중국 내 소수민족 언어의 방향 관련 동사성 표현 고찰

Abstract

This paper investigated verbal components indicating directions in the languages of minority ethnic groups in China. The total number of minority languages in China covered in this paper is twenty-one including four ‘Tibetan languages,’ seven ‘Jingpo languages,’ four ‘Burmese languages’ and six ‘Qiang languages.’ In this paper, verbal expressions indicating directions in these languages were classified by type and then analyzed. First, we examined languages with directional verbs. Among the twenty-one languages studied, it was confirmed that there are directional verbs in ‘Pela’ and ‘Xiandao,’ both of which have a single verb for the meanings of ‘to come’ and ‘to go,’ and they use different verbs depending on the direction and height of the movement. Second, we examined languages with directional particles. It was confirmed that ‘Yidu,’ ‘Sulung’ and ‘Xiandao’ have directional particles. All of these languages have directional particles indicating height, and also have a system where directions are indicated on a speaker basis. Third, we examined languages with verb affixes indicating directions. First, a total of seven languages has directional prefixes, among which ‘Baima’ has the largest number of directional prefixes. Next, there are two languages with directional suffixes: ‘Drung’ and ‘Nung.’ In particular, the directional suffixes of ‘Nung’ are quite developed and systematic. Finally, based on the above analyses, we examined the interrelationship of directional expressions. It was confirmed that when there are multiple directional expressions in a language, they are complementary to each other and are often made through the process of grammaticalization.