Demonstratives and the Noun Phrase Structure of Hakha Chin

Abstract

Demonstratives are linked to spatial deixis, definiteness, and other semantic and pragmatic functions. This paper looks at the demonstrative class in Hakha Chin, a Kuki-Chin language in the Tibeto-Burman family. Hakha Chin demonstratives exhibit several remarkable features, such as their ability to appear in prenominal, postnominal, and “circumnominal” positions (in which they appear concurrently in prenominal and postnominal positions). This analysis also examines Hakha Chin demonstratives as they relate to other elements in the noun phrase structure, such as case marking, numerals, classifiers, and adjectives. The paper also touches on the relationship between demonstratives and the expression of definiteness and familiarity in Hakha Chin, finding that bare nouns can be interpreted as either definite or indefinite and that there is a dedicated familiarity morpheme kha. The findings of this paper presents several questions for future research on the syntactic structure of Hakha Chin nominal phrases and their semantic interpretations.