xiii, 145 p. : map. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Nominalization and its various functions is a topic of considerable current interest in Tibeto-Burman (TB) studies and has both typological and historical implications. This thesis documents and discusses data of nominalizing velar prefixes in the different branches of the TB language family. Based on the reconstruction ofa Proto-TibetoBurman (PTB) 'adjectival prefix' *gV- suggested by TB wide-scale comparativists such as Wolfenden, Shafer, Benedict, and Matisoff, this study incorporates extensive data on velar prefixes covering other functions that are, just like deriving adjectival modifiers, typically associated with nominalization in TB. The various pieces of evidence thus suggest that the existence of a PTB *gV- nominalizer is the best explanation for the distribution of forms and functions of the respective prefixes in TB languages. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Scott DeLancey, Chair; Dr. Spike Gildea

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

xvi, 138 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This study attempts to reconstruct Proto-Boro-Garo (PBG), the ancient language from which the modern Boro-Garo (BG) family evolved. BG is a largely underdocumented sub-branch of Tibeto-Burman that is spoken primarily in the Brahmaputra valley of northeastern India. While other comparative studies have focused on PBG phonology, this study concentrates on grammatical elements and syntactic structures. An initial reconstruction is attained by examining data from the limited number of descriptive grammars available on BG languages and using the comparative method to determine the oldest forms of grammatical elements. Where elements correspond across languages, they can be reconstructed for the common ancestor. When they do not, we have evidence for independent innovation. This is accounted for, when possible, by language-internal reconstruction. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Scott DeLancey, Chair; Dr. Spike Gildea

This dissertation is a description of Darma, an under-documented Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the eastern corner of the state of Uttarakhand, India. With fewer than 2,600 speakers and no writing system, Darma is considered endangered. This is the most comprehensive description of Darma to date. Like the other Himalayan languages, the genetic classification of Darma has not been definitively determined. It is widely described as a western Himalayish language that is closely related to Byansi, Chaudangsi and Rangkas (the latter being extinct). The data presented in this dissertation were obtained through three methodologies: direct elicitation, participant observation, and the discourse-centered approach to data collection advocated by University of Texas linguistic anthropologist Joel Sherzer. The discourse-centered methodology relies on naturally occurring speech, including conversation, stories, songs and public dialogues. The resulting data are contextualized in a cultural framework, which is useful to linguists and anthropologists alike; and the majority of examples presented come from these texts. The dissertation is presented in five sections with a total of nineteen chapters and a glossary. The first section provides background information on the Darma people, the language, and how this project came about. The second section describes the sound system of Darma, including its typologically unusual class of oral stops. The third section introduces the words that comprise a noun phrase including nouns, personal pronouns, and pronominal demonstrative forms, which are marked on a spatial axis (e.g. proximate, neutral, distal, and non-visible). The fourth section examines the affixes that combine with verb stems to form clauses and sentences. This includes a discussion of the basic SV/AOV constituent order, and the ergative/absolutive alignment system. Here nominalization/relativization, a common feature of Tibeto-Burman languages, is also presented along with the clause chaining strategy commonly found in narrative discourse. The analysis for this dissertation is informed by a functional-typological perspective, and an effort has been made to capture general patterns found in the grammar. The goals are to provide a description of the grammar of Darma in a format that is accessible to many, and to avoid relying on any overly specific theoretical framework that may become obsolete. / text

xxxix, 729 p. : ill. (some col.) / Kurtop is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by approximately 15,000 people in Northeastern Bhutan. This dissertation is the first descriptive grammar of the language, based on extensive fieldwork and community-driven language documentation in Bhutan. When possible, analyses are presented in typological and historical/comparative perspectives and illustrated with ample data, drawn mainly from texts but also elicitation as need be. Within Tibeto-Burman, Kurtop has been placed within the East Bodish sub-branch. Data presented in this study support this placement and confirm previous observations that the East Bodish languages are close relatives, but not direct descendants of Classical Tibetan. The link between the current East Bodish languages and Bhutanese prehistory remains unclear but the Kurtop grammar is a first step at understanding the historical relations. The most remarkable aspect of Kurtop phonology is the tonal system, which is contrastive following the sonorants, but incipient following the obstruents, except the palatal fricative, for which tone has completely replaced a previous contrast in voicing. Tone is present only on the first syllable of stems, where vowels are also slightly longer. Kurtop is agglutinating and polysynthetic. Words generally consist of two or three syllables, but may be as long as five or six, depending mainly on suffixing morphology. Like most languages of South Asia, Kurtop exhibits verb-final syntax and the typological correlations that follow, including postposition (or relator noun constructions), auxiliaries after the verb, and sentence-final particles. The case marking system is 'pragmatic' ergative, where an ergative marker is required in some transitive contexts, but not in others. In other contexts, including for some intransitive verbs, the ergative signals a variety of pragmatic or semantic factors. This ergative system, though typologically unusual, is characteristic of many Tibeto-Burman languages, including neighboring Dzongkha and Tshangla. Nominalization and clause-chaining are two essential components of Kurtop syntax, constituting a majority of clauses and a diachronic source for much of the main clause grammar. The evidential/mirative system in Kurtop is also of typological interest, encoding a wide range of values pertaining to speaker expectation as well as mirativity and source of knowledge. / Committee in charge: Scott DeLancey, Chairperson and Advisor; Spike Gildea, Member; Doris Payne, Member; Gyoung-Ah Lee, Member; William Ayres, Outside Member

Karbi is a Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken by half a million people in the Karbi Anglong district in Assam, Northeast India, and surrounding areas in the extended Brahmaputra Valley area. It is an agglutinating, verb-final language. This dissertation offers a description of the dialect spoken in the hills of the Karbi Anglong district. It is primarily based on a corpus that was created during a total of fifteen months of original fieldwork, while building on and expanding on research reported by Grüßner in 1978. While the exact phylogenetic status of Karbi inside TB has remained controversial, this dissertation points out various putative links to other TB languages. The most intriguing aspect of Karbi phonology is the tone system, which carries a low functional load. While three tones can be contrasted on monosyllabic roots, the rich agglutinating morphology of Karbi allows the formation of polysyllabic words, at which level tones lose most of their phonemicity, while still leaving systematic phonetic traces. Nouns and verbs represent the two major word classes of Karbi at the root level; property-concept terms represent a subclass of verbs. At the heart of Karbi morphosyntax, there are two prefixes of Proto-TB provenance that have diachronically shaped the grammar of the language: the possessive prefix a- and the nominalizer ke-. Possessive a- attaches to nouns that are modified by preposed elements and represents the most frequent morpheme in the corpus. Nominalization involving ke- forms the basis for a variety of predicate constructions, including most of Karbi subordination as well as a number of main clause constructions. In addition to nominalization, subordination commonly involves clause chaining. Noun phrases may be marked for their clausal role via -phān `non-subject' or -lòng `locative' but frequently remain unmarked for role. Their pragmatic status can be indicated with information structure markers for topic, focus, and additivity. Commonly used discourse constructions include elaborate expressions and parallelism more generally, general extenders, copy verb constructions, as well as a number of final particles. Audio files are available of the texts given in the appendices, particular examples illustrating phonological issues, and phonetic recordings of tone minimal sets. Supplemental files are located at: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/13657