The cycle of applicative in Tibetic

Abstract This paper investigates the grammaticalization and subsequent pragmaticization of an applicative construction in Tibetic. Based on linguistic data ranging from the 8th century to modern times, we show how successive linguistic changes link a verb phrase originally meaning ‘to act as a companion (of sb.)’ to an imperative marker, through an applicative construction. Despite the scarcity of data, we document the different stages of evolution of this particular construction: the lexicalization of a verb phrase; its grammaticalization into a sociative-benefactive applicative marker; the pragmaticization of particular use patterns of this applicative construction into markers of complaints, wishes and commands; and eventually a secondary grammaticalization into an imperative marker. As they developed, most of these stages have been retained in the modern Tibetic languages and co-exist with lexicalized units based on the same morphological material. Our analysis adds to the recently discussed cross-linguistic data by demonstrating that applicative markers can directly grammaticalize from nouns without an intermediate stage of noun incorporation or adposition. We also show that the range of functions taken over by this construction in synchrony can only be understood by referring to its diachronic evolution.