A grammar of Japhug

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Guillaume Jacques

To cite this version:

Guillaume Jacques. A grammar of Japhug. Language Science Press, 2021, Comprehensive Grammar Library, 978-3-96110-305-8. �hal-03190627�

A grammar of Japhug

Guillaume Jacques

language science

Comprehensive Grammar Library 1

Editor: Martin Haspelmath In this series:

1. Jacques, Guillaume. A grammar of Japhug.

This series grew out of the grammars published inStudies in Diversity Linguistics, which are proudly mentioned:

4. Berghäll, Liisa. A grammar of Mauwake.

5. Wilbur, Joshua. A grammar of Pite Saami.

7. Schackow, Diana. A grammar of Yakkha.

8. Liljegren, Henrik. A grammar of Palula.

9. Shimelman, Aviva. A grammar of Yauyos Quechua.

11. Kluge, Angela. A grammar of Papuan Malay.

12. Kieviet, Paulus. A grammar of Rapa Nui.

22. Döhler, Christian. A grammar of Komnzo.

23. Yakpo, Kofi. A grammar of Pichi.

A grammar of Japhug

Guillaume Jacques

language science

Library 1). Berlin: Language Science Press.

This title can be downloaded at:

http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/295

© 2021, Guillaume Jacques

Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0):

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISBN: 978-3-96110-305-8 (Digital) 978-3-98554-001-3 (Hardcover) DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4548232

Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/295

Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=295 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort

Typesetting: Guillaume Jacques

Proofreading: Anton Antonov, Curtis Bartosik, Aimée Lahaussois, Laura Arnold, Tom Bossuyt, Michael Daniel, Valérie Guérin, Ariel Gutman, Andreas Hölzl, Katarzyna Janic, Seppo Kittilä, Joseph Lovestrand, Lachlan Mackenzie, Bruno Olsson, Bastian Persohn, Yvonne Treis, Jeroen van de Weijer and Ye Jingting

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Acknowledgments xxiii

Abbreviations xxv

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The Japhug language . . . . 1

1.2 The Japhug corpus . . . . 2

1.3 Structure of the grammar . . . . 4

1.4 Language and culture . . . . 4

2 A grammatical sketch 7

2.1 Phonology and word structure . . . . 7

2.2 Parts of speech . . . . 8

2.3 Nominal morphology . . . . 9

2.3.1 Non-attested nominal morphological categories . . . . . 9

2.3.2 Number . . . . 9

2.3.3 Case marking . . . . 11

2.3.4 Possession . . . . 12

2.3.5 Compounding . . . . 15

2.3.6 Derivations . . . . 15

2.4 Verbal morphology . . . . 16

2.4.1 Overview . . . . 16

2.4.2 Indexation . . . . 17

2.4.3 Orientation preverbs and TAME . . . . 21

2.4.4 Non-finite verb forms . . . . 24

2.4.5 Associated motion . . . . 28

2.4.6 Voice . . . . 28

2.4.7 Denominal derivations . . . . 33

2.5 Core and oblique arguments . . . . 33

2.5.1 Neutral alignment . . . . 34

2.5.2 Nominative-accusative alignment . . . . 34

2.5.3 Subjecthood . . . . 34

2.5.4 Objecthood . . . . 35

2.5.5 Absolutive-ergative alignment . . . . 36

2.5.6 Ditransitive verbs . . . . 37

2.6 Word order . . . . 37

2.7 Subordination . . . . 38

2.7.1 Relative clauses . . . . 38

2.7.2 Complement clauses . . . . 38

2.7.3 Other subordinate clauses . . . . 39

2.8 Remarkable features . . . . 41

2.8.1 Consonant clusters . . . . 41

2.8.2 Direct-inverse . . . . 41

2.8.3 Inflectionalization . . . . 42

2.8.4 Prefixal chain . . . . 42

2.8.5 Hybrid indirect speech . . . . 43

2.8.6 The expression of degree and comparison . . . . 44

2.8.7 Japhug morphology and Trans-Himalayan comparative linguistics . . . . 45

3 Phonology 47

3.1 Introduction . . . . 47

3.2 Consonants . . . . 47

3.2.1 Onsets . . . . 47

3.2.2 Codas . . . . 50

3.3 Vowels and rhymes . . . . 52

3.3.1 Vowels . . . . 52

3.3.2 Rhymes . . . . 54

3.3.3 Historical phonology . . . . 55

3.4 Syllabic constraints . . . . 57

3.4.1 Rhotic dissimilation . . . . 57

3.4.2 Uvular harmony . . . . 58

3.5 Neutralization, quasi-neutralization and free variation . . . . 59

3.5.1 The contrast between

and

. . . . 59

3.5.2 The contrast between

and

after palatal and alveolo-palatal consonants . . . . 60

3.5.3 The contrast between

and

after palatal and alveolo-palatal consonants . . . . 65

3.5.4 The contrast between

and

. . . . 65

3.6 Speech errors and self-corrections . . . . 66

3.7 Suprasegmentals . . . . 68

3.8 Word structure . . . . 68

3.8.1 Wordhood . . . . 68

3.8.2 Non-final syllables . . . . 70

4 Consonant clusters and partial reduplication 71

4.1 Partial Reduplication . . . . 71

4.2 Inventory of consonant clusters . . . . 72

4.2.1 Preinitials . . . . 72

4.2.2 Medials . . . . 87

4.2.3 Summary . . . . 99

4.3 Sandhi . . . 104

4.4 Tibetan script-based orthography . . . 105

5 Nominal morphology 107

5.1 Possessive prefixes . . . 107

5.1.1 Possessive paradigm . . . 107

5.1.2 Inalienably possessed nouns . . . 114

5.1.3 Indefinite vs. generic possessor . . . 132

5.1.4 Prenominal modifiers . . . 135

5.2 Unpossessible nouns . . . 137

5.2.1 Place names . . . 137

5.2.2 Colour nouns . . . 140

5.2.3 Other unpossessible nouns . . . 141

5.3 Personal names . . . 142

5.3.1 Vocative . . . 142

5.3.2 Tibetan names . . . 143

5.3.3 Alienably possessed or unpossessible nouns? . . . 144

5.3.4 Personal names and modifiers . . . 145

5.4 Bound state . . . 147

5.4.1 Vowel alternations in non-final members of compounds 147 5.4.2 Other alternations . . . 148

5.4.3 Final member of compounds . . . 151

5.5 Compound nouns . . . 153

5.5.1 Noun-Noun compounds . . . 153

5.5.2 Verb-Verb compounds . . . 156

5.5.3 Noun-Ideophone compounds . . . 158

5.5.4 Adverb-Verb compounds . . . 158

5.5.5 Noun-Verb compounds . . . 159

5.5.6 Verb-Noun compounds . . . 166

5.6 Noun class prefixes . . . 167

5.6.1 Uvular animal name prefix . . . 167

5.6.2 Velar animal name prefix . . . 167

5.6.3 Uvular plant name prefix . . . 169

5.6.4 Other uses of the uvular class prefix . . . 169

5.6.5 Body part noun prefixes . . . 169

5.7 Nominal derivations . . . 169

5.7.1 Privative . . . 170

5.7.2 Relative location . . . 171

5.7.3 Diminutive . . . 171

5.7.4 Augmentative . . . 173

5.7.5 Derogatory . . . 173

5.7.6 Gentilic . . . 173

5.7.7 Gender . . . 174

5.7.8 Collective . . . 174

5.7.9 Superlative . . . 182

5.7.10 Unattested derivations . . . 183

5.8 Denominal adverbs and postpositions . . . 183

5.8.1 Comitative adverbs . . . 183

5.8.2 Reduplicated perlative . . . 187

5.8.3

suffix . . . 187

5.8.4

prefix . . . 187

6 Pronouns 189

6.1 Personal pronouns . . . 189

6.1.1 Honorific plural . . . 191

6.1.2 Personal pronouns as possessive markers . . . 192

6.2 Generic pronouns . . . 192

6.2.1

‘one’ . . . 192

6.2.2 The generic noun

‘person’ . . . 194

6.3 Genitive forms . . . 195

6.4 The emphatic use of pronouns . . . 197

6.5 Interrogative pronouns . . . 198

6.5.1

‘what’ . . . 198

6.5.2

‘who’ . . . 203

6.5.3

‘how many’ and

‘when’ . . . 204

6.5.4

‘where’ . . . 206

6.6 Indefinite pronouns . . . 208

6.6.1

‘someone’ . . . 209

6.6.2

‘something’ . . . 210

6.6.3

‘whatever’ . . . 213

6.6.4

‘whoever, anybody’ . . . 214

6.6.5

‘somewhere’ . . . 214

6.6.6 Interrogative pronouns used as free-choice indefinites . 215 6.7 Quantifiers . . . 217

6.7.1 Universal quantifiers . . . 217

6.7.2 Partitive pronouns . . . 218

6.7.3 Distributive pronouns . . . 219

6.8 Identity pronoun . . . 220

6.9 Demonstrative pronouns . . . 223

6.9.1 Anaphoric demonstrative pronouns . . . 223

6.9.2 Medial and cataphoric pronoun . . . 226

6.9.3 Locative forms of the demonstrative pronouns . . . 228

7 Numerals and counted nouns 233

7.1 Plain numerals . . . 233

7.1.1 Numerals 1-10 . . . 233

7.1.2 Tens . . . 235

7.1.3 Numerals 11-19 and units . . . 235

7.1.4 Hundred and above . . . 237

7.1.5 Ordinals . . . 238

7.1.6 Tibetan and Chinese numerals . . . 240

7.1.7 Use of the numerals . . . 243

7.2 Approximate numerals . . . 244

7.3 Counted nouns . . . 247

7.3.1 Numeral prefixes . . . 248

7.3.2 Counted nouns in quantifying function . . . 258

7.3.3 Counted nouns and semantic classes . . . 268

7.3.4 Counted nouns and other parts of speech . . . 270

7.4 Measures . . . 276

7.5 Counting time . . . 279

7.5.1 Temporal counted nouns . . . 279

7.5.2 Time ordinals . . . 281

7.5.3 Other derived time adverbs . . . 287

7.5.4 Clock time . . . 287

7.6 Basic arithmetic operations . . . 289

7.6.1 Fractions . . . 290

8 Postpositions and relator nouns 293

8.1 Absolutive . . . 293

8.1.1 Intransitive subject . . . 293

8.1.2 Transitive subject . . . 294

8.1.3 Object . . . 294

8.1.4 Sole argument of predicates of natural forces . . . 295

8.1.5 Semi-object . . . 296

8.1.6 Theme . . . 297

8.1.7 Essive . . . 298

8.1.8 Goal . . . 302

8.1.9 Location . . . 302

8.2 Postpositions . . . 303

8.2.1 Independent words vs. clitics . . . 303

8.2.2 Ergative . . . 304

8.2.3 Genitive . . . 313

8.2.4 Locative . . . 323

8.2.5 Comitative . . . 331

8.2.6 Additive . . . 333

8.2.7 Standard marker . . . 334

8.2.8 Exceptive . . . 336

8.2.9 Terminative . . . 337

8.2.10 Egressive . . . 338

8.2.11 Other temporal postpositions . . . 340

8.3 Relator nouns . . . 344

8.3.1 Dative . . . 345

8.3.2 Secutive . . . 348

8.3.3 Deputative . . . 349

8.3.4 Locative relator nouns . . . 351

8.3.5 Temporal relator nouns . . . 361

8.3.6 Semi-grammaticalized relator nouns . . . 363

9 The noun phrase 367

9.1 Noun modifiers and determiners . . . 367

9.1.1 Number . . . 367

9.1.2 Demonstratives . . . 374

9.1.3 Quantifiers . . . 380

9.1.4 Indefinite and definite markers . . . 387

9.1.5 Topic markers . . . 392

9.1.6 Focus markers . . . 400

9.1.7 Identity modifiers . . . 412

9.1.8 Attributes . . . 414

9.2 Noun coordination . . . 420

9.2.1 Coordination or embedded phrase . . . 420

9.2.2 Bare coordination . . . 421

9.2.3 Disjunction . . . 424

9.3 Word order in the noun phrase . . . 425

10 Expressive words and sentence final particles 427

10.1 Ideophones . . . 427

10.1.1 Ideophonic stem morphology . . . 427

10.1.2 Regular derivations . . . 428

10.1.3 Semantic categories . . . 435

10.1.4 Irregularities . . . 436

10.1.5 The phonology of ideophonic roots . . . 438

10.1.6 The genesis of ideophones . . . 442

10.1.7 Syntax of ideophones . . . 445

10.1.8 Discourse function . . . 450

10.2 Other expressive words . . . 451

10.2.1 Interjections . . . 451

10.2.2 Calling and chasing sounds . . . 454

10.2.3 Deonomatopoeic expressive nouns . . . 456

10.3 Speech fillers . . . 457

10.4 Sentence final particles . . . 458

10.4.1 Particles used in commands . . . 458

10.4.2 Particles used in polar questions . . . 460

10.4.3 Hearsay particle . . . 463

10.4.4 Particles expressing epistemic modality . . . 464

10.4.5 Particules expressing speaker attitude . . . 468

11 The structure of the Japhug verb 471

11.1 Introduction . . . 471

11.2 The prefixal chain . . . 471

11.2.1 Outer prefixes . . . 471

11.2.2 Inner prefixes . . . 474

11.2.3 Stress . . . 476

11.2.4 Phonotactic constraints . . . 476

11.3 The suffixal chain . . . 477

11.4 The peg circumfix . . . 479

11.4.1 Morphology . . . 479

11.4.2 Optionality of the suffixal element . . . 480

11.4.3 Functions of the peg circumfix . . . 480

11.5 Templatic vs. layered morphology . . . 483

11.6 Wordhood . . . 484

11.6.1 Criteria for wordhood . . . 484

11.6.2 Enclitics . . . 485

11.6.3 Bipartite verbs . . . 487

12 Non-concatenative verbal morphology 493

12.1 Onset alternations . . . 493

12.2 Stem alternations . . . 493

12.2.1 Stem II . . . 494

12.2.2 Stem III . . . 495

12.2.3 Frozen

suffix . . . 498

12.3 Vowel contraction . . . 499

12.4 Partial reduplication in verbal morphology . . . 502

12.4.1 Initial reduplication . . . 502

12.4.2 Verb stem reduplication as secondary exponence . . . . 508

12.4.3 Emphatic reduplication . . . 510

13 Negation 513

13.1 Negative prefixes . . . 513

13.1.1 Allomorphy . . . 513

13.1.2 Suppletive negative verbs . . . 515

13.1.3 Verbs requiring the negative prefixes . . . 516

13.1.4 Lexicalized negation . . . 517

13.2 Periphrastic negation . . . 518

13.3 Double negation . . . 519

13.4 Negation and parts of speech other than verbs . . . 521

13.4.1 Nouns . . . 521

13.4.2 Pronouns . . . 521

13.4.3 Adverbs . . . 522

14 Person indexation and argument structure 525

14.1 Introduction . . . 525

14.2 Intransitive verbs . . . 525

14.2.1 The intransitive paradigm . . . 525

14.2.2 Irregular intransitive verbs . . . 529

14.2.3 Semi-transitive verbs . . . 530

14.2.4 Intransitive verbs with oblique arguments . . . 534

14.2.5 Semi-transitive verbs with additional oblique arguments 535 14.2.6 Intrinsically non-singular subjects . . . 535

14.2.7 Invariable intransitive verbs . . . 538

14.3 Transitive verbs . . . 540

14.3.1 The morphological marking of transitivity in Japhug . . 540

14.3.2 Polypersonal indexation and direction marking . . . 543

14.3.3 The function of the direct/inverse contrast in non-local configurations . . . 564

14.3.4 Transitive irregular verbs . . . 575

14.3.5 Transitive verbs with dummy subjects . . . 577

14.4 Ditransitive verbs . . . 579

14.4.1 Indirective . . . 579

14.4.2 Secundative . . . 581

14.4.3 Causative of transitive verbs . . . 583

14.4.4 Causative of semi-transitive verbs . . . 586

14.5 Labile verbs . . . 586

14.5.1 Transitive-intransitive labile verbs . . . 586

14.5.2 Transitive-intransitive labile verbs with oblique arguments 593 14.5.3 Semi-transitive labile verbs . . . 594

14.5.4 Ditransitive-monotransitive lability . . . 595

14.6 Additional questions on the generic and number indexation . . 596

14.6.1 Agreement mismatch . . . 596

14.6.2 Generic person vs. 3pl indexation . . . 604

14.7 Person indexation on non-finite predicative words . . . 608

14.7.1 Phatic expressions . . . 608

14.7.2 Exclamative expressions . . . 610

14.8 Historical perspectives . . . 611

14.8.1 Indexation suffixes, pronouns and possessive prefixes . . 612

14.8.2 The inverse prefix . . . 615

14.8.3 The origin of portmanteau prefixes . . . 616

15 Orientation and associated motion 621

15.1 Orientation preverbs . . . 621

15.1.1 Morphology . . . 621

15.1.2 Orientable verbs . . . 632

15.1.3 The tridimensional system . . . 641

15.1.4 Extended uses of orientations . . . 652

15.1.5 Lexicalized orientations . . . 662

15.2 Associated motion . . . 682

15.2.1 AM prefixes: morphology . . . 682

15.2.2 Argument of motion . . . 688

15.2.3 Motion verbs and AM prefixes . . . 690

15.2.4 Orientation and AM . . . 691

15.2.5 Round trips . . . 693

15.2.6 The nature of the motion . . . 694

15.2.7 Goal . . . 696

15.2.8 Echo phenomena . . . 698

15.2.9 The verb

‘fetch, bring’ . . . 701

15.2.10 Associated motion vs. motion verb construction . . . 705

16 Non-finite verbal morphology 713

16.1 Participles . . . 713

16.1.1 Subject participles . . . 714

16.1.2 Object participles . . . 732

16.1.3 Oblique participles . . . 745

16.2 Infinitives . . . 762

16.2.1 Velar infinitives . . . 762

16.2.2 Bare infinitives . . . 774

16.2.3 Dental infinitives . . . 776

16.3 Degree nominals . . . 778

16.3.1 Polarity prefixes . . . 780

16.3.2 Argument structure . . . 780

16.3.3 Nominal predicates . . . 781

16.3.4 Degree construction . . . 782

16.3.5 Complementation . . . 782

16.4 Action nominals and abstract noun . . . 783

16.4.1

action nominals . . . 783

16.4.2

abstract nouns . . . 784

16.4.3 Simultaneous . . . 787

16.4.4 Denominalization of action nominals . . . 788

16.4.5 Lexicalized action nominals . . . 789

16.4.6 Inalienably possessed bare action nominals . . . 791

16.4.7 Action nominal compounds . . . 794

16.5 Other deverbal nouns . . . 797

16.5.1 Nominalization

suffix . . . 797

16.5.2 Nominalization

prefix . . . 799

16.6 Converbs . . . 800

16.6.1 Gerund . . . 800

16.6.2 Purposive . . . 806

16.6.3 Immediate . . . 808

16.6.4 Adverb from finite verb . . . 810

16.7 Defective verbs . . . 811

16.8 Historical perspectives . . . 811

16.8.1 Velar non-finite prefixes . . . 811

16.8.2 Sigmatic non-finite prefixes . . . 814

16.8.3 Dental non-finite prefixes . . . 815

17 Valency-increasing derivations 819

17.1 Introduction . . . 819

17.2 Sigmatic causative . . . 819

17.2.1 Regular allomorphy . . . 819

17.2.2 Irregular allomorphs . . . 822

17.2.3 Lexicalized sigmatic causatives . . . 828

17.2.4 Morphosyntax . . . 830

17.2.5 Semantics of the causative . . . 838

17.2.6 Stative verbs . . . 846

17.2.7 Recursion . . . 847

17.2.8 Compatibility with other derivations . . . 848

17.3 Velar causative . . . 849

17.3.1 Irregular allomorphs . . . 851

17.3.2 Morphosyntax . . . 853

17.3.3 Semantics . . . 856

17.3.4 Compatibilities with other derivations . . . 858

17.4 Applicative . . . 859

17.4.1 The syntactic and semantic functions of the promoted argument . . . 860

17.4.2 Allomorphy . . . 866

17.4.3 Lexicalized applicatives . . . 866

17.4.4 Applicatives and other derivations . . . 868

17.5 Tropative . . . 868

17.5.1 Allomorphy . . . 870

17.5.2 Past imperfective . . . 870

17.5.3 Lexicalized tropatives . . . 871

17.5.4 Compatibility with other derivations . . . 872

17.5.5 Other tropative constructions . . . 874

18 Valency-decreasing derivations 875

18.1 Passive . . . 875

18.1.1 The interaction of the Passive derivation with Dynamicity and TAME . . . 877

18.1.2 Lexicalized passives . . . 878

18.1.3 Agent demotion . . . 880

18.1.4 Passive from ditransitive verbs . . . 884

18.1.5 Reduplicated passive . . . 884

18.1.6 Compatibility with other derivations . . . 885

18.2 Rogative . . . 887

18.3 Reflexive . . . 888

18.3.1 The reflexive prefix: form and basic function . . . 888

18.3.2 Reflexive vs. anticausative . . . 893

18.3.3 Lexicalized reflexives . . . 895

18.3.4 Reflexive causative . . . 896

18.3.5 Reflexive and autive . . . 900

18.3.6 Reflexive, tropative and applicative . . . 901

18.3.7 Historical origin . . . 902

18.4 Reciprocal . . . 903

18.4.1 Reduplicated reciprocal . . . 903

18.4.2 Reciprocal

prefix . . . 910

18.4.3 Reciprocal

prefix . . . 915

18.4.4 Verbs of co-participation . . . 915

18.5 Anticausative . . . 916

18.5.1 Morphology . . . 916

18.5.2 Function . . . 920

18.5.3 Anticausative and dummy subject constructions . . . . 922

18.5.4 Collocation . . . 923

18.5.5 Volitionality . . . 924

18.5.6 Compatibility with other derivations . . . 926

18.5.7 Other cases of voicing alternation . . . 929

18.6 Antipassive . . . 929

18.6.1

antipassive . . . 929

18.6.2

antipassive . . . 933

18.6.3 Lexicalized antipassive . . . 934

18.6.4 Antipassive forms of ditransitive verbs . . . 936

18.6.5 Reduplicated antipassive . . . 939

18.6.6 Antipassive and past imperfective . . . 940

18.6.7 The uses of the antipassive derivations . . . 941

18.6.8 Other strategies used to express indefinite patients . . . 946

18.6.9 Compatibility with other derivations . . . 948

18.7 Distributed property . . . 950

18.8 Proprietive . . . 953

18.8.1 Allomorphy . . . 955

18.8.2 Proprietive derivation and generic marking . . . 955

18.8.3 Proprietive derivations from semi-transitive verbs . . . 957

18.8.4 Proprietive derivations from transitive verbs . . . 958

18.8.5 Lexicalized proprietive . . . 959

18.8.6 Compatibility with other derivations . . . 960

18.8.7 Relationship with other derivations . . . 961

18.9 Facilitative . . . 961

18.9.1 Subject-oriented facilitative . . . 961

18.9.2 Object-oriented facilitative . . . 964

19 Other verbal derivations 967

19.1 Autive . . . 967

19.1.1 The autive prefix and verb transitivity . . . 967

19.1.2 Position in the verbal template and allomorphy . . . 968

19.1.3 Autobenefactive/self-affectedness function . . . 970

19.1.4 Spontaneous function . . . 973

19.1.5 Permansive function . . . 977

19.1.6 Lexicalized autives . . . 979

19.1.7 Historical relationship with other derivations . . . 982

19.2 Vertitive . . . 982

19.3 Abilitative . . . 984

19.3.1 Lexicalized abilitatives . . . 986

19.3.2 Historical origin . . . 986

19.4 Distributed action . . . 987

19.4.1 Lexicalized distributed action verbs . . . 992

19.4.2 Irregular partial reduplication . . . 994

19.4.3 Compatibilities with other derivations . . . 995

19.5 Auto-evaluative . . . 995

19.6 Attenuative reduplication . . . 996

19.7 Fossil affixes and marginal derivations . . . 997

19.7.1 Volitional

prefix . . . 997

19.7.2 Applicative

suffix . . . 998

19.7.3 Antipassive

suffix . . . 1000

19.7.4 Other detransitive prefixes . . . 1002

19.7.5

prefix . . . 1002

19.7.6

prefix . . . 1004

19.7.7

prefix . . . 1005

19.7.8 Abilitative

prefix . . . 1006

19.7.9 Prenasalization . . . 1006

19.7.10 Comparative derivation? . . . 1007

19.7.11 Reduplication . . . 1008

19.7.12 Vowel alternation . . . 1009

20 Denominal derivations 1011

20.1 Introduction . . . 1011

20.1.1 Morphological properties of denominal prefixes . . . 1012

20.1.2 Denominal derivations and light verb constructions . . . 1012

20.2 Contracting prefixes . . . 1014

20.2.1 Stative

. . . 1014

20.2.2 Similative

. . . 1016

20.2.3 Proprietive

. . . 1018

20.2.4 Proprietive

. . . 1019

20.2.5 Collective

. . . 1024

20.3 Sigmatic denominal prefixes . . . 1025

20.3.1 Proprietive

. . . 1025

20.3.2 Causative/instrumental

. . . 1027

20.4 Rhotic denominal prefixes . . . 1031

20.4.1 Intransitive denominal verbs . . . 1031

20.4.2 Transitive denominal verbs . . . 1034

20.4.3 Pairing with other denominal prefixes . . . 1036

20.5 Velar denominal prefixes . . . 1038

20.5.1 Intransitive denominal verbs . . . 1038

20.5.2 Transitive denominal verbs . . . 1040

20.5.3 Pairing with other denominal prefixes . . . 1042

20.6 Labial nasal denominal prefixes . . . 1043

20.7 Dental nasal denominal prefixes . . . 1046

20.7.1 Intransitive . . . 1046

20.7.2 Transitive . . . 1050

20.7.3 Pairing with other denominal prefixes . . . 1052

20.8 Other denominal verbs . . . 1053

20.8.1 Zero-derivation or backformation? . . . 1053

20.8.2 Vowel alternation . . . 1055 20.9 Deideophonic verbs . . . 1055 20.9.1

and

deideophonic verbs . . . 1056 20.9.2

deideophonic verbs . . . 1057 20.9.3

and

deideophonc verbs . . . 1058 20.10 The denominal origin of voice prefixes . . . 1059 20.10.1 The origin of the

antipassive prefix . . . 1060 20.10.2 The proprietive and antipassive

prefixes and their

tropative counterpart . . . 1064

20.10.3 Applicative, sigmatic causative and passive . . . 1065

20.11 Loan verbs . . . 1066

20.12 Compound verbs . . . 1067

20.13 Incorporation . . . 1069

20.13.1 Incorporation and denominal derivation . . . 1070

20.13.2 Incorporation and other derivations . . . 1075

20.13.3 Syntactic function of the incorporated word . . . 1075

20.13.4 Incorporation and other constructions . . . 1078

21.1 Introduction . . . 1081

21.1.1 Preverbs . . . 1082

21.1.2 Stem alternation . . . 1085

21.1.3 Other affixes . . . 1086

21.1.4 Evidentiality and person . . . 1087

21.2 Imperfective . . . 1087

21.2.1 Morphology . . . 1088

21.2.2 Use in periphrastic TAME categories . . . 1089

21.2.3 Use in temporal clauses . . . 1093

21.2.4 Use in complement clauses . . . 1094

21.2.5 Hortative . . . 1095

21.2.6 Inchoative . . . 1096

21.2.7 Perception verbs . . . 1097

21.3 Non-past categories . . . 1100

21.3.1 Factual Non-Past . . . 1100

21.3.2 Sensory . . . 1104

21.3.3 Egophoric Present . . . 1112

21.3.4 Tripartite contrast . . . 1117

21.4 Modal categories . . . 1118

21.4.1 Irrealis . . . 1118

21.4.2 Imperative . . . 1126 21.4.3 Prohibitive . . . 1130 21.4.4 Dubitative . . . 1133 21.5 Past categories . . . 1134 21.5.1 Aorist . . . 1134 21.5.2 Inferential . . . 1143 21.5.3 Past Imperfective and Inferential Imperfective . . . 1152 21.5.4 Archaic form . . . 1157 21.6 Secondary Aspectual categories . . . 1158 21.6.1 Progressive . . . 1158 21.6.2 Proximative . . . 1165 21.7 Secondary Modal categories . . . 1168 21.7.1 Apprehensive . . . 1168 21.7.2 Probabilitative . . . 1172 21.7.3 Rhetorical interrogative . . . 1175 21.7.4 Interrogative . . . 1179 21.7.5 Periphrastic modal constructions . . . 1180 21.7.6 Pseudo-concessive . . . 1181 21.8 Non-verbal TAME markers . . . 1182 21.8.1 TAME adverbs . . . 1182 21.8.2 Sentence-final particles . . . 1182 21.8.3 Nouns and the expression of modality . . . 1182

22 Simple clauses 1187

22.1 Word order . . . 1187

22.1.1 Basic word order . . . 1187

22.1.2 Overt and non-overt arguments . . . 1193

22.1.3 Right dislocation . . . 1197

22.2 Sentential adverbs . . . 1199

22.2.1 Tense and aspect . . . 1200

22.2.2 Quantification . . . 1203

22.2.3 Identity . . . 1208

22.2.4 Adverbial Intensifiers . . . 1208

22.2.5 Epistemic modality . . . 1210

22.2.6 Orientation adverbs . . . 1210

22.2.7 Postverbal elements . . . 1213

22.3 Non-verbal predicates . . . 1214

22.4 Noun-verb collocations and light verb constructions . . . 1216

22.4.1 Intransitive verbs . . . 1216

22.4.2 Transitive verbs . . . 1222 22.4.3 Frozen collocations . . . 1236 22.5 Copulas and existential verbs . . . 1241 22.5.1 Basic functions . . . 1242 22.5.2 Possessive constructions . . . 1245 22.5.3 Postverbal copulas . . . 1248 22.5.4 Postverbal negative existential verb . . . 1253 22.5.5 Verb doubling . . . 1255 22.5.6 Other constructions . . . 1256

23 Relative clauses 1257

23.1 Introduction . . . 1257

23.2 Subtypes of relative clauses . . . 1257

23.2.1 Participial relative clauses . . . 1257

23.2.2 Finite relative clauses . . . 1258

23.2.3 Genitival relative . . . 1259

23.2.4 Relator nouns . . . 1260

23.2.5 Interrogative pronouns and correlative constructions . . 1261

23.3 Morphosyntactic specificities of relative clauses . . . 1263

23.3.1 Resumptive pronouns . . . 1263

23.3.2 Totalitative reduplication . . . 1264

23.3.3 Genitive possessor . . . 1265

23.3.4 Possessive prefix neutralization . . . 1266

23.3.5 Determiners . . . 1267

23.3.6 Postverbal elements . . . 1269

23.4 Position of the relativized element . . . 1270

23.4.1 Headless . . . 1271

23.4.2 Prenominal . . . 1271

23.4.3 Head-internal . . . 1271

23.4.4 Postnominal . . . 1274

23.5 Function of the relativized element . . . 1275

23.5.1 Intransitive subject . . . 1275

23.5.2 Transitive subject . . . 1277

23.5.3 Object . . . 1278

23.5.4 Quasi-objects . . . 1281

23.5.5 Goal and locative . . . 1284

23.5.6 Instrument . . . 1287

23.5.7 Comitative . . . 1288

23.5.8 Dative . . . 1289

23.5.9 Time adjuncts . . . 1289 23.5.10 Possessor . . . 1290 23.5.11 Relativization out of complement clause . . . 1294 23.5.12 Constraints on relativizability . . . 1298 23.6 Relative clauses and focalization . . . 1299 23.6.1 Pseudo-cleft constructions . . . 1299 23.6.2 Non-equative pseudo-cleft . . . 1301 23.7 Quantification . . . 1302 23.8 Relative vs. complement clauses . . . 1304 23.8.1 Ambiguity (finite clauses) . . . 1304 23.8.2 Ambiguity (non-finite clauses) . . . 1306 23.8.3 Participial clauses in core argument function . . . 1307 23.8.4 Relativized complement clauses . . . 1308

24 Complement clauses 1311

24.1 Introduction . . . 1311

24.2 Complement types . . . 1311

24.2.1 Velar infinitive clauses . . . 1312

24.2.2 Bare infinitives and dental infinitives . . . 1314

24.2.3 Finite complements . . . 1316

24.2.4 Multiclausal complements . . . 1320

24.2.5 Reported speech . . . 1322

24.3 Morphosyntactic properties of complement clauses . . . 1327

24.3.1 Word order and constituency . . . 1327

24.3.2 Case marking . . . 1327

24.3.3 Determiners . . . 1329

24.3.4 Restrictive and additive focus . . . 1330

24.3.5 Raising of preverb orientation . . . 1330

24.4 Complementation strategies . . . 1333

24.4.1 Relative clauses in core argument function . . . 1333

24.4.2 Participial clauses . . . 1334

24.4.3 Action nominals . . . 1340

24.4.4 Coordination . . . 1344

24.5 Complement-taking verbs . . . 1345

24.5.1 Causative verbs . . . 1346

24.5.2

‘do’ . . . 1352

24.5.3 Modal verbs . . . 1352

24.5.4 Verbs of cognition . . . 1359

24.5.5 Verbs of perception . . . 1362

24.5.6 Phasal verbs and other aspectual auxiliaries . . . 1364

24.5.7 Similative verbs . . . 1369

24.5.8 Complement-taking adjectival verbs . . . 1371

24.6 Complement-taking nouns . . . 1372

24.6.1 Complement-taking nouns and denominal verbs . . . . 1372

24.6.2 Adnominal complement clause and possessor . . . 1373

24.6.3 Overview of complement-taking nouns . . . 1374

24.6.4 Relative clauses as a complementation strategy . . . 1379

24.7 Syntactic errors . . . 1381

25.1 Classification of multiclausal constructions . . . 1383

25.1.1 Marked subordinate clauses . . . 1383

25.1.2 Correlative clauses . . . 1384

25.1.3 Periphrastic tenses and subordination . . . 1385

25.1.4 Unmarked embedded clauses . . . 1386

25.1.5 Serial verb constructions . . . 1387

25.1.6 Coordination and parataxis . . . 1387

25.1.7 Tail-head linkeage . . . 1388

25.2 Conditional constructions . . . 1389

25.2.1 Real conditionals . . . 1390

25.2.2 Necessary condition . . . 1392

25.2.3 Concessive conditional . . . 1392

25.2.4 Counterfactuals . . . 1397

25.3 Temporal clauses . . . 1398

25.3.1 Iterative coincidence . . . 1398

25.3.2 Precedence . . . 1398

25.3.3 Subsequence . . . 1401

25.3.4 Concurrence . . . 1403

25.4 Manner clauses . . . 1406

25.4.1 Serial verb construction . . . 1406

25.4.2 Manner converbs . . . 1410

25.5 Causality . . . 1411

25.5.1 Consequence . . . 1411

25.5.2 Cause . . . 1412

25.5.3 Prerequisite . . . 1415

25.5.4 Purposive clauses . . . 1415

25.5.5 Justification clauses . . . 1418

25.5.6 Precautioning clauses . . . 1419

25.6 Other constructions . . . 1420 25.6.1 Adversative . . . 1420 25.6.2 Addition . . . 1424 25.6.3 Exceptive . . . 1428 25.6.4 Disjunction . . . 1430

26 Degree and comparison 1431

26.1 Absolute degree and intensifiers . . . 1431 26.1.1 Degree adverbs . . . 1431 26.1.2 Degree nominals . . . 1436 26.1.3 Serial verb construction . . . 1440 26.1.4 Exceptive . . . 1440 26.2 Comparative . . . 1441 26.2.1 The postpositions

and

. . . 1441 26.2.2 Intensifier

‘a little’ . . . 1443 26.2.3 The negative verb neg+

‘(not) just be’ . . . 1444 26.2.4 The egressive postposition

‘up from’ . . . 1445 26.2.5 Negative existential verbs . . . 1445 26.3 Equative and similative . . . 1446 26.3.1 Entity equative . . . 1446 26.3.2 Property equative . . . 1450 26.3.3 Similative . . . 1451 26.4 Superlative . . . 1453 26.4.1 Degree adverb . . . 1453 26.4.2 Possessed participle . . . 1454 26.4.3 Negative existential . . . 1455

27 Kinship 1457

27.1 Introduction . . . 1457

27.2 Kinship terms by generations . . . 1459

27.2.1 Ascending generations . . . 1459

27.2.2 Siblings . . . 1462

27.2.3 Cousins . . . 1463

27.2.4 Descending generations . . . 1465

27.2.5 Spouses and affines . . . 1469

27.3 Marriage rules . . . 1470

27.4 Lineages . . . 1471

27.5 Omaha skewing . . . 1472

27.5.1 Skewing rules and merging rules . . . 1472

27.5.2 Cross-cousin lineages . . . 1476 27.5.3 Maternal parallel cousin lineages . . . 1478 27.5.4 Application . . . 1478

References 1481

Index 1503

Name index . . . 1503

Index of Japhug forms . . . 1507

Subject index . . . 1551

This grammar has been written with the help of colleagues, friends and family. I wish to thank in particular:

• Tshendzin

and Dpalcan

, who taught me Japhug.

• Andzin, Ayang/Kunbzang Mtsho, Tshering Skyid, for telling me stories in Japhug.

• Norbu

and Pengfeng

, for their help and support during my stays in Mbarkham.

• Jackson T.-S. Sun

and Lin Youjing

, from whom I have learnt a lot, especially during our time together doing fieldwork in Mbarkham and Chengdu.

• Laurent Sagart, for his invaluable help for preparing my first fieldwork trip, and for teaching me Chinese historical phonology.

• Yang Dongfang

and Chang Yueh-chin

, for their help during my first stay in Mbarkham in 2002, and for introducing me to Tshendzin.

• My former PhD students Lai Yunfan

, Gong Xun

and Zhang Shuya

, for their challenging questions and comments, and for help- ing recording some of the texts in the corpus.

• Alexis Michaud, Boyd Michailovksy and Séverine Guillaume, without whom I would not have made my Japhug texts available on the Pangloss archive.

• Céline Buret, Rémi Bonnet, Benjamin Galliot, who helped producing sev- eral versions of the Japhug-French-Chinese dictionary.

• Alexander Delaporte, for writing a program to add doi links automatically.

• Martin Haspelmath, for accepting this manuscript in the series ‘Studies in

Diversity Linguistics’ and for organizing the evaluation process.

• Thomas Pellard and Sebastian Nordhoff, for their guidance with L

TEX.

• Anton Antonov, Curtis Bartosik and Aimée Lahaussois, each of whom pro- vided detailed corrections on half a dozen chapters.

• the other LSP reviewers: Laura Arnold, Tom Bossuyt, Michael Daniel, Valérie Guérin, Ariel Gutman, Andreas Hölzl, Katarzyna Janic, Seppo Kittilä, Joseph Lovestrand, Lachlan Mackenzie, Bruno Olsson, Bastian Persohn, Yvonne Treis, Jeroen van de Weijer and Ye Jingting

.

• Li Shang

, Theo Yeh

, Roland Pooth and Marc Miyake, who provided useful corrections on the draft.

• Archi and Mira, for being there.

1 first person

2 second person

3 third person

[II], [III] stem II, stem III abil abilitative acaus anticausative

add additive

aff affirmative anthr anthroponym

aor aorist

apass antipassive appl applicative appr apprehensive

auto autive

aux auxiliary bare.inf bare infinitive cataph cataphoric caus causative cisl cislocative coll collective comit comitative

comp standard of comparison cond conditional

conv converb

dat dative

deg degree

dem demonstrative

du dual

dub dubitative emph emphatic

erg ergative

facil facilitative fact factual non-past gen genitive

genr generic

ger gerund

hort hortative

hum human

idph:X pattern X ideophone ifr inferential

imm immediate imp imperative indef indefinite inf infinitive inf:II dental infinitive interj interjection inv inverse ipfv imperfective irr irrealis lnk linker neg negative nmlz nominalization obj object

obl oblique

pass passive pcp participle peg peg circumfix

pl plural

poss possessive

prob probabilitative

prog progressive

prop proprietive

prox proximal

proxm proximative prs egophoric present

pst past

purp purposive

qu question

recip reciprocal

refl reflexive

rh.q rhetorical interrogative

rog rogative

sens sensory

sfp sentence final particle

sg singular

stat stative

subj subject

total totalitative reduplication

topo toponym

tr transitive

tral translocative

trop tropative

unexp.deg unexpected degree

†XXX

incorrect form

*XXX reconstructed form

X* Kleene star

1.1 The Japhug language

The Japhug language (local name

) is spoken by several thousand speak- ers in Mbarkhams county (in Chinese Maerkang

), Rngaba prefecture, Si- chuan province, China, in the

<xiāng> ‘townships’ of

(

,

),

(

,

) and

(

,

), collectively called

or

(from which the name Japhug is taken).

All speakers of Japhug are classified as ethnic Tibetans (

).

This work focuses almost exclusively on the dialect of

village (

, 32° 12′ 43″ N, 101° 57′ 42″ E), henceforth written as Kamnyu.

Japhug is one of the four Core Gyalrong languages (Sun 2000a), Tshobdun, Zbu and Situ, represented in Figure 1.1. It is particularly closely related to the West Gyalrongic languages: Khroskyabs, Stau and Tangut (Sun 2000b; Jacques et al. 2017).

Core Gyalrong and West Gyalrongic form the Gyalrongic group (Sun 2000b), itself a subbranch of Burmo-Gyalrongic (Jacques & Michaud 2011) and possibly the larger Tibeto-Gyalrongic group (Sagart et al. 2019).

Japhug is in contact with both Standard Mandarin and a local variety of Si- chuanese. Since no study has focused on the Sichuan Mandarin as spoken by Gyalrong speakers in Mbarkham, the present work represents all Chinese words in Standard Mandarin and pinyin (between chevrons), except for highly nativized Chinese words, presented in IPA.

Situ Gyalrong and Amdo Tibetan used to be the two dominant languages in the area, and many speakers of Japhug also have a passive understanding of Situ,

1The township of Gdongrbyad is however not traditionally included under the nametɕɤpʰɯ, and is referred instead by the term_sɤŋu.

2The language can be referred to as茶堡话_chápùhuàin Chinese, reading the character堡aspù rather than the more usual_bǎo. In Western languages, the ‘ph’ should be pronounced as a stop rather than labiodental fricative, and the ‘g’ read as a voiceless stop. In French for instance, I call the language[dʒapuk].

30.5 31.0 31.5 32.0 32.5 33.0

101 102 103 104

Language

Amdo Horpa Japhug Khams Khroskyabs Mandarin Qiang Situ Tshobdun Yelong Zbu Figure 1.1: A map of Gyalrong languages

and sometimes also of Tshobdun and Zbu. There is no immediate intercompre- hensibility between Gyalrong languages, and speakers of Japhug reportedly need several months to acquire basic conversational skills in Tshobdun.

1.2 The Japhug corpus

With the exception of a chapter in Lin (1993: 468–486) on phonology and a few articles by Lin Youjing (Lin & Luoerwu 2003; Lin 2011) (all on the Tatshi dialect), the available data on Japhug are essentially from my own fieldwork, based on nine trips (July-August 2002, April-July 2003, July-August 2005, July 2010, July- August 2012, April-May 2014, July-August 2015, July-August 2016, May 2018) and constant contact by phone with my main language consultants. Some texts have been recorded with the help of my former PhD students Gong Xun and Lai Yun- fan.

A short grammar (Jacques 2008), some texts (Jacques & Chen 2010) and a dic- tionary (Jacques 2015b) have previously been made available, to which a corpus

3See for example (145) (§8.2.9), (35) (§23.3.6) and (126) (§24.5.3.1), where Tshendzin recounts her experience as a teacher in Tshobdun village, where she had to learn Tshobdun to make herself understood by the pupils’ parents.

of transcribed stories on the Pangloss archive (Michailovsky et al. 2014; Michaud et al. 2016) can be added, available on https://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/Japhug.

My main consultant is Tshendzin (Chenzhen

, female, born 1950), a retired schoolteacher (a native speaker of Japhug, bilingual in Sichuan Mandarin since childhood), whose speech and grammaticality judgements are taken as the norm of this grammar.

Stories have also been collected from her husband

Dpalcan

, her maternal uncle Andzin, her nephew (sister’s child) Ayang/Kunbzang Mtsho, and other Kamnyu people, in particular Tshering Skyid. Most traditional stories are typical of Tibetan folklore and not specific to Japhug-speaking areas, but some procedural texts, descriptions of local plants and animals, as well as accounts of local topography, include unique insight into local culture. In addition, a few conversations have been recorded.

The majority of examples in this grammar (except in the grammar sketch in chapter 2) are taken from texts or conversations rather than elicited. Most of the texts cited are already available on Pangloss. Temporal synchronization between transcription and audio was automatically accomplished using forced alignment (Macaire 2020), and whenever available, a hyperlink to the doi of the segment (Vasile et al. 2020) is provided for each example sentence in the grammar.

In addition, I indicate for all examples a title in ASCII characters: Hill (2017:

305) reports that this citation format is sufficient to find the relevant data.

Conversations are not included in the archive at the moment of writing, but individual sound files of the sentences quoted in this grammar are preserved in a private database. In addition, a certain number of sentences have been noted down during participant observation, and lack recordings.

Since speakers I have worked with only recount a limited number of tradi- tional stories (some of which in any case are from written sources; in particular, the story ‘The fox’

told by Kunbzang Mtsho is clearly adapted from the Grimm fairy tale ‘Der goldene Vogel’), I have resorted to translation from Chi- nese to collect a larger corpus. Tshendzin provided surprisingly idiomatic render- ings of various storybooks for children (including Grimm tales, Andersen tales, Liaozhai zhiyi

, Arabian nights and Xiyouji

). These documents are not given the same value as more spontaneous texts, and are systematically indicated by adding the extension “-zh” to the document name. Systematic com- parison with the original text is offered whenever any suspicion of calque from

4The doi were semi-automatically added using the programDOI-Mercywritten by Alexander Delaporte. Only the informative part of the URL is indicated. To obtain the complete URL, the string https://doi.org/10.24397/pangloss- has to be prefixed to it.

Chinese exists. However, the immense morphosyntactic difference between Chi- nese and Japhug makes it necessary to completely rework the structure of the sentences in most cases (see for instance 263, §21.7.1.2), so that even if there is un- doubtedly influence from Chinese, even the way Chinese is adapted into Japhug is itself an interesting topic of research.

1.3 Structure of the grammar

Rather than being intended as the final word on Japhug grammar, this book is conceived as a tool for exploring the Japhug corpus and learning the language.

The reader is invited to start with the grammar sketch (chapter 2). The rest of the grammar contains two chapters on phonology (3, §4), five on nouns and noun phrases (5 to 9), eleven on verbal morphology (11 to 21), five on syntax (§22 to 26), as well as a chapter 10 on expressives and another one 27 on kinship.

In writing this grammar I have always preferred to abstain from definite judge- ment rather than provide incorrect data, and the description remains thus incom- plete in many aspects, in particular in accounting for minute semantic differences between similar constructions, or on the grammaticality of borderline sentences (about which speakers sometimes change their mind). There are many points of uncertainty in many aspects of the morphosyntax (and even in some topics of phonology), and further research on finer points of phonology, morphosyntax and historical linguistics are much needed, with additional data from different speakers.

1.4 Language and culture

This work focuses on the grammar of the language, and only contains a single chapter (27, on the kinship system) dedicated to ethnology. However, the corpus that has been collected contains many traditional stories, as well as procedural texts describing the traditional life before massive sinicization. Examples from these texts are found on nearly all the pages of this grammar, and their interest is not purely linguistic. Thus, the section on place names presents a mythological story explaining the origin of a name (79, §5.2.1), the chapter on orientation pre- verbs contains an account of the traditional living-room/kitchen (§15.1.4.4) and an introduction to weaving (§15.1.4.5), and the section on antipassive derivations includes a passage on rain-calling and mountain tutelary spirits (see example 161,

§18.6.7.3). In this sense, traditional culture permeates this grammar from begin-

ning till end.

Further ethnographical work is necessary, in particular on kinship (Zhang &

Fan 2020), traditional houses (Dong 2018), weaving and ethnobotany, and it is

hoped that this grammar (together with the dictionary) will make it possible

to properly describe local culture through the medium of Japhug rather than

Chinese.

This chapter offers a short introduction to the phonology and morphosyntax of the Japhug language. It is written for typologists and comparative linguists wanting to get a quick general picture of this language, before delving into the core of the grammar.

Morphosyntactic phenomena are illustrated mainly using simplified elicited examples rather than examples gleaned from texts and conversations as in the rest of the grammar.

2.1 Phonology and word structure

Japhug has 8 vowels (§3.3.1) and 50 consonant phonemes (§3.2.1), which can be combined into more than 400 biconsonantal or triconsonantal clusters in the on- set (§4.2). Additional clusters are attested across syllable boundaries (§4.2.3.1). In coda position, only 12 consonants are found, and no clusters are possible: several phonological contrasts are neutralized (§3.2.2).

The IPA-based transcription in this grammar is a spelling system that is not strictly phonological: it uses different symbols to represent the allophones of some phonemes (in particular

, §3.2.1, §4.2.1.1). An alternative Tibetan-based orthography for use by native speakers (§4.4) is also provided.

Japhug is very far removed from the isolating, tonal and “monosyllabic” type once considered to be typical of Sino-Tibetan languages. Japhug lacks tonal con- trasts (§3.7), and monosyllabic and monomorphemic words are a minority (§11.6).

Words of six syllables or more are not rare in the corpus, as shown by the verb form (1) below.

(1) a-kɤ-tɯ-nɯ-rɤʑí-nɯ irr-pfv-2-auto-stay-pl

‘May you stay (here).’

Non-final syllables have strong phonotactic constraints at least in the native

vocabulary (§3.8.2). The last syllable of verbal and nominal stems generally re-

ceives stress (as the syllable

in 1, §3.7) and allows the maximal number of

vowel and consonant contrasts.

2.2 Parts of speech

Unlike other Trans-Himalayan languages such as Sinitic, where the identification of word classes requires extensive syntactic analysis (von der Gabelentz 1881;

Chao 1968), most parts of speech in Japhug can be straightforwardly defined on the basis of morphology.

Japhug has open and closed parts of speech. The three main open parts of speech are nouns, verbs and ideophones.

Nouns can in their turn be subdivided into four classes with different morpho- logical properties. First, inalienably possessed nouns (§5.1.2) require the presence of a possessive prefix (§5.1.1). Second, alienably possessed nouns allow a posses- sive prefix, but do not require it. Third, counted noun (§7.3) take numeral prefixes (§7.3.1). Fourth, unpossessible nouns cannot be prefixed (§5.2).

Verbs are at the core of Japhug grammar, and have the richest morphology of all parts of speech – no less than nine chapters (from 11 to 21), about half of the grammar, is devoted to verbal morphology. Unlike other Trans-Himalayan languages such as Khaling, whose verbs are a closed class (Jacques et al. 2012), Ja- phug has a productive system of denominal and deideophonic morphology (§20), allowing a constant creation of new verbs. Apart from a handful of defective verbs (§14.2.2, §14.3.4), all verbs require orientation preverbs (§15.1) in most finite forms, and are the only part of speech compatible with these preverbs. Person indexation morphology (§14.2.1) is also a criterion for identifying verbs, but it is not always applicable since some verbs only occur in 3sg with no indexation affixes (§14.2.7), and since a few predicative words have adopted number indexa- tion suffixes by analogy with verbs (§14.7).

Ideophones (§10.1) can also be distinguished from other parts of speech by specific morphological patterns (§10.1.2).

There is no specific class of “adjective” in Japhug. Words describing properties belong to three different parts of speech: adjectival stative verbs, which can be distinguished from other stative verbs by their ability to undergo the tropative derivation (§17.5), ideophones, and also property nouns, a subclass of inalienably possessed nouns (§5.1.2.7).

Closed parts of speech comprise numerals (§7.1) and pronouns (chapter 6),

which also have specific morphology, and invariable words including postpo-

sitions (§8.2), determiners (§9.1), adverbs (§22.2, §26.1.1), linkers (§25.1.6, §9.1.5.5),

interjections and calling sounds (§10.2) and sentence final particles (§10.4).

2.3 Nominal morphology

This section presents nominal inflection, derivation as well as grammatical cat- egories expressed by syntactic rather than morphological means within noun phrases and postpositional phrases.

2.3.1 Non-attested nominal morphological categories

There is no gender, definiteness, obviation, negation and tense-aspect-modality- evidential inflection or derivation on nouns in Japhug.

The whole category of gender is completely absent from Japhug grammar;

there are only suffixes for male and female animals, and even these are borrowed from Tibetan (§5.7.7).

There is no dedicated marker of definiteness (§9.1.4.3), but the aforementioned topic marker

only occurs on definite referents (§9.1.5.2). Indefiniteness can be marked by the indefinite article

(§9.1.4.1) derived from the numeral ‘one’

(§7.1.1).

While an obviative/proximative contrast is reflected by some uses of the in- verse prefix in the inflection of transitive verbs (§14.3.3.2), Japhug lacks obvia- tive morphology on nouns (§5.1.1.3), unlike Algonquian languages (for instance Valentine 2001: 183).

Polarity and Tense-aspect-modality-evidentiality, which are prominently en- coded by verbal morphology (§13.1, chapter 21), even on nominalized verb forms (§16.1.1.2), are completely absent from nominal morphology, and various types of participial clauses have to be used instead (§5.7.10).

2.3.2 Number

Number can be indicated by the dual

(§9.1.1.1) and plural

(§9.1.1.2) determin- ers. These determiners are not mutually incompatible with numerals, as shown by (2), where the redundant

‘two’ can be added (these redundant forms, though grammatical, are not very common). The fact that numerals (and other postnominal modifiers, including relative clauses) can be inserted between nouns and number determiners show that they are not analyzable as number suffixes.

(2) jla

male.hybrid.yak (ʁnɯz) two

ni du

‘The two male hybrid yaks’

Table 2.1: Numeral prefixes of counted nouns

Numeral

‘day’

1

‘one day’

2

‘two days’

3

‘three days’

4

,

‘four days’

5

,

‘five days’

6

‘six days’

7

‘seven days’

8

‘eight days’

9

‘nine days’

10

‘ten days’

Some nouns however do have an inflectional number category, expressed by a prefixal paradigm partially illustrated in Table 2.1 (§7.3.1).

This type of nouns corresponds to the category called ‘classifiers’ (Chao 1968:

518, Aikhenvald 2000) (

<liàngcí> in Chinese) in works on the grammar of Chinese, Japanese and other languages of East Asia. However, this terminology is particularly clumsy in the case of Japhug. Unlike in languages such as Chinese or Thai, nouns in Japhug do not require a ‘classifier’ to be used with a numeral, as shown by (3)

and (4).

(3) tɕʰeme girl

ci

one/indef

‘A/one girl’

(4) tɕʰeme girl

χsɯm three

‘Three girls’

When occurring as postnominal modifiers (5), the two main functions of nouns with numerals prefixes are partitive (‘one of the

’) and distributive (‘each

depending on the constructions where they appear (§7.3.2).

(5) tɕʰeme girl

tɯ-rdoʁ one-piece

‘One of the girls’; ‘Each girl...’; ‘One girl’

1The numeralci‘one’ is grammaticalized as an indefinite marker (§9.1.4.1).

In addition, although a handful of ‘classifiers’ are indeed specific to a particular semantic category of nouns (§7.3.3), the generic ‘classifier’

‘one piece’ can be used as modifier with nearly all referents.

For these reasons, this grammar favours the term counted noun based on mor- phology, rather than “classifier” (an extremely marginal function of these words) or “quantifier” (not specific enough, since there are many quantifiers that are not counted nouns, §9.1.3) to refer to nouns with numeral prefixes such as

‘one day’ or

‘one piece’.

2.3.3 Case marking

Japhug lacks case inflection, but has a few regular adverbializing derivations (§5.8), whose functions resemble that of oblique cases: the comitative

(§5.8.1) and the perlative (§5.8.2).

Grammatical relations on noun phrases are encoded by postpositions such as the ergative

(§8.2.2), the genitive

(§8.2.3) and the comitative

(§8.2.5), as well as relator nouns (§8.3) such as the dative

or

(§8.3.1). With the sole exception of the genitive forms of a few pronouns such as

1sg:gen (from

‘1sg’ and

, §6.3), the postpositions do not merge phonologically with the previous word. As shown by (6) and (7), they are located at the end of the noun phrase, further away from the head noun than all determiners, including number markers.

(6) [[ɯ-pi

3sg.poss-elder.sibling ni]

du

erg pɣa bird

nɯ dem

pa-mto-ndʑi 3→3

:aor-see-du

‘His two elder siblings saw the bird.’

(7) [[tɯrme person

ra]

pl

gen

nɯ-fsapaʁ 3pl.poss-cattle

‘People’s cattle’

In addition, it is possible to make a pause between the noun and the postposi- tion

or

that follows: the postposition can be procliticized to the following word. A considerable number of examples can be found in the corpus (§8.2.1).

While Situ Gyalrong does have locative suffixes (Lin 1993: 325–331), Japhug

only uses postpositions (§8.2.4.1) and/or relator nouns (§8.3.4.5) to express loca-

tion, goal and source of motion. The only traces of the proto-Gyalrong suffixes

are the locative postposition

, which was degrammaticalized from a suffix

(§8.2.4.1), and a few isolated lexicalized forms (§8.2.4.4, §8.3.4.5).

2.3.4 Possession

The main nominal morphosyntactic category expressed by an inflectional para- digm in Japhug is possession, encoded by a series of possessive prefixes (§5.1.1).

2.3.4.1 Possessive paradigm

Table 2.2: Possessive paradigms

Person Prefix

‘head’

‘house’

1sg

2sg

3sg

1du

2/3du

1pl

2/3pl

indefinite

generic

The possessive paradigm is nearly the same for all nouns (Table 2.2), but some nouns such as

‘head’ require a indefinite possessor prefix

,

or

when no definite possessor is present, while other nouns like

‘house’ can oc- cur in bare stem form. The former are inalienably possessed nouns, comprising in particular body parts (§5.1.2.3) and kinship terms (§5.1.2.4), while the latter are alienably possessed nouns. Some inalienably possessed nouns have been gramma- ticalized as relator nouns (§8.3) marking the syntactic function of noun phrases.

Furthermore, a handful of nouns have become TAME markers (§21.8.3.1).

Possessors are obligatorily indicated by possessive prefixes. An overt posses- sor can be optionally added. For instance, the meaning ‘my cow’ can be expressed by the noun form

with a simple possessive prefix, but this noun can be additionally preceded by the genitive pronoun

(8) or even by the absolutive

.

(8) (aʑɯɣ) 1sg

a-nɯŋa 1sg.poss-cow

‘My cow’