Himalayan Languages

With its many and diverse languages, including some with very long documented histories, its cultural diversity, and its widespread multilingualism - both the stable and transient kind - the Himalayan region is a treasure trove of empirical data for linguistic research on language typology and universals, historical linguistics, language contact and areal linguistics.

Himalayan Languages contains contributions on Himalayan linguistics written by some of the leading experts in the field. The volume is divided into three parts: First, a general overview is given of the linguistic study of Himalayan languages and language communities. The second part offers synchronic studies of individual languages of the region (Indo-Aryan languages Shina and Kalasha, and Tibeto-Burman languages Belhare, Magar, Kinnauri, Classical Tibetan and Thangmi). The papers in the third part of the volume address topics in historical and areal linguistics, with an emphasis on the Tibeto-Burman languages of the region, discussing grammaticalization processes (in Sunwar, Newar, Seke, Tshangla and Bantawa) and the subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman.

Introduction Linguistic synchrony and diachrony on the roof of the world - the study of Himalayan languages Anju Saxena Descriptive linguistics A grammatical comparison of Shina dialects Ruth Laila Schmidt · Retroflex vowels and other peculiarities in the Kalasha sound system Jan Heegård and Ida Elisabeth Mørch · Direction and differential dative case marking in Magar Karen Grunow-Hårsta · Thangmi kinship terminology in comparative perspective Mark Turin · Hidden syntax in Belhare Balthasar Bickel · On the notion of sentence in Classical Tibetan Claus Oetke · On discourse functions of the finite verb in Kinnauri narratives Anju Saxena Language change Preverbal modifiers in Sunwar Werner Winter · Directional prefixes in Kathmandu Newar David Hargreaves · Grammaticalization of deictic motion verbs in Seke Isao Honda · "Do" as subordinator in Tshangla Erik Andvik · Morphosyntactic transparency in Bantawa Jadranka Gvozdanovic · Areal semantics - is there such a thing? James A. Matisoff · Shafer's proto-West Bodish hypothesis and the formation of the Tibetan verb paradigms Roland Bielmeier · Newaric and Mahakiranti George van Driem Indices Subject indexLanguage index