 What I have in mind is to briefly survey the progress that has been made since the mid-90s, which was when I first began working in Cukicin languages in our understanding of Cukicin or South Central Tibetan Burma for the domains of alignment typology. And then insofar as alignment typology doesn't impinge on the verbal complex, some other aspects of the verbal complex, so valence affecting phenomena, directionals, and what I've called verbal classifiers. And if I have enough time, I think I will also mention elaborate expressions, which is something we may already be too late for, unfortunately. So Cukicin or South Central includes the languages in one, and I won't belabor that since I think probably everybody here is familiar with the subgrouping that's given there. So I just include the languages so you can get some idea of the different parts of the group that I'm talking about. So moving straight to alignment typology. By the mid-90s there was, I believe, a widespread understanding of South Central languages as being ergative, at least with regards to case marking. And at that point, few verbal participant marking systems had been fully analyzed. So there's less certainty about how those systems tend to pattern. So two illustrates the example two at the bottom of page one illustrates core case marking in MISO. So 2A shows an intransitive subject goat, Kale, without any case marking. And if you compare at the top of page two, in handout 2B, you'll see that a goat in that sentence, or the goat in that sentence is marked by the suffix in. So it's a transitive subject there. The transitive object in 2B, grass, like the intransitive participant in 2A, is unmarked for case. So an ergative absolute pattern, essentially. And 3 and 4 show similar facts for Lai and Tedim, two other languages that we knew quite a bit about by that time. And so that was our impression of what Kuki-Chen languages were like in terms of case marking. In terms of verbal participant marking, we had been exposed to systems like the one in Lai, illustrated in 5, where the verbal participant marking is not ergative absolute in terms of its alignment. So Lai shows essentially nominative accusative marking in second and third persons, but neutral marking in first person. So if you compare the first singular forms for intransitive subjects, so S and A versus P, the object in transitive clauses, you have no distinction between the first person singular markers, at least in terms of form. They're placed slightly differently in the order of elements, which distinguishes them. But formally they're the same, first person the same thing. But you'll see there's a difference between A and S in the case of the second and third person markers and P. So essentially nominative accusative type alignment there. The MISO down at the very bottom, which we don't need to look at in detail, it's a little bit small and the handout had a different system, but still not too far from straightforward nominative accusative in certain respects. Certainly no hint of ergotivity or anything more unexpected. So Bedel, who amassed a body of treatments of several systems over the last couple of decades, reached, well, beginning in the 90s, reached I think his high point with Kho, which I extracted the forms from an article of his in number seven at one point. And if we won't examine them carefully, but if you look through them, you'll see that there's no indication that there is ergotivity in the marking there. It's essentially nominative accusative, although there are some syncretisms and other complications to the paradigm, but nothing out of the ordinary. But in Delancey's discussion of Mara, in the paper that touched off years of controversy in Tibetan and linguistics regarding the reconstructability of pronominal marking, still ongoing, he hinted at hierarchical marking in Mara, which nevertheless was at that point undergoing a restructuring, so not completely recognizable as a hierarchical marking, particular an inverse marking system. That was a hint of things to come. So in the present, 25 years later, certainly have seen a large number of other ergotive, absolute case marking systems described. So Dai, Kho, Helga Hartman's account of Lemmy, treats it as being essentially ergotive. Maybe there are some which have less clearly ergotive, absolute of systems. So a lot of the older sources for these languages don't indicate strict ergotive, absolute of case marking. But actually, Kho, I should mention, doesn't have strict ergotive, absolute of it. Like you see in Miso and Lai, it's got split ergotive marking with third person marked and second and first person unmarked in terms of over nominal elements. So other systems, maybe there's something that we could describe it as a gentive marker, but maybe it's not strictly speaking an ergotive marker. So maybe Shobana can comment about whether Lemkanya is like that or not. And I'm not sure about Monsang. But it would make sense that a lot of languages of Manipur might end up with more agent marking rather than ergotive marking due to contact with Matei. So that's one side of things where things have gotten a little bit less straightforward. At the same time, we've also got a number of examples of languages which have nominate of accusative, essentially case marking boringly in, for instance, Kumi. The elements that are underlined there are, those are tonally marked as locative. So the locative marker is extended to P participants in Kumi if they're sufficiently salient as they are in Senate 8. In 9, Rangmicha, like Kumi, also has extension of locative marking to P participants if they're sufficiently salient. And there's a segmental marking there. So this element you see in 9. In 9, it actually marks not only the matnit element, which is the P participant, the people who were floated off on the raft. It also, that example, which shows you just a straightforward instance of the nomarker as a locative marker. The no at the end of the sentence, you'd be tempted to call that a locative marker as well. But no actually is, in this case, a borrowing from Roo. Rangmicha marks sequentiality with other means, not the element. So in terms of participant marking, at the top of page 4, a number of systems have been recovered, which at least in part involve hierarchical, specifically inverse marking. So in 10 from Kanathram Wanglaar's treatment in the excellent volume from Himalayan Linguistics on Northeast Indian person indexation systems, you see that there is an M prefix, which occurs in the lower left-hand quadrant of the paradigm, where you have second persons and third persons acting on first persons and third persons acting on second persons and first persons. So just in the appropriate conditions to act as an inverse marker, reversing the default interpretation of person markers map to roles according to the hierarchy 1 over 2 over 3, which is apparently operative in the language. In Hyo, Zakaria has shown that you have a knee inverse marker, which makes in a number 11 a number of appearances, because in this language, first person is not ranked over second person, but first person and second person are ranked equally in the hierarchy. So whenever you get the knee marker, whenever second person is acting on first person, but you also get it when first person is acting on second person, and more confusingly, knee also, if I'm not mistaken, indicates plural in certain forms in this paradigm. So another knee, which is an offence with the inverse marker, also pops up in a number of places. More straightforwardly, in Lamkang, at least for the portion of the paradigm that's seen in number 12, T marks inverse under conditions which are comparable to those which were seen from Lonsang. So again, it's in the lower left hand quadrant, so this T prefix marking an inverse situation. So two related issues where considerable progress has been made in the last quarter decade include recognition of the prevalence of post-verbal participant marking paradigm remnants, if not pretty full paradigms. So particularly in the northwestern languages, formerly known as old kooky languages, and also in southeastern languages like Hyo, not illustrated in number 11, but Hyo has in the negative pretty robust representation of the what must be reconstructable post-verbal participant marking as Delancey has discussed. And there's also the prevalence of systems where the verbal complex is more fragmented in general with interspersed auxiliary or auxiliary-like elements rather than forming a coherent agglutinative piece. So I mean it may still form an agglutinative piece, but there are portions of it which are analyzable as in containing auxiliary elements. So that is indeed progress, I think, in terms of our understanding of the alignment of these languages. Turning to three, some other aspects of the verbal complex. From the discussions that were available for Lai Zou and Bom and Mizo, Tedim, Cezanne, by the mid-90s there were at least fragmentary discussions in older sources that were indicative of what might be there. By the mid-90s we realized there were morphological causatives and possibly benefactives for some of these languages. There may be as evidence in the discussion of Bom by Reichler for possibly also for Lai Zou of other types of applicative-like constructions. But what we know after 25 years is that there is a widespread suffix or causative sock, recognized long ago, but only four specific portions of the family, but it seems to be pretty widespread. So it's found in Dai, in Shaq. It's found in the productive causative shock in Hyo. It's marginally attested in Ring Mitra and less grammaticalized than I would expect it to be in Ring Mitra given its presence elsewhere in the family. Even in Lai it makes an appearance in a few lexicalized verbs. In Lai Zou it actually turns up as a benefactive marker rather than a causative, but that also makes sense. Probably older is a P or M prefix of causative, also widely attested, found in Dai, Kumi, Ring Mitra, Sorbonne, Lamkang. I forgot to check, but I think it's also found in Pankwa. So Thirteen gives an example from Ring Mitra of this prefix. It gives the prefixed causative blot and then it also gives an instance of that verb without the prefix in an intransitive sense. So that's that one. At the top of page six there's also, of course, initial voiceless stop aspiration in Sonoran devoicing that's widely attributed to an S causative prefix seen elsewhere in Tibet or Burma. This also has a fairly broad distribution, so in Central Chin and also in Southeastern in Hyo. It's very robust in Hyo as Shrombo Zakaria. And finally there are various more sporadic developments like the causative der in Lai, which I think is also tir in Mizo. And then there's a southwestern element, Hy, which I'll talk about in a second. So regarding applicatives in 1998, I wrote about the remarkable family of applicatives that's seen in Hakka Lai, of which I'll draw special attention to the benefactive, null effective applicative in 14a, which like as far as I know almost all benefactive, null effective applicatives comes from the verb to give. The committative in 14c marked by b, the relinquitive in 14f, dak, and the instrumental in 14g marked by nak. And I draw attention to these because these are I think the most widely attested. They have the widest distribution in South Central. So for instance, in 15 at the top of page 7, all of these show up in Dai. So there's a benefactive, null effective marker based on the verb to give. There is a relinquitive element identical to Lai's. The committative has bui, which must be the predecessor to Lai's b. It's a regular development of the ui, rhyme, in Lai, and an instrumental marked by nak. Hyo exhibits most of these as well, seen in 16, so three of the four at least. And ring mitcha and kumi on the other hand show somewhat more impoverished system with only a b, a benefactive, null effective applicative attested in ring mitcha as shown in 17. I neglected, I'm sorry, to include an example of the kumi marker, but it's marked with b, virtually identical to ring mitcha's in its behavior. And there is also in these two languages an element high, which I can talk about the grammaticalization source for that later if you ask me about it. But it marks instrumentals and committatives in ring mitcha as in example 18, but in kumi it has a greater functionality. It marks kumi's productive causative construction, or it can also mark various types of applicative construction, including instrumental applicatives and goal applicatives exemplified in 19 for the causative and 20 and 21 for the applicative constructions. So another valence affecting construction type, which we knew would be important probably by the late 90s, was the middle, but we're only now becoming more aware of constructions of this sort. And I think we'll hear more about them at least in one language this afternoon. So I think we'll hear about them here. I'm not sure what we'll hear about in sumtu, whether it's a middle there or not. But the middles are important for one thing, because there is this outlier middle marker that occurs in southeastern languages, but also they're interesting because of their potential relation to things which are involved in the inverse systems. So potential relationships of inverse marking and other middle-like phenomena draws the inverse marking that we see into the possible light in the context of middles. A further aspect of the verbal complex worth considering is directional elements with the top of page eight. So by the mid 90s, attested descriptions of directional marking involved predominantly prefixel systems. So the descriptions we've already discussed for central languages like mezzo, bum, and lyzo. And the LSI had little tidbits of information from lots of languages, most of it in the prefixel elements. Hartman's 1989 treatment of die directionals was the exception. There were hints that there might be more elements occurring after the verb as well. So skipping over 22 for a second and going to directionals now, we have an update on So Hartman 1989 in the form of Helga So Hartman's dissertation from SOAS on die, which turned into her grammar of die, where she notes important distinctions in directionals depending on the motion or lack thereof of the agent involved. So that's brought in as a parameter besides some of the other parameters which are detected widespread. So in 2014, I surveyed available materials and made the observations on directionals in 22 that the prefixel elements listed there are widespread, but then there are also some preverbal or prefixel elements found, sorry, there are also some suffix or postverbal elements found in southeastern and southwestern languages, and I said that maybe there are some exclusively postverbal suffix or languages, but I don't think that's the case because all languages that have suffix or ones have something preverbal at least, so they both occur. So we since the 90s also have papers by Chellion Ut on Lamkan, paper by Van Beek and Flangnet, more fully treating the elements in Lai, so these are preverbal systems which have a lot of similarities to other systems that have been described. Zakaria's description of Hyo's directionals include two elements unless I've missed one, so the preverbal element which resembles an andative and a postverbal one which also resembles kind of an andative, an al element that Zakaria calls a departative. So not a very extensive system compared to other languages like Dai in the southeast, in the southwest. The systems are not generally that rich, but Ringmicha appears to have a fairly rich system in part because it borrows some elements from Mu, so alongside elements which are native Kugichen elements, it uses an element Jam which is an andative, it uses Dkut or Kut which is an element that means back or again which also is apparently from Mu, but it also has elements of its own that I've worked on recently, including a number of things that are andative that I list in 23, and the examples I give on the handout don't illustrate all of these, so Hu actually it turns out is the most neutral of these andatives. I'll talk about Kui in a second and I haven't got an example of Bai here, but I actually understand how Bai is different from the others so I can tell you about that if you would like me to later. So Ringmicha and Kumi both have venitives which presumably reflect the archaic venitive which I said probably, well I'm not the only person who said it, so Delancey probably said it forms something similar to Hval and G or Ang, so usually it's only an ng prefix in Ringmicha as in 24, in Kumi it has a larger form ang as in 25. Ringmicha also has what I've determined to be at the top of page 9 a distributed or maybe I should call it a distributive andative, distributive andative, sounds strange, so distributed andative is what I've settled on, so it indicates motion away from a dyctic center plus action performed in various places or in order to perform action in various places, like you see in example 26, so this Kui element in Ringmicha is actually cognate with a perfective marker Vui in Kumi and I'm still assessing the extent to which it retains any residual distributive semantics in Kumi, I haven't detected it before, so I'm trying to recheck it but I don't think that it does. Ringmicha and Kumi also have apparently unrelated upwards motion directionals which are post-verbal seen in 27 and 28, so Kang in Ringmicha and Kalaw in Kumi. Also post-verbal are Ringmicha and Kumi's downwards directionals which actually are cognate seen in 29 and 30, so probably you can tell that Tuk in Ringmicha is feasibly cognate with Khatiu, so there must have been a prefix on this element that Ringmicha has lost but the Io Ring in Kumi reflects an oak Ring in Ringmicha or in their predecessor. So I'll also note Conrith's work on the relationship between venitives and syslocatives or venitives or syslocatives as she refers to them and participant marking which I believe has a wider distribution than just in northeast where she notes that it occurs, so development of second person marking out of a venitive or syslocative marker, so similar sorts of things I think are going on in Kumi with their venitive maybe also in Ringmicha although it's not clear. So there's still more work to be done in terms of directionals but we're obtaining I believe a critical mass of information in this area as well and just like I think we have for valence effecting instructions. So it's turned to a couple of areas which have maybe not had as much progress in them, so what I refer to as verbal classifiers in South Central. So Henderson had this notion of chiming, so these were adverbial elements which occurred in postverbal position and had a form I guess approximating something like ding dong or cling clang, hence the name chiming. I'm otherwise not really sure where the word chiming came from unless it was a translation from tedium or a translation from Burmese, I don't know. Ryan and chime, it comes from the descriptions of Burmese adverbs and keeps et al and you were a Ryan with a t, so who is that short but someone who's short then comes from probably from that, someone doing it. Oh okay, yeah so anyway, Bhaskar Rao had told us more about tedium chiming by the mid-90s and Patent relabeled these chimes. Idiophones as demonstrated by my favorite example of these in number 31, so in 31a the element watma occurs and evokes the image of a large or rotund baby, I guess fat baby. Yatma on the other hand creates the image of a baby which is small or thin and there's a typo in that so it shouldn't be in a nakta, it should be nakta with an h rather than n in 31b. There's also a typo in the clause for elephant in 32 which I'll turn to next. So 32 and 33 show you the related phenomenon in kumi where the elements in question focus mostly on the size of the referent that's involved so there isn't a so there are somatic nuances that often co-occur with these elements and they may involve some element of visual imagery or other kind of imagery like they do in tedium and lie but the the sense of largeness or smallness is really the central element of meaning in the mid would seem so for instance in 32 the element ga refers to a relatively large king's daughter as opposed to the element ke in 33 which refers to the smallness of the child that's involved here and in both of these instances the ka or ke element also includes the information that whatever verbing occurred it verbed the relevant referent to death so the king's daughter dies in 32 due to being stepped on by the the elephant and in 33 it's this spirit that I refer to as an ogre in other work which captures his son and beats him to death and then eats him and plants his head atop the the granary spoke or stick or whatever I guess it is so anyway um rake mitchell also has a verbal classifier kat kat which is actually identical to this ka ke one in in kumi so again in 34 comments on the large size of the sister and that she is well bop is the neutral word to mean to kill I'm sorry she's killed to death I guess it's a little bit superfluous but the the element of to death is still there in this one as well um but not all of these elements have lots of rich additional semantics other than size so hoop loop and hoop loop can refer to both the motion of a dove or an elephant but hoop loop is a small or diminutive verbal classifier in reference to a dove in 35 a but hoop loop is in reference to an elephant in 35 b so a large or an augmentative verbal classifier there so there's a curve also in mitchell and where they're tested as I've already said size seems to be the most central sense that they have either literally or metaphorically so it can sometimes refer to relative extent of some quality if the predicate refers to a quality rather than a more active event so they may appear in non-reduplicated form in kumi and during mitzha at least I'm pretty sure also in ru so they don't really have a chime form to them they also don't have a change in the vowel in almost all cases there may be a couple of exceptions to that in kumi that I can think of and again they often do although their central notion is size bear some idiosyncratic somatic nuances or can be associated with particular imagery resembling idiophones and this latter observation is important for our development of lexical resources because where these occur it's really important that you actually check for every verb what which of these can occur with the verb and what effect do they have and I haven't I must have been done that yet for either of these languages and a daunting task that hopefully native speakers will help us with however since I made these observations about chiming and verbal classifiers a decade ago not much has been shown about their use elsewhere in kuki chin and I'm worried that their their use may be waning if it wasn't already waning by the time I made the observations that I've made about kumi and I know I'm running probably pretty short on time but just briefly on elaborate expressions I think this also holds for elaborate expressions illustrated in 3b with the very first elaborate expression in kumi I encountered in the wild where a tiger is searching for a girl who's hiding from him so structures there involve an elaborate elaboration element and so dung and long are enough to mean water gourd or pot and they've got this default reduplicative templatic elaboration of them not all elaborations are reduplicative that's just the kind of default and this has very similar sorts of effects to what you see for elaborate expressions elsewhere in Southeast Asia in terms of making the discourse or the utterance sound nice and also in terms of some other things that I've suggested correlate with the use of these ring which also has elaborate expressions so for instance bang dong in number 37 appears to be an elaboration for shoulder so I can't for the life of me get consultants to tell me that it means anything and the after long discussions have decided it must be what I've what I'm calling elaborations so there are also aspects to this example which make it fit in with other kinds of elaboration that I can tell you about if you ask me about it so the ring which and other languages in the area like more also exhibit elaborations elaborate expressions not as robustly as kumi does but nevertheless relatively frequently so and it's as I've alluded to unclear how widespread or robust this phenomenon is so little description of it has been forthcoming since I worked on this about 10 years ago and nevertheless again the unpredictability of elaborate expression formation is potentially significant for the development of lexical resources because ideally for anything that can have an elaborate expression you would have a recording of what the elaborate expression was at least so let me just conclude briefly by observing the obvious the progress that's made in the analysis of kukuchen morphosyntax over the last 10 years it was everything to people getting out and expanding the corpus of data for kukuchen languages so something that we are all participating in and can be proud of but there's clearly much more to do and I hope to have demonstrated some areas where I think we're doing a pretty good job and pointed to a few other places where we might dig a bit deeper so thank you very much David