The Multi-functionality of Optional Agent and Patient Markers in Ludian Naxi
This article investigates the optional agent marker nɯ33 (with the allomorph ni33) and the three optional patient markers to55, kuɑ55, and tɕo11 in Ludian Naxi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Yunnan. Drawing on first-hand discourse data spanning folk narrative, customs description, traditional-housing interviews, and family conversation, the study finds agent marking (6.1%) slightly more frequent than patient marking (4.8%), with genre strongly shaping which patient marker speakers prefer and showing tɕo11 still emerging as a marker. It identifies animacy, verb transitivity, syntactic structure (causative, ditransitive, direct-quotation, reflexive, pseudo-cleft), and information structure as factors governing whether markers surface, and shows agent/patient relations can also be signaled by tone sandhi alone. The markers prove highly multifunctional, also serving as locative, ablative, instrumental, goal, nominalizing, recipient, and emphatic markers, leading the author to classify Ludian Naxi as an optional ergative-type language.
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