Agreement systems and syntactic organization in the Kham verb [Nepal]

Abstract

Throughout its early history, Tibeto-Burman was characterized as monosyllabic with few remarkable features in terms of elaborate morphosyntactic systems. The few exceptions were found in the so-called "pronominalizing" languages of the sub-Himalayan region and dismissed as a probable consequence of a Munda substratum (Konow, in Grierson 1909). Maspero (1946) and Egerod (1973) rejected the Munda hypothesis and ascribed the feature to probable Indo-Aryan areal diffusion. Henderson (1957) was perhaps the first to suggest that the feature was "the possibility of a genuine Tibeto-Burman family trait." In 1975, Bauman, basing his work on a broad sampling of Tibeto-Burman languages introduced the first serious, typological study of the question. Many of the languages he drew upon were clearly outside the geographical confines implicit to the notion of a substratum influence. Furthermore, serious typological dissimilarities to the supposed substrate and highly significant consistencies within the morphologies of the Tibeto-Burman languages themselves provided all the evidence needed to imply a native origin of the complex verb morphologies to the internal inclinations and predispositions of Tibeto-Burman itself.