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Word order pattern tendency and the Yongning
Na (Mosuo)
RESEARCH · JULY 2015
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4881.2644
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Tsung-Lun Wan
National University of Singapore
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Word order pattern tendency and the Yongning Na (Mosuo)
Tsung-Lun Wan
National Taiwan University
Department of Geography
1. Introduction
The Universality indicates that there are some syntactic phenomena common in
human language all over the world. One of them, the word order pattern tendency
includes some principle that project the order of elements in certain structures.
Many of these implications concern the relationship between the verb and its
dependents (O’Grady 2012). To explain the tendencies in the word order
correlations, syntacticians put emphasis on the contrast between right-branching
(or head-initial) and left-branching (or head-final). The former one has the
structurally more elaborate part of a phrase on its right branch; on the contrary, the
more elaborate part of a phrase of the latter is on its left branch.
Right-branching languages are likely to have P-NP, V-PP, N-Possessor, and
subordinator-S patterns, like (1).
(1)
In contrast, left-branching languages prefer NP-P, PP-V, Possessor-N, and S-
subordinator patterns as in (2).
(2)
However, as Dryer (2005) admits, not all languages can be assigned to a rigid
word order. We can only say an order is frequently used in a certain language and
other orders are infrequently used or depends on the pragmatic context. There are
even some languages said to have flexible order, which is sometimes described as
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“free” word order, in that this kind of languages choose word order according to
pragmatic factors (Dryer 2005). In this sense, it seems to be difficult for us to
predict the word order based on right/left-branching. This paper aims to examine
how the word order pattern tendency applies to Yongning Na (Mosuo) language,
whose grammar is seen to be context-dependent by syntacticians (Lidz 2010;
Michaud et al. 2013).
2. Word Order Correlation
As what is mentioned in section one, the word order tendency between different
phrase structures can be explained by the contrast between right-branching and
left-branching. This phenomenon is in fact called word order correlation by
syntacticians. The previous researches use the head-dependent theory (HDT) to
explain the syntactic phenomenon. HDT indicates that:
…a pair of elements X and Y will employ the order XY significantly
more often among VO languages than among OV languages if and
only if X is a head and Y is a dependent. (Dryer 1992: 87)
Dryer (1992) proposes that the HDT fails to predict some word order in the
empirical evidence in human languages, and therefore he suggests that we
should use phrasal categories instead of heads and dependents to predict word
patterns. He called it as the branching direction theory (BDT):
…a pair of elements X and Y will employ the order XY significantly
more often among VO languages than among OV languages if and
only if X is a nonphrasal category and Y is a phrasal category. (Dryer
1992: 89)
Although Dryer (2005) admitted that there are some problems for explaining
some pairs of elements under assumptions of flat constituent structure, this
article will discuss the word pattern irrelevant to the failing prediction caused
from the different assumption of constituent structure, and still, in this paper, I
will use branching structure to demonstrate the discussion.
In the following sections, I will give a brief introduction for Yongning Na and
examine the word order correlations between V&NP, P&NP, V&PP, Possessor
NP & N, and subordinator & S.
2
3. Yongning Na (Musuo)
According to the report of minority languages by Chinese Academy of Sciences,
the Mosuo people live in the north-western Yunnan near to Tibet. The language
spoken by Mosuo people is called the Yonging Na, or Mosuo, which is the variety
of Naxi, and belongs to Tibeto-Burman languages (He and Jiang 1983).
Because of the increasing tourists from China to Lugu Lake, this area undergoes a
rapid change. More and more children don’t speak Yongning Na (LACITO 2012),
so this language is getting disappearing gradually now, and this means that we
need more linguists doing research on Yongning Na lest we can no longer realize
the holistic Mosuo language.
Figure 1. the relative location of Mosuo in Yunnan Figure 2. The specific location of Mosuo (Jacques & Michaud 2011)
4. Word order pattern in Mosuo
The basic word order structure in Mosuo is SOV, which means it may be a left-
branching language, as (3) (data from Alexis Michaud 2006: S41).
(3) ʐɯ˧ lə˧-ʑi˩ (4)
alchohol Accomp.-hold
‘(He) picked up the alcohol’
This sentence was from a Na speaker talking about his sister’s wedding.
According to the context recorded, we can know the subject here was dropped,
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and referred to the brother. As the syntactic tree in (4), the more elaborate part of
the verb phrase occurs on the left side of the structure, which indicates that Na is a
left-branching language.
With the basic SOV structure, we can move on to the other word order patterns
which can be predicted from this pattern. As O’Grady (2012) reports, PPs usually
precede the verb in NP-V languages. The following data is from Alexis Michaud
(2011: S49):
(5) ʐɤ˩mi˩ qo˥ ɳɯ˩ ʈʂʰɯ˧ni˧˥ lə˧-ʈʰæ˧˥ dʑo˩ tʰi˩˥
way Loc. Abl./Top. therefore Accomp.-devour Top. then
comme (la mère) s'était fait dévorer de la sorte en chemin... 1
‘therefore (the mother) had herself devoured of this kind on way…’
(6)
The sentence in (5) was about a story that how the tiger attacked a woman and her
daughter. We can see that the PP precedes the verb in the VP in the syntactic tree.
Another example below is from Lidz (2010: 341):
(7) bɔ˥˩gu˧ tʰɯ˧ lɯ˧ dʑi˧ wɔ˧qʰwɤ˥˩ tʰɯ˧-tsɛ˩˥ lə˧-tsʰɯ˧
pig trough this Cls. water Loc.(on top) Dur.-float Accomp.-come
‘That pig trough has come here with the action floating upon the water.’
1 The free translation was written in French by Michaud (2011), and the English version is translated
by author.
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(8)
The sentence in (7) also complies with the world order correlations between NP-V
and PP-verb, and furthermore, from data in (5) and (7), the sentences also reveals
that the adposition in PPs belongs to postposition, which means the dependent in
PP is also on the left side according to the word order tendency of left-branching
languages.
Another word order pattern which can be predicted via left-branching processing
concerns with the possessor NP-noun structure (O’Grady 2012). The following
data is from Alexis Michaud (2011: S3):
(9) nɑ˩-bv̩˥ zɯ˧...
the Na-poss life
‘the Na’s life’
As the sentence presents, the pattern also complies with the word order correlation
between NP-V and possessor NP-noun. Another example is from Yang (2009: 28):
(10) tʰɯ˧tɕi˥ bv̩˧ ɕo˥xɑ˩
3Pl.Fam. poss. school
‘their school’2
The same pattern is also found in non-animate and supernatural possessor cases
(Lidz 2010: 562-64):
2 Yang (2009) reports that in Mosuo language, when the connection between the possessor and the
possessed is more distant, the possessive marker bv̩³³ is used. The example that shows no usage of
possessive marker is as what follows:
no⁵⁵ ɣuɑ³³
2Sg village
‘your village’
5
(11) ʐɯ˧mi˧ bv̩˧ tsɯ˧tæ˧
hearth room poss. foundation
‘the hearth’s room’s foundation’
(12) ɢɑ˧ɬɑ˧ tʰɯ˧ wu˧ bv̩˧ ɑ˧-mi˧
god this Cls. poss. mother
‘the god’s mother’
We can infer that there is no hierarchy for the syntactic processing of possession
in Mosuo based on the data. And the last one, the predicted S-subordinator
structure, is examined below. The following sentence is from Yang (2006: 32; 40):
(13) lo˧ mɑ˧ ʑi˧ bi˧dʑo˩ xɑ˧-dzɯ˧-di˩ dʑo˧ mɑ˧ ku˧.
work Neg do if food-eat-Nom Exist Neg able
‘If one doesn’t work, then one can’t have food to eat.’
(14)
(15) tʰɯ˧ xɑ˧ dʑo˧ be˧lə˧ dzɯ˧ mɑ˧ ŋuɑ˩.
3Sg. food has even though eat Neg. give alms
‘Even though he has food, he doesn’t give alms.’
(16)
Excitingly, the data reveals the S-subordinator order, the same as the predicted
one, which means Mosuo language complies with all of the word order pattern
according to left-branching principle.
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5. Conclusion
This paper tries to predict specific word order patterns in Mosuo language via the
branching direction theory which was suggested by Dryer (1992). As the main
body in this paper, I have examined the NP&V, PP&V, NP&P, Possessor NP & N,
and subordinator & S structures with the narrative data from different sources
built by different scholars. I have found that in Mosuo, there are NP-V, PP-V, NP-
P, Possessor NP-N, and S-subordinator patterns the same as what Dryer (1992)
indicates that the left-branching language should have.
In future research, if there are more data collected, we may examine more patterns
in that whether they are still complying with the word order correlation, which can
be seen as a kind of Universality.
6. Reference
Dryer, M. S. (2009). The branching direction theory of word order correlations
revisited. In Universals of language today (pp. 185-207). Springer
Netherlands.
Dryer, M. S. (1992). The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language, 81-
138.
Dryer, M. S. (2005). Order of subject, object, and verb. The world atlas of
language structures, 330-33.
Michaud, A. (2006). Sister: The sister's wedding (version 1). In Na Corpus of
LACITO. http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/tools/show_text_en.php?id=crdo-
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Michaud, A. (2011). Tiger: How the tiger attacked a woman and her daughter
(version 1). In Na Corpus of LACITO.
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Yang, Z., & Lidz, L. A. (2009). An overview of the Mosuo language. Linguistics
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Lidz, L. A. (2011). A descriptive grammar of Yongning Na (Mosuo). The
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Jacques, G., & Michaud, A. (2011). Approaching the historical phonology of three
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He, J. 和即仁, & Jiang, Z. 姜竹仪. (1985). Naxiyu Jianzhi 纳西语简志 (A
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