Bridging constructions in Sino-Tibetan languages

Abstract

This article presents the first systematic typological survey of bridging constructions in the Sino-Tibetan language family. Bridging constructions are discourse-linking devices in which material from a preceding clause is repeated or summarized at the onset of a following sentence, thereby contributing to cohesion, discourse continuity, and information backgrounding. Despite growing typological interest in such constructions, previous cross-linguistic research has relied heavily on data from Papunesia and South America, leaving Eurasia – and Sino-Tibetan in particular – underrepresented. The study is based on a source-driven sample of 50 Sino-Tibetan languages and combines two complementary datasets: a primary corpus of unedited oral narratives from five languages and a broader comparative survey based on secondary grammatical descriptions. This mixed methodology allows for both fine-grained analysis of attested bridging constructions and broader assessment of their distribution across the family. The analysis examines their occurrence, formal realization, and relationship to morphological type, clause-linking strategies, participant-tracking resources, zero anaphora, and areal patterning. The results show that bridging constructions are widespread across Sino-Tibetan, but that their syntactic realization varies considerably. The data provide limited support for strong typological correlations. Instead, formal variation reflects the interaction of language-specific clause-linkage resources, discourse-packaging strategies, and broader areal tendencies along the Indosphere-Sinosphere continuum.