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Himalayan Languages and Linguistics: Studies inphonology, semantics, morphology and syntax
edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler
Leiden: Brill, 2011, 322 pages, ISBN 9789004194489

Reviewed by Nathan W. Hill
The work under review is the twelfth volume in the series ‘Languages of
the Greater Himalayan Region’. This series has heretofore comprised
reference grammars of Tibeto-Burman languages, typically the outcome ofPh.D dissertations originally submitted to Leiden University. These elevengrammars are of uniform high quality, providing detailed and clearly
written linguistic information, while eschewing the maelstroms of faddish
currents in theoretical or typological linguistics. Indeed, the researchers
associated with the Himalayan Languages Project have arguably
contributed more to advancing Tibeto-Burman linguistics than all otherworking scholars combined. This twelfth volume mostly constitutes
papers originally delivered at the 11th Himalayan Languages Symposium,
graciously hosted by Krisadawan Hongladarom at Chulalongkorn
University in 2005. One of the editors (Mark Turin) and three of thecontributors are associated with the Himalayan Languages Project.
The volume opens with a paper by George van Driem in which heoutlines the contributions of linguistics, archaeology and genetics to thepopulation history of the greater Himalayan region. Most of the genetic
data van Driem and his team have compiled remains unpublished; thisessay is consequently more exciting for what it presages than what itreveals. I lack some of van Driem’s optimism about the role of genetics inthe study of prehistory. Historical linguistics and archaeology offer
predetermined populations for investigation, but genetics does not. The
Tibeto-Burmans are speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages. The Brākhuṭiculture is characterised by a habitation site and unifacial choppers. Buthow does one assign ethnicity to a blood sample? The answer in thePeoples’ Republic of China appears to be to look at the nationality (民族) on
someone’s identity card. Witness Chen et al.’s use of the terms ‘HanChinese’, ‘Tibetan Chinese’ and ‘Mongolian Chinese’ (2006). The reader

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would have benefited from van Driem’s insights on this problematic.1
In the second essay, Plaisier presents a detailed comparison of foursystems for the transliteration of the Lepcha script. In addition to thematerial aid this essay will bring to librarians and students of Lepcha
alike, it offers Plaisier an opportunity to present convincing arguments infavour of her own system.
Huysmans offers readers a description of the Sampang verbal system.
Like all Kiranti verbs, the Sampang verb is complex and much analyticalwork is required in order to make sense of it. Huysmans presents sevensuccessive analyses, and contextualises the Sampang verb against thebackdrop of proto-Kiranti as proposed in a series of articles by van Driem(1990, 1991, 1992, 1997). The Leiden school has already made great
achievements in the description and analysis of Kiranti languages and thisglimpse of Huysmans’ forthcoming Sampang grammar suggests that thisprogress will continue unabated.
Scholars without affiliation to the Himalayan Languages Projectcontribute another six papers; three of these do not disappoint. Suzuki
offers an updated English version of his previous article on the phonologyof Sogpho Tibetan (2005). As in his other works on the phonology ofTibetan dialects, Suzuki first surveys the consonant, vowel, and tone
inventory of the dialect, with special attention to allophonic variation. He
then contextualises the dialect, discussing the sound changes that derive
Sogpho Tibetan from Classical Tibetan, and compares certain features ofSogpho Tibetan with other Khams dialects. Some text samples andinstrumental phonetic data would render Suzuki’s study even more useful.
The bibliography of this article unfortunately has many mistakes in1

Equally a problem, and deserving of van Driem’s comment, is the grotesque cultural,
historical and ethnographic naïveté of so many working in genetics. For example, almost
all genetic studies reiterate a claim that the Tibetans are descended from Di-Qiang tribes(Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1988: 6005, Gayden 2007, Zhao 2009); such claims are of no historicalvalue (Beckwith 1977: 1-3). Geneticists’ use of linguistics is no better. Yao et al.’s study of
mitochondrial DNA erroneously concludes that ‘linguistic and geographic classificationof the populations did not agree well with classification by mtDNA variation’ (2002: 63).
Depending on outdated theories of linguistic classification, they regard the Turkic andMongolian language families as sub-branches of ‘Altaic’ and see Tibeto-Burman, Chineseand Zhuang-Dai as three branches of ‘Sino-Tibetan’ (2002: 65). Commitment to Matisoff’s‘Sino-Tibetan’ theory similarly vitiates the conclusions of Su et al. (2000: 588).

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Japanese transcription (e.g. 研究 appears as kenkyu, kenkyuu, and kenkyuus,p.73).
Dotson’s study of the vexing Old Tibetan term khrin is a model ofthoroughness and clarity. Analysing the use of this term in both legal andritual contexts, he hypothesises that the original meaning is ‘tether’,
which in legal contexts means ‘judicial punishment’ (p.93). Far from a dry
lexical study, this paper insightfully engages a number of themes in early
Tibetan society and religion, offering close readings of many passages. The
paper deserves to be read multiple times; pearls such as the treatment ofverbs of giving construed with the recipient in the absolutive (p.91) might
be easily overlooked.
Rehman’s paper presents nearly the first information ever on Kundal
Shahi and Hindko, two Indo-Aryan languages of the Neelam Valley, and,by way of comparison, also treats Kashmiri. While these languages
generally conform to the expected picture of split ergativity in IndoAryan languages, there are interesting differences in detail. For example,
ergative marking in Hindko is not obligatory (p.228). As the author himselfadmits (p.231), any discussion of ergativity in three languages over a mere
fourteen pages is bound to be cursory.
The remaining three papers fall short of the overall quality of theseries and volume. Basing his investigation on work by Dixon (1982, 2004)
and Givón (1984), Kiryu explores a grab bag of words that he dubs
‘adjectives’ in Newar. Sentences such as ‘[m]ost adjectival words can benegated by ma-ju:, although some may not be’ (p.107) show that Kiryu isusing ‘adjective’ as a pre-established category, and does not classify Newar
lexemes according to their structural form classes; the conclusion that
Newar has adjectives (p.128) although ‘there are no unique morphologicalproperties that distinguish adjectives from nouns and verbs in Newar’(p.101) is consequently circular. Kiryu’s choice of theorists is unfortunate;
de Saussure, F. (1916) or Bloomfield (1933) are surer guides through strait
gates and on narrow ways. The simple English words ‘flash’ and ‘remain’
gainsay Givón’s proposal that nouns and verbs exist on a ‘time scale’, withnouns on the most stable side and verbs on the side of rapid change (p.107,cf. Givón 1984: 55). The greater part of Kiryu’s essay catalogues Newarwords according to ‘thirteen concepts that adjectives prototypicallyBook Reviews

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denote’ (p.108), according to Dixon. Parts of speech categories are notsemantic classes; if they were, ‘burn’ and ‘fire’ would be the same part ofspeech. Semantic categories, even when written in capital letters, exist in
the mind of an author and not in the structure of languages. Since ‘lesentités abstraites reposent toujours, en dernière analyse, sur les entités
concrètes’ (Saussure 1919: 190), what are the concrete entities on which‘HUMAN PROPENSITY’ (p.108) rests?
Bartee’s paper is besprent with inaccuracies and omissions, such as theidentification of Minhe Mangghuer and Akha respectively with 土族語Tǔzúyǔ and 哈尼語 Hāníyǔ2 and the categorisation of Naxi as a Lolo-Burmese
language (strangely contradicted on p.175, n. 53). Tibetan spelling also
gives her some trouble (correct slob.grwa.ba on p.136, versus incorrectslab.grwa.ba on p.138 and bslab.grwa.ba on p.141). In addition, herbibliographic knowledge is weak; the discussion of Khams and Nanzhao
history omits seminal studies such as Backus (1981) and makes no mentionof the bizarre renaming of the county of her fieldwork in 2001 from 中甸Rgyal-thaṅ to 香格里拉 Shangri-La. More worrisome than such small
mistakes is Bartee’s complete mischaracterisation of the Standard Tibetan
verbal system. She shoehorns this language’s three-term evidential
system into a two-term ‘conjunct/disjunct’ framework. As sources for her
data and analysis she cites Denwood (1999), Garrett (2001) and Tournadre(2003).3 She has not read these works carefully. None of these authors
employs the terminology ‘conjunct/disjunct’ and both Garrett (2001: 209n. 1) and Tournadre (2008) pointedly rejected the value of these terms andthe Denkweisen that they facilitate.4 De Saussure tells us ‘la langue est unsystème dont tous les termes sont solidaires où la valeur de l’un ne résulte
que la présence simultané des autres’ (1919: 159); and Haspelmath more
recently reminds us that ‘pre-established categories don’t exist’ (2007).
Bartee appears not to agree with these opinions.
234In fact, Tǔzúyǔ encompasses both Minhe Mangghuer and Huzhu Mongghul (Dpal-ldanbkra-shis, et al. 1996: 1) and Hāníyǔ is a language distinct from but closely related toAkha (Lewis and Bai 1996: 1-2).
Tournadre (2003) was published in Ithaca and not in New York, as stated on p.182.
Bartee even writes that the sentence ṅa na-gi-yod ‘I’m chronically sick’ is ungrammatical(p.143), apparently unaware of Tournadre’s (1996: 223) and Denwood’s (1999: 151)
discussion of this very sentence.

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The last and longest of the papers in the volume is a mixed bag. Zeisler
describes a number of phonetic and morphological features of the Śamskad and Gyen-skad dialect groups of Ladakhi. Confusingly, she treats
several dialects at once without offering a phonemic inventory ormorphological overview of any one. The paper appears to have threeconclusions: (1) these two dialect groups are quite distinct; (2)phonetically conservative dialects are not necessarily morphologicallyconservative and phonetically innovative ones not necessarilymorphologically innovative; and (3) Old Tibetan was already used as alingua franca in Ladakh at the time of the Tibetan empire. The firstconclusion is an important contribution to Tibetan dialectology, thesecond a well known but significant insight of great importance to work inhistorical linguistics, which always bears repeating. The third conclusion
is unwarranted on the basis of the evidence presented.
Zeisler’s article is brimming with detailed observations and insights.
Her examples of the reanalysis in compounds in the Gya dialect of b- fromthe initial of the second morpheme to the final of an original open syllable
initial morpheme (pp.264-265) provide new data for an on-going
discussion. She elegantly employs her dialectological observations toelucidate the philological interpretation of the words yab-med ‘ancestor’and yas-se ‘from above’ in early Tibetan texts (p.276 and p.284). The
observation that work on historical linguistics should take inflected verbal
forms into account and not just uninflected stems (p.258) may be taken for
granted in work on other language families, but in Tibetan linguistics it istrail blazing. Although in places her citations could be more extensive,5
there is no doubt she is an accomplished philologist. Zeisler’s skills as afield worker are less impressive. Inexplicably uninterested in basing herdescription on the linguistic behaviour of her consultants, she complainsin a number of places of their inconsistent judgments (p.261, n. 44; p.267,n. 58). A native English speaker, asked how many vowels English has, will5

In her discussion of ḥu/ḥo as a demonstrative (p.279), the failure to cite Dotson’sinteresting observations about ḥo-tshal (p.87) is rather surprising. Because ḥu is directly
attested as a third singular demonstrative (I.O.L. Tib J 737.1 lines 141-142, cf. de Jong
1989: 112), there is a need to infer the existence of such a usage on the basis of forms
such as ḥu-bu-cag ‘we’ and ḥuṅ-nas ‘and then’, etc. The speculation that this pronoun isrelated to the sentence final morpheme -ḥo requires further demonstration.

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normally answer ‘five’. Asking one’s consultants how many phonemic
tones a dialect possesses (pp.251-258) is not an effective way to learn theanswer to this question.
Although there is some danger that these three methodologicallyweaker papers will perpetuate conceptual or factual errors in the hands ofthe innocent, the auspicious price of €108 will presumably guarantee that
only committed professionals will acquire the volume. Such researchers
will find it a valued addition to their libraries.
References
Backus, C. 1981. The Nan-chao Kingdom and Tʻang China’s Southwestern
Frontier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beckwith, C.I. 1977. A Study of the Early Medieval Chinese, Latin, and Tibetan
Historical Sources on Pre-Imperial Tibet. Indiana University PhD
Dissertation.
Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York: H. Holt and Company.
Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. et al. 1988. ‘Reconstruction of human evolution:bringing together genetic, archaeological, and linguistic data’.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 85: 6002-6006.
Chen, S. et al. 2006. ‘Allelic distribution of HLA class I genes in the Tibetan
ethnic population of China’. International Journal of Immunogenetics 33:
439–445.
Denwood, P. 1999. Tibetan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dixon, R.M.W. 1982. Where Have all the Adjectives Gone? and other essays insemantics and syntax. Berlin: Mouton.
Dixon, R.M.W. 2004. ‘Adjective classes in typological perspective’. AdjectiveClasses: A cross-linguistic typology, edited by R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y.
Aikhenvald, pp.1-49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Driem, G. 1990. ‘An exploration of Proto-Kiranti verbal morphology’.
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 22: 27-48.
van Driem, G. 1991. ‘Bahing and the Proto-Kiranti verb.’ Bulletin of theSchool of Oriental and African Studies 54.2: 336-356.
van Driem, G. 1992. ‘Le proto-kiranti revisité, morphologie verbale dulohorung’. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 24: 33-75.

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van Driem, G. 1997. ‘A new analysis of the Limbu verb’. Tibeto-Burman
Languages of the Himalayas, edited by D. Bradley, pp.153-173. Canberra:
Pacific Linguistics.
Dpal-ldan-bkra-shis, et al. 1996. Language Materials of China’s Monguor
Minority: Huzhu Mongghul and Minhe Mangghuer. Sino-Platonic papers
no. 69.
Garrett, E. 2001. Evidentiality and Assertion in Tibetan. PhD thesis at
University of California Los Angeles.
Gayden, et al. 2007. ‘The Himalayas as a Directional Barrier to Gene Flow’.
The American Journal of Human Genetics 80: 884-894.
Givón, T. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Philadelphia:
Benjamins Pub. Co.
Haspelmath, M. 2007. ‘Pre-established categories don’t exist:
consequences for language description and typology.’ LinguisticTypology 11: 119-132.
de Jong, J.W. 1989. The Story of Rāma in Tibet: Text and translation of the Tunhuang manuscripts. Stuttgart: F. Steiner.
Lewis, P. W and Bai Bibo 1996. Hani-English/English-Hani Dictionary:Haqniqdoq-Yilyidoq, Doqlo-Soqdaoq. London: Kegan Paul International.
de Saussurre, Ferdinand 1919. Cours de Linguistique Générale. Paris: Payot.
Su et al. 2000. ‘Y chromosome haplotypes reveal prehistorical migrations
to the Himalayas.’ Human Genetics 107.6: 582-590.
Suzuki Hiroyuki 鈴木博之 2005. ‘チベット語丹巴・梭坡[Sogpho] 方言の音声分析
Chibettogo Danba-Sopo [Sogpho] Hōgen no Onseibunseki [PhoneticAnalysis of the Danba Sogpho Tibetan Dialect.’ ニダバ Nidaba 34: 96-104.
Tournadre, N. 1996. L’ergativité en Tibétain: Approche morphosyntaxique de lalangue parlée. Paris: Peeters.
Tournadre, N. 2008. ‘Arguments against the concept of“conjunct”/“disjunct” in Tibetan.’ Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek:
Festschrift für Roland Bielmeier zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, edited by B. Huberet al., pp.281-308. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan andBuddhist Studies.
Zhao, Mian et al. 2009. ‘Mitochondrial genome evidence reveals successful
Late Paleolithic settlement on the Tibetan Plateau.’ Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences, USA 106.50: 21230-21235.