajectories for the grammaticalization of relational morphology in head-final languages (e.g. Lehmann 1985, Aristar 1991).

Similar grammaticalization processes are attested in the verbal morphology of Ao. A considerable number of suffixes expressing a range of adverbial, aspectual and modal meanings occur in the verb complex immediately following the verb root, a slot in the predicate template that is arguably the most important conduit for the grammaticalization of new verbal morphology. The vast majority of these suffixes can be shown to have related forms that are used to express similar meanings in their functions as main verbs, which is highly suggestive of a verbal origin for all the members of this category. Attested grammaticalization processes applying to nominal and verbal morphology will be exemplified with a selection of examples sourced from narrative texts.

The Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken across a huge swathe of Asia, extending from peninsular Th... more The Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken across a huge swathe of Asia, extending from peninsular Thailand northwards to the periphery of the Tibetan Plateau and westwards into the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan. Given the great potential for language contact created by this broad distribution, it is perhaps not surprising that Tibeto-Burman languages display a very diverse range of features in their phonological systems, word formation typology and morphosyntax.
Areal influences have resulted in tonal isolating types common to the East and Southeast Asian region, to potentially highly agglutinative and synthetic types in the South Asian region. Just as diverse are the strategies they employ for encoding ‘who does what to whom’. Some have little in the way of head or dependent marking and instead rely exclusively upon contextual pragmatics for encoding grammatical functions, while others are consistently ergative-absolutive or nominative-accusative according to their dependent marking characteristics. Yet others have additionally reanalyzed head-marking morphology from independent pronouns, some with hierarchical agreement systems.
The paper will present an overview of the phonological and structural diversity presented by Tibeto-Burman languages and will propose explanations, where feasible, for how a related group of languages could develop such divergent typological features.

CoRSAL VI Symposium, 2022

This keynote paper shares the presenter's experiences of creating dictionaries and coordinating t... more This keynote paper shares the presenter's experiences of creating dictionaries and coordinating training workshops for minority languages of Nagaland, summarizing the lessons learnt and providing advice to current dictionary makers.

36th South Asian Languages Analysis Roundtable & 43rd Linguistic Society of Nepal Annual Meeting, 2022

Nagamese is a creoloid language used as a lingua franca throughout Nagaland and in adjacent areas... more Nagamese is a creoloid language used as a lingua franca throughout Nagaland and in adjacent areas of Assam, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh. The lexifier is predominantly Assamese, augmented by extensive lexical borrowing from Hindi, Nepali and increasingly English. The language demonstrates a differential O-marking pattern involving a co-opted dative marker /ke/ that appears on individuated/definite arguments – in common with many Indo-Aryan languages of North India – but it is significant that a new core marking pattern is emerging in written texts and oral narratives. This is encoded by the ablative/instrumental marker /para/, whose function has been extended to marking the A arguments of transitive clauses. The reanalysed use of /para/ could be innovative, because narrative texts recorded two decades ago show that previously it was only very rarely used for marking a core argument, and that its dominant function was to mark obliques in the semantic role of source or instrument (e.g. see Bhattacharjya 2001 for textual examples).

We need only look at the differential agentive marking pattern that is common to scores of Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages to appreciate how this new core marking might have developed. A pragmatically-motivated agentive marking pattern is particularly prevalent in the languages of central and southern Nagaland (as well as more widely in TB) and has been extensively documented (e.g. see Chelliah & Hyslop [eds.] 2011, 2012; Coupe & Lestrade 2017, inter alia). As most speakers of Nagamese are also speakers of TB languages, the innovated core marking function of /para/ is likely to have resulted from bilingual speakers adopting a cognitive schema already represented in their native TB languages. The new core marking pattern will be demonstrated with examples, and the paper will conclude with a discussion of the significance of language contact for understanding the mechanism of alignment change.

This paper discusses reasons for the considerable linguistic diversity found in the mountain vil... more This paper discusses reasons for the considerable linguistic diversity found in the mountain villages of Nagaland, Northeast India, taking into account the historical and cultural influences that have contributed to an extremely high number of languages being spoken in this small northeastern state. On the one hand, pre-colonial contact situations resulting from annexations of territory, the kidnapping of women, and migrations of entire clans to the villages of other speech communities because of disease, famine or intra-village conflicts have resulted in different types of linguistic convergence and multilingualism; on the other hand, earlier cultural practices such as head-hunting and a state of constant warfare inhibited contact between different linguistic communities, even those speaking the same language. We can therefore identify factors that both motivated linguistic homogenisation as well as those that contributed to maintaining a high degree of linguistic diversity. In addition to upland-upland contact between different Tibeto-Burman languages, there has also been some borrowing of syntactic structure as a result of lowland-upland contact between the Indo-Aryan lingua franca Nagamese and the Tibeto-Burman languages of the mountainous interior, and some of this exchange has been bidirectional. Historical and cultural factors responsible for observed linguistic outcomes will be discussed and illustrated with examples from a range of languages.

This paper discusses relativization strategies used by South Asian languages, with the focus fall... more This paper discusses relativization strategies used by South Asian languages, with the focus falling on relative-correlative constructions. The bi-clausal relative-correlative structure is believed to be native to Indo-Aryan languages and has been replicated by Austroasiatic, Dravidian and Tibeto-Burman languages of South Asia through contact and convergence, despite the non-Indic languages of the region already having a participial relativization strategy at their disposal. Various permutations of the relative-correlative construction are discussed and compared to the participial relativization strategies of South Asian languages, and functional reasons are proposed for its widespread diffusion and distribution.

This paper provides a typological overview of a variable, non-paradigmatic case-marking pattern t... more This paper provides a typological overview of a variable, non-paradigmatic case-marking pattern that is increasingly becoming recognized in modern descriptions of many Tibeto-Burman languages. Pragmatically-motivated core case marking is not a new development, but may have been overlooked in some older work due to the nature of the methodology employed to gather data: it is now known that analyses based on directly elicited data often fail to create the specific pragmatic contexts that motivate the use of core case marking in these languages. Elicited data may consequently produce regular paradigms that are not actually attested in narrated texts, or the contact language used to elicit translation equivalents might exert an adverse effect on the structure of the elicited data, leading to misconstrued interpretations of the case-marking pattern in the language of investigation.
Careful text-based analyses reveal that an increasing number of Tibeto-Burman languages lack a recognizable alignment conforming to an ergative-absolutive, nominative-accusative, active-stative or split-ergative marking pattern (e.g. Chelliah 1997; Coupe 2007, 2011; Hyslop 2011; Lidz 2011; Tournadre 1991 among others). Rather, case marking (or its absence) on a core argument can instead be motivated by a range of pragmatic factors that will be outlined in the paper. The fact that agentive marking variably appears on both the S and A arguments of monovalent and bivalent clauses demonstrates that it cannot be motivated by factors relating to transitivity, as might be expected of a language that has grammaticalized an alignment pattern based on clausal valency.
Discrimination via core case marking is most likely to appear in bivalent clauses with two participants when either one may fulfill the role of the agent. Under these circumstances, some grammatical means of distinguishing an A argument from an O argument may be required to clarify meaning. Conversely, if semantic roles can be unambiguously assigned to core arguments because of the semantic nature of their referents, then there may be no overt relational marking whatsoever. In some Tibeto-Burman languages we observe metaphorical extensions of this basic discriminatory function. Agentive marking is additionally used to contrast one referent from another, to encode increased agency or volitionality, to signal a shift in perspective, or to encode that a referent is behaving in an atypical or unexpected manner.
The recognition of pragmatically-determined case marking in emerging work has potentially important ramifications for syntactic theory, because such innovative uses of relational morphology could provide an initial pathway for the subsequent development of syntactic alignments and other aspects of grammatical complexity.

References
Chelliah, Shobana L. 1997. A grammar of Meithei. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Coupe, Alexander R. 2007. A grammar of Mongsen Ao. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Coupe, Alexander R. 2011. On core case marking patterns in two Tibeto-Burman languages of Nagaland. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 34.2: 21–47.
Givón, Talmy. 2009. The genesis of syntactic complexity. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins.
Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: a conceptual framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2010. Kurtöp case: The pragmatic ergative and beyond. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 33.1: 1–40.
LaPolla, Randy J. 1995. ‘Ergative’ marking in Tibeto-Burman. In Nishi, Yoshio, Matisoff, James A. & Nagano, Yasuhiko (eds.) New horizons in Tibeto-Burman morpho-syntax (Senri Ethnological Studies 41), 189–228. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
Lidz, Liberty A. 2011. Agentive marking in Yongning Na (Mosuo) Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 34.2: 49–72.
Touradre, Nicolas. 1991. Rhetorical use of the Tibetan ergative. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 14.1: 93–107.

This paper discusses two interrelated topics that are relevant to creating dictionaries for minor... more This paper discusses two interrelated topics that are relevant to creating dictionaries for minority languages. The first part of the paper reports on a dictionary project for the Zeme language [nzm] of Dima Hasao District, Assam. For this task, the research team used the ‘Rapid Words’ data collection methodology (http://rapidwords.net/). This is a community-oriented collection method that focuses on the rapid compilation of a lexicon using small teams of native speakers, each of which is responsible for eliciting words belonging to particular semantic domains. The collected data was glossed and entered into ‘Wesay’ (http://wesay.palaso.org/), an application for helping minority communities develop dictionaries in their own languages. The paper summarizes the utility of these collection methodologies and discusses their strengths and weaknesses as tools for language documentation and development.
The second part of the talk deals with principles concerning orthography design, and discusses the merits of including tonal representation in writing systems designed for the tonal TB languages of Northeast India.