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Aspects of the Grammar of Thulung Raian Endangered Himalayan Language Aimée Lahaussois

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Aspects of the grammar of Thulung Raian endangered Himalayan language Aimée Lahaussois To cite this version: Aimée Lahaussois. Aspects of the grammar of Thulung Raian endangered Himalayan language. Lin- guistics. University of California, Berkeley, 2002. English. halshs-00004761 HAL Id: halshs-00004761 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004761 Submitted on 29 Sep 2005 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Aspects of the grammar of Thulung Rai: an endangered Himalayan language by Aimée Lahaussois B.A. (Princeton University) 1993 M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1998 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee in charge: Professor James A.Matisoff, Chair Professor John McWhorter Professor William F. Hanks Spring 2002 Abstract Aspects of the grammar of Thulung Rai: an endangered Himalayan language by Aimée Lahaussois Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor James A. Matisoff, Chair Thulung Rai is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of eastern Nepal, currently spoken by approximately one thousand people. It is a member of the Kiranti group in the Himalayish branch of Tibeto-Burman, along with languages characterized principally by their complex pronominalizing verbal inflectional systems. This dissertation provides an overview of the grammar of the Thulung language, along with selected texts and a glossary. The aspects of the grammar which are discussed are those which are particularly relevant as far as Thulung’s heritage as a Tibeto-Burman language is concerned. The chapters discuss the phonological system of the language; the case marking system; the use of discourse particles; nominalization and its etymological and semantic relationship with relativization and genitivization; the finite verbs, with their complex agreement system and stem alternations; the augmentation of verbs with aspect-bearing derivational suffixes; clause-combining by means of converbs and sequencers. Each of these topics bears a significance to Tibeto-Burman studies as a whole, and these are characteristic features of languages from this area. The areal context for Thulung is another important aspect of this dissertation. The endangered status of Thulung is a result of the inroads of the Indo-Aryan national language of Nepal, Nepali. Each chapter, in addition to describing and analyzing particular grammatical topics, also discusses the equivalent constructions in Nepali in light of whether they constitute the source for the construction in Thulung as it stands today. The contributions of this dissertation are in providing reliable and up-to-date information on a little-known minority Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. This is an important addition to the field of Himalayan languages and will be useful for efforts towards reconstructing the development of Tibeto-Burman languages in the Himalayas. An important dimension of this dissertation is that it looks at grammatical features in one language in the context of their distribution over the linguistic area, even across language family boundaries. In this way, the materials presented are useful as another case-study of an intense language contact situation. Acknowledgments Jim Matisoff is the ultimate inspiration behind this work: he introduced me to Tibeto- Burman studies through his classes, mentoring and STEDT project, exposing me to a language family which has changed my outlook on language and the world. John McWhorter, Bill Hanks and Leanne Hinton provided very helpful discussion and suggestions. Bala Thulung, Yelung Kirant and Major Mani Rai are responsible for the success of my trip to the field: they generously shared their language, knowledge, time and homes, welcoming me into their community and allowing me a rare glimpse of the Thulung and their language. It is my hope that this dissertation will somehow be useful to them in their efforts to bring back the Thulung language, and my inspiration to continue work in this area is due to their energy and enthusiasm. I am grateful to the Fulbright Commission which sponsored my field research trip to Nepal, and particularly to Mike Gill, the executive officer in Nepal. I also received money from the Social Sciences and Humanities Fellowship, which I used on a first exploratory trip to Nepal to set up research. Curtis and Alexandre provided the comic relief which gave me a sound perspective on life while I carried out research and wrote up this dissertation. And I thank my parents for providing a bilingual and then trilingual environment, which gave me direct experience of language contact long before I learned how to analyze any of it. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Language and people 1 Classification of Thulung within Tibeto-Burman 4 Previous research 6 Goals of the dissertation 7 Inroads of Nepali into Thulung 10 Typological overview of the language 32 Chapter 1: Phonology 33 Syllable structure 33 Initial consonants 35 Vowels 38 Final consonants 40 Rhymes 41 Vowel length 45 Tone 46 Morphophonological rules 47 Chapter 2: Case marking 54 S and A marking : -ka 55 O marking: -lai 64 Genitive:-ku, -kam 72 Comitative: -num 75 Instrumental: -ka 77 Locatives: -ra, -la, -ju, -nu 78 Chapter 3 : Discourse markers 84 Topic marker ne 85 Focus marker re 89 Contrastive marker tsahi 91 Emphasis marker -!a 94 Chapter 4: Nominalization, relativization, genitivization 99 Relativization 103 Alternative relativization with participials 107 Nominalization: 109 Citation form of verbs 109 Verb complementation 110 Clause nominalization 110 Verbal periphrasis 112 Sentence nominalization 114 Genitivization: 116 Genitivization of time words 117 Genitivization of locative elements 118 Pronominal nominalization 121 Noun complementation 123 Alternative nominalizations 127 Agent/patient nominals, in -pa 127 Locative nominals, in -khop/-khom 129 Nouns in -la 131 Chapter 5: Finite verbs 132 Stems with alternating initials : morphological causatives 132 Inflectional system of the language 133 Intransitive paradigm 135 Transitive paradigm 137 Verb suffixes 140 Change in the paradigm 151 Stem alternations 155 Irregular verbs 173 Copulas 174 Tense 183 Aspect 183 Mood 184 Irrealis 184 Imperative 187 Obligation 190 Evidentiality 193 Negation 194 Adjectives 198 Chapter 6 : Aspectivizers 200 Valence-changers 205 Causativizer -be- 205 Detransitivizer -si- 209 Benefactive -sa- 212 Habitual -thal- 215 Stative -ta- 217 Completives 218 Definitive -so- 218 Ponent -dz"l- 220 Resultative -le- 224 Intensifier -tha- 228 Approximative -bal- 232 Directional verbs 236 Aspectivizers denoting suddenness 237 Chapter 7: Clause combining 239 Converbs 241 Simultaneous -to 241 Anterior -saka 252 Summary of converbs 260 Sequencers 261 Simultaneous -lo 263 Anterior ma 272 Summary of sequencers 282 Bibliography 284 Appendix 1: Selected stories 289 Bala’s Life 289 Millet paste recipe 296 Eagle story 299 Dilwar 315 Ghumne Pani 330 Frog story 346 Hansel and Gretel 353 Appendix 2: Glossary 365 List of tables Table 1 The TB family 5 Table 2 Matisoff’s Himalayish 6 Table 3 Initial consonants 35 Table 4 Vowels 38 Table 5 Final consonants 40 Table 6 Thulung independent pronouns 59 Table 7 1975 Thulung independent pronouns (Allen 1975) 60 Table 8 Nepali independent pronouns 62 Table 9 Possessive pronouns 122 Table 10 Functions and forms of relativizers, genitivizers and nominalizers 125 Table 11 Intransitive verb paradigm 135 Table 12 Intransitive personal endings 136 Table 13 Non-past personal endings for transitive verbs 138 Table 14 Past personal endings for transitive verbs 139 Table 15 Independent pronouns compared to agent and patient personal markers 141 Table 16 Distribution of Stem I and Stem II for various person/tense combinations 158 Table 17 Stem in -k paradigm 159 Table 18 Stem in -p paradigm 160 Table 19 Stem in -! paradigm 162 Table 20 Stem in underlying -ŋ paradigm 164 Table 21 Stem in underlying -s paradigm 166 Table 22 Stem in underlying -i paradigm 168 Table 23 Stem in -l paradigm 170 Table 24 Stem in -r paradigm 170 Table 25 Stem in -m and stem in -n paradigms 171 Table 26 Differences between transitive and intransitive personal endings 172 Table 27 Verbs po-mu and bo-mu 173 Table 28 Verb bu-mu 174 Table 29 Examples of transitive verbs showing non-past/past and affirmative/negative morphology 195 Table 30 Examples of intransitive verbs showing non-past/past and affirmative/negative morphology 196 Table 31 Formation of converbal form in -to for various verb classes 242 Table 32 Formation of converbal form in -saka for various verb classes 254 List of glosses CASE: ERG ergative -ka DAT dative (ie primary object) -lai ABL ablative -lam, -laŋka LOC generic locative -ra,-!a hiLOC high-locative -la loLOC low-locative -ju levLOC level-locative -nu COM comitative -num INSTR instrumental -ka GEN genitive -ku, -kam PRAGMATIC: TOP topic, ne FOC focus, re CONTR contrastive, tsahi EMPH emphasis -ŋa
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