This paper outlines Tibetan morphosyntactic features transferred into two genetically unrelated and typologically distinct languages, Salar (Turkic) and Wutun (Sinitic), both spoken in the same linguistic area, the Amdo Sprachbund located in the Upper Yellow River basin in Western China.Part of the research cited in this paper was carried out under the research project “Interactional, Cross-Linguistic, Theoretical and Areal Perspectives on Evidentiality and Egophoricity” funded by the Academy of Finland. Examples not otherwise cited are from the two authors’ fieldwork. We wish to thank all our Salar, Wutun and Amdo Tibetan friends for their patience and helpfulness in helping us to understand their languages. We are also grateful to the organizers and fellow participants of the International Workshop on Linguistic Microareas of South Asia held in Uppsala on May 5–6, 2014, to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and to Christopher Culver for improving the English language of our paper.Due to long-term linguistic contact with Amdo Tibetan, the culturally dominant language in the region, Salar and Wutun have undergone many parallel convergence processes, and they have developed shared grammatical features not found in their genetic relatives spoken elsewhere. By comparing the grammatical structures transferred from Tibetan into both Salar and Wutun, we aim to identify the most prominent Tibetan grammatical features that tend to be copied into neighboring languages despite their different genetic affiliations and typological profiles. Our study highlights the role of Tibetan as the dominant language of the Sprachbund, serving as a model for linguistic convergence for its neighboring languages.

Among the categories grammaticalised in the noun phrase, the domain of number shows several formal and functional similarities in genetically distinct languages of Amdo. In most languages of the area, it is grammaticalised in a complex way, with several morphemes expressing distinct plural categories. This paper describes the attested categories and their functional characteristics in order to retrace cases of linguistic copying and show the respective contribution of each language group to this domain. Hence, the paper shows that the grammatical domain of plurality in Amdo, both from a functional and a formal point of view, presents characteristics of linguistic convergence based on multiple model-languages.

This paper explores the initial steps of transgenerational language change in exile by comparing the varieties of “Common” Tibetan as spoken by parents born in Amdo, Tibet, and by their teenager children, born in Tibet or in South Asia, who arrived in France at an early age and who have spent all or most of their schooling in France. In these families, the parents speak a variety of Amdo Tibetan as their first language, which does not allow for inter-comprehension with “Common” Tibetan. They have acquired “Common” Tibetan during their stay in South Asia before they moved to France. The paper follows a descriptive approach to analyze the structural (dis)similarities between the parents’ and the children’s varieties of “Common” Tibetan. It also documents intra-generational variation (1) within the parents’ generation, where we can observe a variable extent of retention for Amdo Tibetic features, and (2) within the children’s generation, where variation is usually due more to the (often contact-induced) linguistic changes than to the retention of some of their parents’ linguistic features.

Les descriptions de la syntaxe du tibétain ont depuis longtemps mis en évidence plusieurs caractéristiques qui montrent que les questions de valence verbale dans cette langue ne peuvent être traitées à un niveau simplement syntaxique, mais doivent intégrer des composantes pragmatiques et sémantiques essentielles. Cet article vise donc à mettre en avant ces questions d’ordre sémantique, essentielles pour la compréhension de la notion de valence. Nous proposons tout d’abord une définition de la valence verbale en tibétain, puis une description de deux diathèses et enfin d’un autre exemple de variation du marquage morpho-syntaxique des actants dans l’énoncé.

This paper investigates the grammaticalization and subsequent pragmaticization of an applicative construction in Tibetic. Based on linguistic data ranging from the 8th century to modern times, we show how successive linguistic changes link a verb phrase originally meaning ‘to act as a companion (of sb.)’ to an imperative marker, through an applicative construction. Despite the scarcity of data, we document the different stages of evolution of this particular construction: the lexicalization of a verb phrase; its grammaticalization into a sociative-benefactive applicative marker; the pragmaticization of particular use patterns of this applicative construction into markers of complaints, wishes and commands; and eventually a secondary grammaticalization into an imperative marker. As they developed, most of these stages have been retained in the modern Tibetic languages and co-exist with lexicalized units based on the same morphological material. Our analysis adds to the recently discussed cross-linguistic data by demonstrating that applicative markers can directly grammaticalize from nouns without an intermediate stage of noun incorporation or adposition. We also show that the range of functions taken over by this construction in synchrony can only be understood by referring to its diachronic evolution.

La présente étude s’inscrit dans le cadre plus vaste de la description des langues de l’aire linguistique Amdo. Cette région est caractérisée par la présence de langues sinitiques, mongoliques, tibétiques et turciques et, pour le salar et le tibétain, une situation de contact linguistique long d’environ sept siècles. Le salar est l’une des langues turciques les moins décrites et elle présente de nombreuses particularités dues à son isolement par rapport aux autres langues turciques. Il n’existe pas non plus de description des variétés de tibétain parlées dans la région salarophone, périphérique dans la tibétosphère. La perspective que nous adoptons ici est donc à la fois descriptive et comparative. Après un exposé des caractéristiques historiques et sociolinguistiques de cette situation de contact, nous analysons de façon détaillée des catégories grammaticales indexées dans le syntagme nominal et dans le prédicat. En particulier, nous proposons une nouvelle analyse des morphèmes de Temps-Aspect-Mode en salar et montrons que cette langue a copié en partie ses catégories évidentielles sur le modèle de celles du tibétain de l’Amdo. Nous nous intéressons ensuite aux problématiques liées à la valence verbale et aux effets du contact linguistique sur l’organisation accusative et ergative qui caractérisent respectivement le salar et le tibétain de l’Amdo. Nous analysons les marques casuelles à la fois comme relateurs, au sein du prédicat verbal, mais également comme converbe ou au sein des formes converbiales. Enfin, nous décrivons les catégories de voix grammaticalisées en salar et en tibétain, et montrons que celles-ci sont quasiment identiques dans les deux langues.