Himalayan Linguistics
Review
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics
Edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler
Leiden: Brill 2011
ISBN 978-90-04-19448-9
Vii + 322 pages
Reviewed by Kristine A. Hildebrandt

Himalayan Linguistics, Vol. 12(1). © Himalayan Linguistics 2013
ISSN 1544-7502

Review

Himalayan Languages and Linguistics
Edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler
Leiden: Brill 2011
ISBN 978-90-04-19448-9
Vii + 322 pages
Reviewed by Kristine A. Hildebrandt
In addition to its many reference grammars, the Brill series Languages of the Greater
Himalayan Region (itself subsumed under the Tibetan Studies Library series) now also puts out edited
volumes of thematic and areal concentrations. This review concerns one such volume organized andco-edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler in 2011: Himalayan Languages and Linguistics: Studies in
Phonology, Semantics, Morphology and Syntax. This review is organized into summaries of eachchapter, along with comments on particular strengths or gaps. The review finishes with a generalcommentary about the place of an edited volume such as this in a linguistics library or graduate level
curriculum.
This volume emerged from a selection of papers delivered at the 11th annual Himalayan
Linguistics Symposium, held at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand in December 2005.
In all, there are nine chapters from ten contributors, including the introductory chapter. The
introductory chapter, written by the co-editors notes that the volume represents an attempt to fillgaps in our knowledge base on properties and changes through time to selected languages of theHimalayas, including sub-groupings of Tibeto-Burman and some Indo-Aryan languages. As such, it
is broad in scope, and so at first glance it is difficult to find unifying characteristics to this volume
other than its wide geographic range. However, the impact and importance of this volume becomes
more apparent when all contributions are considered in relation to each other.
The first section is focused on “The Himalayas in history,” with a single contribution. Georgevan Driem (“Lost in the sands of time somewhere north of the Bay of Bengal”), in considering thehistorical geographic homeland of Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman considers the potential benefits
and challenges of correlating population genetics, data on major and minor shifts in climate,agricultural practices and other available extra-linguistic information on material cultures withlanguage sub-group movements and re-settlement patterns. As such, he turns an eye to research andfindings (as evidenced in his extensive bibliography) on linguistic paleontology, paleoclimatology andpaleobotany as they may (or may not) play a role in strengthening hypotheses on linguistic phylogeny
for these two families. Although his chapter seems to raise more questions than it answers, he also
notes some tentative and tantalizing evidence (through reconstructible roots for rice plant sub-speciesterms) that ancient Austroasiatic peoples were the original cultivators of rice.
Part two concerns “Phonology and script”, with two contributions. Heleen Plaisier begins her
account “A key to four transcription systems of Lepcha” by noting that the orthography of thelanguage is over three hundred years old, and that the transcription alternatives for those wishing towrite in Lepcha but without training in the original orthography typically resort to ‘transcriptions,’

Hildebrandt: Review of Turin and Zeisler
either in Roman or Devanagri orthographies. These alternatives come with their own benefits anddrawbacks. This account is written in both a comparative tone as well as an instructive one. Plaisiercompares four transcriptions systems with the native orthography in order to observe specificphonological changes in the language, and also to encourage consistent use of symbols that arephonologically grounded. Of particular interest was her coverage of retroflexes, in particular her
preference for Cr-cluster representation vs. the Mainwaring dot (e.g. kṛa, hṛa). This is done
presumably to recognize the origin of the retroflex in Lepcha and to more closely approximate its
phonetic value in the contemporary language. One reaction to this chapter is a question about whatdimensions of the larger Lepcha community make use of specific transcription systems. A related
reaction is to what extent Plaisier’s recommendations have been (or could be) tested by the Lepcha
community across different genres.
Hiruyuki Suzuki provides a phonological sketch of Sogpho Tibetan, spoken in DanbaCounty, Sichuan, China. While speakers culturally self-affiliate with rGyalrong, Suzuki provides
phonological and some lexical evidence in this account of Sogpho as a distinct variety. Suzuki’s
description includes a number of sophisticated impressionistic analyses and is data-rich, but some of
the more intriguing segmental phenomena in this variety cry out for further instrumental phoneticanalysis. This includes co- and secondary articulations like pre-nasalization, pre-aspiration,labialization and also the phonetic status of the varied onset clusters in Sogpho.
Part three of the volume concerns “Semantics (words and word classes)”, with twocontributions. Brandon Dotson’s chapter traces the history of the Old Tibetan legal term khrin inadministrative and in ritual contexts. He convincingly portrays the co-occurrences of khrin-related
lexemes and constructions in different domains as a case of ritual-administrative polysemy. In thelegislative lexicon, khrin translates as ‘legal/judicial punishment’, while in the ritual lexicon, it is ‘alead/tether’ ornament capable of killing a horse. This analysis offers up valuable insight into thehistorical connections between the punitive dimensions of Tibetan state and religion.
Newar is one of the more comprehensively documented Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal.
Kazuyuki Kiryu, himself a known scholar of Newar, continues this in his consideration of adjectives
in the Kathmandu varieties spoken in Kathmandu/Patan and in Bhaktapur. Largely working fromthe proposals in Dixon and Aikhenvald (2004), he argues for two classes of adjectives in Kathmandu
Newar, based primarily on morpho-syntactic criteria. His account is a rich description of theheterogeneous nature of adjectival forms in Newar, taking into account morpho-syntax, semantics
and to a limited extent, phonology. Adjectives may be a complement before a copula, they may takeadnominal suffixes, and they have a special form to indicate plurality. Negation is accomplished via
negation of the copula (but Kiryu does not delve into negation patterns of true verbs in comparison).
Kiryu does focus in on a particular adjectival construction -se cwane with an adverbializing function.
But, one remaining question is whether true verbs can also be adverbialized like this (e.g. ‘to eat in aslurping manner’).
The fourth and largest part of the volume is on “Morphology and syntax”, with four detailedchapters. One particularly interesting and valuable contribution in this volume is Ellen Bartee’s
account of the conjunct-disjunct system in Dongwang Tibetan (“Animacy in Dongwang Tibetan”), a
Southern Khams variety of Tibetan. Similarly to what has been observed throughout Sino-Tibetan
and in other parts of the world, the c/d system of Dongwang manifests itself as one set ofexistential/copula verbs or verbal auxiliaries marked for “first person declaratives, in second person
interrogatives, or in reported speech in which the agentive participant of the complement clause isco-referential with the agentive participant in the matrix clause. (134-135).” Another distinct set of77

Himalayan Linguistics, Vol 12(1)copulas or auxiliaries is used for other clauses and participant types. What makes the Dongwang c/dsystem stand out as areally unique is an additional animacy split in existential copular clauses(including possessives), where the label ‘animacy’ applies to anything capable of volitional movement.
Bartee notes that Dechen Tibetan (another Southern Khams variety) exhibits something akin to thesituation in Dongwang, an “animacy-netural” split (172), but that otherwise this phenomenon isotherwise unattested. Bartee turns to the long-term social and political influence of Naxi (LoloBurmese) as a possible catalyst for this development in Dongwang, noting that if this were the case, itwould be a situation of language contact in which lexical and morpho-syntactic materials were notborrowed, but rather where a strategy was the result of this contact. This is reminiscent of thedistinction between “matter borrowing” (the replication of morpho-syntactic material into a language
in contact situations) and “pattern borrowing” (strategy re-structuring modeled on an external source)
proposed by Matras and Sakel (2007). If so, the rise of this animacy split in the c/d system ofDongwang could be viewed as a type of pattern borrowing from Naxi.
René Huysmans undertakes an analysis of “The Sampang verbal agreement system,” in anunder-documented Kiranti language. Like its sister languages, Sampang is a ‘complex
pronominalizing language’ where the verb simplex shows agreement with the agent and the patient,
as well as a rich range of tense and aspect marking. Among the many features of the Sampang verb
simplex are redundant copy morphemes in the tense-aspect system. His account illustrates thechallenges of articulating the verb paradigm in this Tibeto-Burman sub-grouping, and also thebenefits to comparative analyses of affixal allomorphy and to reconstructions of Proto-Kiranti simplex
verb structure. In addition to Huysmans’ speculation on the history of the copy morphemes inSampang, and similarly to what has been demonstrated for Limbu, one cannot help but wonder towhat extent such morphemes play a role synchronically in the larger word-prosodic systemorganization in Sampang (cf. Hildebrandt 2007).
Khawaja A. Rehman is the author of the single account of Indo-Aryan in this volume, ananalysis of ergative-marking in three languages of Kashmir. Similar to other languages of the family,
these languages demonstrate a split by aspect, but they also demonstrate patterns that are noncanonical in comparison to other Indo-Aryan languages. In Kundal Shahi, the agent is ergativemarked in perfective aspect, and the verb agrees with the object, but in Kashmiri (Neelam, Pakistanvariety), the verb agreement is more complex by showing obligatory agreement with second-person A
arguments and optional agreement with third-person plural A arguments. Additionally in Kashmiri,intransitive subject arguments are obligatorily ergative-marked when the main verb indicates noises,bodily functions or undirected motion. This is an example, Rehman notes, of Dixon’s (1994) “activealignment.” The situation in Hindko is similarly complex, with an optional ergative postposition that
does not occur with first and second singular pronouns, no matter the aspect, and is also subject topragmatic constraints. The varying pragmatics of ergative marking in this account are evocative ofaccounts of ergative marking in Nepali and in Hindi-Urdu, where the system is demonstrated to beneither fully ergative, nor a neat split-ergative alignment, but rather is sensitive to a combination ofmorpho-syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions (cf. Pandharipande and Kachru 1977; Das2006; Ura 2006; Li 2007).
The final chapter is by one of the co-editors. Bettina Zeisler considers “Kenhat, the dialects ofupper Ladakh and Zanskar”. Rather than focusing exclusively on lexical and segmental phonologicaltraits, Zeisler’s extensive account also takes into consideration tonogenesis, the residue ofmorphological erosion in the verb stem, argument structure differences, and also lexicalization effectsof compounding. The diachronic picture that emerges in different Kenhat varieties is a mixed one,78

Hildebrandt: Review of Turin and Zeisler
with phonetic changes pointing in some cases towards gradual differentiation and retention ofconservative traits, but with morpho-syntactic changes indicative in other cases of more rapidinnovation. Zeisler’s account, beyond using morpho-syntax as a diagnostic for dialect differentiationand drawing from data from a wide range of Tibetan varieties located elsewhere in the region, is a
useful overview of the geo-cultural distribution of Tibetan varieties in this region of the Himalaya.
Structurally, this book is carefully edited and assembled. Overall, aside from very rare
typographic errors, the only minor formatting annoyances include irregularity in the presence orabsence of introductory chapter abstracts (two chapters have them, the others do not), and also apoorly rendered map in Suzuki’s sketch of Sogpho Tibetan. This volume benefits from the inclusionof an index, and as always the attractive cover art that is standard to Brill publications makes thisvolume a striking addition to any library.
Content-wise, this volume is a valuable contribution to the ongoing need to more fully represent
the research contributions across language families in the region and the relevance of these languages
to all sub-disciplines of linguistics (and beyond). Beyond this, this book could also find its place in a
graduate-level seminar on Himalayan languages or else in a field methods course in which thelanguage of study is located within this geographic and structural continuum. The history andsynchronic patterns of languages from two of the major families is viewed through many different
types of lenses and within many frames of linguistic thought. These include explorations of longterm within- and cross-family contact, the value of extra-linguistic information in language
classification, issues of orthographic representation, and examples of benefits from cross-scholar
collaboration and interaction. As such, it is a valuable and inspirational field guide and teaching tool
on both practical and analytical levels.

REFERENCES
Das, Pradeep Kumar. 2006. Grammatical agreement in Hindi-Urdu and its major varieties. München:Lincom.
Dixon, R.M.W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W. and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.). 2004. Adjective classes: A cross-linguistic typology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press [Explorations in Linguistic Typology].
Hildebrandt, Kristine A. 2007. Prosodic and grammatical domains in Limbu. Himalayan Linguistics
8: 1-34.
Li, Chao. 2007. “Split ergativity and split intransitivity in Nepali”. Lingua 117: 1462-1482.
Matras, Yaron M.; and Sakel, Jeanette (eds.) 2007. Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic
perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pandharipande, Rajeshwari; and Kachru, Yamuna. 1977. “Relational grammar, ergativity and HindiUrdu”. Lingua 41.3-4: 217-238.
Ura, Hiroyuki. 2006. A parametric syntax of spectrally conditioned split-ergativity. In: Johns, A.;
Massam, D.; and Ndayairagije, J. (eds.), Ergativity: Emerging issues, 111-142. Dordrecht: Springer[Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 65].
Kristine A. Hildebrandt
khildeb@siue.edu79