The markers ka, ha and zero-marking in oral colloquial Burmese

This thesis investigates the morphological phenomenon of subject topic marking in Burmese – ka, ha and zero-marking (with some comparison to kou and zero-marked objects) in oral Colloquial Burmese. I give a qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of the markers’ functions based on the works of Givón (1983, 1995) and Chafe (1987). The first chapter equips the reader with some important features of the Burmese language and introduces the data and methodology used in my work. The second chapter provides discussion of previous work on the markers mainly presented by Kasevich (1976, 2005), Thurgood (1978), Wheatley (1982), Sawada (1995), Soe (1999), Okell and Allott (2001), and Kato (2004). Characterizations of the markers in the previous research will be compared to the findings from my research in Chapter 3. The third chapter makes several observations. First, statistical testing of Burmese data shows a significant correlation between ka-appearance on subjects and the presence of some elements between the subject and the verb. Second, analysis of topic continuity reveals the multi-functionality of the markers with some interesting tendencies: e.g. ka’s function of maintaining continuity, ha’s tendency not to appear with inactive referents, kou’s tendency to introduce new referents. Third, my replaceability experiment, which tests the capacity of a marker to be substituted with a different marking option, shows that ka is almost non-replaceable by other markers while ha is highly replaceable by the marker ka. I also explore to some extent the contrastive function of ka and discuss ka-marking of contrastive focus and contrastive topic, which leads me to an interesting observation about obligatoriness of ka-marking of the second NP in constructions consisting of two clauses with two focus or topic NPs contrasted with each other.