Discourse Structure and Argument Realisation in Old Literary Tibetan: From Text Composition to Verb Semantics

Abstract

The paper discusses disparate language phenomena whose common denominator is their relevance for the study of argument realisation in Old Literary Tibetan. It attempts to outline the boundaries, within which argument realisation should be considered when preparing a verb lexicon, dictionary, or a syntactic annotation of a text. The study focuses on processes and constructions that may have impact on argument realisation of verbs and belong to discourse-forming strategies of the language. In a top-down approach various levels of text composition are examined for their role in presentation of events.