This volume edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler is a collection of papers pertaining to languages and linguistics of the Himalayas, with a focus on Tibeto-Burman perspectives. Six of the nine papers in this volume were presented at the 2005 Himalayan Languages Symposium, held in Bangkok, Thailand. Three additional papers (by George van Driem, Heleen Plaisier, and René Huysmans) were invited to supplement the collection. The book is divided into four sections for the nine contributions: Himalayas in history, phonology and script, semantics, and morphology and syntax, respectively.
The first chapter, and the only contribution in the first section, is “Lost in the Sands of Time Somewhere North of the Bay of Bengal” by van Driem. This twenty-six-page chapter summarizes previous literature on the ethnolinguistic history of the Himalayas, focusing on studies of Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic language families. In typical breadth, van Driem brings in data from genetics, paleobotany and archaeology to supplement the linguistic picture. Topics addressed include the spread of Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic language families, the “Father Tongue” hypothesis, and the domestication of rice.
The next chapters address phonology and script. Plaisier presents an overview of the four different transcription systems used to represent Lepcha, an indigenous language of Sikkim. Suzuki's contribution is a presentation of phonologically rich Sogpho Tibetan. This language, also called the “twenty-four villages” patois, is considered a Khams variety spoken in western Sichuan province, China. With twelve vowels, fifty consonants, and six phonetic pitch patters, Sogpho Tibetan displays a remarkably rich phonology. Suzuki goes beyond presentation of the phonological system, making dialectal and historical observations as well.
Section three of the book consists of chapters by Dotson and Kiryu, united in semantics but representing very different approaches. The contribution from Dotson is philological, focusing on uses of the Tibetan word khrin in legal and ritual lexicons. After a very rich and thorough discussion, Dotson concludes with a summary of the relationship between khrin and khrims, ultimately showing that the two are related but separate terms existing side by side, and not dialectal variants of the same word. Kiryu's contribution is a functional approach to adjectives in Newar. He carefully shows that Newar has three classes of adjectives, despite the fact that, on the surface, there may appear to be minimal difference between adjectives and verbs. In this sense, Kiryu's contribution follows Post (2008)Footnote 6 in demonstrating that defining word classes in a language can be a nuanced but important linguistic endeavor.
The fourth and final part of the book touches on several morphosyntactic topics of theoretical interest. The first chapter in this section, by Bartee, presents the “conjunct-disjunct” system in Dongwang Tibetan, showing the important role animacy plays in the language. The phenomenon of “conjunct-disjunct,” first described by Hale (1980)Footnote 7 for a contrast found in Newar, is an area of recent, intense interest in Tibeto-Burman linguistics. Bartee's chapter will certainly be useful to scholars interested in the theoretical debate regarding conjunct/disjunct or egophoric systems. The contribution by Huysmans will be of interest to Tibeto-Burmanists interested in pronominalization, or the indexing of arguments in the verb. Huysmans presents an analysis of the verbal agreement system in the Kiranti language Sampang, reflecting on the diachronic implications.
Ergativity, the grammatical grouping of S and O arguments, apart from A arguments, is presented for the Indo-Aryan languages Kundal Shahi, Kashmiri, and Hindko by Rehman. The final contribution in this section is by Bettina Zeisler, who presents data on the Kenhat varieties of Tibetan, spoken in Ladakh. Her chapter addresses the location where these varieties are spoken and discusses several phonetic and morphosyntactic features of the language, often from a diachronic point of view.
In summary, the book presents a representative array of the current language and linguistic research in the Himalayas, spanning topics as diverse as prehistory, philology, and new descriptions of linguistic phenomena in understudied languages. As such, chapters of the book should be of interest to Tibetan philologists, comparative Tibeto-Burmanists, Himalayan prehistorians, and theoretical linguists interested in tonogenesis, ergativity and egophoricity.
