A Grammar of Yakkha Abhandlung zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophisen Fakultät der Universität Züri vorgelegt von Diana Schackow Angenommen im Frühjahrssemester 2014 auf Antrag der Promotionskommission: Prof. Dr. Balthasar Bickel (hauptverantwortliche Betreuungsperson) Prof. Dr. Martin Haspelmath Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Behr Zürich, 2014 A Grammar of Yakkha Volume I Diana Saow Anowledgements is dissertation would not exist in its present form without the support of various people and institutions. First of all, I am very grateful to Prof. Novel Kishor Rai for suggesting Yakkha as a language to work on for my doctoral dissertation and for establishing the contact to the Yakkha community in 2009. None of this work would have been possible without the generous support and overwhelming hospitality of so many people from the Yakkha community. I would like to thank from all my heart Kamala Jimi (Linkha), who opened her home to me and my husband Lennart. She became our friend and also the most important Yakkha teacher for me. is grammar owes much to her enthusiasm. My deepest gratitude also goes to Magman Linkha and Man Maya Jimi, who took the time to work with me and share their native speaker intuitions with me. Kamala Linkha, Magman Linkha and Mohan Khamyahang also painstakingly went through each record of my lexical database and offered corrections and additions where appro- priate. Many people were so kind to let me record and archive their speech, thus crea- ting the basis for my linguistic analyses. धेरै धयबा to Prem Kumari Jimi, Ka- mala Jimi (Koyongwa), Kamala Jimi (Linkha), Ram Kul Bahadur Jimi, Dhan Ku- mari Jimi, Ganga Ram Jimi, Sita Linkha, Magman Linkha, Lanka Maya Jimi, Om Bahadur Jimi (Koyongwa), Desh Kumari Jimi, Padam Kumari Jimi, Chom Bahadur Jimi, Kaushila Jimi, Man Bahadur Khamyahang, Hasta Bahadur Khamyahang, Man Maya Jimi, Bhim Maya Jimi, Mohan Khamyahang and his mother. Many thanks also go to Magman Linkha, Ajaya Yakkha and Shantila Jimi for leing me incorporate their wrien stories into my database. I would also like to thank everyone in the Kirant Yakkha Chumma (Indigenous Peoples Yakkha Organization) for their trust and their interest in my work and also for practical and administrative support, especially in the early phase of the project, in particular Kamala Jimi (Koyongwa), Indira Jimi, Ramji Kongren and his family in Dandagaun, and Durgamani Dewan and his family in Madi Mulkharka. Heartfelt thanks also go to Dhan Kumari Jimi, Dil Maya Jimi, Nandu Jimi and their families for their hospitality. I am very grateful to Kaushila Jimi, Sonam Jimi and Vishvakaji Kongren in Kathmandu for their spontaneous help, and to the teachers v Acknowledgements at Shree Chamunde Higher Secondary School and Ram Kumar Linkha for taking an interest in my work. I wish to express sincere appreciation to Balthasar Bickel for sharing his in- sights and expert knowledge on Himalayan languages and on Kiranti languages in particular. is thesis has also greatly benefited from numerous discussions with Martin Haspelmath, whose comments gave me new perspectives on various topics throughout this work. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends at the MPI EVA and the Univer- sity of Leipzig for linguistic discussions and shared enthusiasm: Iren Hartmann, Katherine Bolaños, Eugenie Stapert, Kristin Börjesson, Lena Terhart, Swintha Da- nielsen, Falko Berthold, Sven Grawunder, Alena Witzlack, Zarina Molochieva, John Peterson, Netra Paudyal and Robert Schikowski. I have also benefited greatly from the ELDP language documentation workshop held at SOAS in March 2012. Conversations with colleagues at conferences and other occasions have also been valuable, especially with Mark Donohue, Martin Gaenszle, Kristine Hildebrandt, Gwendolyn Hyslop, Eva van Lier, Tom Owen-Smith and Volker Gast. Special thanks go to An Van linden, Mara Green, Alena Witzlack, Iren Hart- mann, Katherine Bolaños, Lennart Bierkandt, Falko Berthold, Tom Owen-Smith and Tyko Dirksmeyer for their comments on individual chapters, to Hans-Jörg Bibiko for automating the dictionary clean-up to the greatest possible extent, and to Lennart Bierkandt, additionally, for elegantly formaing the kinship charts and numerous diagrams, and for levelling the LaTeX learning curve for me. My work on Yakkha has been funded by a graduate scholarship from the State of Saxony (2009–2012) and by an Individual Graduate Studentship from the En- dangered Languages Programme ELDP (2012–2013, Grant No. IGS 154). e field trip in 2011 was financed by a travel grant from the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD. I would also like to thank Bernard Comrie, director of the Linguis- tics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA) for hosting my ELDP project and also for financing my field trips in 2009 and 2010. e MPI EVA provides ideal conditions for such work, and my thesis has benefited greatly from the resources at this institution and from discussions with colleagues and guests of the department. I thank Claudia Büchel and Julia Cissewski in Leipzig as well as Sascha Völlmin in Zürich for being so incredibly helpful in all administrative maers. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my family and my friends in Germany, Nepal and elsewhere, especially to my mother for her support during all these years, and to Laxminath, Rita and the whole Shrestha family in Kathmandu. Without Laxminath’s efforts, my spoken Yakkha skills would probably be beer now, be- vi Acknowledgements cause my Nepali skills would have been much worse. is work is dedicated to the memory of Belayati Shrestha. Finally, I thank Lennart (again): for making those Nepal journeys “our” journeys. vii Contents Anowledgements v Abbreviations xxi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Aims of this grammar ......................... 1 1.2 How to use the grammar ....................... 2 1.2.1 Structure of the book ..................... 2 1.2.2 Orthography and transliterations .............. 2 1.2.3 Glossing and further conventions .............. 3 1.2.4 Notes on terminology .................... 4 1.3 Data sources .............................. 6 1.3.1 Fieldwork ........................... 6 1.3.2 e corpus ........................... 7 1.3.3 e lexical database ..................... 9 1.4 Earlier studies on Yakkha language and culture ........... 9 1.5 Typological overview of the Yakkha language ........... 10 1.5.1 Phonology ........................... 10 1.5.2 Word classes ......................... 11 1.5.3 Nominals ........................... 11 1.5.4 Verbs .............................. 12 1.5.5 Syntax ............................. 12 2 e Yakkha language and its speakers 17 2.1 Geographical context ......................... 17 2.2 Cultural and historical background ................. 22 2.2.1 Kiranti ............................. 22 2.2.2 e Yakkha .......................... 26 2.2.2.1 Ethnic affiliation .................. 26 2.2.2.2 Language names .................. 27 2.2.2.3 Subsistence and economy ............. 28 ix Contents 2.2.2.4 Material culture .................. 29 2.2.2.5 Social organization and religion ......... 30 2.3 Genealogical affiliation ........................ 32 2.4 Sociolinguistic context ........................ 35 2.4.1 Dialectal variation ...................... 35 2.4.2 Endangerment ........................ 36 3 Phonology 41 3.1 Phoneme inventory and allophonic rules .............. 41 3.1.1 Vowel phonemes ....................... 41 3.1.2 Diphthongs .......................... 41 3.1.3 Consonant phonemes .................... 44 3.1.3.1 e main phonemic distinctions in the consonants 44 3.1.3.2 Marginal consonant phonemes .......... 45 3.1.3.3 e phonemic status of the gloal stop ..... 45 3.1.3.4 e status of /r/ in Yakkha and in Eastern Ki- ranti perspective .................. 48 3.1.3.5 Aspirated voiced consonants ........... 50 3.2 Syllable structure ........................... 51 3.3 e phonological treatment of Nepali and English loans ...... 55 3.4 Stress assignment ........................... 58 3.5 Morphophonological processes .................... 62 3.5.1 Voicing ............................ 63 3.5.2 e prefixation of underspecified nasals .......... 68 3.5.3 Vowel harmony ........................ 70 3.5.4 Operations to avoid adjacent vowels ............ 71 3.5.4.1 Vowel deletion ................... 71 3.5.4.2 Ablaut ....................... 72 3.5.4.3 Insertion of glides ................. 73 3.5.4.4 Gliding ....................... 73 3.5.5 Consonants in sonorous environment ........... 74 3.5.5.1 Intervocalic /h/ and /w/ .............. 74 3.5.5.2 Nasals in sonorous environment ......... 75 3.5.6 Assimilations ......................... 76 3.5.7 Operations involving nasals ................. 78 3.5.7.1 Nasality assimilation ............... 78 3.5.7.2 Nasalization of codas ............... 79 3.5.7.3 Insertion of nasals ................. 80 x Contents 3.5.8 Nasal copying ......................... 83 4 Pronouns, demonstratives, quantifiers, numerals, interrogatives 87 4.1 Personal pronouns ........................... 87 4.2 Possessive pronouns and nominal possessive inflection ...... 88 4.2.1 Possessive pronouns ..................... 88 4.2.2 Possessive prefixes ...................... 89 4.2.3 Obligatory possession .................... 90 4.3 Demonstratives ............................ 92 4.3.1 Proximal, distal and anaphoric deixis ............ 93 4.3.2 Demonstrative adverbs and quantifiers ........... 96 4.4 Indefinite reference .......................... 97 4.5 antifiers, numerals and numeral classifiers ............ 100