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 univer-sals, historical linguistics, language contact and areal linguis-tics. Himalayan Languages contains contributions on Hima-layan linguistics written by some of the leading experts in the field.
The volume is divided into three parts: First, a general over-view is given of the linguistic study of Himalayan languages and language communities. The second part offers syn-chronic 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 ad-dress topics in historical and areal linguistics, with an empha-sis on the Tibeto-Burman languages of the region, discussing grammaticalization processes (in Sunwar, Newar, Seke, Tshangla and Bantawa) and the subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman.
From the Contents
Linguistic synchrony and diachrony on the roof of the world – the study of Himalayan languages
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
Thangmi kinship terminology in comparative perspective
Hidden syntax in Belhare
On the notion of sentence in Classical Tibetan
On discourse functions of the finite verb in Kinnauri narratives
Preverbal modifiers in Sunwar
Directional prefixes in Kathmandu Newar
Grammaticalization of deictic motion verbs in Seke
"Do" as subordinator in Tshangla
Morphosyntactic transparency in Bantawa
Areal semantics - is there such a thing?
JAMES A. MATISOFF
Shafer's proto-West Bodish hypothesis and the formation of the Tibetan verb paradigms
Newaric and Mahakiranti
GEORGE VAN DRIEM