A Grammar of Athpare

Karen Ebert
University of Zürich

Athpare is a Kiranti language spoken in a few villages around Dhankuta in eastern Nepal. The number of speakers is probably less than 2000, but unlike other small Kiranti languages, Athpare is still learned by children.

Athpare has SOV word order, all modifiers precede their head. The verb morphology is highly complex; subject and object person markers are realized partly as prefixes, partly as suffixes. There are separate number suffixes and tense markers, some of them followed by a copy of the person marker. Periphrastic tense-aspects (perfect and progressive) are fully grammaticalized. Athpare is morphologically ergative, with a split between 1st person and the rest. Minimal use is made of nonfinite verb forms: Compound verbs consist of two verbs marked for person and tense, subordinators follow inflected verbs.

The Athpare data are from a short field trip to Dhankuta. There are no previous descriptions of Athpare except for some data used in earlier publications by the author.

ISBN 9783895861468. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 01. 270pp. 1997.

Marphatan Thakali

Untersuchungen zur Sprache des Dorfes Marpha im Oberen Kali-Gandaki-Tal/Nepal
Stefan Georg
Universität Bonn

The Thakali language belongs - together with Tamang, Gurung, Chantel and Manang - to the Tamangic subgroup of the Himalayan branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family. It is spoken by approx. 4500 people along the river Kali-Gandaki in NW-Nepal.

This grammar describes the variant of the village of Marpha, which holds a special place among the dialects of this language. Whereas in most of the other Thakali villages native language use seems to be vigorous, among the ca. 1000 inhabitants of Marpha Thakali is nowadays used by only the middle and older generations, being gradually replaced by Nepali, the only language of education.

The phonology of the language features a word-level tone system, which is in accordance with most of the other Tamangic languages, as far as the interaction of voice-register and contour yields a four-way tonal contrast, but the articulatory basis in Marpha is quite considerably different even from that of the other Thakali dialects. The morphology is basically agglutinative, with a very limited degree of fusion. On the syntactic level, Marphatan Thakali shows SOV-order of constituents, ample use of non-finite verb forms (converbs and verbal nouns) to form subordinate structures and (together with other Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, e.g. Newari) a special type of morphological split-ergativity, which seems to be governed mainly by discourse-pragmatic factors.

This description of the grammatical facts of the language is accompanied by a large number of examples, taken both from texts and from field-session elicitations, which are constantly provided with an interlinear morph-by-morph gloss and a free translation. The volume is concluded by a selection of seventeen short texts and two glossaries (Thakali-German and German-Thakali) with comparative and etymological remarks. [written in German]

ISBN 9783895860980. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 02. 450pp. 1997.

Japanese Phonetics

Theory and Practice

Tsutomu Akamatsu
University of Leeds

Japanese Pronunciation gives a detailed description of both the segmental elements in terms of articulatory phonetics and suprasegmental elements of standard (Tokyo) Japanese pronunciation and is intended for both professional specialists of Japanese and advanced foreign learners of Japanese interested in aquiring an in-depth knowledge of facts about Japanese pronunciation. Hints and advice for acquiring 'intelligible' Japanese pronunciation are also found here and there as appropriate.

Chapter 1 is provided for the benefit of those readers who are not sufficiently familiar with articulatory phonetics. Full articulatory description of the vowels follows (Chapter 2). Full treatment is given of inter alia 'nasalized vowel', which is well known to present substantial and notorious difficulty to foreign speakers of Japanese.

The Japanese consonants are individually described (Chapter 3). Then all types of combination involving vowels, semivowels and consonants are studied (Chapter 4). Chapters 5 to 8 deal with suprasegmental elements like rythm, accent and speech melody; the moraic structure of Japanese words is also treated as it relates to the question of rhythm. Finally, a summary of guideline is provided to help towards the acquisition of 'intelligible' Japanese pronunciation (Chapter 9). The book ends with Conclusion, References and Index.

ISBN 9783895860959. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 03. 440pp. 1997.

Manipuri Grammar

D.N.S. Bhat & M.S. Ningomba
Central Institute of Indian Languages

Manipuri (called Meiteilon in the language itself) is a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the Kuki-Chin subgroup. The language is spoken primarily in the valley region of the State of Manipur, Índia (ca. 700,000 speakers, ca. 300,000 speakers in Burma, ca. 100,000 speakers in Assam, ca. 50,000 in Bangladesh and 30,000 in Tripura).

The grammar of Manipuri shows a number of interesting typological characteristics: There are only two major lexical categories, namely nouns and verbs, with adjectives and adverbs merging rather unrecognizably with verbs. Inflectional markers also split into two distinct categories, namely nominal and verbal inflections with exclusive membership.

The volume contains 14 chapters: Introduction, Phonology, Word-formation, Sentence structure, Nominal category, Use of case suffixes, Verbal category, Directional and deictic verb distinctions, Valency patterns, Tense, aspect and mood, Modyfying constructions, Complementation, Illocutionary distinctions.

ISBN 9783895861918. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 04. 480pp. 1997.

Learning to Read Pinyin Romanization and its Equivalent in Wade-Giles

A Practical Course for Students of Chinese

Siew-Yue Killingley


The most important romanization system of Chinese until recent times was the Wade-Giles system. Pinyin is now the most important romanization system in modern usage and is the system used in international communications and in computer software. But Wade-Giles still retains an unparalleled place in the canon because a great deal of sinological work published before 1955 used it exclusively, and it continues to be used in areas of study such as Chinese philosophy. While Pinyin consonant letters maintain a one-to-one correspondence between a particular sound and a letter or sequence of two letters, there is a much more complicated correspondence between vowel letters and vowel sounds. Wade-Giles has a lesser degree of divergence between sound and letter, and in this respect is easier to operate.

The chief aim in this course is to teach competence in reading Pinyin romanization, and to foster an understanding of the principles underlying that romanization system. The student is introduced to some phonetics, although theoretical discussions are kept to a minimum. For those who wish, this course also teaches the ability to systematically convert each Pinyin representation into its Wade-Giles equivalent.

This course is directed at anyone who wishes to study Chinese fairly seriously for general or specialist purposes. It is meant to be used in conjunction with any current Chinese-language teaching book that uses Pinyin. No previous knowledge of phonetics is presupposed, and the course can be followed with or without a teacher. Parts of this course have been used since 1994 in draft form for beginners studying courses on Chinese language and culture at the University of Newcastle. This first published edition has been completed in the light of the author's experience in teaching those courses.

The lessons introduce difficulties of pronunciation and spelling gradually, beginning with Chinese sounds which are easily relatable to those of English (e.g., nasals), and progressing to those which may be outside the student's experience (e.g., retroflex fricatives).

Tone is introduced and taught by drawing on known analogies of pitch features in English intonation rather than taught as something entirely alien to the student's experience. Each lesson contains explanations, oral practice which enables the student to produce correct sounds, and practice in relating each sound to its Pinyin representation. A final lesson gives guidance on how to use Chinese-English Dictionaries.

Appendices on the organs of speech, on tables of vowels and consonants, and on developing a keyboard for Pinyin spelling complete with tones using macros in WordPerfect.

ISBN 9783895861994. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 05. 96pp. 1998.

Les langues Hmong-Mjen (Miáo-Yáo)
Phonologie historique

Barbara Niederer
Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale, CNRS

L'épanouissement que connaît la recherche sur les langues Hmong-Mjen depuis une quinzaine d'années a enrichi sensiblement nos connaissances sur cette famille linguistique. Les informations concernant les différentes langues sont toutefois dispersées dans des documents hétérogènes, souvent difficilement accessibles, et aucune présentation d'ensemble n'a été tentée jusqu'à ce jour.

Nous nous sommes donc proposée d'entreprendre une étude comparative des langues Hmong-Mjen en considérant ces sources dans leur totalité. Un tel travail de synthèse nous a paru constituer une étape préliminaire à des recherches plus approfondies, auxquelles s'ajouteront nécessairement des enquêtes de terrain. Notre aperçu vise, en effet, à mettre en évidence les principaux problèmes encore en suspens dans le domaine de la phonologie historique Hmong-Mjen tout en révélant les lacunes dont pâtit encore notre documentation.

Après la présentation des travaux antérieurs effectués dans le domaine de la linguistique diachronique Hmong-Mjen, et la discussion de leurs résultats dans une perspective ethnohistorique, nous décrivons les systèmes phonologiques de quarante parlers Hmong-Mjen, en analysant leurs systèmes d'initiales, de rimes, de tons et, dans la mesure du possible, leur sandhi tonal.

Notre examen révèle que certaines langues attestent près de cent consonnes initiales tandis que d'autres n'en ont qu'une vingtaine, certaines langues attestent plus de cent rimes tandis que d'autres en possèdent à peine une dizaine, certaines langues ont développé plus de seize tons phonologiques tandis que d'autres n'en attestent que trois. La glottalisation et le type de phonation sont employés à une fin distinctive dans plusieurs parlers. La phonation murmurée apparaît en relation avec d'anciennes initiales sonores dans la plupart des langues Hmong. Le déclenchement du sandhi tonal, progressif dans la majorité des langues Hmong et régressif dans la majorité des langues Mjen, s'avère être fortement limité par des contraintes phonologiques et syntaxiques, aussi bien que par l'usage.

Notre description des quarante parlers Hmong-Mjen est suivie d'une partie comparative dans laquelle sont présentés les principaux types d'évolution des systèmes tonals et les tableaux de correspondances des tons, des initiales et des rimes.

ISBN 9783895862113. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 07. 340pp. 1998.

Korean Phonology

Duck-Young Lee
The Australian National University

This book presents an attempt to investigate major issues in Korean phonology in terms of principles and elements, based on the framework of Government Phonology. It begins with an introductory section, describing central aspects of the framework, which include recent development in the theory with regard to the representation of ATR and coronals. An analysis of a wide range of data in Korean phonology is then provided. In dealing with data involving vowels, the study first discusses vowel harmony, which has traditionally been treated as the result of the harmonic opposition between 'light vowels' and 'dark vowels'. It address some unsolved problems in previous analyses by proposing a phonological operation called 'A-head alignment'. This will be followed by an element-based analysis of vowel coalescence and diphthongisation.

It will be shown that a phonological operation called 'Nuclear Fusion' and asymmetry in the spreading properties of the vocalic elements 'I' and 'U' in Korean have a crucial role in the analysis. The second half of the book is devoted to discussions of issues involved in consonantal clusters, such as tensification, lenition, nasalisation and vowel epenthesis, etc. It outlines the mechanisms as to under what conditions these phenomena take place and how each phenomenon is connected to each other. These mechanisms will be discussed in conjunction with the possibility that consonantal clusters may occur in two onsets that are separated by a nuclear position which does not contain any phonetic realisation (i.e. an empty nucleus). The important point is that onsets surrounding an empty nucleus are in a governing relation (i.e. interonset government) in Korean, and an intervening empty nucleus maintains its null status during derivation if the surrounding two onsets form the governing relation. Tensification and neutralisation are manifestations of interonset government, while the failure of the government results in vowel epenthesis or nasalisation.

ISBN 9783895862205. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 12. 250pp. 1998.

Introduction to Chinese Dialectology

Margaret Mian Yan
Indiana University

Introduction to Chinese Dialectology intends to give a comprehensive account of the studies on Chinese dialects tracing from the first Chinese dialect study of Yang Xiong's Fangyan "Dialect" to present works, covering mainly phonological and lexical features.

It investigates the dialect research from historical and theoretical linguistic perspectives. Topics include: the classification of Chinese dialects, dialect studies in different periods, the criteria for the dialect classification as proposed by different scholars, discussions on the Chinese dialectology from philological, descriptive, generative and computational quantifying approaches, and the contributions of Chinese dialectology to the general linguistic theories. The main text devotes to the description of the major phonological characteristics and distributions of the major dialects, supplemented by fourteen sketch dialect maps and over one hundred tables of dialect data for easier reading and comparisons. Each chapter is supported by exercises, which basically is in the form of contrastive and comparative linguistic analysis nature.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Maps and Figures

1 Background of Chinese Dialectology
1.1 Language, Dialect, and Subdialect
1.2 Pre-Modern Period of Dialectology
1.3 The Classification of Modern Chinese Dialects

2 Modern Period of Dialectology I
2.0 Modern Dialectology
2.1 Dialect Surveys from the 1920s - 1949
2.2 Dialect Surveys and Dialect Studies in Mainland China during 1950s-1960s
2.21 Dialect Surveys
2.22 Other Dialect Studies
2.3 Dialect Studies in Taiwan during 1950s- 1960s
2.4 Dialect Surveys and Dialect Studies from the 1970s-present
2.41 Dialect Studies in Mainland China
2.42 The Publications of Dialect Dictionaries in 1990s
2.43 Dialect Works in the Gazetteers
2.44 Chinese Dialect Sound Database
2.45 Dialect Studies in Taiwan

3 Modern Period of Dialectology II
3.1 Dialect Studies in the United States
3.2 The Chinese Linguistics Project at Princeton University
3.3 The DOC Project at the University of California, Berkeley
3.4 Quantitative Approach of Dialect Study
3.5 Dialect Surveys in Shandong, Fujian and Taiwan
3.51 Shulin Dialect Survey
3.52 Shandong Dialect Survey
3.53 Dialect Surveys in Fujian and Taiwan
3.6 Computer Database of Chinese Dialects at the University of Hawaii
3.7 Comparative Chinese Dialectal Grammar Project at University of Washington
3.8 Tone Sandhi Patterns of Chinese Dialects
3.9 The Yuen Ren Society

4 Major Dialect Groups

4.1 The Mandarin and Jin Dialects
4.11 Subgrouping of the Mandarin Dialects
4.12 General Characteristics of the Mandarin Dialects
4.121 Initials of the Mandarin Dialects
4.122 Finals of the Mandarin Dialects
4.123 Tones of the Mandarin Dialects
4.124 Lexical Differences in the Mandarin Dialects

4.2 The Wu Dialects
4.21 Subgrouping of the Wu Dialects
4.22 Sounds of Suzhou Dialect
4.23 Initials of the Wu Dialects
4.24 Finals of the Wu Dialects
4.25 Tones of the Wu Dialects
4.26 Lexical Differences in the Wu Dialects

4.3 The Xiang Dialects
4.31 Subgrouping of the Xiang Dialects
4.32 Sounds of the Changsha and Shuangfeng Dialects
4.33 Initials of the Xiang Dialects
4.34 Finals of the Xiang Dialects
4.35 Tones of the Xiang Dialects
4.36 Lexical Differences in the Xiang Dialects

4.4 The Min Dialects
4.41 Subgrouping of the Min Dialects
4.42 Sounds of the Fuzhou and Xiamen Dialects
4.43 Initials of the Min Dialects
4.44 Finals of the Min Dialects
4.45 Tones of the Min Dialects
4.46 Lexical Differences in the Min Dialects

4.5 The Gan Dialects
4.51 Subgrouping of the Gan Dialects
4.52 Sounds of the Nanchang Dialect
4.53 Initials of the Gan Dialects
4.54 Finals of the Gan Dialects
4.55 Tones of the Gan Dialects
4.56 Lexical Differences in the Gan Dialects

4.6 The Kejia Dialects
4.61 Subgrouping of the Kejia Dialects
4.62 Sounds of the Meixian Dialect
4.63 Initials of the Kejia Dialects
4.64 Finals of the Kejia Dialects
4.65 Tones of the Kejia Dialects
4.66 Lexical Differences in the Kejia Dialects

4.7 The Yue Diaelcts
4.71 Subgrouping of the Yue Dialects
4.72 Sounds of the Guangzhou Dialect
4.73 Initials of the Yue Dialects
4.74 Finals of the Yue Dialects
4.75 Tones of the Yue Dialects
4.76 Lexical Differences in of the Yue Dialects

4.8 Transitional Dialects
4.81 Transitional Nature of Mixed Dialect Areas
4.82 Huiyu
4.821 Subgrouping of the Hui Dialects
4.822 Sounds of the Jixi Dialect
4.823 Initials of the Hui Dialiects
4.824 Finals of the Hui Dialects
4.825 Tones of the Hui Dialects
4.826 Lexicon of the Hui Dialects
4.83 Pinghua
4.831 Subgrouping of the Pinghua Dialects
4.832 Sounds of the Tingzicun Pinghua

Concluding Remarks

References

Summary of Phonological Rules

Index

ISBN 9783895866296 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 22. 300pp. 14 maps. 2006.

Probleme der Wortbildung in den Jenissej-Sprachen

Heinrich Werner
Universität Bonn

Bislang liegen auf dem Gebiet der Wortbildung in den Jenisej-Sprachen nur wenige Arbeiten vor, und es schien dem Verfasser angebracht zu sein, sich dem Problem in einer zusammenfassenden Arbeit zuzuwenden. Dabei setzte er sich vor allem zum ziel, die theoretische Fragen und die praktischen Richtlinien für die Erstellung von Wörterbüchern der Jenissej-Sprachen zu erörtern. Da aber die Wortbildung in diese Sprachen aufs engste mit der Morphologie verbunden und verflochten und in vielen Fällen kaum von ihr zu trennen ist, kann eine derartige Spezialuntersuchung der Wortbildung auch zur Klärung mehrerer grammatischer Phänomene beitragen. Die Spezifik der lexikalischen Nomination in den Jenissej-Sprache kann außerdem auf wichtige typologische Züge hinweisen, die einen breiteren überblick über den typologischen Zustand dieser Sprachen ermöglichen. Die Arbeit basiert hauptsächlich auf ketische, jugischen und kottischen Sprachmaterialien.

Inhalt: 1. Zum Problem des Wortes in den Jenissej-Sprachen, 2. Zum Problem der nominalen Wortbildung, 3. Zum Problem der verbalen Wortbildung, 4. Zur Wortbildung der Adverbien und Numeralien, 5. Grenzfälle der verbalen Wort- und Frombildung, 6. Schlußbetrachtungen.

ISBN 9783895862700. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 25. 194pp. 1998.

 Issues in Maithili Syntax

A Government-Binding Approach

Yogendra Yadava Royal Nepal Academy

The purpose of this study is to present a syntactic analysis of Maithili, an Indo-Aryan language of the 'Bihari' group of the eastern sub-branch, which has a long and rich heritage of written literature and is spoken in the eastern plains of Nepal (as the second majority language in terms of number of speakers, viz. approximately 12%) and also in the north-eastern region of Bihar, India, by 21 million people (Yadav, 1996). When this study was undertaken, little had been done about Indo-Aryan syntax (and, for that matter, Maithili syntax) within the GB-framework. It was, therefore, deemed quite essential to make a study of this nature with a view to examining the "empirical adequacy" of the framework in question. This work is an attempt in this direction. More specifically, this study addresses itself to the analysis of movement rules involved in Maithili sentences and also of the related phenomena therein with a view to exploring their implications for the G(overnment)B(inding)-framework.

It is organized into the following six chapters: 1. Introduction, 2. Theoretical Background, 3. A Tranformational Analysis of Maithili Sentences, 4. Topicalization/Focussing in Maithili and the Trace Theory, 5. Raising in Maithili and the Binding Theory, 6. Case Assignment in Maithili and the Case Theory, and 7. Conclusion.

ISBN 9783895865473. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 26. 140 pp. 1998.