A Tsum Lexicon
Mark Donohue & Dubi Nanda Dhakal
Australian National University; Tribhuvan University
A Tsum Lexicon is the first publication on the Tsum language. Tsum is the language of the northern valley bearing the same name on the border between Nepal and Tibet. The language is spoken by over 4,000 people and is heavily endangered due to long-standing influence from Tibetan, and the more recent, but potentially even stronger, impact from Nepalese language and culture. This first lexicon contains over 2,400 words searchable via Tsum, English, and semantic fields, and includes a list of basic vocabulary separately.
While there are many aspects of Tsum that are transparently attributable to a close relationship with Tibetan, the question of linguistic affiliation has not been examined in detail, though there are indications that a social relationship with the non-Tibetan linguistic ecology to the south and west has played a strong role in the history of Tsum (Donohue and Dhakal 2015), suggesting an old, and nearly submerged, relationship shared with Kuke (the language of Kutang, to the west of Tsum, past Chamar mountain), and (to a lesser extent) the other languages of the Manaslu area, including Nubri and (northern) Ghale.
Dr. Mark Donohue works at The Australian National University, specialising in the research of languages of Nepal, Bhutan, and Indonesia. He has published on phonology, morphosyntax, and language histories. His work can be found at http://papuan.linguistics.anu.edu.au/Donohue/.
Dr. Dubi Nanda Dhakal works at Tribhuvan University, and has published extensively on both Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, as well as work exploring the contact history of these languages. A list of his published work can be found at http://tibetoburman.linguistics.anu.edu.au/Tsum/dnd.php.
ISBN 9783862886821 (Hardbound). Languages of the World/Dictionaries 61. 197pp. 2016.
