The historical development of the causative category in Tibeto-Burmese languages

The paper is a preliminary exploration of the historical development of the causative category on the basis of a comparison of more than 20 Tibeto-Bur man languages. The methodology adopted is one of the comprehensive comparis on between phonetic forms and semantic content and of the analysis of the l anguage system (structural system and kinship language system). We conclude that the causative category is one of the oldest and most general grammati cal categories of Tibeto-Burman languages and its historical development is constrained by prosodic, semantic and functional factors.