The Semantic Value and Grammatical Traits of "Come" and "Go" in the Naxi Language
This 2008 paper by He Wanchuan and He Hongjun describes the phonetics, semantics, and grammar of the Naxi verbs for "come" and "go," based on the Naxi speech of Lunan village, Longpan township, Lijiang. Naxi has four morphemes for "come" (lu33, lɯ33, tsʰɿ33, la21) and six for "go" (bɯ33, ba21, xɯ33, xo21, kʰɯ33, fæ33), each with distinct pragmatic register (blunt/decisive vs. polite/mild), aspectual value (imminent, completed-and-returned, departed-and-not-yet-returned, imperative), and person restrictions. The authors show that when these words combine with a following verb, the verb may undergo tone sandhi that converts a serial-verb phrase into a verb-complement phrase with a shifted meaning, and that in complement position "come/go" morphemes are frequently bleached into aspect/modal markers (a sentence-final "let's," a probability marker, or a perfective particle) rather than retaining literal directional meaning.
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