A new type of convergence at the deictic center

Abstract

There is a functional overlap between motion towards the deictic center and (di-)transitive events directed at speech act participants. Grammatical evidence for this comes from verbal morphemes that are used in motional clauses like ‘come to me!’ and ditransitive clauses like ‘give (it) to me!’ While the literature suggests that such syncretic markers develop through extension from a cislocative (venitive/ventive) to a speech act participant index, the evidence presented here indicates that this development has gone the other way in Karbi (Tibeto-Burman). This suggests that neither cislocative nor non-subject speech act participant indexation is more primary, but that they share an equally basic idea of orientation towards and therefore impact on the deictic center.