A grammar of Kurtöp / / by Gwendolyn Hyslop.

• Superior document: Brill's Tibetan studies library ; Languages of the greater Himalayan region v. 5/18.
• Author: Hyslop, Gwendolyn.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2017]
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's Tibetan Studies Library 18.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (474 pages) :; illustrations.

A grammar of Kurtöp is the first descriptive grammar of Kurtöp, a threatened language of Bhutan, and the only reference grammar of any East Bodish language. The East Bodish languages are a relatively unstudied branch of the larger Tibeto-Burman family, situated in Bhutan and neighbouring regions in Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh. The chapters introduce the language and the people who speak in a historical context and then go on to detail the synchronic and diachronic phonology, discuss word classes and cause structure, morphosyntax and syntax, and illustrate rich system of evidentiality and related categories. The book will be of interest to Tibeto-Burmanists, historical linguists and those interested in the prehistory of the eastern Himalayas, and to typologists.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Contrastive Phonology -- Non-contrastive Phonology -- Word Classes and Word-formation Processes -- Lexicon -- Syntactic Overview -- The Noun Phrase -- Post-head Nominal Modifiers -- Proforms -- Case-Marking -- The Verbal Complex -- Copulas and Non-verbal Predication -- Nominalization -- Tense/Aspect -- Evidentiality, Mirativity, and Related Categories -- Multi-clause Constructions -- Negation and Non-declarative Speech Acts -- Rhetorical Devices -- References -- Appendix A: Texts -- Appendix B: Abbreviations and Typological Features -- Appendix C: A Guide to the Examples -- Appendix D: Database of Recordings and Speakers from which Examples are drawn -- Index.