TIL
English
Grammar in Plain Language
ch01.htm
by U Kyaw Tun (UKT), M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), and staff of TIL (Tun Institute
of Learning).
Based on Barron’s Educational Series, Grammar In Plain English,
by Diamond, H. and Dutwin, P., Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.,
Woodbury, New York. Copyright 1977.Prepared for students of
TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, Myanmar. Not for sale.
http://www.tuninst.net ,
http://www.softguide.net.mm ,
http://www.romabama.blogspot.com
Adding Descriptive Words
01. Descriptive Words: Adding Meaning
Exercise 0101
Exercise 0102
02. Descriptive Words: Special
Problems
Exercise 0201
UKT notes
• adjective
• adverb
Adding Descriptive Words
You know that an English sentence must have a person or thing (performer =
subject S, noun)
performing an action (verb V). You might say that these words are the core of every
sentence. But, we don’t speak in such simple sentences: He ran. She
jumped.
အဂၤလိပ္ စကားစုမ်ားတြင္လည္းေကာင္း၊ စာတြင္လည္းေကာင္း <S> ႏွင့္
<V> ပါ၀င္ၾကတယ္။ ထုိ႔အျပင္ ပုိမုိထိေရာက္ေစရန္ အထူးျပဳေသာ စကားမ်ား၊ စာမ်ားထည့္သြင္းေျပာၾကေရးၾကတယ္။ <noun> ျဖစ္ေသာ
<S> ကုိ အထူးျပဳသည့္စကားကုိ <adjective> လုိ႔ေခၚတယ္။ <V> ကုိအထူးျပဳေသာ စကားကုိ <adverb> လုိ႔ေခၚတယ္။
{ïn~ga.laip sa.ka:su. mya: twing lÉ-kaung: / sa twing lÉ-kaung: <S> nhing.
<V> pa wing kra. tèý// hto. a.pring po-mo hti. rauk sé ran a.htu: pru. þau:
sa.ka: mya: sa-mya: htæÑ. þwing: prau: kra. ré: kra. tèý// <noun> hpric þau:
<S> ko a.htu:pru.þæÑ. sa.ka: ko <adjective>
lo. hkau tèý// <V> ko a. htu:pru.þau: sa.ka. ko <adverb>
lo. hkau tèý//
Other words are added to the core to make a sentence more meaningful and
interesting. These words may tell you more about the performer (S), or they may tell
you more about the action (V). Look at the following example:
Again, look at the following:
The beautiful swan swam quickly.
Here swan is the performer (S), and swam is the action word (V). The
descriptive words (adj./adv.) are: beautiful, and quickly.
<beautiful> ha <adjective, adj.>/ <quickly> ha <adverb, adv.> hpric
kra. tèý//
<adverb> a.mya: twing <-ly> sa-twè pa tût ta ko tha.ti. pru. pa//
Let's compare the above to Burmese-Myanmar>:
ငန္းျဖဴႀကီးဟာ လ်င္ျမန္စြာ ေရကူးသြားတယ္။
{ngûn: hpru-kri: ha lying mran-swa ré-ku: thwa: tèý}
literal: (swan white-big-{ha} quickly water-swim proceed-{tèý})
Note: {tèý} in colloquial usage and {thæÑ} in formal usage are
known as a nominalizers. See TIL Grammar Glossary on 'The
Grammaticalization of Nominalizers in Burmese' by Andrew Simpson, Professor of
Linguistics & East Asian Languages and Cultures, Univ. of Southern California,
http://victoria.linguistlist.org/~lapolla/nw/Simpson.doc.
Note the difference in structure of Burmese and English sentences. In
Bur-Myan, the adjective follows the noun whereas in English it is the opposite.
Similarly the position of verb and adverb is reversed.
Study the two sentences given. Label the performer (S), action (V), and descriptive
words (adjective - Adj. ; adverb - Adv.) in each sentence. Remember that the
performer (S) is also a noun (N).
1. A large apple fell suddenly.
Ans.:
S, N -- (apple)
V -- (fell)
Adj. -- (A) (large)
Adv. -- (suddenly)
2. The decaying tooth throbbed painfully.
Ans.:
S, N -- (tooth)
V -- (throbbed)
Adj. -- (The) (decaying)
Adv. -- (painfully)
The descriptive words in the following sentences have been underlined. What
is the descriptive word: adj. or adv.? Which
is the word it describes?
1. The telephone rang unexpectedly.
Ans.:
Underlined word (unexpectedly): adv.
Word being described: (rang)
2. A heavy rain ruined our picnic.
Ans.:
Underlined word (heavy): adj.
Word being described: (rain)
3. The talented fingers knit the sweater.
Ans.:
Underlined word (talented): adj.
Word being described: (fingers)
4. The speeding truck swerved abruptly.
Ans.:
Underlined word (abruptly): adv.
Word being described: (swerved)
5. The soft snow fell gently.
Underlined word (soft): adj.
Word being described: (snow)
Underlined word (gently): adv.
Word being described: (fell)
Many words which are used to describe S (performer) must add -ly
in order to describe V (action). For example:
The nice woman spoke at the meeting.
The woman spoke nicely at the meeting.
In the above two sentences (nice) and (nicely) do
very different jobs:
• Nice describes S (woman).
• Nicely describes V (spoke).
A common error is to write: *The woman spoke nice.
Many people make the mistake of using nice to describe V (spoke). However, you can avoid that error if you can remember that
most words which describe actions end in -ly.
What is the descriptive word in each of the following sentences? Which is the
word it describes?
1. My brother adds (quick, quickly).
Ans.:
Correct word: (quickly) -- Adv.
Word it describes: (adds) -- V
2. That neighbor’s (loud, loudly) radio annoys me.
Ans.:
Correct word: (loud) -- Adj.
Word it describes: (radio) -- N
3. He behaved (polite, politely) toward me.
Ans. :
Correct word: (politely) -- Adv.
Word it describes: (behaved) -- V
4. The old dog walked (lazy, lazily) down the street
Ans.:
Correct word: (lazily) -- Adv.
Word it describes: (walked) -- V
5. I’ll give you a (quick, quickly) call when I need you.
Ans.:
Correct word: (quick) -- Adj.
Word it describes: (call) -- N
6. He plays the piano too (loud, loudly).
Ans.:
Correct word: (loudly) -- Adv.
Word it describes: (plays) -- V
7. I don’t like (soft, softly) music.
Ans.:
Correct word: (soft) -- Adj.
Word it describes: (music) -- N
8. The (delicate, delicately) bird hovered in the sky.
Ans.:
Correct word: (delicate) -- Adj.
Word it describes: (bird) -- N
9. Maria (sincere, sincerely) apologized for her error in book keeping.
Ans.:
Correct word: (sincerely) -- Adv.
Word it describes: (apologized) -- V
10. The dancer balanced (delicate, delicately) on one foot.
Ans.:
Correct word: (delicately) -- Adv.
Word it describes: (balanced) -- V
From: AHTD
Abbr. adj. a. 1. Grammar Any of a class of words used to
modify a noun or other substantive by limiting, qualifying, or specifying and
distinguished in English morphologically by one of several suffixes, such as
-able, -ous, -er, and -est, or syntactically by position directly
preceding a noun or nominal phrase, such as white in a white house.
adj. 1. Grammar Adjectival: an adjective clause. ...
[Middle English from Old French adjectif from Late Latin adiectīvus
from adiectus, past participle of adiicere to add to ad- ad-
iacere to throw; See y ¶- in Indo-European Roots.] -- AHTD
From: UseE
An adjective modifies a noun. It describes the quality, state or action that a
noun refers to.
1. Adjectives can come before nouns:
a new car
2. They can come after verbs such as:
be / become / seem / look / etc.:
that car looks fast
3. They can be modified by adverbs:
a very expensive car
4. They can be used as complements
to a noun:
the extras make the car expensive
From: LBH
adjective .
A word used to modify:
a
noun : beautiful morning
a
pronoun : ordinary one.
Nouns, some verb forms,
phrases, and
clauses may also serve as adjectives:
book sale
a used book
sale of old books
the sale, which occurs annually
Adjectives come in several classes:
• A descriptive adjective names some quality of the noun:
beautiful morning
dark horse
• A limiting adjective narrows the scope of a noun.
a possessive
my / their
a demonstrative adjective
this train / these days
an interrogative adjective
what time?
whose body?
a number
two boys
• A proper adjective is derived from a proper noun:
French language
Machiavellian scheme
Adjectives also can be classified according to position:
• An attributive adjective appears next to the noun it modifies:
full moon
• A predicate adjective is connected to its noun by a
linking verb:
The moon is full.
Go back adjective-note-b
From: AHTD
n. Abbr. adv. Grammar 1. A part of speech comprising
a class of words that modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. 2.
A word belonging to this class, such as rapidly in The dog runs
rapidly. [Middle English adverbe from Old French from Latin
adverbium ad- in relation to; See ad- verbum word; See wer-
5 in Indo-European Roots.]
From: LBH
Adverb is word used to modify:
• a verb
warmly greet
• an adjective
only three people
• another adverb
quite seriously
• a whole sentence
Fortunately, she is employed
(See Chapter 16.)
Some verb forms, phrases, and clauses may also serve as adverbs:
easy to stop
drove by a farm
plowed the fields when the earth thawed
From: UseE
Most adverbs in English are formed by adding -ly to an adjective. An
adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of:
a verb;
an adjective;
another adverb;
a noun
or noun phrase;
a determiner;
a numeral;
a pronoun; or
a
Prepositional Phrase .
It can sometimes be used as a complement of
a preposition.
Adverb spelling notes:
1. Adjectives ending -l still take -ly;
careful –> carefully
2. Adjectives ending
-y change to -ily;
lucky –> luckily
3. Adjectives ending -ble change to -bly;
responsible –> responsibly
UKT: Adverbs can be quite complicated as the following shows. The following is
from UseE, which classifies the adverbs into:
1. adverbs of • manner, • place or location, • time, • degree, and
2. adverbs modifying • adjectives, • adverbs, • nouns, • noun phrases, •
determiners, numerals and pronouns.
Since, these belong to the realm of experts, which I am not, it is best to
simply make the remark that "adverbs usually ends in -ly."
However, for curiosity sake, I will give below what UseE has given (with
remarks by a non-expert).
Adverb of manner:
Adverbs of manner modify a verb to describe the way the action is done.
• She did the work carefully.
Remark: Carefully modifies the verb to describe the way the work was
done, as opposed to quickly, carelessly, etc.
Adverb of place or location:
Adverbs of place show where the action is done.
• They live locally.
UKT remark: Locally modifies where they live.
Adverb of time:
Adverbs of time show when an action is done, or the duration or frequency.
• He did it yesterday. (When)
• They are permanently busy. (Duration)
• She never does it. (Frequency)
Adverb of degree:
Adverbs of degree increase or decrease the effect of the verb.
• I completely agree with you.
Remark: Completely increases the effect of the verb, whereas partially
would decrease it.
Adverbs modifying adjectives:
An adjective can be modified by an adverb, which precedes the adjective, except
'enough' which comes after.
• That's really good.
UKT remark: In 'That's good.', good is the adjective. Really is
the adverb that is modifying the adjective good.
Again, consider the following sentences:
1. That's good.
2. That's really good.
3. That is good.
4. That is really good.
Though these sentences mean almost the same, they had different 'shades' of
meanings. The difference between the first two, and the second is in the
emphasis on is .
• It was a terribly difficult time for all of us.
• It wasn't good enough. ('Enough' comes after the adjective.)
Adverbs modifying adverbs:
An adverb can modify another. As with adjectives, the adverb precedes the one it
is modifying with 'enough' being the exception again.
• She did it really well.
UKT remark: The sentence 'She did it well.' would have shown how she had
done it as opposed to 'She did it badly.' Here well and badly
are adverbs. These adverbs can be further modified by really, sort of, etc.
• He didn't come last night, funnily enough.
Adverbs modifying nouns:
Adverbs can modify nouns to indicate time or place.
• The concert tomorrow.
• The room upstairs.
Adverbs modifying noun phrases
Some adverbs of degree can modify noun phrases.
• We had quite a good time.
• They're such good friends.
• What a day!
Remark: quite, rather, such can be used similar to what (What
a day!).
Adverbs modifying determiners, numerals and pronouns:
Adverbs such as almost; nearly; hardly; about, etc., can be used:
• Almost everybody came in the end.
Go back adverb-note-b
End of TIL file
TIL
English
Grammar in Plain Language
EGPE-indx.htm
by U Kyaw Tun (UKT), M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), and staff of TIL (Tun Institute
of Learning).
Based on Barron’s Educational Series, Grammar In Plain English,
by Diamond, H. and Dutwin, P., Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.,
Woodbury, New York. Copyright 1977.Prepared for students of
TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, Myanmar. Not for sale.
http://www.tuninst.net ,
http://www.softguide.net.mm ,
http://www.romabama.blogspot.com
Introduction
Syllable, Word, Sentence, and Syntax
Introduction of three new aksharas for BEPS work
for < f > =
{fa.} /f/, < v > =
{va.} /v/, < sh > =
{sha.} /ʃ/
UKT notes
• abugida
aka alphasyllabary
• အဂၤလိပ္ {in~ga.laip}
• IPA
• norminalization - sentence endings ၏
{IÉ}, သည္
{þæÑ}, မည္
{mæÑ}
• palatal nasal ည {Ña}/ ဉ{ña.} :
both pronounced as
IPA /ɲ/
• particle ပစၥည္း
{pic~sæÑ:}
• syllable ၀ဏၰ
{wûN~Na.} စလၻ
{sil~Ba.}
• syntax : ၀ါက်ဖြဲ႔ျခင္း
{wa-kya.hpwè.hkring:} - Gram. syntax -- UHS-BEPD-797.
၀ါက်
{wa-kya.} - n. gram sentence -- MLC MED2006-473
I suggest ၀ါက်စည္း
{wa-kya.sæÑ:} for <syntax>.
• TAM
(Tense-Aspect-Mode)
Very few people love Grammar: at least the traditional
way of learning it. The terminology which we have
to memorize has very little practical meaning in
day-to-day speech. The scope of this manuscript
can be judged from the aim of the original book:
To prepare for the General Educational Development
(GED) test. The following are several passages in Romabama,
you can easily read if you know how to speak Burmese
and read the Myanmar script.
<grammar> ကုိ ႀကိဳက္ပါတယ္ ဆုိတဲ့ လူဟာ
အလြန္နည္းပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ သမ႐ုိးက် <grammar> ကုိ မုန္းၾကတယ္။
မွန္ပါတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လုိ႔လဲဆုိေတာ့ သမ႐ုိးက် <grammar> ဟာ
စကားေျပာတဲ့ေနရာမွာ လံုး၀နီးပါး အသံုးမ၀င္ဘူး။
<grammar> ko kreik pa-tèý hso-tè. lu ha
a.lwun rha: pa-tèý// a.htu:þa.hpring. þa.ma.ro:kya.
<grammar> ko moan: kra. tèý// mhan-pa-tèý//
Ba-hpric lo. lè: hso tau. þa.ma.ro:kya.
<grammar> ha sa.ka: prau: tè. né ra mha
loän:wa. ni: pa: a.þoän: ma.wing-Bu://
We should note that when a Bur-Myan child goes
to school to learn English, we say in Burmese
that he goes to learn အဂၤလိပ္စာ
{ïn~ga.laip sa} or the written English.
Of course, he will come to know how to
"speak" English, but the primary
goal is to learn how to read and write.
However, in these lessons, the emphasis
will be on spoken English first and then
to proceed to written English.
ပထမဦးဆံုး
အဂၤလိပ္စာ သင္တာလား။ အဂၤလိပ္စကားသင္တာလားဆုိတာ ခြဲျခားသိဖုိ႔ လုိတယ္။ အခု
သင္ခန္းစာေတြက စကားအေျပာမွ လုိအပ္တဲ့ အေျခခံက စမယ္။ တျဖည္းျဖည္းနဲ႔
အေရးဘက္ကုိ ၀င္သြားမယ္။ သမ႐ုိးက် သဒၵါ သုိ႔မဟုတ္ <traditional
grammar> ဟာ အဂၤလိပ္စာ အေရးမွာ မပါရင္ မျဖစ္ဘူးလုိ႔ ထင္ၾကတဲ့ လူေတြက
မ်ားပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ <A noun is the name of a person or thing.>
ဆုိတာမ်ဳိးကုိ စသင္ၾကေတာ့တယ္။ ဒီလုိပံုေသ <definition> ေတြကုိ
က်က္ခုိင္းလုိ႔ သင္ၾကားရတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားဟာ <definitoin> ေတြ
အလြတ္ရြတ္ရင္းနဲ႔ <grammar> ကုိ ေၾကာက္သြားေတာ့တယ္။
အဂၤလိပ္စကားေျပာျပန္ေတာ့လည္း <grammar> မွန္ပါ့မလား ဆုိတဲ့
စိတ္၀င္လာၿပီး စကားေျပာမထြက္ေတာ့ဘူး။
အခုသင္ခန္းစာမွာ
<traditional grammar definition> ေတြဟာ အဂၤလိပ္စကားေျပာတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ
သာ မဟုတ္၊ အေရးမွာလည္း လံုး၀နီးပါး မလုိဘူးလုိ႔ ေတြ႔ရလိမ့္မယ္။
ျပန္ေျပာပါမယ္။ မလုိဘူးဆုိတာ <grammar> ကုိ ေျပာတာမဟုတ္ဘူး။
<definition> ေတြ မလုိဘူးလုိ႔ ေျပာတာျဖစ္တယ္။
pa-hta.ma. U:hsoan: ïn~ga.laip-sa þing ta la:/
ïn~ga.laip-sa.ka: þing ta la:
hso-ta hkwè:hkra: þi.Bo. lo tèý//
a.hku. þing-hkan:sa twé ka. sa.ka: a.prau: mha
lo ûp tè. a.hkré-hkän ka. sa. mèý/
ta.hpræÑ:hpræÑ: nè. a.rè: Bak ko wing þwa: mèý//
þa.ma.ro:kya. þûd~da þo.ma.hoat <traditional grammar>
ha ïn~ga.laip-sa a.ré: mha ma.pa ring ma.hpric-Bu: lo.
hting-kra.tè. lu twé ka. mya: pa-tèý// da-kraung.
<A noun is the name of a person or thing.>
hso-ta mro: ko sa. þing kra. tau. tèý//
di-lo poän-þé <definition> twé ko kyak hkeing:
lo. þing-kra: ra.tè. kyaung:þa: ha <definition>
twé a.lwut rwut ring: nè. <grammar> ko
krauk þwa: tau. tèý// ïn~ga.laip sa.ka: prau pran tau. lè:
<grammar> mhan pa. ma.la: hso tè. sait wing la-pri:
sa.ka: prau: ma.htwak tau.Bu://
a.hku. þing-hkûn:sa mha <traditional grammar definition>
twé ha ïn~ga.laip sa.ka: prau: tè. né ra mha-þa ma.hoat/
a.ré: mha lè: loän:wa. ni:pa: ma.lo Bu: lo. twé. ra. laim.mèý//
pran-prau: pa. mèý/ ma.lo-Bu: hso ta <grammar>
ko prau: ta ma. hoat Bu:// <definition>
twé ma.lo Bu: lo. prau: ta hpric tèý//
In Bur-Myan traditional grammar, the student learns
the grammatical terms which are mostly derived
from Pali. In essence, the students of my father's
generation (turn of 19th century to 20th) ended up
learning grammatical terms in Pali, a foreign language
in Myanmarpre, and the set of grammatical terms in English,
another foreign language, to be bilingual in
Burmese and English. In our days, the emphasis on
Burmese grammar became and less and less and eventually
almost totally dropped in high school. In the university
of my student days, those taking Burmese as a specialized
subject had to learn the Burmese grammar, but
for us Science students, we did not have to take any.
However during the days of Burmese Way to Socialism,
under the leadership of Chairman U Né Win, [as General NéWin 1962-1974:
1947-constitution abrogated and new constitution adopted in 1974
when the General retired and became Chairman U Né Win 1974-1988),
MLC was forced to rewrite a new version of Burmese Grammar
in Burmese.
The result was the students have to learn what was then
touted as Bur-Myan terms but which reality were Pali
just as in old days of my father's generation. The
following are some of the terms taken from the TOC of
MLC Bur-Myan Grammar,
~BamaGrammar/in_Burmese/vol1-1.html (link active only my hard-disk). I still
need to check the gloss I have given with my reference dictionaries some of
which did not list the terms.
¤ သဒၵါ
{þûd~da} - grammar -- MED2006-517
¤ 
{ak~hka.ra} 'akshara' -- alphabet -- MED2006-619
¤ 
{wa-sïn~ga.} - parts of speech
¤ 
{naam} - noun [Checking a long vowel is
only allowed in Pal-Myan]
¤ 
{naam-sa:} - pronoun
¤ 
{laing} - gender
¤ 
{kain:} - number [In an English sentence, the
number in subject (noun) must be compatible
with verb. It is not required in a Burmese
sentence. When the number changes in English
a change in spelling can be met. e.g.
<man>
- singular to <men> plural.
In Burmese only a suffix may be added.
Even then it is not compulsory. It is
the same with gender. We therefore say
that Burmese has no gender and no number.]
¤ 
{kri.ya} - verb
¤ 
{ka-la.} - tense
Tense is only one of the trio
TAM in BEPS.
Bur-Myan being an analytic language
does not have tense forms.
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 121121. ]
¤ 
{na-ma. wi.þe-þa.na.} - adjective
¤ 
{kri.ya wi.þeþa.na.} - adverb
¤ 
{wi.Bût} - determiner
¤ 
{þûm~bûn~Da.} - conjunction
¤ 
{pic~sæÑ:} - modifier
See in my note on
particle
¤ 
{a-me-ðait} - interjection
¤ 
{wa-kya.} - sentence -- MLC MED2006-473
See in my notes on
-
norminalization - sentence endings, e.g.
{IÉ},
{þæÑ},
{mæÑ}
-
syntax - rules for sentence construction.
{wa-kya.hpwè.hkring:} - Gram. syntax -- UHS-BEPD-797.
{wa-kya.} - n. gram sentence -- MLC MED2006-473
I suggest
{wa-kya.sæÑ:} for <syntax>
¤ 
{poad-hprût}
{poad-rût}
þïn~ké-ta.} - punctuation
Most of us, those with modern education such as
those among the staff of Rangoon University,
ended up thinking that these two modern languages,
Burmese and English, which we have to use in
our everyday life are so far apart that it is
better to drop one almost completely. I am
speaking this from the experiences of my wife
and myself as university teachers for over 30 years.
I notice the same with our fellow staff members --
an observation which makes me keep up with my
language skills in both Burmese and English.
The following are some definitions which a student
of my father's generation had to learn -- taken from
my edited version of Burmese Grammar and Grammatical Analysis
by A. W. Lonsdale, Education Department, Burma,
British Burma Press, Rangoon, 1899.
002. The Bur-Myan grammarians, having no suitable
grammatical terms of their own, were obliged to
borrow them from the Pali Language.
The term they employ for Grammar is
{þûd~da-þût~htän} (fn001-02), commonly called
{þûd~da kyûm:}, or simply
{thûd~da}.
003. In general the written representation
of a sound is called Akshara
{ak~hka.ra}. Because of its inherent vowel,
an Akshara is pronounceable and is
called a Syllable or
{wûN~Na.}. In this respect, it is entirely
different from the Letter of the
Alphabet. This distinction was not made
when Lonsdale was writing his Grammar.
A combination of syllables is called a Word or
{poad}. A word may contain just one syllable
when it is called monosyllabic,
when it contains more than one syllable
it is called polysyllabic. --
this subsection is entirely rewritten by UKT 121120.
UKT
The most basic idea behind the abugida aka
alphasyllabrary in which the basic unit is the
syllable has not been recognized by
MLC in particular and the linguists in India
and Myanmar in general. The whole idea has been
brought forward by computer scientists who in
designing computer languages noticed the idea
of syllable in Sanskrit. Facts need to be checked.
-- UKT 121128
See my note on
Sanskrit as computer language .
MLC gives the syllable as
{wûN~Na.}
-- n. 1. appearance. 2. letter; syllable [Pali
]
-- MLC MED2006-480
The term
syllable
is not mentioned by MLC
in its three volumes of Myanmar grammar. In
view of this I propose to transcribe it from
English as
{sil~Ba.}. Please correct me if I am wrong!
-- UKT121128
004. The Bur-Myan Grammar may be divided into
three principal parts, viz.
{ak~hka.rûp~pa.Bé-da.} -- Distinction of Letters
-- includes Orthography (spelling) and
Orthoepy (pronunciation) (fn002-03)
{pa.da.wi.wé-sa.na.} -- Word Investigation
-- embraces the classification of words,
their accidence (inflection) and derivation (etymology)
{ka-ra.ka.kûp~pa.} -- Rules concerning the necessary
relations of words in a sentence.
-- what we understand by syntax .
[
{wa-kya.hpwè.hkring:} - Gram. syntax -- UHS-BEPD-797.
What UHS has given is an explanation. In need of a term, I suggest
{wa-kya.sæÑ:} -- UKT121122]
UKT: For unusual English words, I have given the gloss
in (...) based on AHTD.
In any spoken language, we start with a <syllable>,
and then group the syllables into <words>.
Then we arrange the <words> in a definite
pattern to form a meaningful sentence. The arrangement
of words is known as <syntax>. In English
the canonical structure is CVC, where the first
C is known as onset-consonant, V is the peak or
nuclear vowel, and the second C is the coda-consonant.
Bur-Myan & Skt-Dev has the same structure, CVÇ,
where the coda-consonant is a "killed"
akshara whose inherent vowel has been killed by
{a.þût} aka «virama» in Sanskrit [which I
usually shorten to «viram»]. e.g.
{ka.} क +
{ka.} क -->
{ka.ka.} कक - the sound
of the cawing of a crow.
- the akshara has a sound. It may or
may not have a meaning.
{ka.} क +
{ka.} क + viram -->
{kak} कक् - 'domino'
- notice the shapes of the
{a.þût}
, and viram ् :
the function is the same -
to kill the inherent vowel of the akshara
{ka.} क + viram +
{ka.} क -->
{k~ka} क्क - no longer a syllable:
cannot be pronounced
- the first
{ka.} has lost its inherent vowel and should
be shown under the viram sign.
By using a vertical conjunct
the sign is hidden. The conjunct can also be written as
a horizontal conjunct. The conjunct
if preceded by another akshara can come to
have a sound. e.g.
{ta.} त +
{kka} क्क -->
{tak~ka.} तक्क - part of the word
{tak~ka.þol} 'university'
-
{tak~ka.} is now a disyllable and it can be pronounced.
{tak~ka.þol} is a trisyllabic word. It's equivalent is Taxila .
The ancient Taxila university is
now in Pakistan where
the official script is Urdu -
a script that writes from right to left.
It is not easily comparable
to Sanskrit or Myanmar.
In these lessons, we must always remember that syntax
is more important than the traditional grammar definitions.
ဘယ္လူမ်ဳိးရဲ႕ စကားမွာျဖစ္ျဖစ္ အသံစုလုိ႔ ေခၚတဲ့ <syllable>/ ထုိမွတဆင့္ <word> လုိ႔ေခၚတဲ့ အသံတြဲေတြ ျဖစ္ေပၚရတယ္။ <word> ေတြဟာ အစီအစဥ္ တမ်ဳိးကုိ လုိက္နာရတယ္။ အဲဒီအစီအစဥ္ ကုိ
<syntax> လုိ႔ေခၚတယ္။ အဂၤလိပ္စကားရဲ႕ <syntax> ဟာ ဗမာစကားရဲ႕ <syntax> နဲ႔ မတူဘူး။
<syntax> ဟာ စကားေျပာသင္တဲ့ေနရာမွာ <grammar definition> ေတြထက္ အေရးႀကီးပါတယ္။
အထက္မွာ ဗမာစကားဆုိတဲ့ အသံုးအႏႈန္းကုိ သံုးလုိက္တာ မွားယြင္းသံုးတယ္လုိ႔ မထင္ပါနဲ႔။ ဘာသာေဗဒလုိ႔ေခၚတဲ့ <Linguistics> မွာ အေျပာနဲ႔ အေရးကုိ ခြဲျခားထားရပါတယ္။ အခု သင္ခန္းစာေတြကုိ <Linguistics> ႐ႈ႕ေထာင့္က ေရးထားတာျဖစ္လုိ႔ ဗမာစကား (Burmese spoken language) နဲ႔ ျမန္မာအကၡရာ (Myanmar akshara) တုိ႔ကုိ ခြဲျခားေျပာရပါလိမ့္မယ္။
Bèý lu-myo: rè. sa.ka: mha hpric-hpric a.þän-su. lo.
hkau-tè. <syllable>/ hto-mha. ta.hsing.
<word> lo. hkau-tè. a.þän-twè: twé hpric pau ra. tèý//
<word> twé ha a.si-a.siñ tic-myo: ko
leik-na ra. tèý// è:þæÑ. a.si-a.siñ ko <syntax>
lo. hkau-tèý// ïn~ga.laip sa.ka:
rè. <syntax> ha ba.ma sa.ka: rè.
<syntax> nè. ma.tu Bu:// <syntax>
ha sa.ka:prau: þing tè. né-ra mha <grammar definition>
twé htak a.ré: kri: pa tèý//
a.htak mha ba.ma sa.ka: hso-tè. a.þoän: a.nhoän:
ko thoän: leik ta mha:ywing: þoän tèý lo. ma.hting pa-nè.//
Ba-þa-bé da. lo. hkau-tè. <Linguistics> mha
a.prau: nè. a.ré: ko hkwè:hkra: hta: ra. pa tèý//
a.hku. þing-hkan:sa twé ko <Linguistics>
rhu.daung. ka ré:hta: ta hpric lo. ba.ma-sa.ka:
(Burmese spoken language) nè. mran-ma ak~hka.ra
(Myanmar akshara) to. ko hkwè: hkra: prau: ra. pa laim. mèý//
Long before the electronic recording was invented,
the spoken word was recorded on paper, or any
suitable material, in the form of markings. The
ancient Egyptians used little "pictures"
to represent the words. The Chinese also use what
can be described as pictures. Myanmars, and peoples
of the Indian sub-continent and places as far away as
Philippines use the <
abugida>. English and the peoples of Europe
use the <alphabet>.
The abugida of a written language consists of aksharas
{ak~hka.ra} [Skt-Dev अक्षर
«akṣara»], and the alphabet consists of <letters>.
(The technical term for <letter> is <grapheme>.
Grapheme is how a <phoneme> aka <sound>
is represented in "ink on paper".) The word
<abugida> is relatively new and is not well known,
and in this paper, we will use <akshara> in its place.
The word <akshara> is derived from Sanskrit.
In Burmese we use the term {ak~hka.ra} which is derived
from Pali. I was told by my Bengali friends of Deep River,
Ontario, Canada, that the Bengali pronunciation is also
{ak~hka.ra} and not <akshara>.
The information on
{ak~hka.ra} pronunciation of Bengali has led me
to compare the two languages: Bangala-Bengali
and Bur-Myan. Though the languages are
different, many pronunciations are found to be
similar. (This is just a rough observation which
would have to be checked further.) This has
led me to wonder if Bengali had been a Tib-Bur (Tibeto-Burman)
language just as Burmese is. Since the two areas
speaking the languages are geographically next
to each other, we should expect the two
populations to be using the same set of muscles
in pronouncing the syllables especially the vowels.
For a description of vowel production see works
on Voice Quality such as The Phonetic Description
of Voice quality by John Laver, Reader in the
Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh.
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, London, New York,
New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney. 1980. First published
1980. ISBN 0 521 231 760. A photocopy of this
rare book is available in the TIL library.
This conjecture that the peoples of modern
Bengal (India) and modern Myanmar use almost
the same set of muscles to produce the similar
sounds could be extended to the idea that the
ancient peoples of the two area had spoken
the languages of Tib-Bur group. Thus we
would be able to conclude that the pronunciation
of the Buddha would be similar to that of
the people of Myanmar. And that the Pali-Myan
pronunciation is more authentic than that of
the so-called International Pali.
English uses the alphabet. There are 33 consonantal
characters in the Burmese-akshara system, and
21 consonantal characters in English-alphabetic system.
The 21 consonantal-characters together with
the 5 vowel-characters of English-alphabetic system
are sometimes known as "letters". But,
here for consistency sake we will not use the word
'letter'. Instead, we will use the convention:
• Bur-Myan-akshara system, or the akshara
{ak~hka.ra} has 33 consonantal-characters
• Eng-Lat-alphabetic system, or the alphabet
{al~hpha-bakt} has 21 consonantal-characters
It is not the policy of TIL to introduce new glyphs
at every turn of events. Yet we are seeing that
we will have to "invent" three glyphs to
transcribe English. These three derived with medial former
{ha.} are illegal in regular Bur-Myan:
for < f > -
{fa.} /f/ derived from
{hp~ha.}
for < v > -
{va.} /v/ derived from
{b~ha.}
for < sh > -
{sha.} /ʃ/ derived from
{s~ha.}
Thus looking at from pronunciation
{al~hpha-bakt} would be
{al-fa-bakt}. Notice how I have represented
the syllable {bakt} which has two coda consonants
- a flag has been added. Otherwise it would become
disyllabic {bak~ta.}. Regular Bur-Myan syllable
has either C=0, or 1. No more. Eng-Lat coda can
have up to C=3 or more. e.g.,
The biggest advantage of an akshara over the alphabet is,
the akshara is based on phonemic principles which
are well-known in the East for thousands of
years, whereas the alphabet has no such basis.
အဂၤလိပ္စကားက <Latin alphabet> ကုိ သံုးပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ <
English-Latin> <Bur-Myan> ဆုိတဲ့ အသံုးအႏႈန္းေတြကုိ ေတြ႔ရလိမ့္မယ္။ <alphabet> နဲ႔ <akshara> ဟာ လံုး၀မတူဘူး။ ဒီအျဖစ္ကုိ
<linguistic> ႐ႈ႕ေထာင့္နဲ႔ အသံေဗဒလုိ႔ ေခၚလုိ႔ရတဲ့ <phonetics> ႐ႈ႕ေထာင့္တုိ႔က ၾကည့္မွသာ ကြက္ကြက္ ကြင္းကြင္း ျမင္ႏုိင္ပါတယ္။
အဂၤလိပ္စကားေျပာမွာ အသံမွန္ဖုိ႔ထက္ အသံဟာ ပါးစပ္ ႏႈတ္ခမ္း၊ အာခံတြင္း၊
ႏွာေခါင္း စလုိ႔ ဘယ္ေနရာက ထြက္တာလဲဆုိတာ သိဖုိ႔လုိပါတယ္။ အဲဒါကုိ <phonemics> လုိ႔ ေခၚပါတယ္။ အဲဒီကမွ တဆင့္ အသံ အဆြဲအငင္ အျဖတ္အေတာက္ စလုိ႔ အေသးစိတ္လာတာကုိ <phonetics> လုိ႔ ေခၚပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာအကၡရာကုိ သင္ပုန္းႀကီး အစီအစဥ္နဲ႔ ေရးရင္ အတန္း ၇ တန္း <7 rows>၊ အတုိင္ ၅ တုိင္
<5 columns> နဲ႔ ေရးပါတယ္။ အဲဒီလုိေရးတာကုိ သခၤ်ာအသံုးအႏႈန္းအရ <matrix> လုိ႔ေခၚပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာ အကၡရာကုိ <7r x 5c matrix> လုိ႔ ေခၚပါတယ္။
<r1-c5> {င} မွ <r4-c5> {န} အထိၾကည့္ရင္ ႏွာေခါင္းသံေတြကုိ
ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။ အသံျဖစ္တဲ့ေနရာေတြဟာ အာခံတြင္းမွတျဖည္းျဖည္း အျပင္ဘက္သုိ႔
ထြက္လာတာကုိ ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။
အခုသင္ခန္းစာေတြဟာ <phonemics> အေျခခံရွိတဲ့
ျမန္မာစာကုိတတ္ကၽြမ္းသူေတြအတြက္ အလြန္လြယ္ကူပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာစာ
မတတ္ကၽြမ္းေသးတဲ့ ခေလးေတြအတြက္ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။
အသံဖလွယ္ <transcription> လုပ္တဲ့ေနရာမွာ <English-Latin
alphabet> ရဲ႕ ခ်ဳိ႕တဲ့မႈေၾကာင့္ အခက္အခဲ အမ်ားႀကီးေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာလူအမည္ , ၿမိဳ႕အမည္ , နဲ႔ ေဒသအမည္တုိ႔ကုိ အဂၤလိပ္လုိ
အမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိး စာလံုးေပါင္းၾကတာကုိ ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။
ïn~ga.laip sa.ka: ka. <Latin alphabet> ko þoän: pa-tèý//
da-kraung. <
English-Latin> <Bur-Myan> hso-tè.
a.þoän:a.nhoän: twé ko twé. ra. laim. mèý//
<alphabet> nè. <akshara>
ha loän:wa. ma.tu Bu:// di a.hpric ko <linguistic>
rhu.daung. nè. a.þän-bé-da. lo. hkau-lo. ra.tè.
<phonetics> rhu.daung. to. ka. kræÑ. mha. þa
kwak-kwak kwing:kwing: mring neing pa tèý//
ïn~ga.laip a.prau: mha a.þän mhûn Bo.htak/ a.þän ha
pa:sûp nhoat-hkûm: , a-hkän-twing: , nha.hkaung: ,
sa.lo. Bèý né ra ka. htwak la tèý hso ta þi.Bo. lo pa tèý//
è:da ko <phonemics> lo. hkau pa tèý//
è:þæÑ ka. mha. ta. hsing. , a.þän , a.hswè: ,
a.ngin a.hprût a.tauk sa. lo. , a.þé: saip-la ta
ko <phonetics> lo. hkau pa tèý//
mran-ma ak~hka.ra ko þing-poän:kri: a.si-a.siñ nè. ré: ring/
a.tan: 7 tan: <7 rows>/ a.teing 5 teing <5 columns>
nè. ré: pa tèý// è:þæÑ lo ré: ta ko þïn~hkya
a.þoän: a.nhoan: a.ra. <matrix> lo. hkau pa tèý/
mrûn-ma ak~hka.ra ko <7r x 5c matrix> lo.
hkau pa tèý//
<r1-c5> {nga.} mha. <r4-c5> {na.} a.hti.
kræÑ. ring nha-hkaung: þän twé ko twé. ra. pa tèý//
a.þän hpric tè. né ra twé ha a-hkän-twing: mha.
ta.hpré: hpré: a.pring Bak þo. htwak la ta ko
twé ra. pa tèý//
a.hku. þing-hkan: sa twé ha <phonemics>
a.hkyé hkän rhi. tè. mrûn-ma sa ko tût kywûm: þu twé
a.twak a.lûn lwèý ku pa tèý//
mrûn-ma sa ma.tût kywum: þé: tè. hka.lé: twé a.twak
ma. hoat pa Bu://
a.þän hpa.lhè <transcription> loap tè.
né-ra mha <English-Latin alphabet> rè. hkyo.tè. mhu.
kraung. a.hkak a.hkè: a.mya.kri: twé. ra. pa tèý//
da.kraung. mrûn-ma lu-a.mæÑ , mro.a.mæÑ , nè.
dé-þa.a.mæÑ to. ko ïn~ga.laip lo a.myo:myo:
sa-loän: paung: kra. ta ko twé. ra.pa-tèý //
To overcome the deficiencies of the European-languages,
linguists have to invent a phonetic alphabet known as
the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA ).
ဘယ္ေနရာမွာ <English-Latin alphabet> ခ်ဳ႕ိတဲ့ေနသလဲဆုိရင္ {nga.þän} နဲ႔ {Ña.þän} ကုိ ျပဖုိ႔
<letter of alphabet> မရွိတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ နမူနာအေနနဲ႔ အဂၤလိပ္စာလံုး <sing> ထဲက <ng> mha <g> သံမပါ/ {nga.thän} သာပါပါတယ္။ ျပစရာ <alphabet-letter> မရွိလုိ႔ ႏွစ္လံုးတြဲ <digraph ng> နဲ႔ ေရးရပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာအမ်ားေျပာေနသလုိ
<g> သံ ထည့္ေျပာရင္ မွားပါတယ္။
အေထာက္အထား <DJPD16 p.490> ဥေရာပတုိက္
<European continent> မွ စကားစာမ်ားျဖစ္ၾကတဲ့ <English-Latin,
French-Latin, Spanish-Latin> တုိ႔ကုိ တစ္ခုမွ တစ္ခုသုိ႔
အသံဖလွယ္ဖုိ႔ျပဳလုပ္တဲ့ အခါမွာ ေတြ႔ရတဲ့ အခက္အခဲေတြကုိ ေက်ာ္လြန္ဖုိ႔
<alphabet> တစ္မ်ဳိးကုိ တီထြင္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ အဲဒါကုိ
<International Phonetic Alphabet =
IPA> လုိ႔ေခၚပါတယ္။ <Bur-Myan> မွာ ႏွာေခါင္းသံ ၅ ခုရွိတယ္။
<English-Latin> မွာေတာ့ ၃ ခုပါရွိလုိ႔ <English native speakers> ေတြဒုကၡေရာက္ၾကတယ္။ သူတုိ႔အခက္အခဲရွိၾကတာက
{nga.},
{Ña.}, နဲ႕
{Na.} တုိ႔ျဖစ္ၾကတယ္။
•
{nga.} ဟာ <IPA ŋ (U014B) velar
nasal consonant> ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
•
{Ña.} နဲ႕ <Pali>
{ña.} တုိ႔ဟာ < IPA ɲ (U0272)
palatal nasal consonant> ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ <Spanish-Latin> မွ <
IPA ɲ > ကုိ ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။
<English-Latin alphabet> မွာ အဲဒီအသံကုိ ျပစရာမရွိလုိ႔
<diagraph ny > နဲ႔ျပရပါတယ္။
• ေနာက္တစ္ခုကေတာ့
{Na.} <IPA ɳ (U0273) retroflex nasal
consonant> ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
Bèý né ra mha <English-Latin alphabet> hkyo. tè.
né þa. lè: hso ring {nga.þän} nè. {Ña.þän} ko pra. Bo.
<letter of alphabet> ma.rhi. ta hpric pa tèý/
na.mu-na a.né nè. ïn~ga.laip sa-loän: <sing>
htè ka. <ng> mha <g> þän ma. pa/ {nga.thän}
þa pa pa tèý// pra. sa. ra <alphabet-letter>
ma. rhi. lo. nhic.loän: twè: <digraph ng>
nè. ré: ra. pa tèý// mrûn-ma a.mya: prau: né-þa.lo
<g> þän htæÑ. prau: ring mha: pa tèý/
a.htauk a.hta: <DJPD16 p.490>
U.rau:pa. taik <European continent> mha.
sa.ka: sa mya: pric kra. tè. <English-Latin,
French-Latin, Spanish-Latin> to.ko
tic.hku. mha. tic.hku. tho. a.thän hpa.lhè Bo.
pru. loap tè. a. hka mha twé. ra. tè. a.hkak a.hkè:
twé ko kyau lwan Bo. <alphabet> tic.myo:
ko ti-htwing hkè. kra. ra. pa tèý/ è:da ko
<International Phonetic Alphabet =
IPA> lo. hkau pa tèý//
<Bur-Myan> mha nha-hkaung: þän 5 hku. rhi. tèý.
<English-Latin> mha tau. 3 hku. þa rhi. lo.
<English native speakers> twé doak~hka. rauk kra. tèý//
þu-to. a.hkak-a.hkè: rhi. kra. ta. ka.
{nga.},
{Ña.}, nè.
{Na.} to. hpric kra. tèý//
•
{nga.} ha <IPA ŋ (U014B) velar
nasal consonant> hpric pa tèý//
•
{Ña.} nè. <Pali>
{ña.} to. ha < IPA ɲ (U0272)
palatal nasal consonant> hpric pa tèý//
<Spanish-Latin> mha <
IPA ɲ > ko twé. ra. pa tèý//
<English-Latin alphabet> mha
è:di. a.þän ko pra. sa. ra ma.rhi. lo
<diagraph ny > nè. pra. ra. pa tèý//
• nauk-tic hku. ka. tau.
{Na.} <IPA ɳ (U0273) retroflex nasal
consonant> hpric pa tèý//
These three IPA symbols are so alike that
the little TIL mascot is reduced to saying:
Mnemonic
The Doggie Tale:
Little doggie cringe in fear -- ŋ (velar),
Seeing Ella's flapping ears -- ɲ (palatal)
And, the Shepard's hanging rear -- ɳ (retroflex).
Doggie so sad he can't get it out
What's that Kasha क्ष
when there's a Kha ख ?
And when there's Jana ज्ञ
what I am to do with Jha झ?
(U014B) lo a.mhat a.þa: ha <Unicode font>
nän-paat hpric tèý// <Unicode font> a.kraung:
ka. <computer, information technology>
þa.ma: twé nè. þa hseing lo. a.hku. þing-hkan:sa
twé mha ma. rhing: pra. tau. Bu://
• IPA /ŋ/ - velar nasal (the most interior
of the mouth at soft-palate or velum) - Bur-Myan
{nga.}. The most prominent part in the interior
of the mouth is the uvula
{lhya-hking} . It is attached to the velum.
• IPA /ɲ/ - palatal nasal
(to the front of the most interior of the mouth
at hard-palate or palate) - Bur-Myan
{Ña.}/
{ña.}
• IPA /ɳ/ - retroflex nasal (still moving towards
the front of the mouth at palate) - Bur-Myan
{Na.}
Please note that until about a few decades ago,
the furthest most you can see of the interior
of the mouth of a living person is the area
around uvula and velum. And so the places
of production or articulation (POA) that
could be observed that could be described by
ancient phoneticians were those of the consonants
only. Vowels are produced in the interior, the
voice box or larynx producing them in a
living person was not seen until modern
times. Therefore how the vowels are produced
by a living person is not well described.
Yet the ancients knew that the vowels were
produced deep in the throat.
Much of our knowledge of the larynx and the
muscles controlling them is from the surgery
of the cancerous parts of the larynx. This
is a point not generally appreciated by most
linguists (grammarians) especially those
from Myanmarpre especially like my friend
U Tun Tint of the MLC who always insists
that the "sounds" of Pali have
been well described. To them my answer is:
no one really knows the sounds of the ancient
Pali (that of the Buddha) -- no voice recording
machines have been made until recently. And
the usual way of saying that such and such is
the "sound of Pali" is not only wrong
but very misleading.
a:loän:hkyoän prau:ra. ring a.hku. þing-hkûn:sa twé ha
mrûn-ma twé twé. né kra. <grammar> ma.hoat-Bu: hso ta
hpric pa-tèý//
An abugida, alphasyllabary, or syllabics
is a writing system in which consonant signs (graphemes)
are inherently associated with a following vowel. Thus,
the absence of such a vowel, or other following vowels,
are usually indicated explicitly. About half
the writing systems in the world, including the extensive
Brahmic system used for most Indo-Aryan languages, are
abugida. -- Wikipedia 070710
Note both the singular and plural form of "abugida"
are the same. On population basis, there are more people
in the world using abugida than the alphabet. -- UKT.
Go back
abugida-note-b
n. English -- MEDict622 (I have been using the wrong spelling
{ïn~ga.lait} and in spite of my efforts
to change them, there might still be some mis-spelled
words left. The correct spelling according to MEDict622 is
{ïn~ga.laip}.)
Go back
in-ga-laip-note-b
n. Abbr. IPA I.P.A. 1. A phonetic alphabet
and diacritic modifiers sponsored by the International Phonetic Association
to provide a uniform and universally understood system
for transcribing the speech sounds of all languages. -- AHTD
In 1886, in Paris, a small group of language teachers
formed an association to encourage the use of
phonetic notation in schools to help children acquire
realistic pronunciations of foreign languages
and also to aid in teaching reading to young children.
The group, led by Paul Passy, called itself initially
Dhi Fonètik Tîcerz' Asóciécon (the FTA).
In January 1889, the name of the Association
was changed to L'Association Phonétique des Professeurs de
Langues Vivantes (AP), and, in 1897, to
L'Association Phonétique Internationale (API) ?in English,
the International Phonetic Association (IPA).
The IPA’s peak of membership
and influence in education circles was around 1914,
when there were 1751 members in 40 countries.
World War I and its aftermath severely disrupted
the Association's activities, and the Journal
did not resume regular publication until 1922.
The group’s initial aim was to create a set of
phonetic symbols to which different articulations
could apply, such that each language would have
an alphabet particularly suited to describe
the sounds of the language. Eventually it was
decided that a universal alphabet, with the
same symbol being used for the same sound in
different languages was the ideal, and development
of the International Phonetic Alphabet
progressed rapidly up to the turn of the 20th
century. Since then, there have been several sets
of changes to the Alphabet, with additions and
deletions that the progress of the science of phonetics
has indicated. -- Wikipedia 070710
Go back
IPA-note-b
-- UKT 121123
I have always been intrigued by sentence endings such as
{IÉ},
{þæÑ},
{mæÑ}. A Bur-Myan sentence ends with such endings.
What are they? Are they particles or
{pic~sæÑ:}? They are not. In linguistic terms
they are known as norminalizers.
From:
The Grammaticalization of Nominalizers in Burmese
by Andrew Simpson, Professor of Linguistics
& East Asian Languages and Cultures,
http://victoria.linguistlist.org/~lapolla/nw/Simpson.doc
080622, 121123
UKT note: I find the author's transcriptions (unofficial)
to be sometimes unintelligible, and I have inserted
Bur-Myan & Romabama.
The term ‘nominalizer’ is a purely functional
label which is appropriately used to refer to
all those morphemes/words which have the specific function
of creating a nominal morpho-syntactic form as
the result of their combination with other
kinds of non-nominal input, as indicated in (1):
(1)
A nominalizer: a morpheme whose primary function
is to convert a non-nominal input form into a nominal category.
Nominal categories, and hence the
presence of functional elements which may be nominalizers, can in turn be
identified in two basic ways: (a) through the occurrence of noun-like/nominal
morphological patterns, and/or (b) via syntactic privileges otherwise
commonly associated with nouns and their syntactic projections.
... ... ...
(2) Morphological indications that a
syntactic constituent is nominal:
i. the occurrence of case
inflections on a constituent
ii. possible pluralization/plural-marking
of the constituent
iii. possible enumeration of
the constituent (combination of the constituent with
numerals)
iv. the potential occurrence
of demonstratives and adjectives with the
constituent, rather than complementizers and adverbs
v. use of case-marking strategies associated specifically with nouns in the marking
of arguments of the noun (e.g. use of possessive/Genitive case to
mark the noun’s arguments rather than Nominative/Accusative case)
Syntactically, a complex constituent may be identified as a nominal phrase if it
shows the distribution of other simplex phrases that are clearly nominal, for
example, the ability to occur in subject position, or the ability to be co-ordinated
with other clearly nominal categories. If other, non-nominal categories such as
verbal/adjectival phrases are regularly excluded from such positions, but a
verbal/adjectival phrase in combination with some additional morpheme is found
to allow for occurrence in subject position/co-ordination with other
noun-phrases, this may be taken as reasonable evidence for the nominalized
status of the complex constituent, and for the nominalizing function of the
morpheme combined with the verb/adjective and their dependents.
... ... ...
3.0.
Nominalization in Burmese
Having considered some of the general
issues involved in the study of nominalization and the grammaticalization of
nominalizers in a language, we now turn to an investigation of nominalization
phenomena in Burmese. The discussion here will focus in particular on the
sentential/clausal nominalizers present in the language, as these can be shown
to reveal much about the way reanalysis applies to create complex new
grammaticalized morphemes/words, and give rise to shifts between categorical
types.
[i] As briefly mentioned in the introduction,
Burmese is commonly described as having two complementary forms:
Colloquial Burmese and Literary Burmese.
3.1 Sentential nominalizers in Literary
Burmese:
the elements ‘thii’
{þæÑ} and ‘mii’
{mæÑ}
In Literary Burmese, the morpheme thii
{þæÑ}
occurs
in clause-final position, both in
main clauses (as a sentence-final morpheme), and when clauses are embedded as
arguments of other predicates:
When thii is used to embed
clauses as the arguments of a predicate, it is naturally accompanied by a
case-marker.[i]
Examples (9) and (10) show this with the embedding of clauses as the object of a
verb, and (11) and (12) with the embedding of a clause in subject position.[ii]
It should also be noted that the use of thii in all of (8-12) is
obligatory and clauses may not occur as the arguments of verbs without this
morpheme :
UKT: More in the original paper.
o back norminalization-note-b
From Wikipedia 070710
IPA [Ñ] / [ñ] (upper / lower case )
( /
{Ña.kri:/ ña.lé:}) are represented by graphemes
of the modern Roman alphabet formed by an N or n
with a diacritical tilde. They are used in the Spanish alphabet, where
it precisely represents a palatal nasal (IPA: [ ɲ ]). Unlike many other
alphabets that use diacritic marks (such as ü in Astur-Leonese or â
in Tagalog), in Spanish, Ñ is considered a letter in its own right, with its own
name (eñe) and its own place in the alphabet (after N).
The palatal nasal sound is roughly reminiscent of as
/nj/ as in "onion" IPA: [ˈʌnjən].
This description is enough to give a rough idea of the sound,
but it is not precise (it is the equivalent of giving
the pronunciation of the English word "shot" as "syot").
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatal_nasal 080815
The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is
ɲ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J. The IPA symbol is a
lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the
bottom of the left stem of the letter. Compare n and ɲ. The symbol
ɲ should not be confused with ɳ, the symbol for the retroflex nasal,
which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem, or with
ŋ, the symbol for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook
extending from the bottom of the right stem. In Spanish and languages whose
writing systems are influenced by Spanish orthography, this sound is represented
with the letter eñe (ñ).
Go back palatal-nasal-b
- UKT 121122
What is the equivalent of grammatical Particle in Bur-Myan? The following the
definition given by MLC
UKT translation: 32.
{pic~sæÑ:} is the grammatical term denoting a qualifier that adds more
information to the noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb.
Now from Wikipedia:
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language#Particles 121122
Note: The font used by Wikipedia does not display well on my computer
because of which I have given my usual pix-glyph & Romabama. I have also
modified it slightly.
The Burmese language
makes prominent usage of
particles (called
{pic~sæÑ:}
in Burmese), which are untranslatable words that are suffixed or prefixed to
words to indicate level of respect, grammatical tense, or mood.
According to the Myanmar–English Dictionary (1993), there are 449
particles in the Burmese language. [UKT¶ ]
For example,
{sûm:},
is a grammatical particle used to indicate the imperative mood.
{loap}
'to work'
{loap sûm} 'you do it' - the imperative mood does not indicate politeness
{loap pa} 'you do it' - the imperative mood is now more polite: 'please do
it'
Particles may be
combined in some cases, especially those modifying verbs.
Some particles modify
the word's
part of speech. Among the most prominent of these is the particle
{a.},
which is prefixed to verbs and adjectives to form nouns or adverbs. Unlike Pali,
{a.} does
not mean negation. For instance, the word
{wing} 'to enter' but in combination as
{a.wing} 'entrance'. Combination
{a.loap} 'work'. Here the particle
{a.} has turned verbs into nouns.
Go back particle-note-b
UKT: I always look on newspaper articles with suspicion. They are useful for
general information only. Until I see a piece of information in a well-reputed
academic or scientific journal, all facts posted below must be taken with
caution. -- UKT121128
From: News article in Jagran Post - an online newspaper
Posted on: 26 Mar 2012, 04:13 PM
Agra: Very soon the traditional Indian language Sanskrit
will be a part of the space, with the United States of America (USA) mulling to
use it as computer language at NASA. After the refusal of the Indian Sanskrit
scholars to help them acquire command over the language, US has urged its young
generation to learn Sanskrit.
On visit to Agra, Aurobindo Foundation (Indian Culture) Puducherry Director
Sampadananda Mishra told Dainik Jagran about the prospects of Sanskrit. Mishra
said, “In 1985, NASA scientist Rick Briggs had invited 1,000 Sanskrit scholars
from India for working at NASA. But scholars refused to allow the language to be
put to foreign use.”
According to Rick Briggs, Sanskrit is such a language in which a message can
be sent by the computer in the least number of words.
After the refusal of Indian experts to offer any help in understanding the
scientific concept of the language, American kids were imparted Sanskrit lessons
since their childhood.
The NASA website also confirms its Mission Sanskrit and describes it as the
best language for computers. The website clearly mentions that NASA has spent a
large sum of time and money on the project during the last two decades.
The scientists believe that Sanskrit is also helpful in speech therapy
besides helping in mathematics and science. It also improves concentration. The
alphabets used in the language are scientific and their correct pronunciation
improves the tone of speech. It encourages imagination and improves memory
retention also.
Mishra told the daily that even the call centre employees are improving their
voice by reading Sanskrit, besides the language being used by news readers, film
and theatre artist for alternative voice remedy.
(JPN/Bureau)
Go back
Sanskrit-computer-language-note-b
-- UKT: 121128
The syllable is the most basic idea in Abugida
or Akshara system of writing. Yet it is not given
a prominent place in Bur-Myan grammar. MLC in its
MED2006-480 gives it as
{wûN~Na.} -- a term which almost all, including myself
at one time, knows as "beautiful appearance",
because of which I propose to transcribed it from English as
{sil~Ba.}
From AHTD
syllable n. Abbr.
syl. syll. 1. Linguistics a.
A unit of spoken language consisting of a single
uninterrupted sound formed by a vowel, diphthong,
or syllabic consonant alone, or by any of these sounds
preceded, followed, or surrounded by one or
more consonants. b. One or more letters
or phonetic symbols written or printed to approximate
a spoken syllable. 2. The slightest bit
of spoken or written expression: Do not
alter a syllable of this message. v. tr.
syllabled syllabling syllablesLinguistics
1. To pronounce in syllables.
[Middle English sillable from Anglo-Norman
alteration of Old French sillabe from
Latin syllaba from Greek sullab ē
from sullabein, second aorist of sullambanein
to combine in pronunciation sun- syn-
lambanein to take]
Unless you know the pronunciation of a word,
you cannot count the number of syllables in it.
Since, the pronunciation can vary from place
to place, from country to country, and from
a time-period to another, the syllable count
can differ. This is especially true in loan words.
Always consult a pronouncing dictionary like
Daniel Jones Pronouncing Dictionary which I have
made the standard for my works: English Pronouncing Dictionary
by Daniel Jones. 16th ed. Edited by Peter Roach,
James Hartman and Jane Setter. Cambridge University Press,
2003.
As an example of a word (example given in UseE -
http://www.usingenglish.com/ ), let's take
<elevate>. Look in AHTD, which gives
el·e·vate -- three syllables. Thus
<elevate> is a tri-syllabic word.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable 121128
A syllable is a unit of organization
for a sequence of speech sounds. For example,
the word <water> is composed of two syllables:
<wa> and <ter>. A syllable is typically
made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel)
with optional initial and final margins (typically,
consonants).
An Eng-Lat syllable has the canonical form CVC,
whereas Bur-Myan, Pal-Myan, & Skt-Dev syllables
have CVÇ, where Ç has its inherent vowel
killed by virama aka
{a.þût}. -- UKT
Syllables are often considered the phonological
"building blocks" of words. They can
influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its
poetic meter and its stress patterns.
Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the
first letters [UKT: alphabet]. The earliest
recorded syllables are on tablets written around
2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from
pictograms to syllables has been called "the
most important advance in the
history of writing".
[1]
A word that consists of a single syllable (like
English <dog>) is called a monosyllable
(and is said to be monosyllabic). Similar
terms include disyllable (and disyllabic)
for a word of two syllables; trisyllable (and trisyllabic) for a
word of three syllables; and polysyllable (and polysyllabic),
which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of
more than one syllable.
UKT: More in the Wikipedia article.
Go back
syllable-note-b
-- UKT 121120
Many of us have about this word: syntax.
Yet, I, for one did not know what it actually
is. As usual let's turn to a dictionary -
I always have a dictionary on my computer hard disk,
otherwise, I am too lazy to look up in an ink-on-paper
printed book.
syntax
n. 1. a. The study of the rules
whereby words or other elements of sentence structure
are combined to form grammatical sentences. -- AHTD
A. W. Lonsdale 1899, p.002, states: "
{ka-ra.ka.kûp~pa.} -- Rules concerning the necessary
relations of words in a sentence. Let's get more.
Written by UKT based on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax 121120
(You should also look into:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 121121)
Modern research in syntax attempts to describe
languages in terms of such rules. Many professionals
in this discipline attempt to find general rules
that apply to all natural languages. The term syntax
is also used to refer to the rules governing
the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal
languages used in logic. (See
Logical syntax).
Works on grammar were written long before
modern syntax came about; the
Aṣṭādhyāyī of
the Indian linguist Pāṇini
{pa-Ni.ni.} (fl. about the time of Gautama Buddha)
is often cited as an example of a premodern work
that approaches the sophistication of a modern
syntactic theory. Pāṇini
{pa-Ni.ni.} was responsible for
formulating Vedic into classical Sanskrit.
I always wonder what Vedic was. It was
the oldest language, committed to memory,
used for composing Vedic hymns - to
the three principal deities: Indra (the king
of heavenly beings - or deva and asura),
Agni (the messenger between devas and humans),
and Soma (the health drink which has now degenerated
into an alcoholic drink. I think Soma may be
the deva who cools human passions and sorrows.).
Was Vedic Tib-Bur (Tibeto-Burman) or IE (Indo-European)?
How was it connected to Bur-Myan? The way
Vedic hymns are recited, and the way we recite
our Parrita are quite similar, e.g. Geyatri mantra
& the Peacock Paritta.
In the West, the school of thought that came
to be known as "traditional grammar"
began with the work of Greek grammarian
Dionysius Thrax. (170 BC – 90 BC) who appeared
on the scene many centuries later after Pāṇini
{pa-Ni.ni.}. So the question remains:
Were the Indians getting knowledge from the Greeks
or the other way around?
One of the modern approach to language was pioneered by
Noam Chomsky. Most generative theories
(although not all of them) assume that
syntax is based upon the constituent
structure of sentences. Generative grammars
are among the theories that focus primarily
on the form of a sentence, rather than
its communicative function.
Grammar in Plain English
UKT: Now a word on Grammar in Plain English
on which I have based my work.
Though the English text is almost entirely
from Barron, the explanations in Romabama,
are mine. What I am trying to do here is
to prescribe Barron, and to go through it
giving explanations in Bur-Myan (Burmese-Myanmar).
However, because of the difficulty of presenting
the Bur-Myan font on the internet, I have to resort to Romabama
{rau:ma.ba.ma} which started out as a transliteration,
but now which has come of age as a transcription.
I have been putting it to a severe test by going
into Skt-Dev (Sanskrit-Devanagari) in A. A. Macdonell
A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary. One
advantage of using Romabama is due to the
phonetic nature of the Myanmar script itself,
because of which I can give the pronunciations
of English words in Romabama instead of in IPA
(International Phonetic Alphabet).
Excerpt from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 121121
The basic word order of the Burmese language
is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). Pronouns in Burmese
vary according to the gender and status of
the audience. Burmese is monosyllabic (i.e.,
every word is a root to which a particle but not
another word may be prefixed).
[16]
Sentence structure determines syntactical
relations and verbs are not conjugated.
Instead they have particles suffixed to
them. For example, the verb "to eat,"
{sa:} (ca: [sà] is itself unchanged
when modified.
Go back syntax-note-b
-- by UKT 121121
Tense is not important in Bur-Myan. English-Latin
has simple tenses, but in Skt-Dev (& probably Pali)
tenses are more complex. Moreover there are
two very similar terms, Aspect & Mode,
with which tense across languages got fuzzy.
Please remember, I am not a grammarian in all
the languages of BEPS. Therefore, I can only
quote from what I consider to be reliable sources:
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense 080526, 091221
Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic
quality expressing the time at, during, or over
which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.
Tense is one of at least five qualities, along
with mood, voice, aspect,
and person, which verb forms may express.
Tenses cannot always be translated from
one language to another. While verbs in
all languages have typical forms by which
they are identified and indexed in dictionaries,
usually the most common present tense or
an infinitive, their meanings vary among languages.
There are languages (such as isolating languages,
like Chinese [UKT: Bur-Myan included?]) in which
tense is not used, but implied
in temporal adverbs when needed, and some
(such as Japanese) in which temporal
information appears in the inflection of
adjectives, lending them a verb-like quality.
In some languages (such as Russian) a simple verb
may indicate aspect and tense.
UKT: For languages like Bur-Myan (contrast
with English-Latin), I'll have to use the term
"non-past tense" or "nonpast tense",
which I have first come across in Wikipedia.
It is indicated by Ø.
Linguistics is very
confusing because of similar words, which
are not the same, but being described by
closely related words. Here for deciding how
to describe Bur-Myan, I need to to know
(the following are from the same Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolating_language 121121):
Isolating language :
a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio
— in the extreme case of an isolating language
words are composed of a single morpheme.
Analytic language :
in the extreme case does not use
any inflections to indicate grammatical
relationships (but which may still form
compound words or may change the meanings of individual words with
derivational morphemes, either of which processes
gives more than one morpheme per word). [UKT: Wikipedia
states clearly that Burmese is an analytic language. --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 121121]
Synthetic language : where
words often consist of multiple morphemes. That
linguistic classification is subdivided into
the classifications
fusional,
agglutinative, and
polysynthetic, which are based on how the morphemes are combined.
The same article has analyzed the Bur-Myan
using the sentence:
"Tomorrow my friend will bake a birthday cake for me."
Lit:
{ma.nak-hpûn}
{kywun-noap.}¹
{IÉ}²
{þu-ngèý-hkying:}
{þæÑ}³
tomorrow / me / (subordinating particle) / friend / (subject particle) /
{mwé:né.}
{kaik}
{ta.}
{bûn:}
{hpoak}
{pé:}
{mæÑ}
birthday / cake / one / (classifier) / bake / give / (future tense particle)
¹. pronoun generally used for males -
². Literary form
{IE}. Colloquial form
{rè.}
³. Literary form
{mæÑ}. Colloquial form
{mèý}
4. Literary form
{þæÑ}. Colloquial form
{ka.}
- Note: Wiki article has lost superscript-4
and has given superscript-3 two times. I have
given the equivalent colloquial sentence.
My comment: the author has given a sentence
with complicated words -- obviously he doesn't
know our culture or he is a city-boy used
to city usages only. What is considered
colloquial in Yangon & Mandalay are
regular forms in dialects like Inntha.
UKT: Because the Literary language is unnecessary
I have given the Colloquial sentence using what are
given as colloquial terms in the Wikipedia article.
Coll:
{ma.nak-hpûn}
{ngaa.}
{rè.}
{þu-ngèý-hkying:}
{ka.}
tomorrow / me / (subordinating particle) / friend / (subject particle) /
{mwé:né.}
{kaik}
{ta.}
{bûn:}
{hpoak}
{pé:}
{mèý}
birthday / cake / one / (classifier) / bake / give / (future tense particle)
The number of tenses in a language may be
controversial, since its verbs may indicate
qualities of uncertainty, frequency, completion,
duration, possibility, and even whether
information derives from experience or hearsay.
UKT: There were more in the above Wikipedia
articles. However, when I access Wikipedia
articles again, I am finding lots have been changed.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense 121121
UKT: There is no mention of Burmese, Pali or Sanskrit.
In grammar, tense is a category that
locates a situation in time, to indicate
when the situation takes place.
[1]
[note 1] Tense is the grammaticalisation
of time reference, and in general is understood
to have the three delimitations of [UKT¶]
"before now", i.e. the past
"now", i.e. the present
"after now", i.e. the future.
The "unmarked" reference
for tense is the temporal distance from the
time of utterance, the "here-and-now",
this being absolute-tense.[UKT ¶]
Relative-tense indicates temporal distance
from a point of time established in the discourse
that is not the present, i.e. reference to a point
in the past or future, such as the future-in-future,
or the future of the future
(at some time in the future after the reference point,
which is in the future) and future-in-past
or future of the past (at some time
after a point in the past, with the reference
point being a point in the past).
Not all languages grammaticalise tense, and
those that do differ in their grammaticalisation
thereof. [UKT ¶]
Not all grammaticalise the three-way system
of past–present–future. [UKT ¶]
For example, two-tense languages
such as English and Japanese express past and
non-past, this latter covering both present
and future in one verb form. [UKT ¶]
Four-tense languages make
finer distinctions either in the past
(e.g. remote vs recent past), or the future
(e.g. near vs remote future). [UKT ¶]
The six-tense language
Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia has
the remote past, the recent past, the today
past, the present, the today/near future
and the remote future. [UKT ¶]
The differences between such finer distinctions
are the distance on the timeline between the
temporal reference points from the present.
UKT: More in the Wikipedia article
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tense-aspect-mood 121121
Tense–aspect–mood, commonly abbreviated
tam and also called tense–modality–aspect
or tma, is the grammatical system
in a language that covers the expression of
tense (location in time),
aspect (fabric of time – a single block of time,
continuous flow of time, or repetitive occurrence), and
mood or
modality (degree of necessity, obligation,
probability, ability).
[1]
In some cases,
evidentiality (whether evidence exists for the statement,
and if so what kind) may also be included.
The term is convenient because it is
often difficult to untangle these features
of a language. Often any two of tense,
aspect, and mood (or all three) may be
conveyed by a single grammatical construction;
but this system may not be complete in that
not all possible combinations may have
an available construction. In other cases
there may not be clearly delineated categories
of tense and mood, or aspect and mood.
For instance, many Indo-European languages
do not clearly distinguish tense from aspect.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
In some languages, such as Spanish and Modern Greek,
the imperfective aspect as a whole is fused with
the past tense in a form traditionally called the
imperfect.
This fusion can occur because the imperfective aspect
only exists in the past tense. Other languages
with distinct past imperfectives include Latin and
Persian.
Not all languages conflate [or bring together]
tense, aspect, and mood, however; close to
a theoretically ideal distinction, with separate
grammatical markers for tense, aspect, and/or mood,
is made in many
analytic languages such as Mandarin Chinese
and creole languages [UKT: Bur-Myan included?].
Much has been said on languages. Now is Bur-Myan
an analytic language?. Wikipedia in the following:
"Burmese is a tonal, pitch-register, and
syllable-timed language,
[3]
largely monosyllabic and analytic language,
with a subject–object–verb word order." --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 121121
UKT: More in the Wikipedia article.
Go back TAM-note-b
End of TIL file
{U:wing:} manee-ga
{rauk-la} thii 
{kya.nau} [
{ko} 
{kra:} ya 
{ra.} thii