Kiranti linking /ʔ/

Abstract

Van Driem (1990:84)1 has recently called attention to a linking /7/ in Kiranti: "In Limbu, compounds arose such as hanuo 'fireplace stone', derived from ha 'tooth' and /up 'stone' with an unexplained linking glottal stop, not uncommon in compounds." The /7/ here, to be assigned morphemic status, surely is the residue of Proto-Tibeto-Burman *a- = *?a-, basically a 3rd person pronominal element (Benedict 1972:121 ff.): 'tooth-its-stone'. Van Driem indicates that the /7/ is variable ('not uncommon') here, paralleling PTB *?a-. The writer has frequently in Tibeto-Burman source material encountered an apparently random /7/ that would appear to fit with the Limbu linking /7/ and, indeed, one would anticipate parallelism in this line of development.