Grammatical Relations in Mon. Syntactic tests in an isolating language

Abstract

This study investigates the relevance of the generalized semantic roles S, A, P, T, and G and whether there are constructions that treat subsets of these identically, defining Grammatical relations in Mon, (Austroasiatic). After establishing the notion of transitivity in Mon, the study looks at syntactic constructions that are cross-linguistically found to be relevant the selection of Grammatical Relations, including word order, case marking, control, reflexivization, among others. The results show that Mon exhibits identical treatment of S and A (‘Subject’) in most constructions, less prominently of P and T (‘Direct Object’), as well as a subset {P, G} in at least one construction. Grammatical Relations are found to be relevant for the description and analysis of Mon.