Yanning Lai
Biographic Data
| ID | 137134 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yanning Lai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yanning |
| FAMILY NAME | Lai |
| SIGNATURE | LAI Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nanyang Technological University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7034-056X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Shared innovations and the “Tangut-Horpa clade”: A demonstration of Neogrammarian principles in language classification
This paper conducts a comprehensive exploration of methodology in historical linguistics, focusing on language subgrouping. Employing Tangut, a severely eroded medieval language, as a case study, it scrutinizes previous linguistic analyses that depart from the rigorous Neogrammarian method, specifically referencing Beaudouin (2023). These non-compliant analyses have impeded recent progress in understanding the genetic relationships within Burmo-Q…
Thoughts on the Etyma for ‘Corpse’ in Gyalrongic Languages
This paper studies the four distinct native terms for ‘corpse’ attested in Gyalrongic languages. Through comparative analysis, it establishes the sound correspondences among cognates and proposes preliminary reconstructions. In a second step, it hypothesises on the origins of the etyma by examining potential cognates in other Sino‐Tibetan languages. Two shared innovations can be found in the etyma for ‘corpse’. First, the Situ form *m‐g[á]m is an…
New origins to vowel tensing in Tangut: Internal and Comparative Evidence
This paper proposes new origins for tense vowels in Tangut by integrating textual analysis of Tangut texts with comparative data from both Gyalrongic and other Sino-Tibetan languages. It uncovers two previously unreported sources of vowel tensing in compounding: the collective prefix (*S-) and the compound linker (*-S-). Both morphemes left only a few traces, indicating their antiquity and productivity in earlier stages. The collective *S- could …
Musk deer are inherited: The reconstruction of the onset *t.ɬj- in Proto-Gyalrongic
This paper explores a rare sound correspondence pattern found in Gyalrongic languages, focusing on two etyma: ‘musk deer’ and ‘valley’. The reflexes in daughter languages exhibit different onsets, including palatals, alveolars, and laterals, which renders their genetic relationship non-obvious. Despite its significance, this correspondence pattern has been largely overlooked and insufficiently reconstructed. In this study, I propose a novel recon…
Mutual predictiveness of sound correspondences for reconstruction and language subgrouping: The case of Gyalrongic preinitials
This paper uses Gyalrongic languages, a conservative branch of Sino-Tibetan, to illustrate a new method to evaluate proto-language reconstructions in general historical linguistics and to conduct exploratory analyses in language phylogeny. It first reconstructs a proto-system of Gyalrongic preinitials and computes and compares the implicative entropies between reconstructed and modern systems. In a second step, Mutual Implicative Entropy (MIE) is…
On plosive-nasal correspondences and alternations in Gyalrongic and their possible solutions
Gyalrongic languages exhibit a series of non-trivial nasal-plosive (or approximant) correspondences, which so far lack an explanation. Some nasal consonants, mainly found in West Gyalrongic languages, correspond to plosives or approximants in their East Gyalrongic cognates. Long considered irregular, these correspondences have never been studied with the comparative method. This paper tackles these seeming correspondences and makes the first atte…
Lenition alternation in West Gyalrongic and its implications for Southeast Asian panchronic phonology
Based on internal reconstruction, this paper resolves a long-standing problem observed in Khroskyabs, a West Gyalrongic language (Sino-Tibetan), that seems to sporadically have lenited voiceless stops, resulting in irregular correspondences with East Gyalrongic. Two major sound changes are involved: intervocalic lenition and post-stress intersyllabic compression. It turns out that the processes proposed here are one probable solution to monosylla…
From transitive to intransitive and voiceless to voiced in Proto-Sino-Tibetan: New evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs
This paper offers new evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs to address the question of directionality in valency-changing derivations in Sino-Tibetan. Examining Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs causative and anticausative verb stem pairs adds to the evidence that in Proto-Sino-Tibetan, a number of intransitive stems are derived from transitive stems, in some cases as the result of * N ‐ prefixation, and in other cases from voicing alternation …
Preinitial denasalisation and palatal fortition in Khroskyabs and the Gyalrongic word for ‘man’
There are four distinct forms conveying the meaning of ‘human, person, man’ across Gyalrongic languages. The default type (Japhug tɯ-rme), the rounded type (Khroskyabs vɟú ), the Stau type (Geshiza vdzi) and the uvular type (Geletuo taˈʁap ). Except for the default type, which has cognates in many other Sino-Tibetan languages, the origins of the other types are to date obscure and understudied. This paper first studies the phenomena of preinitial…
When internal reconstruction goes further: Proposing the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs through examining bound state apophony
This paper proposes an internal reconstruction of the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs by analysing bound state apophony in modern Siyuewu Khroskyabs. While most modern Khroskyabs dialects do not exhibit sufficient variations of bound state apophony, Siyuewu Khroskyabs is conservative in this regard. The internal reconstruction deals with the different reflexes between final and non-final vowels in modern Khroskyabs dialects, and postulates a unifi…
Come is the new go: The evolution of stem alternation of basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs
In this paper, I describe the morphology as well as the uses of the basic motion verbs, ‘to come’ and ‘to go’, in Khroskyabs based on two of its varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, before analyzing the evolutionary pathways of their stem alternation patterns. The meanings of the basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs originally were not ‘to come’ or ‘to go’; instead, these verbs denoted Goal-oriented motion and Source-oriented motion. The choice of the deict…
Betrayal through obedience: On the history of the unusual inflectional chain in Siyuewu Khroskyabs
This paper focuses on the verbal inflection chain of Siyuewu Khroskyabs, a Gyalrongic language (Trans-Himalayan). Siyuewu Khroskyabs goes against two general typological tendencies: first, as an SOV language, it shows an overwhelming preference for prefixes, which is rarely reported typologically; second, the inflectional prefixes in the outer slots are older than those in the inner slots, which is the reverse case of most languages. In this pape…
The complexity and history of verb-stem ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs
This paper describes the ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs, an understudied Gyalrongic language. Ablaut is only found in verbs containing closed syllables, and ablaut patterns in Siyuewu preserve Proto-Khroskyabs patterns relatively well. After providing a synchronic description of verb-stem functions and ablauting patterns, implicative entropy is used to model Siyuewu’s ablauting status. Entropy measurements reveal Siyuewu to have relativ…
Tangut as a West Gyalrongic language
This paper proposes that Tangut should be classified as a West Gyalrongic language in the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan family. We examine lexical commonalities, case marking, partial reduplication, and verbal morphology in Tangut and in modern West Gyalrongic languages, and point out nontrivial shared innovations between Tangut and modern West Gyalrongic languages. The analysis suggests a closer genetic relationship between Tangut and Modern West…
The historical development of inverse marking in Khroskyabs: Evidence from two modern varieties - Siyuewu and Wobzi
This paper describes the inverse marking systems of two closely related Khroskyabs varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, and hypothesizes the historical development of the Khroskyabs inverse marking system. I propose that a hypothetical prefix, *Cə-, which is probably related to the second person markers attested in many Trans-Himalayan languages, existed in Proto-Khroskyabs, and that it has different reflexes in the two modern Khroskyabs varieties
Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan
Significance Given its size and geographical extension, Sino-Tibetan is of the highest importance for understanding the prehistory of East Asia, and of neighboring language families. Based on a dataset of 50 Sino-Tibetan languages, we infer phylogenies that date the origin of the language family to around 7200 B.P., linking the origin of the language family with the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.
Building a body of followers: Neoliberalism and online discourse of fitness and masculinity
In 2014, a British journalist coined the termspornosexualto account for the emergence of a body-obsessed version ofmetrosexuality. While metrosexuals practice beautification rituals, spornosexuals are men obsessed with developing muscular bodies and self-objectifyingly flaunting them online. In an age of neoliberalism and globalization, this form of masculinity has now spread worldwide, including to Singapore, as a hegemonic ideal male figure. Us…
Causativisation in Wobzi and other Khroskyabs dialects
Mainly basing on first hand data, this paper deals with the causative constructions in the Khroskyabs language (Rgyalrongic, Sino-Tibetan), focusing on the Wobzi dialect. Causative prefixes, anti-causative, analytic causative and labile verbs are described. In addition, comparative analyses within Rgyalrongic as well as the Sino-Tibetan family are made. En se basant principalement sur des données de première main, cet article traite des construct…
The Person Agreement System Of Wobzi Lavrung (Rgyalrongic, Tibeto‐Burman)
This article offers a description of the person agreement system of Wobzi Lavrung, a Tibeto‐Burman language spoken in Sichuan, China. The Lavrung language is still imperfectly described, and the aim of this paper is to contribute to the documentation of one of its dialects. The analysis follows the terminology proposed in Dryer (1986), Haspelmath (2005), Zuñiga (2006), and Malchukov et al. (2010). We discuss the inflectional affixes, the empathy …
Person Marking in Stau
This paper offers an overview of the verb system and person marking in a hitherto poorly described Sino-Tibetan language. We posit the existence of six verb classes based upon alternations of the final stem vowel, both for transitive and intransitive verbs. Person marking is described in comparison with that of closely related Rgyalrongic languages is found to be of interest for the reconstruction of the protosystem. The data analysed show that R…
The historical development of inverse marking in Khroskyabs: Evidence from two modern varieties - Siyuewu and Wobzi
This paper describes the inverse marking systems of two closely related Khroskyabs varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, and hypothesizes the historical development of the Khroskyabs inverse marking system. I propose that a hypothetical prefix, *Cə-, which is probably related to the second person markers attested in many Trans-Himalayan languages, existed in Proto-Khroskyabs, and that it has different reflexes in the two modern Khroskyabs varieties
Building a body of followers: Neoliberalism and online discourse of fitness and masculinity
In 2014, a British journalist coined the termspornosexualto account for the emergence of a body-obsessed version ofmetrosexuality. While metrosexuals practice beautification rituals, spornosexuals are men obsessed with developing muscular bodies and self-objectifyingly flaunting them online. In an age of neoliberalism and globalization, this form of masculinity has now spread worldwide, including to Singapore, as a hegemonic ideal male figure. Us…
New origins to vowel tensing in Tangut: Internal and Comparative Evidence
This paper proposes new origins for tense vowels in Tangut by integrating textual analysis of Tangut texts with comparative data from both Gyalrongic and other Sino-Tibetan languages. It uncovers two previously unreported sources of vowel tensing in compounding: the collective prefix (*S-) and the compound linker (*-S-). Both morphemes left only a few traces, indicating their antiquity and productivity in earlier stages. The collective *S- could …
The Person Agreement System Of Wobzi Lavrung (Rgyalrongic, Tibeto‐Burman)
This article offers a description of the person agreement system of Wobzi Lavrung, a Tibeto‐Burman language spoken in Sichuan, China. The Lavrung language is still imperfectly described, and the aim of this paper is to contribute to the documentation of one of its dialects. The analysis follows the terminology proposed in Dryer (1986), Haspelmath (2005), Zuñiga (2006), and Malchukov et al. (2010). We discuss the inflectional affixes, the empathy …
Person Marking in Stau
This paper offers an overview of the verb system and person marking in a hitherto poorly described Sino-Tibetan language. We posit the existence of six verb classes based upon alternations of the final stem vowel, both for transitive and intransitive verbs. Person marking is described in comparison with that of closely related Rgyalrongic languages is found to be of interest for the reconstruction of the protosystem. The data analysed show that R…
Causativisation in Wobzi and other Khroskyabs dialects
Mainly basing on first hand data, this paper deals with the causative constructions in the Khroskyabs language (Rgyalrongic, Sino-Tibetan), focusing on the Wobzi dialect. Causative prefixes, anti-causative, analytic causative and labile verbs are described. In addition, comparative analyses within Rgyalrongic as well as the Sino-Tibetan family are made. En se basant principalement sur des données de première main, cet article traite des construct…
Building a body of followers: Neoliberalism and online discourse of fitness and masculinity
In 2014, a British journalist coined the termspornosexualto account for the emergence of a body-obsessed version ofmetrosexuality. While metrosexuals practice beautification rituals, spornosexuals are men obsessed with developing muscular bodies and self-objectifyingly flaunting them online. In an age of neoliberalism and globalization, this form of masculinity has now spread worldwide, including to Singapore, as a hegemonic ideal male figure. Us…
Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan
Significance Given its size and geographical extension, Sino-Tibetan is of the highest importance for understanding the prehistory of East Asia, and of neighboring language families. Based on a dataset of 50 Sino-Tibetan languages, we infer phylogenies that date the origin of the language family to around 7200 B.P., linking the origin of the language family with the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.
Tangut as a West Gyalrongic language
This paper proposes that Tangut should be classified as a West Gyalrongic language in the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan family. We examine lexical commonalities, case marking, partial reduplication, and verbal morphology in Tangut and in modern West Gyalrongic languages, and point out nontrivial shared innovations between Tangut and modern West Gyalrongic languages. The analysis suggests a closer genetic relationship between Tangut and Modern West…
The historical development of inverse marking in Khroskyabs: Evidence from two modern varieties - Siyuewu and Wobzi
This paper describes the inverse marking systems of two closely related Khroskyabs varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, and hypothesizes the historical development of the Khroskyabs inverse marking system. I propose that a hypothetical prefix, *Cə-, which is probably related to the second person markers attested in many Trans-Himalayan languages, existed in Proto-Khroskyabs, and that it has different reflexes in the two modern Khroskyabs varieties
Come is the new go: The evolution of stem alternation of basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs
In this paper, I describe the morphology as well as the uses of the basic motion verbs, ‘to come’ and ‘to go’, in Khroskyabs based on two of its varieties, Siyuewu and Wobzi, before analyzing the evolutionary pathways of their stem alternation patterns. The meanings of the basic motion verbs in Khroskyabs originally were not ‘to come’ or ‘to go’; instead, these verbs denoted Goal-oriented motion and Source-oriented motion. The choice of the deict…
Betrayal through obedience: On the history of the unusual inflectional chain in Siyuewu Khroskyabs
This paper focuses on the verbal inflection chain of Siyuewu Khroskyabs, a Gyalrongic language (Trans-Himalayan). Siyuewu Khroskyabs goes against two general typological tendencies: first, as an SOV language, it shows an overwhelming preference for prefixes, which is rarely reported typologically; second, the inflectional prefixes in the outer slots are older than those in the inner slots, which is the reverse case of most languages. In this pape…
The complexity and history of verb-stem ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs
This paper describes the ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs, an understudied Gyalrongic language. Ablaut is only found in verbs containing closed syllables, and ablaut patterns in Siyuewu preserve Proto-Khroskyabs patterns relatively well. After providing a synchronic description of verb-stem functions and ablauting patterns, implicative entropy is used to model Siyuewu’s ablauting status. Entropy measurements reveal Siyuewu to have relativ…
From transitive to intransitive and voiceless to voiced in Proto-Sino-Tibetan: New evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs
This paper offers new evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs to address the question of directionality in valency-changing derivations in Sino-Tibetan. Examining Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs causative and anticausative verb stem pairs adds to the evidence that in Proto-Sino-Tibetan, a number of intransitive stems are derived from transitive stems, in some cases as the result of * N ‐ prefixation, and in other cases from voicing alternation …
Preinitial denasalisation and palatal fortition in Khroskyabs and the Gyalrongic word for ‘man’
There are four distinct forms conveying the meaning of ‘human, person, man’ across Gyalrongic languages. The default type (Japhug tɯ-rme), the rounded type (Khroskyabs vɟú ), the Stau type (Geshiza vdzi) and the uvular type (Geletuo taˈʁap ). Except for the default type, which has cognates in many other Sino-Tibetan languages, the origins of the other types are to date obscure and understudied. This paper first studies the phenomena of preinitial…
When internal reconstruction goes further: Proposing the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs through examining bound state apophony
This paper proposes an internal reconstruction of the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs by analysing bound state apophony in modern Siyuewu Khroskyabs. While most modern Khroskyabs dialects do not exhibit sufficient variations of bound state apophony, Siyuewu Khroskyabs is conservative in this regard. The internal reconstruction deals with the different reflexes between final and non-final vowels in modern Khroskyabs dialects, and postulates a unifi…
On plosive-nasal correspondences and alternations in Gyalrongic and their possible solutions
Gyalrongic languages exhibit a series of non-trivial nasal-plosive (or approximant) correspondences, which so far lack an explanation. Some nasal consonants, mainly found in West Gyalrongic languages, correspond to plosives or approximants in their East Gyalrongic cognates. Long considered irregular, these correspondences have never been studied with the comparative method. This paper tackles these seeming correspondences and makes the first atte…
Lenition alternation in West Gyalrongic and its implications for Southeast Asian panchronic phonology
Based on internal reconstruction, this paper resolves a long-standing problem observed in Khroskyabs, a West Gyalrongic language (Sino-Tibetan), that seems to sporadically have lenited voiceless stops, resulting in irregular correspondences with East Gyalrongic. Two major sound changes are involved: intervocalic lenition and post-stress intersyllabic compression. It turns out that the processes proposed here are one probable solution to monosylla…
Musk deer are inherited: The reconstruction of the onset *t.ɬj- in Proto-Gyalrongic
This paper explores a rare sound correspondence pattern found in Gyalrongic languages, focusing on two etyma: ‘musk deer’ and ‘valley’. The reflexes in daughter languages exhibit different onsets, including palatals, alveolars, and laterals, which renders their genetic relationship non-obvious. Despite its significance, this correspondence pattern has been largely overlooked and insufficiently reconstructed. In this study, I propose a novel recon…
Mutual predictiveness of sound correspondences for reconstruction and language subgrouping: The case of Gyalrongic preinitials
This paper uses Gyalrongic languages, a conservative branch of Sino-Tibetan, to illustrate a new method to evaluate proto-language reconstructions in general historical linguistics and to conduct exploratory analyses in language phylogeny. It first reconstructs a proto-system of Gyalrongic preinitials and computes and compares the implicative entropies between reconstructed and modern systems. In a second step, Mutual Implicative Entropy (MIE) is…
Thoughts on the Etyma for ‘Corpse’ in Gyalrongic Languages
This paper studies the four distinct native terms for ‘corpse’ attested in Gyalrongic languages. Through comparative analysis, it establishes the sound correspondences among cognates and proposes preliminary reconstructions. In a second step, it hypothesises on the origins of the etyma by examining potential cognates in other Sino‐Tibetan languages. Two shared innovations can be found in the etyma for ‘corpse’. First, the Situ form *m‐g[á]m is an…
New origins to vowel tensing in Tangut: Internal and Comparative Evidence
This paper proposes new origins for tense vowels in Tangut by integrating textual analysis of Tangut texts with comparative data from both Gyalrongic and other Sino-Tibetan languages. It uncovers two previously unreported sources of vowel tensing in compounding: the collective prefix (*S-) and the compound linker (*-S-). Both morphemes left only a few traces, indicating their antiquity and productivity in earlier stages. The collective *S- could …
Shared innovations and the “Tangut-Horpa clade”: A demonstration of Neogrammarian principles in language classification
This paper conducts a comprehensive exploration of methodology in historical linguistics, focusing on language subgrouping. Employing Tangut, a severely eroded medieval language, as a case study, it scrutinizes previous linguistic analyses that depart from the rigorous Neogrammarian method, specifically referencing Beaudouin (2023). These non-compliant analyses have impeded recent progress in understanding the genetic relationships within Burmo-Q…
Linguistics (17 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · History (12 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (11 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Mathematics (8 works) · Language and cultural evolution (7 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (6 works) · Biology (5 works)