Japhug

""This article investigates the synchronic status and diachronic origin of an incorporation-like construction in Japhug, a polysynthetic Sino-Tibetan language of Eastern Tibet. This construction constitutes the intermediate stage on a path of development from denominal derivation to incorporation, the opposite of the usual path of development from incorporation to denominal derivation.

Additionally, this article shows that similar phenomena exist in other languages, and that coalescence between noun and verb is not the only attested diachronic origin of incorporating verbs.""

The diachronic analysis of person indexation systems in Sino-Tibetan (Trans-Himalayan) languages is currently a topical issue. Factual errors have occasionally crept in, detracting somewhat from the quality of the linguistic discussion about these systems. Evidence from Tangut, Gyal-rongic and Kiranti is so central to the debates that it appeared useful to provide a few clarifications about their person indexation systems, adduc-ing evidence from a body of texts that has been considerably enriched in the past decade. The main points made in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, the view that personal affixes derive diachronically from pronouns is by no means as self-evident as it may seem. Second, person indexation in Tangut, the oldest Trans-Himalayan language with person in-dexation, is not optional, as has sometimes been stated in the literature. Third, person indexation in Gyalrongic and Kiranti is sensitive to grammatical relations, a finding which calls into question its analysis as marking speech act participant involvement.

This paper documents the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the autobenefactive-spontaneous prefix nɯ– . It describes the regular and irregular morphological and morphophonological alternations displayed by this prefix, as well as its three main semantic functions, namely spontaneous, autobenefactive and permansive. Finally, it discusses the historical relationship of the autobenefactive prefix with other derivations, in particular the vertitive nɯ– and the anticausative prenasalization.

This article provides a detailed survey of complement clauses and complementation strategies in Japhug. It shows the bewildering diversity of constructions attested in these languages, which are largely unpredictable and need to be specified for each complement-taking verb. Special focus is given to typologically unusual constructions, in particular Hybrid Indirect Speech.

This paper describes the uses of the marker  kɯ in Japhug, which presents many distinct functions, including ergative, instrumental, distributive, causal linker, manner linker, emphatic adversative, interrogative sentence final particle and index of the comparee in the comparative construction. A series of grammaticalization pathways, some of which have never been documented before, are proposed to account for the polyfunctionality of this marker.

This paper addresses Prins' (2016) recent proposal of a m(ə)-non-volitional prefix in the Kyomkyo dialect of Situ, showing that alternative analyses are preferable. In addition, it offers an account of some irregular anticausative forms in Situ, and presents evidence for a possible volitional mə-prefix in Gyalrong languages.

This paper documents equative, similative, comparative and superlative constructions on the basis of a corpus of narratives. It reveals a previously unsuspected wealth of constructions: no less than three main types of superlatives, and four types of equative are attested, some including additional subtypes. Most of the constructions described in this paper belong to categories previously identified by typologists, but some constructions, such as the denominal equative adjectives, appear to be crosslinguistically rarer.

Japhug, like other Gyalrong languages, is one of the very few languages with both a full-fledged person indexation system and an egophoric evidential category. A detailed account of the uses and meanings of the Egophoric and its interaction with person is thus of interest to the typology of evidential systems. This paper describes the uses of Egophoric marking in Japhug and of the two other evidential categories with which it contrasts (Factual and Sensory), as well as their interaction with person indexation. Due to the limited distribution of the Egophoric in Japhug (it only occurs in present contexts), the present paper exclusively focuses on the uses of evidentials with stative verbs in present (imperfective) contexts, where minimal pairs are available in the corpus.