A typological study of rainfall expressions in Sino-Tibetan languages

Abstract This study investigates the encoding strategies and morphosyntax of rainfall expressions across 222 Sino-Tibetan language varieties. The analysis reveals that 76.6% of these varieties encode rainfall events with the argument type, wherein only the argument carries the meteorological meaning, accompanied by a supportive verb as the predicate. The supportive verbs exhibit diverse patterns of transitivity and directionality, with expressions of heavy rain tending to employ verbs of high transitivity. In most sampled varieties, verbs for rainfall also extend to other precipitation events, such as snow and hail. Diachronically, the encoding strategy demonstrates a shift from predicate type to argument(-predicate) type through three pathways: lexicalization, word split, and loss of other encoding strategies. This development is argued to reflect a typological transition in Sino-Tibetan languages, moving from more complex morphology towards increasingly analytic structures.