The autobiography of Robert Shafer

Robert Shafer was an amateur linguist who collaborated with Paul K. Benedict under the sponsorship of Alfred L. Kroeber on the original Sino-Tibetan linguistics project at UC Berkeley in the 1930s and 40s. He wrote the following short autobiography in 1963 in a French journal called Orbis. Thank you to Nathan Hill for helping me secure a scan of the article, and to Roy Andrew Miller for originally pointing it out in a footnote of his review of Benedict's Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus -- I will quote Miller's note in full below:

"The autobiographical sketch that Robert Shafer contributed to Orbis (12:1.350-353 [1963]) is interesting and important, not the least for its list of his publications on Sino-Tibetan, an impressive total of 18 articles in various journals appearing between 1940 and 1955, plus a book (the first volume of his Bibliography of Sino-Tibetan Languages, 1957, the second volume of which appeared in 1963--both these were to some extent, and the first volume almost entirely, further spin-offs from the S-T L [Sino-Tibetan Linguistics] manuscript volumes). This notice of Shafer and his work had escaped my attention until Professor South Coblin of the University of Iowa told me about it."

(Miller, Roy Andrew. 1974. Sino-Tibetan: Inspection of a Conspectus. Journal of the American Oriental Society 94(2). 195–209.)

For Benedict's memories of Shafer, see: Benedict, Paul K. 1975. Where it all began: memories of Robert Shafer and the Sino-Tibetan Linguistics Project, Berkeley 1939-1940. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 2(1). 81–92.

And now, our main feature:

Shafer, Robert. 1963. Collaborateurs du présent fascicule: Shafer, Robert. Orbis 12(1). 350–353.

 

I was born in the sleepy little city of Findlay, Ohio, which never breaks into the metropolitan newspapers except with quotations of the price of oil, for the headquarters of the Standard Oil of Ohio are located there. My first contact with a foreign language was with German. My grandfather Shafer was an Alsatian who spoke both French and German, but he came to the United States in 1818 and my father knew German when he was young, because there were many German farmers in Ohio, but he had forgotten it before I was born. But I had a German aunt that my mother and I would visit every summer, and she had an old German Bible, and since I knew lots of passages more or less by heart, I used to entertain myself by seeing how much I could read in German. On her death she bequeathed the German Bible to me.

I wished to study French in high school, but they did not teach it, so I took Latin instead. Class was at 2 p. m., and we had two hours for lunch and always intended to get our Latin lesson after lunch. But the river was nearby and we always found it so much more enticing to pole a scow about on the river, pretending it was the Congo or the Orinoco we were exploring, than it was to get our Latin lessons. We had a very "easy" Latin teacher, and we would get back to high school about fifteen minutes to 2, each one would pick out a sentence and rush in to the teacher and say "Oh, teacher, I had a little trouble translating this". Then we would all rush back, exchange translations, and remember long enough to get through the recitation. The next year I wore the edges off my Caesar, which I could take an interest in, but flunked the course. Not a very brilliant beginning for a linguist. But I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me. For we had moved to Tacoma, Washington, where the larger high school offered courses in French. I got busy and learned the grammar the first year, and a sailor on a Belgian boat gave me an old fashioned almanach in French that had something on just about everything in the world, I think, and from reading that on rainy days – and that is about seven months out of the year in Tacoma – I got a very large vocabulary for a first year French student in high school.

Between high school and college I taught myself Italian. And when I was 17 I did my first linguistic research, unofficially and without any grants. My mother and I had returned to Findlay, Ohio, for the trip. In the city library in the basement of the court house, I ran across Grimm's Law, I think in one of the works of one of the von Humboldt, I suppose Wilhelm. It made a tremendous impression on me to find that so many European languages were related but had diverged through regular phonetic shifts. I hurried to my aunt's, only a vew blocks away, and took Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which I had been reading, out on the front porch and worked out the phonetic shifts for the southern dialect, used by the characters in the novel, in comparison with standard English.

When we returned West that fall, I entered the University of Washington. I was like Jack London discovering knowledge. There were so many courses I wished to take that there just was not time enough. I remember I had to "audit" my course in Old Irish, although I was the only pupil in the class. I did not get credit for it, and the professor did not get paid for it. We both did it for the love of Old Irish.

Between my Freshman and Sophmore years I went down to raise a crop of potatoes on a little ranch I had in central Oregon. I took Heine's Harzreise with me and a neighbor's son who had attended the University of Wisconsin lent me a book of Spanish short stories. While I should have been cultivating or irrigating my potatoes, I was lying under a juniper tree reading Spanish short stories or the Harzreise. The water would break out of its channels and flood my potatoes. I lost $1000 on my summer's "toil", but I came back to the university with enough German and Spanish to enter advanced courses in the lyrics of those languages. At the University of California I began the study of Russian and Chinese.

I did not study "linguistics" because no such courses were given when I was a student. Pliny Earle Goddard, then at the Museum of Natural History in New York, gave me some offprints of his work on Athapaskan and some of Edward Sapir's, and this got me started working à la Sapir – three years later I burned bushel basskets full of comparisons made in this matter in the fireplace. I had covered much of the native languages of North and South America and Oceania. A professor at Columbia University had had the good taste to recommend Antoine Meillet's Introduction for Indo-European comparative grammar and Roudet, a pupil of Abbé Rousselot, for phonetics, when I told him I might as well learn linguistics in French. Later I wore out a German dictionary getting the linguistic and phonetic vocabulary in reading similar works in German.

After getting from the Americas across the Pacific I came to the Austroasian and Sino-Tibetan languages. Because of the difficulty of these languages they offered a real challenge, and I have spent the greater part of my life on them. When I began, I had to blow the dust off the tops of the books I took out of the University of California Library, because they had never been used before. Now, some 35 years later, I have difficulty getting the books I need, for they are out to another borrower.

 

Publications.

Sino-Tibetan.

"The vocalism of Sino-Tibetan", Journal of the American Oriental Society 60 (1940), 302-337; 61 (1941), 18-31.

"Problems in Sino-Tibetan Phonetics", JAOS 64 (1944), 137-143.

"The initials of Sino-Tibetan", JAOS 70 (1950), 96-103.

Bibliography of Sino-Tibetan languages, Wiesbaden 1954.

"Studies in the morphology of Bodic verbs", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13 (London 1951, 702-724, 1017-1031.

"Khimi grammar and vocabulary", BSOAS 11 (1944), 386-434.

"East Himalayish", BSOAS 15 (1933), 356-374.

"Further analysis of the Pyu inscriptions", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6 (1943), 313-366 + 5 pls.

"Prefixes in Tibeto-Burmic", HJAS 9 (1945), 45-50.

"Phonétique comparée de quelques préfixes simples en sino-tibétain", Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 46 (1950), 144-171.

"L'annamite et le tibéto-birman", Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient 40 (1940), 439-442.

"Phonétique historique des langues lolo", T'oung Pao 41 (1952), 191-229.

"Newari and Sino-Tibetan", Studia Linguistica (Lund 1952), 92-109.

"The Naga branches of Kukish", Roczink Orientalistyczny 16 (1950), 467-530.

"Phonetik der Alt-Kuki Mundarten", ZDMG 102 (1952), 262-279.

"The linguistic position of Mru", Journal of the Burma Research Society 31 (1941), 58-79.

"Classification of some languages of the Himalayas", Journal of the Bihar Research Society 34 (Patna 1951), 192-214.

"Classification of the northernmost Naga languages", ibid. 39 (1953), pt. 3, 225-264.

"Classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages", Word 11 (1955), 94-111.

North American Indian.

"Penutian", International Journal of American Linguistics 13 (1947), 205-219.

"Notes on Penutian", IJAL 18 (1952), 211-216.

"Athapaskan and Sino-Tibetan", IJAL 18 (1952), 12-19.

"Tones in Wintun", Anthropological Linguistics 3 (1961), 16-29.

South American Indian.

"Algumas equações fonéticas em Arawakan", Anthropos 54 (1959), 542-561.

"Aruakan (not Arawakan)", Anthropological Linguistics 4 (1962), 31-40.

Indo-European.

"Implosive finals in Indo-European", Zeitschrift für Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 13 (1960), 48-56.

African.

"Phonétique comparée du Nigéro-Sénégalien (Mande)", Bulletin de l'Institut Français de l'Afrique Noire, Ser. B, Vol. 21 (Dakar 1959), 179-200.

Ancient Near Eastern.

"Pisidian", American Journal of Philology 71 (1950), 239-270.

"Lycian hrppi", AJPh 67 (1946), 252-261.

"Greek transcription of Lukian", Jahrbuch für kleinasiatische Forschung 2 (1951), 1-12.

"Lycian numerals", Archiv Orientalní 18, no. 4 (1950), 251-261.

"Some Lycian penalties", Revue Hittite et Asianique 52 (1950), 1-17.

"System of relationship in Lukian", Die Welt des Orients 2 (1959), 484-501.

Austroasian.

"Études sur l'austroasien", BSLP 48 (1952), 111-158.

And half as many more.

The best listens of 2021

 As a followup to my best books post, here is a list of the best interviews and lectures that I listened to this past year. (It was easier to follow a conversation than a heady, involved book, no matter how interesting, even if it was an audiobook.)

Marlena Fiol and Joshua Coleman, "The Roots of the Tree: Family dynamics, forgiveness, and reconciliation" 

I stumbled on this interview in the days and nights after my mom died, as I was searching for answers to how to connect estranged siblings and heal family brokenness. I haven't got answers yet, but I benefited from the perspectives of Marlena Fiol and Joshua Coleman, who each wrote several books of their own: Fiol wrote a memoir called Nothing Bad Between Us based on her experience of being the headstrong daughter of a stern Mennonite missionary-doctor father in Paraguay, painful experiences of spanking and community shunning, wayward years after re-entering the US, marriage and divorce, studying French literature and then business and leadership and becoming a professor and consultant, and finally reconciling with her father in his last few years. It's a powerful story. Coleman, on the other hand, is a counseling psychologist who became estranged from his adult daughter for several years after a divorce and remarriage, and he wrote two books of advice based on this experience: When Parents Hurt and Rules of Estrangement. The books are comprehensive, but what really helped me was watching his webinars and reading his email newsletters, which package the concepts into bite-sized pieces -- understanding the other party, giving them space, writing an amends letter, accepting what you can't fix, and understanding how the rules and expectations for family relationships have changed in America in the last hundred years. Coleman looks and talks like a smart and dignified grandpa, sort of like Jordan Peterson, which presentation I think really helps parents and pre-millennials to understand and listen to him, while he has also been listening to the youngsters and so he knows what the parents can say to make them feel heard.

Christopher Watkin, (1) "Cultural Marxism and Cancel Culture" and (2) "Critical Theory Encore"

Christopher Watkin is a young Englishman who lectures at Monash University in Australia -- his field is post-Structuralist French philosophy. Because of this, he is able to fairly and respectfully assess our current cultural context from the perspective of the writers whose thoughts underpin it, and then point out the biblical themes that they echo, and then gently critique them from a Christian point of view. I also love his two websites: his academic one where he gives study hacks and snippets of research, and his explicitly Christian one with posts on biblical cultural theory. I listened to the two-part interview linked above while I was in Covid lockdown in Yangon in 2020, and immediately dived into his blog posts. I recently listened to the interview again while driving home from work, and enjoyed it just as much the second time.

David French, "Intersectionality and Identity Politics" (3-part lecture series) 

David French (the pundit, not the kid I knew in church when I was a teen) is a voice of moderation in the middle of political polarization. He started as a First-Amendment lawyer, and then went to Iraq with the US Army as a Judge Advocate General, came back and wrote for the National Review and other conservative papers, started The Dispatch, positioned himself as a "never-Trump-er", adopted a girl from Ethiopia, and pretty much inserted himself in lots of controversies. But his manner of speaking to those controversies is always winsome and respectful, and that helps a lot. In this three-part lecture series on identity politics, given at Southern Seminary, he covers much the same ground as Christopher Watkin, but longer and with a specifically American application to things like Twitter mobs and academic politics. Basically, he says that the progressive movement has become like a church, with its own unique form of allyship and lending one's voice to representatives of disadvantaged groups, who rise to the top of a new kind of hierarchy. It's fascinating stuff, and again, what I love about him is how he can analyze these trends and still be respectful of the good that is behind the bad, which can help us respond to people in a loving and humane way, no matter what their political tribe may be.

Tom Schreiner, "Mentoring the Next Generation of Scholars" 

This ten-minute interview segment follows another interview where Schreiner, who is a New Testament professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, talks about his life and vocation as a pastor-scholar. In this clip, however, he gives some advice to young people starting out on an academic career:

Stick close to the text, rather than following methodological fads, so that your work will have lasting relevance after the fads are gone. Stick close to the Lord and the people in the church, so that your spiritual life stays humble and relational and you're not always alone in your scholarly cave. Get off your phone, get off social media and all its gotcha-debates, and discipline yourself to read, read, read.

Robert Yarbrough, "Populism and Elitism in New Testament Theology" Part 1 and Part 2 

I can't remember a whole lot about this interview, but I know it was interesting. Yarbrough, a New Testament professor at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, adds a historical dimension to the debates about biblical inerrancy and asks whether it is better to be academically popular in terms of accommodating unbelief, or to write for a popular (non-scholarly) audience in the church, and keep one's theological integrity. He says that the latter has had more vital staying power in church history. Especially interesting is how the latter approach has been picked up by the church in the global south, helping them stay strong during persecution. For more, see his book Clash of Visions: Populism and Elitism in New Testament Theology.

Preston Sprinkle, "Digital Leaders Forum" 

Preston Sprinkle got his PhD in New Testament at Aberdeen, and then taught for several years at Francis Chan's Eternity Bible College. He moved his family to Idaho in order to start an extension campus, but it fizzled out. What he has been doing since then is writing books and producing high-quality videos and study materials on a Christian approach to sexual issues related to same-sex orientation and transgender identity. What really sets him apart is his winsome and compassionate approach (again like David French and Christopher Watkin). He interviews a number of Christians (and non-Christians, and former Christians) who experienced same-sex attractions or gender dysphoria, and really listens to their experiences in life and in the church, good and bad. And through it all, he maintains a faithful biblical theology that only allows for sexual relationships within opposite-sex monogamous marriage. The several hours of videos and position papers are oriented for church leaders, and well worth the $50 per year it costs to access them.

Erin Jones, "Community Spotlight: Erin Jones" 

Erin Jones is a bi-racial (black-white) woman in the Seattle area, with an amazing life story. She was given up for adoption to a white couple in the mid-west who became teachers at an international school near the Hague, where she made friends with the children of Palestinian and Israeli ambassadors and caught the vision for helping bring about world peace. Then she went back to the US for college and experienced racism for the first time, and in a time of great personal anguish and listlessness, met a group of hopeless inner-city black kids playing basketball in Philadelphia and decided to become a teacher. She uses her cross-cultural knowledge of white and black cultures in the US and her wider experiences in Europe as leverage for creating intercultural understanding. After an unsuccessful run for state-wide office in the Washington State education department, she became a consultant and trainer and motivational speaker for schools on issues of racial inclusion and reconciliation. I like how she talks about her personal growth journey as a listener in tense situations and how she used her experience to broaden networks of understanding across communities.

The best books of 2021

Here are four of my favorite reads from 2021:

Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser Little, Brown Spark 2020).

To be honest, I read a lot and very little this year. I was constantly bouncing from ebook to audiobook, to which I then listened myself to sleep and woke up with the author still droning on, and then ordered a hard copy, which sat on my shelf with the spine staring me down as I went to sleep again. But in a way, this was the perfect book for imperfect perusal. I found it as I was stumbling around looking for things to help fill time in my high school English class, and along the way help my students become better writers. Roy Peter Clark connected with me because he, like me, wants to take it all in -- all the best manuals on good writing -- and then give just a sampling of what he liked about each.

Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature While Remaining Emotionally Immature (Zondervan, updated edition 2017). 

I read this one in the context of a men's recovery group. I wasn't sure about the title -- it sounded suspiciously like "Softsoap for soft skinᵗᵐ". And we had just finished reading Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, which had been a mix of strategies to avoid people-pleasing and individualistic '90s self-empowerment talk wrapped in the fig leaves of Bible verses. But one day, on a bus ride from Vancouver down to Southwest Portland, I listened to the first few chapters of EHS and was quite surprised: this guy knew his Bible, not just to proof-text, but even to give the historical context of the book of Revelation in the persecutions and temptations to compromise in the face of the Roman empire. He disarmed me by recounting his own mistakes and walking me through the kitchen to see how his thinking had developed from those mistakes to the point of writing the book from the lessons he'd learned. And finally, he evaded the charge of faddish pop-psychology by quoting from the church fathers and pulling things from all eras of church history, especially the idea of the Sabbath rest as applied by the monastics. This historical grounding and deep knowledge of scripture helped me trust the samplings of wisdom he offered on going deeper with God by dealing with past trauma, listening to God regularly, and establishing healthy daily routines. The book comes with two companion volumes: a book of questions for daily reflection and a book of twice-a-day silent periods of stillness before God interspersed with readings for meditation. This meant for a workout, but it was a good routine to follow and I learned a lot.

Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan, enlarged edition 2016). 

I listened to this one on Audible while driving the 30 minutes to and from work. It's a short listen; only about four hours. I'm not sure I caught all of it, because the speaker in my phone wasn't loud enough over the rough stretch of I-205 between Salmon Creek and Portland. But what I did get was enough to tell that Wesley Hill is sincere, and that he wants to be faithful to God amidst his struggles with sexuality. I identified a lot with his story. (He struggles with same-sex attraction; I struggle with bisexual attraction and intrusive thoughts of gender dysphoria.) I was encouraged by his stories of how he was helped by friends and mentors at church and college, by the testimonies of others similarly-afflicted such as Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley-Hopkins, and by his martyr's resolve that even if his desires don't change, he can serve Christ and the church through his patient endurance in struggling through loneliness to keep killing sin and to hold onto God and his people. He doesn't take the easy way out, and that makes his book the more beautiful.

Aminta Arrington, Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China (Penn State, 2020). 

I'm not sure if I read this book all the way through, but I did look closely at the author's PhD dissertation from Biola, as well as every single one of her published articles on the subject leading up to this monograph. She's that good. She started out as a foreign teacher at universities in Shandong and Beijing, and somehow came down to Yunnan to visit the Lisu and write her dissertation on them, a people group who are still practicing the Christianity they learned from early-20th-century missionaries: from the China Inland Mission, James Outram Fraser, Allyn and Leila Cooke, John and Isobel Kuhn, and others; from the Pentecostals and Assemblies of God, Alfred and Mary Lewer, James Clifford Morrison and his wife Lavada, Leonard Bolton, etc.; and from the Churches of Christ, Justin Russell Morse and his wife Gertrude and their sons Eugene, Robert, and LaVerne, as well as other colleagues such as Isabel Maxey Dittemore and Dorothy Sterling. The history of religion among the Lisu and their neighbors the Rawang is a special interest of mine, and Arrington fills in an important gap, showing from interviews what happened on the China side of Lisuland after Communism took over: how during persecution they buried their Bibles and rarely met to sing hymns, and consequently their faith lay dormant, but after they were again allowed to congregate in the 1980s, their faith was rekindled as they became active in fellowship and singing once again. 

The wisdom of Jespersen

 One book which I bought this past year was the autobiography of Otto Jespersen, A Linguist's Life (translated by David Stoner, edited by Arne Juul, Hans F. Nielsen, and Jørgen Erik Nielsen). I think I first came across Jespersen in 2011 when I was teaching English on Jinmen Island, Taiwan, and happened to find his book The Philosophy of Grammar (1924) in the upstairs floor of a department store among a lot of books imported from China. I only read a couple chapters, but I was warmed by his friendliness and lucidity around linguistic concepts. The following year, after I started studying linguistics at Payap University in Thailand, I read in R. M. W. Dixon's Basic Linguistic Theory (vol. 1, pp.87-88) that The Philosophy of Grammar is a classic. Dixon calls it "[a]n impressive synthesis of typological theory at that point in time. Asks important questions and provides thoughtful and thorough answers. It may appear a little outdated but it is still worthwhile examining what Jespersen had to say on virtually any topic."

So late this year as I was languishing in my room here at Old World Apples, hopped onto Jespersen's profile on Wikipedia and found out that he'd published an autobiography in 1938, and that it was published in English in 1995. I scoured the internet for copies, and the ones for sale were all way overpriced, but finally I found the Danish university press that had published it, and was able to order it from there at a reasonable price. When it got here, I found a real treat in chapter 16, "Retrospect". Maybe old scholars like Jespersen have had some of the tartness seasoned out of them, and what remains is devil-may-care wisdom and advice based on life experiences. Sample the following:

On accepting one's limitations (pp.246-247)

A song at a party at the time when I was writing my Fonetik, had this to say of me:

[Otto's a mighty clever chap.

With vigour undiminished

He labours on his heavy tome,

Which never will be finished.]

Time has shown this judgement to be rather hasty; I have completed both the phonetics and other big books -- although there are several plans which I have not carried out, and for which half-finished, often very copious, drafts lie in my drawers...

This is the nub of the matter, I suppose: we are all limited and Goethe's words [("It is in limitation that the master truly reveals himself")] are only true if they are taken to mean, "[it is in recognition of his limitation that the master truly reveals himself]".

On jotting down observations (p.247)

I am above all an observer; I quite simply cannot help making linguistic observations. In conversations at home and abroad, in railway compartments, when passing people in the street and on the road, I am constantly noticing oddities of pronunciation, forms, and sentence constructions -- but more in my younger days than now, when much of what was then striking is familiar to me. I have jotted down much of what I have picked up in that way and have developed quite a skill in catching language subtleties on the wing.

Reading with pencil in hand (p.247-248)

I constantly read with a pencil in my hand, and when there is something I find worth noting, I put a small dot in the margin. Afterwards these things, individual forms or whole sentences, are entered on slips of paper... At the moment when something is noted down I very often have no idea what I am going to use it for, or whether it will prove or show anything of interest; quite frequently a rule or connection becomes clear to me only when I compare a number of slips which may have been written at intervals of several years; thus a system which emerges from many separate observations has not, as in the practice of some philologists, been deduced beforehand (a priori) -- a method which can easily lead one astray.

...[N]otes on small slips are a good help, because with the greatest ease they can be arranged and re-arranged and put together from various points of view, until one finds the final system. From the start it is all elastic and flexible, until it is fitted into the straitjacket of a system.

From notes to slips to drawers to books (p.250)

So when any topic comes up for treatment, I already have a fair number of individual observations and ideas to build upon... One of my pupils is said to have once depicted my procedure like this: Jespersen gradually stuffs a quantity of slips into compartments in his drawers; when one compartment is full, a little bell rings, and another book is finished. Well, it is not quite so easy as that, and certainly not everything that has been collected is put into the final version. It is a matter of discriminating between what is essential and what is inessential, that may be where my strength lies... the secret [of finding good examples] lies precisely in the fact that... I have already gathered so many examples of every phenomenon dealt with that I can reject many of the less apt or useful ones, so that only the good ones are left.

The art of presentation (p.251)

One thing that is related to my ability to weed out material, instead of pedantically wanting to include everything, is... the art of presentation. "It reads like a novel" has been said in reviews of several of my books... But in my books I am not a mere popularizer deftly presenting things that others have thought -- my books contain mainly things that I have myself observed and thought, which I have endeavored to arrange for the reader in such a way that without too much effort he will grasp the broad and basic problems and see the main lines. Although I have avoided many of the technical terms that make the reading of many scholarly works so difficult, I hope that it will be said of me that I have not dodged difficulties.

Feel free to rearrange (pp.252)

As regards the final drafting, I shall first pass on a piece of advice which [Henry] Sweet gives in one of his books: don't try to save paper; paper is cheap. So of course write on only one side. But if you are not absolutely sure of the final order of the sections, always write each paragraph, however short, on a separate piece of paper. This gives opportunity for later expansions, additions, and rearrangements.

Writing habits (pp.252-253)

Form habits of work that are as regular and practical as possible.

Relieve the reader of much time-consuming labour. So quote in the best way: in the text itself as far as possible, so that his eye does not have to glance up and down while reading...

Do not immediately number the pages of the manuscript but wait until the whole of it is finished...

Do not reread what you have written straight away, but wait until next morning, when you are more detached and look at it with fresh eyes. It is good to begin one's daily stint by looking through the previous day's work; it prepares the mind for continuing. Morley Roberts and, as far as I recall, Anthony Trollope give novelists the advice not to finish in the evening by concluding a chapter, but to write just the beginning of the next one; then it will be easier to get into the mood the next day.

Communication as labor to enable understanding (p.254)

All this is bound up with my whole basic view of the nature of language as human labour to enable one person to grasp another's thought, feeling, and will. From this there necessarily follows the evaluative view with its two poles: easy to produce and easy to grasp. The best is that which, with the least effort, achieves the easiest, fullest, and most certain understanding. But from this all the rest follows, including the ethical task of working for an approach to this ideal.

Random notes for random thoughts (p.254)

I have not used the slips of paper only for single observations or quotations; on many of them I have written thoughts, whole reflections, or series of thoughts in outline. These may often have been evoked in an odd way through an apparently random link with what I am reading, not infrequently on quite unconnected subjects, in books, periodicals, or newspaper articles. A single word or phrase may arouse thoughts in my own special field or outside this.

Thinking-walks (p.254)

I have had many good ideas on solitary walks (thinking-walks my wife used to call them, and when I was much preoccupied with a topic, she knew that either I had to walk alone or, if she was with me, she had better keep quiet, whereas at other times our conversation could be lively enough). On such walks I always have slips in my pocket and write quite a lot on them. For instance, Novial came into being mainly in the parks of Ermelunden and Dyrehaven.

Notes at night (p.254)

I have also worked with slips of paper at night. In Jægersborg, when I shared a bedroom with my wife, I accustomed myself to writing thoughts down in the dark in pencil (not on ordinary paper slips, but on special ones of cardboard). As a rule these night slips contain only a single word which in the morning sets off a whole train of thought that might otherwise easily have been forgotten; it may also remind me of something to be done during the day. Here at Lundehave, where I have my own bedroom, I can of course switch on the light for such jottings without bothering anyone. Particularly while working on Analytic Syntax I would frequently wake up thinking of some sentence or sentence type: Have I included that one? And how is it to be analysed and symbolized? This led to disturbed sleep and was an important factor in the mental strain and exhaustion which was evident in the summer of 1936.

Habits of sleep and work (p.255)

In my younger days I used to read much at night and consequently got up late. During my period as a teacher, however, I combated this by always making sure that my lessons were in the morning. As a professor I had to get up early on the days I had lectures from 9 o'clock: I had to leave Gentofte station at a little after eight, and it took me twenty minutes to walk there. But I might not wake up properly until I had almost finished dressing, or during breakfast, or even while walking up the hill along Bernstorff Park. But on the days when I did not have to go to the University, I slept in late. I have long since shaken off these bad habits, and for many years now I have consistently kept to the rule that I do not work seriously after about eight o'clock or so, often indeed not after our evening dinner at about six. I get out of my bed without fail at half past seven, sit down to breakfast at eight, then read newspapers or the day's mail, then work until exactly eleven, and then walk until a quarter past twelve or thereabouts (only in exceptionally nasty weather is the walk curtailed); lunch at 12.30 is followed by a rest on the sofa... At 2, 2.15, or 2.30 I am up again and as a rule work until dinner-time, but nearly always with an additional walk of 30 or 45 minutes, when there are no afternoon visitors. I like if possible to walk my seven kilometres a day.

On answering letters (p.255)

A habit, not quite consistently adhered to, is on Sunday morning to answer those of the week's letters which have not required an immediate response. But I prefer to reply at once, because then one does not need to read them through again and can at once consign most letters to the waste-paper basket.

On daily reading (p.255-256)

For some years I made it a rule every day to read something, whether much or little, in one of the languages that are not exactly a picnic to me. Although there were days when it amounted to very little, it all added up, and in that way I managed to read most of the Odyssey, some of Plato, Calderón, Tolstoy, some Old Norse, the Gothic gospels with the Greek text, Holberg's Latin epistles, etc. It was fairly easy to maintain such a habit when life followed its daily routine, but once the habit had been broken by a longish journey, it was hard to get started again.

On forgetting (p.256)

I have written and published so much that I oftentimes cannot remember whether something about which I know I have reached conclusions has found a place in my published works, or whether it exists half-finished in one of my manuscripts for lectures or the like... 

It happens now and again when I dip into one of my earlier books, that I say to myself in amazement: What a lot you knew about that topic in those days. The reader may take this admission as he pleases, as an expression of vanity or as evidence of my poor memory.

On toning down criticism (p.257)

I am probably by nature of a critical cast of mind... Many of my best ideas have come to me when I have been reading or hearing the opposite views of others. In reviews and in books I have therefore often been polemical; it is my nature to put forward objections as sharply and definitely as possible and I may not always have expressed myself in as considerate a manner as possible. Here, however, I must thank my wife; she did not read much of my strictly scholarly works, but where possible, particularly in lectures, minor articles, and letters, she toned down over-sharp comments and persuaded me to see the justice of this. So I think I can rightly say that I have had, and continue to have, a good personal relationship with all those whose views I have publicly contradicted. (With perhaps a solitary exception.)

The fruits of progress (p.258)

I am happy that in my long life I have seen the introduction of telephones, bicycles, typewriters, fountain pens, cars, water closets, lifts, electric light, sound films, gramophones -- and not least: radio. And I am sure it is also a good thing that nowadays in Denmark we can eat tomatoes, bananas, and grapefruit, which were unknown in my youth. There are some points, after all, where the world progresses!

Alan Clements on interviewing

 In February 2021, I emailed Alan Clements about his four-volume interview series Burma's Voices of Freedom (co-edited by Fergus Harlow). In response to my questions, he was gracious enough to give me some advice on interviewing:

"The best way of learning the art of the interview is to study interview books. Next have a topic you want to learn about and next find someone you are inspired to learn from. From there, reach out, tape, transcribe, edit, done. You must want to learn from the person. You want to know what they know, the good, bad and ugly. The art is getting another to share truthful information, that they themselves rarely share with anyone. In that sense you must have a good understanding of human psychology. Love the question. Ask good ones. Even so getting some to talk and tell you the truth is a deeper issue."

Burmo-Gyalrongic innovations in Nungish

In a previous post, I quoted Sagart et al. (2019:26), who presented potential lexical innovations shared by Lolo-Burmese and Gyalrongic. I will quote their list below, with additions from Nungish in italics. All bolding is mine. Unless otherwise stated, Rawang forms come from the Rawang Dictionary.

Sagart et al. say:

The hypothesis of a genetic relationship between Lolo-Burmese and Gyalrongic languages has been previously discussed by several scholars, including Bradley (1997), Jacques and Michaud (2011), and Lǐ (1998). The Burmo-Gyalrongic hypothesis is strongly supported by our analysis. Potential Burmo-Gyalrongic innovations in our database are the following:

1. Japhug ɕɤɣ “new” – Old Burmese sac ‘new’ (Jacques (2004: 190)). This etymon has cognates elsewhere in Sino-Tibetan, but in other branches the coda is nasal (for instance Chinese 新 sin < *siŋ)

Based on Jacques (2004:260, 266, 330), the Japhug word kɯ-ɕɤɣ 'new' corresponds to the Somang/Cogtse Gyalrongic word kə-ɕə́k 'new', and the Proto-Gyalrongic form (minus the pre-syllable) should be something like *ɕ{ɐ/ɔ/ə}k. This k final does fit with the Old Burmese -c. On the other hand, Nungish has a final rhotic, as seen in Rawang ʃə́r 'new' and Central T'rùng sər⁵⁵ 'be new' (T'rùng Dictionary). The rhotic fits better with Tibetan གསར་ gsar 'new' and Burmese θa < sa < *sar 'titivate' (Hill 2019:71). I will have to take Nungish out of the running for this one.

2. Japhug ɣɯrni “red” – Old Burmese nī ‘red’ (Jacques (ibid.: 172))

3. Japhug zdɯm “cloud” – Old Burmese tim “cloud” (Jacques (ibid.: 185))

4. Japhug ɯ-ʁɤri “the front side” – Old Burmese rheʔ ‘the front side’ (Jacques (ibid.: 104)).

5. Japhug tɯ-rtsʰɤz “lung” – Old Burmese ʔachut ‘lung’ (Jacques (ibid.: 150)).

Rawang rəʃɯ́ 'lung'; Central T'rùng rə³¹sɯ⁵⁵ (T'rùng Dictionary). The Nungish r initial fits the Japhug r, and the Nungish ɯ vowel fits Japhug ɤ and Old Burmese u, but the final z or t does not appear in Rawang, unless we say that it became a high tone. Also, the tsʰ / ch cluster does not correspond terribly well with Nungish ʃ / s. It is possible that Japhug and Burmese added a dental suffix after splitting off from Nungish, so I will take Nungish out of the running for this word.

6. Japhug tɯ-mɯ “rain, sky, weather” – Rangoon mo⁵⁵ ‘rain, sky’(Jacques (ibid.: 154))

Rawang mu͏ʔ 'sky, rain, name of a spirit-deity', dəmɯ̀ 'god' (Mətwàng); gəmɯ̀ 'god', gəmɯ́ 'heaven' (Jerwàng and other northern dialects). Since I have not read up thoroughly on Japhug morphology, I don't know whether to ignore the tɯ- pre-syllable or not. As Hill (2017) points out, not only Rawang but also Old Tibetan dmu 'a type of sky god' corresponds well to the Japhug form.

7. Daofu sme “woman” – Old Burmese minḥ-ma ‘woman’

The Daofu form would be better matched with Burmese သမီ θəmí < sa-mīḥ 'daughter' (spelling from Hill 2019:59). Rawang has a similar word, zəmì 'girl, bride', which is also used as part of some women's names, but it might be a Burmese loanword.

From the Rawang Dictionary:

zəmì rɯt lə́m ʃaʔrépèla búŋe. "The elders went to ask/propose a bride."

zəmì-ʃə́r 'bride' (dictionary entry erroneously reads 'groom') (lit. girl+new)

zəmì-sè (girl-son/diminutive) 'baby girl'

zəmì-sè-rì (girl-son-PL) 'family you give your daughter to (brothers and uncles from the woman's side)' [here son-PL means 'people'] 

Interestingly, there is also a Rawang word with the syllables switched: məzè 'girl, woman (a formative in noun compounds)', e.g. ŋà-ní məzè (1SG-DL girl) 'we two women'.

From the Rawang Dictionary:

àŋ-ní məzè tuʔ-daʔ-ì. 

3SG-DL girl arrive-DOWN/TOWARD-3INTR.PST

"The two girls have arrived."

As I mentioned above, I believe that zəmì comes from Burmese *sa-mīḥ 'daughter' (son-female), the equivalent of Rawang sè-mè < Proto-Nungish *tsə̀{l/j}-mə̀j (son-female) 'daughter', and məzè probably comes from either the two Burmese syllables in reverse or from the Rawang phrase mè-sè  < *mə̀j-tsə̀{l/j} (female-son/diminutive) 'little girl'.   

Note that the cognacy between Rawang zəmì and Burmese sa-mi was long ago noted by Benedict (2008[1941]:165), based on the Waʔdə́mkong form zami 'daughter' (Barnard 1934:74). He also cites the Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson 1928:24, 156), which provides the form sɑ̀mi 'daughter', also collected by Barnard: with the s initial, this one is even closer to the Burmese spelling.

As evidence that syllable reduction in Rawang dialects is possible, compare the following words from Melam (a northern Anu variety) collected at Tsekou (Cigu) on the upper Mekong River (d'Orleans 1898:439-446), with the latter two transcribed by Father Dubernard:

poumakielra [puma-cəl-ra] (woman-son/child-group) 'daughter'

poumatienza [puma-cən-za] (woman-son/child-group) 'daughter'

lankiera [laŋ-ce-ra] (man-son/child-group) 'son'

Now compare them with modern spoken Mətwàng:

səmaré ~ səmasəré (səma 'woman', -sə- 'child?', -ré 'group, class') 'woman'

ləŋàré ~ ləŋàsəré (ləŋà 'man', -sə- 'child?', -ré 'group, class') 'man'

I heard the two forms with the infixed -sə- from Ráwàng Gønzì in Yangon, and when I asked about them to see whether they came from the word sè 'son, child', she said no, that's just they way they say it sometimes. I still suspect that -sə- is derived from 'son', but that it is now fossilized, whereas it was still recognizable in 1895-1896 in the case of Melam. This still doesn't mean that zəmì is not a Burmese loanword, but it does show how the process of fossilization works -- and even today, you can add -sè 'son/child/diminutive' to the end of səmasəré 'woman' or ləŋàsəré 'man'. And the cycle goes on!

8. Daofu kvo, Wobzi Khroskyabs djú “year” – Lisu kho̱³¹ “year” (Jacques (2014: 101)).

9. Japhug nɯqambɯmbjom, Wobzi Khroskyabs jmbjə̂m “to fly” – Old Burmese pjaṃ ‘to fly’. This root is related to Tibetan ’byam “spread” and Chinese 泛 phjomH “float”, with unidirectional semantic change “float” → “fly”. The Japhug verb form has reduplication and additional prefixes, but related language have the simple verb root.

[10.] Jacques (ibid.: 305-306) lists a additional few phonetic and lexical innovations, notably the verb ‘to be’, ŋu in Japhug, ŋǽ in Wobzi Khroskyabs, corresponding to Proto-Burmese *ŋwa¹ ‘to be the case’ (Bradley 1979 0698a). Jacques (2014: 305-306) suggests that the copular use of this verb is derived from an earlier meaning, namely ‘to be true’. 

Rawang has the form ˀɯ̀ŋ 'yes', which can be used to acknowledge an interlocutor's statement, respond affirmatively to a question, or to place emphasis after one's own statement. This is a widespread iconic ideophone, as the Mandarin Chinese spoken in Jinmen, Taiwan (and no doubt elsewhere) has a similar form: ˀɯ̀ŋ/ˀm̀/ˀǹ, used in affirmation after someone has asked you a question. English has it too, for that matter, in our grunt "mm-hmm".

On another note, compare Jinghpaw ŋà 'be, exist' and ŋa 'say, speak, declare' -- these two forms correspond to the Burmo-Gyalrongic forms, and they also correspond in semantic range (but not in phonetic form) to the Rawang forms əl ~ e 'exist in a place; say, tell; call/name someone'. This semantic range shared by the Jinghpaw and Rawang terms, as well as the semantic extension pathway 'be true' > 'be the case' > 'be' suggested for Burmo-Gyalrongic, appears to be an areal feature.

Summary

Out of ten etyma proposed by Sagart et al. and Jacques as Burmo-Gyalrongic innovations, one appears in Nungish with close correspondence ('sky'); two appear with distant correspondence ('new' and 'lung'); one appears as a possible Burmese loanword ('woman'), and one has ideophonic similarity and a possible semantic areal feature ('be').

I don't know whether that casts doubt on the uniqueness of the innovations or if it pulls Nungish in closer to the tenuous Burmo-Gyalrongic orbit. As with many things in comparative-historical linguistics, evidence of genetic closeness is a matter of degrees, in counting how many isoglosses are shared and how closely they correspond. The next step would be to figure out some regular sound correspondences for Lolo-Burmese, Gyalrongic, and Nungish. Considering the messiness of the data already presented, that step will take a lot more work.

It is a credit to Jacques, Sagart et al., and Hill, that, each in their own way, they have moved the conversation forward this far in our search for evidence of historical relatedness.

References

Barnard, Joseph Terence Owen. 1934. A handbook of the Răwang dialect of the Nung language. Rangoon: Superintendent of Gov’t. Printing and Stationery.

Benedict, Paul King. 2008[1941]. Kinship in Southeastern Asia (STEDT Monograph 6). Berkeley, CA: University of California. http://stedt.berkeley.edu/pubs_and_prods/STEDT_Monograph6_PKB_1941.pdf (12 September, 2016).

Bradley, David 1979. Proto-Loloish. London: Curzon Press.

Bradley, David. 1997. Tibeto-Burman languages and classification. In David Bradley (ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics. Vol. 14, 1–72. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Coblin, W. South. 1987. A note on Old Tibetan mu. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 10.1, 166–168.

Grierson, George Abraham (ed.). 1928. Linguistic survey of India. Vol. 1 (Part 2): Comparative vocabulary of Indian languages. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, India. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/lsi/ (15 August, 2015).

Hill, Nathan W. 2017. Songs of the Bailang: A new transcription with etymological commentary. Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 103. 386–430.

Hill, Nathan W. 2019. The historical phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jacques, Guillaume. 2004. Phonologie et morphologie du japhug (Rgyalrong). PhD thesis. Université Paris VII - Denis Diderot.

Jacques, Guillaume. 2014. Esquisse de phonologie et de morphologie historique du tangoute. Leiden: Brill, 373.

Jacques, Guillaume & Alexis Michaud. 2011. Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages: Naxi, Na and Laze. Diachronica 28(4). 468–498.

Lǐ, Yǒngsuì. 1998. Qiāngmiǎn yǔqún chúyì. Mízúyǔwén 1, 16–28.

Orléans, Henri Philippe Marie, prince d’. 1898. From Tonkin to India by the sources of the Irawadi, January ’95-January ’96. London: Methuen. http://seasiavisions.library.cornell.edu/catalog/sea:054 (17 July, 2015).

Sagart, Laurent, Guillaume Jacques, Yunfan Lai, Robin J. Ryder, Valentin Thouzeau, Simon J. Greenhill & Johann-Mattis List. 2019. Supplementary information for the paper “Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(21). 10317–10322. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817972116.

Language Resources

Kachin Dictionary:

https://rawang.org/raw/ka%CC%80-paqzi%CC%81linguistics/kachin-dictionary

(multilingual dictionary app and webpage with Jinghpaw, including tones, and other languages of Kachin State)

Rawang Dictionary:

LaPolla, Randy J. & David Sangdong. 2015. Rawang-English-Burmese dictionary (A Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Myanmar). Privately published for limited circulation. http://rawang.webonary.org/ (23 December, 2015).

T'rung Dictionary:

Trung Dictionary Committee, Li Aixin 李爱新, Li Jinming 李金明, Yang Jiangling 杨将领 & Ross Perlin. 2015. Concise Trung-English-Chinese dictionary / Tvrung kvt cv’tyeng / 简明独龙语英语汉语词典 Jianming Dulongyu Yingyu Hanyu cidian. Draft. Trung Dictionary Committee. http://trung.webonary.org (18 June, 2016).

A dialogue on the Rawang reflexive marker

The following dialogue illustrates some of the admirative, auto-benefactive, and isolative connotations of the Rawang reflexive and middle voice suffix -shì. The conversation took place over Viber on 15-16 Jan 2021, between Nathan Straub of Vancouver, Washington, USA and Ráwàng Kurzi of Upper Shanggong Village, Putao District, Kachin State, Myanmar. 

Each line is given in the vernacular as originally texted, followed by an English translation in parentheses, with phonemic transcription and morpheme glossing on the lines below. Please note that I have supplied tones in the morphological analysis to the best of my ability, but have not checked them with a native speaker.

NS = Nathan Straub

KZ = Ráwàng Kurzi

KZ: [video of Donny & Marie Osmond's song "A little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll"]

NS: Gvzà byoe 

gəzà bjo-e

very be.enjoyable-NPST

"Very enjoyable!"

KZ: [photo of rice in sifting tray]

NS: Vmcit ima?

əmtsit í má

rice.uncooked be YNQ

"Is that uncooked rice?"

KZ: IE byoe. Alanginx mvkun anglíri tangshxng nø vbx yvlvm mele 

í-e

be-NPST 

bjo-e

be.enjoyable-NPST

a-lang-i-nɯ məkun àŋ-lí-rì ta-ŋ-ʃɯ̀-ŋ nɯ əbɯ jəl-əm-e-le

this-moment-INST-TOP song NMLZ-old-PL listen-1SG-REFL-1SG TOP rice sift-for.eating-NPST-EXCL

"Yes, it's enjoyable. Right now I'm listening to old songs (by myself) and sifting rice for eating!"

KZ: IE vmcit 

í-e əmtsit

be-NPST rice.uncooked

"Yes, it's uncooked rice." 

NS: Shvlae lo 

ʃəla-e lo

be.good-NPST FRIENDLY

"Oh, good."

NS: Why do you say tangshxng, not tangoe or tange? 

why do you say ta-ŋ-ʃɯ̀-ŋ, not tá-ŋ-ò-e or ta-ŋ-e?

why do you say listen-1SG-REFL-1SG not listen-1SG-3OBJ-NPST or listen-1SG-NPST

"Why do you say tangshxng (listen by/for myself), not tangoe (listen to something) or tange (listen)?"

KZ: Vsvng maba vdewawa enjoying eating or listening rvgaq langoe 

əsə̀ŋ mə-əbá ədè-wa-wa 

person NEG-be.present oneself-only-only 

enjoying eating or listening LOCATION use-3OBJ-NPST
enjoying eating or listening rəgaʔ laŋ-ò-e

"People use it where there are no other people there and you're just enjoying eating or listening."

KZ: Angwawa vmshidari 

àŋ-wa-wa əm-ʃì-dár-ì

3SG-only-only eat-REFL-PST.HRS.AGO-3.PST

"He/she ate it alone by him/herself."

KZ: Gvza nxntmvshxmsori shxne 

gəzà nɯt mə-ʃɯ̀m sori ʃɯ̀n-e

very mind NEG-be.satisfied while say-NPST

"It is said when a person is very discontent."

KZ: Vmshxng dxra 

əm-ʃɯ̀-ŋ-dɯ́r-à

eat-REFL-1SG-PST.HRS.AGO-1SG.PST

"I ate by myself"

KZ: Vdedvpvt wairvgaq langie 

ədè dəpət wa-ì rəgaʔ laŋ-ì-e

oneself for do-1PL LOCATION use-1PL-NPST

"We use it when we're doing something for ourself."

KZ: Along lvngshxnge le 

a-lòŋ ləŋ-ʃɯ̀-ŋ-e le

this-CL use/take-REFL-1SG-NPST EXCL

"I'm taking/using this one (for myself)!"

KZ: Nawawa nx kapa etashie lo 

nà-wa-wa nɯ ka-pà è-tá-ʃì-e lo

2SG-only-only TOP what-thing N1-listen-REFL-NPST FRIENDLY

"Hey, what are you listening to all alone?"

KZ: Wakeni me sori shxn we ie

wa-kèní me sori ʃɯ̀n we í-e

say-from envy/admire while say NMLZ be-NPST

"These things are said when a person is envious/admiring."

KZ: Positive ku ie

positive ku í-e

positive way be-NPST

"It's a positive thing (sense or manner of speaking)."

KZ: Ok.. Ari dvdvng shirae le… 

OK.. a-rì də-dəŋ-ʃì rà-e le

OK this-PL CAUS-finish-REFL need-NPST EXCL

"OK… I should stop with these."

NS: :D

KZ: Nawawa pa evm shie 

nà-wa-wa pà è-əm-ʃì-e

2SG-only-only what N1-eat-REFL-NPST

"What are you eating all by yourself?"

NS: Me sori shxn we nx jealous ku I ma? 

me sori ʃɯ̀n we nɯ jealous ku í má

envy/admire while say NMLZ TOP jealous way be YNQ

"When you say "When envious/admiring", is it a jealous thing (sense or manner of speaking)?"

KZ: Jealous nø shøm me waka ie. ME e waka nø Vm lvm dang taq lango keni lvjøm tiq pvn (Cvmre ri muk Muk vm we tiqgø ce nø mazí shvmè oe Negative) dvgá dang lango keni admire ku lvjøm lun shie . Kurvp ceri paqzi gvza vhánga lunga. Mē rae I! 

jealous nɯ ʃɯ̀m-e wa-kà í-e

jealous TOP satisfy?-NPST say-speech be-NPST

me-e wa-kà nɯ əm lə́m daŋ taʔ laŋ-ò kèní ləjɯm tiʔ pə̀n

envy/admire-NPST say-speech TOP eat PUR about on use-3OBJ from meaning one kind

tsə̀mré rì muk-muk əm we tiʔ-gɯ́ tsè nɯ mə-ə-zí ʃə-mè-ò-e ...

child PL bread-bread eat NMLZ.but one-CL.person child TOP NEG-INTR/NMLZ-give CAUS-envy-3OBJ-NPST

dəgá daŋ laŋ-ò kèní ... ku ləjɯm lún-ʃì-e

other matter use-3OBJ from ... way get-REFL-NPST

ku-rəp tsè-rì paʔzí gəzà ə-háŋ-à-lúŋ-à

that-family child-PL knowledge very INTR-raise.high-3PST-UPWARD/CHANGE-3PST

mē-ra-e í

admire TOWARD/EVID.FEEL-NPST RHETORICAL.Q.YES

"Jealous is the word shø̀me. The word me on the other hand is used for one meaning when someone's going to eat. [For example,] "The kids are eating bread, but one kid wasn't given any, and it made him jealous." That's a negative connotation. Another possible meaning of me is when you admire something. "The kids in that family have really advanced in education. Gotta admire them, huh!"

Summary

In this conversation, I found out that the Rawang suffix -shì /-ʃì/ can indicate a sense of doing something alone, by oneself, and/or for oneself, such as eating food or listening to music. For the one doing the action, it indicates a feeling of enjoyment or contentedness. For the one observing and asking about the action, it indicates envy or admiration, mostly in a positive sense.

The sense of 'for oneself' or 'to oneself' is no surprise, but the individuative sense of 'alone, by oneself' had not been reported before in linguistic descriptions of Rawang (Barnard 1934; Morse 1965; Sarep 1996; LaPolla 1996, 2000; LaPolla & Yang 2004). 

Furthermore, the secondary or tertiary pragmatic connotations of enjoyment, envy, and admiration are things that would hardly ever work their way into a grammar or dictionary. They call to mind how Roman Jakobson (1960:353, 357) isolates six functions of language and correlates them with six factors involved in verbal communication:

1. emotive (expressing) functions focus on the addresser (speaker)

2. conative (vocative, imperative) functions focus on the addressee

3. referential functions focus on the context

4. poetic functions focus on the message

5. phatic functions focus on the contact

6. metalingual functions focus on the code

Normally, morpheme analysis focuses on the referential functions. However, in conversation, as Ráwàng Kurzi explains above, the emotive and phatic functions of expressing a feeling and maintaining a connection, are equally important.

References

Barnard, Joseph Terence Owen. 1934. A handbook of the Răwang dialect of the Nung language. Rangoon: Superintendent of Gov’t. Printing and Stationery.

Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In Thomas Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, 350-359. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

LaPolla, Randy J. 1996. Middle voice marking in Tibeto-Burman languages. In Pan-Asiatic Linguistics: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Languages and Linguistics, vol. 5, 1940–1954. Mahidol University, Thailand. 

LaPolla, Randy J. 2000. Valency-changing derivations in Dulong/Rawang. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity, 282–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

LaPolla, Randy J. & Yang Jiangling. 2004. Reflexive and middle marking in Dulong-Rawang. Himalayan Linguistics 2. 1–13.

Morse, Robert H. 1965. Syntactic frames for the Rvwàng (Rawang) verb. Lingua 15. 338–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(65)90018-5.

Sarep, Hpung. 1996. A study of the morphology of verbs and nouns in the Sinwal dialect of the Rawang language. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 19(2). 93–184.