PhD Dissertation by Narayan Sharma
Puma is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of the Kiranti subgroup spoken by approximately 4,00... more Puma is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of the Kiranti subgroup spoken by approximately 4,000 people in eastern Nepal. This dissertation investigates the phonology and morphosyntax of Puma. Data are presented and analysed from a cross-linguistic typological perspective where possible. The analysis is based mainly on annotated texts from a substantial corpus of spoken Puma, and from informally collected data and direct elicitation to supplement the corpus.
Puma is a polysynthetic and complex pronominalised language where words can consist of a series of morphemes. Verbal agreement, where verbs agree with subjects and objects, is very complex, and differs strikingly from the case-marking system used with independent noun phrases. Case-marking of nouns and pronouns is split between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive-dative. Intransitive subjects also exhibit characteristics of a split-S pattern: some intransitive subjects display grammatical properties similar to those of transitive objects, while others do not.
In contrast to Dryer’s (1986, 2007) typology of primary object type and direct object type languages, Puma is neither a fully primary object nor a fully direct object language. Transitive verbs can be detransitivised with a kha- prefix or with zero, which is typologically more common (Bickel et al. 2007). For kha-detransitivisation the affected entity must be human; this is typologically unusual, but characteristic of the Kiranti subgroup.
The syntactic pivot for both inter-clausal and intra-clausal syntax is ‘subject’, comprising the single argument of intransitive verbs and the agent-like argument of transitive verbs. Interestingly, the morphology does not treat these in a consistent way but the syntax does. Verbs fall into classes that show distinct syntactic behaviours in different constructions. Compound verbs, which are an areal feature of South Asian languages (Masica 1976), comprise verbal, nominal and lexical types. Different nominalisation and relativisation strategies exist for S human and non-human, A and P arguments.
The dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive description of Puma and includes hundreds of examples drawn from the corpus, plus Appendices of sample verb paradigms and texts, and names of contributors.
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Papers by Narayan Sharma
Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2018
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Gipan
The most significant and most obvious factor behind the growth of ethnic and cultural diversity i... more The most significant and most obvious factor behind the growth of ethnic and cultural diversity in Nepal, is of course, the country’s multilingual context. Multicultural context, in turn, reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity, and social thinking of the period during which the context came into existence. We can argue that cultural and ethnic diversity has always been a source of strength and unity in Nepali society. This article addresses the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Puma people. The future of Nepal will be even more ethnically and culturally diverse than it is today.
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Nepalese Linguistics
The purpose of this paper is to overview the historical status of conjugations observed in the Me... more The purpose of this paper is to overview the historical status of conjugations observed in the Mewahang language based on a comparison of Proto-Kiranti verbal agreement system. The provenance of Proto-Kiranti affixal agreement paradigms is presented by investigating the conjugations of Mewahang. While some Mewahang suffixes are identical with the Proto-Kiranti morphemes, a few are cognate with the Proto-Kiranti reflexes.
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Anthropological Linguistics, 2011
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2. Basic argument structure Puma verbs can be classified according to their argument structures. ... more 2. Basic argument structure Puma verbs can be classified according to their argument structures. It is assumed that each predicate in every language is correlated with a set of arguments, the number and type of which are not systematically predictable from the meaning of the verb. Different predicates can require different numbers of arguments. Puma employs zero place, one place, two place and three place predicates. Zero-argument verbs may require no arguments at all; as in many languages, weather predicates are expressed by a bare predicate with no arguments as in (1) from Puma.
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Data-Driven Approaches to Cross-Clausal Syntax, 2012
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Contemporary issues in …, 2005
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MA Thesis, Central Department of Linguistics, TU..( …, 2001
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Data-Driven Approaches to Cross-Clausal Syntax, 2012
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The most significant and most obvious factor behind the growth of ethnic and cultural diversity i... more The most significant and most obvious factor behind the growth of ethnic and cultural diversity in Nepal, is of course, the country's multilingual context. Multicultural context, in turn, reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity, and social thinking of the period during which the context came into existence. We can argue that cultural and ethnic diversity has always been a source of strength and unity in Nepali society. This article addresses the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Puma people. The future of Nepal will be even more ethnically and culturally diverse than it is today.
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The Puma language has a penchant for nominalizing sentences typically via a marker that is also u... more The Puma language has a penchant for nominalizing sentences typically via a marker that is also used in the citation-form of agents and verbs and that has a relative, genitive or general function in other constructions. Puma exemplifies a very complex relativisation pattern, where nominalisation is a main device to form relative clauses.
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Anthropological Linguistics 53 (4): 365-382., 2011
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The SOAS Working Paper
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Nepalese Linguistics, Nov 2012
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Nepalese Linguistics, Nov 2011
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PhD Dissertation by Narayan Sharma
Puma is a polysynthetic and complex pronominalised language where words can consist of a series of morphemes. Verbal agreement, where verbs agree with subjects and objects, is very complex, and differs strikingly from the case-marking system used with independent noun phrases. Case-marking of nouns and pronouns is split between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive-dative. Intransitive subjects also exhibit characteristics of a split-S pattern: some intransitive subjects display grammatical properties similar to those of transitive objects, while others do not.
In contrast to Dryer’s (1986, 2007) typology of primary object type and direct object type languages, Puma is neither a fully primary object nor a fully direct object language. Transitive verbs can be detransitivised with a kha- prefix or with zero, which is typologically more common (Bickel et al. 2007). For kha-detransitivisation the affected entity must be human; this is typologically unusual, but characteristic of the Kiranti subgroup.
The syntactic pivot for both inter-clausal and intra-clausal syntax is ‘subject’, comprising the single argument of intransitive verbs and the agent-like argument of transitive verbs. Interestingly, the morphology does not treat these in a consistent way but the syntax does. Verbs fall into classes that show distinct syntactic behaviours in different constructions. Compound verbs, which are an areal feature of South Asian languages (Masica 1976), comprise verbal, nominal and lexical types. Different nominalisation and relativisation strategies exist for S human and non-human, A and P arguments.
The dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive description of Puma and includes hundreds of examples drawn from the corpus, plus Appendices of sample verb paradigms and texts, and names of contributors.
Papers by Narayan Sharma
Puma is a polysynthetic and complex pronominalised language where words can consist of a series of morphemes. Verbal agreement, where verbs agree with subjects and objects, is very complex, and differs strikingly from the case-marking system used with independent noun phrases. Case-marking of nouns and pronouns is split between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive-dative. Intransitive subjects also exhibit characteristics of a split-S pattern: some intransitive subjects display grammatical properties similar to those of transitive objects, while others do not.
In contrast to Dryer’s (1986, 2007) typology of primary object type and direct object type languages, Puma is neither a fully primary object nor a fully direct object language. Transitive verbs can be detransitivised with a kha- prefix or with zero, which is typologically more common (Bickel et al. 2007). For kha-detransitivisation the affected entity must be human; this is typologically unusual, but characteristic of the Kiranti subgroup.
The syntactic pivot for both inter-clausal and intra-clausal syntax is ‘subject’, comprising the single argument of intransitive verbs and the agent-like argument of transitive verbs. Interestingly, the morphology does not treat these in a consistent way but the syntax does. Verbs fall into classes that show distinct syntactic behaviours in different constructions. Compound verbs, which are an areal feature of South Asian languages (Masica 1976), comprise verbal, nominal and lexical types. Different nominalisation and relativisation strategies exist for S human and non-human, A and P arguments.
The dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive description of Puma and includes hundreds of examples drawn from the corpus, plus Appendices of sample verb paradigms and texts, and names of contributors.