'A Web of Relations' is a descriptive grammar of the Jiaomuzu dialects of rGyalrong, a Qiangic language of the Tibeto-Burman family. rGyalrong is spoken in north-west Sichuan Province in the People... Show more'A Web of Relations' is a descriptive grammar of the Jiaomuzu dialects of rGyalrong, a Qiangic language of the Tibeto-Burman family. rGyalrong is spoken in north-west Sichuan Province in the People's Republic of China. The dissertation contains eight chapters and a collection of texts. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the Qiangic languages, the rGyalrong people and Jiaomuzu Township, the field work site. Chapter 2 describes the phonology. Chapters 3 through 7 contain a description of the morphology, dealing with pronouns, nouns, adverbs and some smaller word classes such as expressives, interjections and conjunctions, and finally verbs. In Jiaomuzu the verbal morphology is by far the most complex part. Chapter 8 discusses sentence structure. The three texts at the end of the dissertation illustrate the structures described in the previous chapters. Native speakers of Jiaomuzu place a high value on understanding and communicating the exact relationships between participants in a speech act as well as their position in the contexts both of the particular situation in which the speech act occurs and in their wider environment. The language reflects, especially in the verbal morphology, this web of relations. Show less
This book is a descriptive grammar of Lepcha, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Sikkim, Darjeeling district in West Bengal in India, in Ilam district in Nepal, and in a few villages of Samtsi... Show moreThis book is a descriptive grammar of Lepcha, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Sikkim, Darjeeling district in West Bengal in India, in Ilam district in Nepal, and in a few villages of Samtsi district in south-western Bhutan. The data for this study were collected during several sojourns amongst the Lepcha people in Kalimpong and Sikkim between 1994 and 1998. The grammar includes chapters on phonology, morphology, derivation and sentence particles, as well as morphologically analysed example sentences and texts, a bilingual glossary and an index. This grammar is the first modern description of the Lepcha language. Lepcha has no elaborate conjugational morphology. Nouns lack a grammatical gender distinction and show no agreement with articles, adjectives or verbs. There is no verbal agreement morphology and actants are not morphologically indexed in the verb. Tense, mood, aspect and other meanings of the verb are expressed by the use of postpositions and auxiliary verbs. Although Lepcha is unmistakably a Tibeto-Burman language, its exact position within Tibeto-Burman is still unclear. Whilst Lepcha may lack the formal complexity of some Himalayan languages, the interest of Lepcha morphology lies in the semantics of the grammatical categories expressed by the Lepcha repertoire of endings and auxiliaries. Show less
