the ISFC39 Proceedings - International Systemic-Functional ...

Papers from the 39th ISFCThe Process is the only nuclear element since Classical Tibetan clause can only contain aProcess without specifying by whom or through what the process is actualized. For example,mthong ngo (“saw”) means a “seeing” took place; it can by extended by a zero-markedMedium, or further by an Agent, as in (bdag gis) bla ma chen po mthong ngo discussed in3.1. The Medium is optional in that the Process can directly reach out to the outer ring withcase-marked elements, as in bdag gis mthong ngo (“I saw”) or sems can thams cad la byin no(“gave to all beings”). In the last example, la is the allative case particle marking theBeneficiary.5 VoiceClassical Tibetan does not distinguish between active and passive voices. For example, shingmkhan gyis shing bcad do can be rendered into English as either “The woodsman cut thewood” or “The wood was cut by the woodsman”. The voice of a clause is determinedaccording to whether there is agency. The clause is effective with agency, middle without.The effective voice does not further split into operative and receptive, but into actualized andnon-actualized, depending on whether the clause involves a Medium, the element throughwhich the process is actualized. The system network is shown in Figure 7. Examples for eachvoice type can be found in sections above.clause VOICE+Processmiddleeffective+Agentactualized+Mediumnon-actualizedFigure 7: The system of VOICE in Classical Tibetan6 Concluding RemarksThis paper provides a brief account of the ergativity system in Classical Tibetan, particularlythe functions of the ergative particle, adopting the ergative model in SFL. A pattern of clausenucleus and periphery is also devised to account for the construal of experience in ClassicalTibetan clauses. It is observed that the Process is the sole element in the nucleus, and theparticipant that does not take any particle, i.e. not case-marked, is the Medium, which issemantically closer to the Process than other elements with postpositional markers. TheAgent, Range or Beneficiary, which are conceived of as participants in English clauses, arede facto circumstantial elements in Classical Tibetan, since they are not inherent in theclause, enter into the clause in postpositional phrases and augment the experiential core of theclause.With no distinction between active and passive, Classical Tibetan has middle andeffective voices differentiated by agency. In the effective voice, there can be a Medium forthe Agent to actualize the process upon, or the target of the Agent’s actualization of theProcess is not made explicit. Due to the restriction of space, this paper has not been able toexamine the ergativity functions across process types, but only addresses the fundamentalissues concerning the ideational functions of the ergative particle in Classical Tibetan, in abid to apply the SFL ergative model to the functional interpretation of a genuine ergativelanguage.109