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Title	Directionals in Mru
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Type	Thesis
Length	88 Pages
Area	Linguistics
Advisor	David A. Peterson
Composed	2008
Summary	Mru, a Tibeto-Burman language of Bangladesh, has a highly productive class of “directional” elements as part of its verb complex which have developed through the process of grammaticalization from independent verbs originally involved in serial verb constructions. Directionals are the spatial equivalents to the well known temporal categories tense and aspect. The elements in Mru cover a wide range of spatial meanings including what I term direction, location and prior motion. More highly grammaticalized elements are developing rather abstract semantics, sometimes functioning as markers of aspect. This grammatical category of verbal morphology is less studied and not as well understood as other categories of verbal operators. This study examines the category as it exists in Mru, investigating its semantics, morphosyntax, grammaticalization and proposed origins in Proto-Tibeto-Burman. My research will provide more material for a better understanding of this grammatical category as well as the theory of grammaticalization employed here to explain its development in Mru.