A Reference Grammar of Dhimal
A Reference Grammar of Dhimal

Author: Karnakhar Khatiwada

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9783862888245

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This study analyzes the grammar of Dhimal, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the far eastern Tarai region of Nepal in the framework of the functional-typological grammar developed by Givón (2001a, b). According to the census (2011), the total number of the Dhimal is 26, 298 which comprise 0.09% of the total population of Nepal. The main objective of this study is to prepare a reference grammar of Dhimal. Most of the examples presented in this dissertation are drawn from naturally occurring texts. 0Dhimal is an atonal, agglutinating language with nominative-accusative case marking scheme. The basic word order is SOV, however, the constituents of the clause may be permuted within the clause for pragmatic purposes. Dhimal exhibits morphologically marked past, present and future tenses. Honorificity exhibits neutral vs. affinal contrast. The grammar of pronouns and grammatical agreement are morphological devices to encode the referential coherence. Verbs with clausal complements include modal-aspectual, manipulation and perception-cognition-utterance verbs. Causativization is primarily morphological. The widely used way to put the verb of the relative clause is in nominalized form. Discourse particles, intonation and constituent order may be utilized in contrastive focus and marked topic constructions. The adverbial subordinate clauses are either marked through the subordinating morphemes attached to the dependent clause or through the special non-finite verb forms. Dhimal exhibits a number of typologically interesting features.

A Grammar of Dhimal
A Grammar of Dhimal

Author: King John T.

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 634

ISBN-13: 9004175733

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The present work, a grammar of Dhimal, fills an important void in the documentation of the vast and ramified Tibeto-Burman language family. Dhimal, a little known and endangered tongue spoken in the lowlands of southeastern Nepal by about 20,000 individuals, is detailed in this work. With data gathered in the village of hiy b r , the author crafts a readable description of the western dialect, using over 1000 examples to illustrate usage. Included in this reference work are seventeen texts, riddles, songs and a Dhimal-English glossary. Joining other recent ground-breaking linguistic descriptions by researchers from the Himalayan Languages Project at Leiden University, this grammar of Dhimal will have lasting scientific value and aid the Dhimal community in preserving their language.

A Reference Grammar of Maithili
A Reference Grammar of Maithili

Author: Ramawatar Yadav

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-20

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 3110811693

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Volumes in the Trends in Linguistics. Documentation series focus on the presentation of linguistic data. The series addresses the sustained interest in linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, grammars and editions of under-described and hitherto undocumented languages. All world-regions and time periods are represented.

A Grammar of Guìqióng
A Grammar of Guìqióng

Author: Li Jiang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 9004293043

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In A Grammar of Guìqióng, Jiāng Lì describes the grammar of Guìqióng, a hitherto undocumented language spoken by alpine people in Kāngdìng county, China. Guìqióng has a lot to offer in its phonology, verbal and nominal morphology, syntax and glossary, distinguishing itself from the neighbouring Tibetan, Chinese, Qiangic and Loloish languages. The newly discovered features of Guìqióng include breathy vs. modal voice, indefinite number, ablative, ergative, instrumental, dative and genitive case markers, topic and emphatic markers, the diminutive suffixes, the pronominal and deictic systems, demonstratives and numerals, a rich store of differentiated copular verbs expressing equationality, inchoative, animacy vs. inanimacy, dependent existence and negation, verbal affixes indicating directions, present tense of experienced perceptions, gnomic tense, perfective vs. imperfective aspect, modality and evidentiality.

A Grammar of Mina
A Grammar of Mina

Author: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-06-03

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 3110893908

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A Grammar of Mina is a reference grammar of a hitherto undescribed and endangered Central Chadic language. The book contains a description of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and all the functional domains encoded by this language. For each hypothesis regarding a form of linguistic expression and its function, ample evidence is given. The description of formal means and of the functions coded by these means is couched in terms accessible to all linguists regardless of their theoretical orientations. The outstanding characteristics of Mina include: vowel harmony; use of phonological means, including vowel deletion and vowel retention, to code phrasal boundaries; two tense and aspectual systems, each system carrying a different pragmatic function; a lexical category ‘locative predicator’ hitherto not observed in other languages; some tense, aspect, and mood markers that occur before the verb, and others that occur after the verb; the markers of interrogative and negative modality that occur in clause-final position; the conjunction used for a conjoined noun phrase in the subject function that differs from the conjunction used for a conjoined noun phrase in all other functions.In addition to the coding of argument structure, adjuncts, tense, aspect, and mood categories, Mina also codes the category point-of-view. The language has a clausal category ‘comment clause’ used in both simple and complex sentences, which overtly marks the speaker’s comment on the proposition. The discourse structure has the principle of unity of place. If one of the participants in a described event changes scene, that is coded by a special syntactic construction in addition to any verb of movement that may be used. Because of these unusual linguistic characteristics, the Grammar of Mina will be of interest to a wide range of linguists.

Here – Hither – Hence and Related Categories
Here – Hither – Hence and Related Categories

Author: Julia Nintemann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-07-20

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 3110672642

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As a follow-up study to the global comparison of spatial interrogatives (Studia Typologica 20), the present book examines the spatial declarative counterparts which are provided by the expression class of spatial deictic adverbs. In a functionally motivated typological approach, equivalents of Early Modern English here – hither – hence and there – thither – thence are identified across a sample of 250 languages from all macro-areas. These are also quantitatively assessed to extrapolate areal and global trends of coding patterns. The formal relationships between spatial interrogative and spatial declarative paradigms are analyzed with a focus on the syncretism of categories and of individual cells. Qualitative discussions of patterns precede in-depth treatments of problematic cases and other relevant issues related to the research topic. The quantitative results strongly point to areal linguistic trends concerning the distribution of distinct and non-distinct coding of the three spatial relations Place, Goal, and Source. Additional aspects such as quantitative evaluations of constructional complexity are addressed subsequently.

Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa)
Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa)

Author: Timotheus Adrianus Bodt

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-01-13

Total Pages: 789

ISBN-13: 9004409483

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The volume Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa) is a comprehensive description of Duhumbi, the language spoken by the Duhumbi (Chugpa, Chug Monpa) people of Dirang circle West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

A Grammar of Prinmi
A Grammar of Prinmi

Author: Picus Sizhi Ding

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-06-05

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 9004279776

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A Grammar of Prinmi represents the first in-depth description of a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Pǔmǐ Nationality and the Zàng Nationality (in Mùlǐ, Sichuan) in southwest China. Prinmi belongs to the Qiangic branch and is closely related to the extinct language of Tangut. Picus Ding examines in the grammar the phonology (both segmental and suprasegmental), morphology, syntax and information structure of Prinmi, with two sample texts and an English-Prinmi glossary provided in appendices. Some noteworthy features of Prinmi include a wealth of clitics (appearing as proclitic, enclitic, mesoclitic or endoclitic), a lexical tone system akin to Japanese, and a collection of existential verbs that discriminates concreteness, animacy, and location.