Dan Raj Regmi Boeken

This study offers a functional-typological analysis of nouns and noun phrases in the endangered Bhujel language of Nepal, uncovering unique morpho-syntactic features. Key findings include the absence of gender and number agreement in verbs, a lack of duality, and the use of numeral classifiers for distinguishing between human and non-human nouns. The language exhibits split ergativity influenced by tense and aspect, rigid modifier order in noun phrases, and flexible clause constituent arrangement. Notably, grammatical relations do not align with thematic roles, reflecting Bhujel's complex linguistic structure.

This grammar, framed within an adaptive approach, analyzes phonological and grammatical codes in Lhowa, a southern Tibetic language, and compares them with Lhasa Tibetan and other Central Bodish languages from a typological perspective. Lhowa is a tonal language featuring high-front and mid-front rounded vowels, murmured plosives, and voiceless lateral sounds. It is typologically agglutinating and consistently ergative, with nouns unmarked for grammatical gender and number. However, they are marked for three numbers (singular, dual, plural) and twelve case roles. Personal pronouns in Lhowa reflect social standing (ordinary vs. honorific) and clusivity (inclusive vs. exclusive) in the first person plural. Adjectives, numerals, and quantifiers follow nouns, while demonstratives and possessive pronouns precede them. Tense markers in Lhowa interact with aspect, modality, and evidentiality, and the verb agreement system relates closely to the conjunct-disjunct distinction. Egophoricity, which marks the first person in the past tense, is governed by volitionality and is also evident in essential and existential copulas. Tense is inferred from the text's context. Lhowa, a dependent marking and highly nominalizing language, features a non-promotional type of passive. While sharing phonological and grammatical coding devices with Lhasa Tibetan and the gTsang cluster, Lhowa also shows contact-induced changes not found in its counterpart

This grammar examines major communicative coding devices in Western Tamang and compares them with those in Eastern Tamang from a typological perspective. Western Tamang employs thirty-five basic consonants and eleven vowels, including four phonetic pitches of tone, to code 'words' at the conceptual lexicon. It utilizes morphology, intonation, and word order as primary grammar-coding devices to encode atomic propositional information, while other grammatical sub-systems mainly code discourse-pragmatics. As a complex tonal language, Western Tamang features a somewhat consistent ergative case-marking system, with human patients marked by a dative case suffix. All case-role and tense-aspect and modality markers, except for negation, are cliticized as suffixes. The order of clausal constituents may vary primarily for pragmatic effects. Western Tamang lacks agreement and employs nominalization extensively for various syntactic functions. Relative clauses are formed with nominalized verbs followed by a genitive suffix. Notably, it exhibits non-promotional passive constructions and uses conjunction and subordination to maintain coherence across clauses. The co-authors, Dr. Dan Raj Regmi and Dr. Ambika Regmi, are affiliated with the Central Department of Linguistics at Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

This book presents thirty-three interlinearized oral texts in Bhujel, a critically endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken by 21,715 individuals (18.30% of the ethnic Bhujel population) in select villages of Tanahun, Gorkha, Nawalparasi, and Chitwan districts in Nepal. The texts reflect various aspects of the Bhujel community's life, including origin, history, culture, traditions, professions, folk tales, legends, and daily activities. Each text is first transcribed phonetically, then segmented into morphemes, followed by interlinear morpheme translations (glosses), and concluded with a free English translation. Additionally, the book offers essential background information about the language and its speakers. It is designed for linguists and ethnolinguists interested in exploring the language's connection to culture and traditions. The book is structured into three chapters: the first provides background information, the second presents the interlinearized texts, and the third offers a summary and conclusion. The author, Dr. Dan Raj Regmi, is a Professor and Head of the Central Department of Linguistics at Tribhuvan University, Nepal, with expertise in Tibeto-Burman linguistics, linguistic typology, sociolinguistic surveys, and language documentation in Nepal. ISBN 9783862885862. Languages of the World/Text Collection 35. 119pp. 2014.

This book provides a comprehensive description of Bhujel, a previously undescribed and endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 3,923 ethnic Bhujel, most of them living along the Mahabharata mountain range of Tanahun, Gorkha, Chitwan and Nawalparasi districts of Nepal. It investigates phonological and morphosyntactic features in Bhujel and compares them, from a typological perspective, with those characteristic structural features in both Bodish and Himalayish languages. Bhujel, an atonal and consistently ergative language, is characterized by a complex verb agreement pattern indexing person, number and inclusivity in the verb complex. Person marking, based exclusively on the hierarchical ranking of the participants (i.e.1?2, 1?3, 2?3), sometimes encodes the agent and sometimes the patient but not both at a time. Uniquely, the verb is also marked by suffix -u in 1?2, 1?3, 2?3, along person and number suffixes, to encode the direct relations of the participants. Like tense, such marking is neutralized in negative constructions in Bhujel. However, the inverse relation of participants (i.e. 2?1, 3?1, or 3?2), somewhat counter to universal expectations, remains unmarked. The author, Dr. Dan Raj Regmi, is Associate Professor and Head of Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal and has specialized in Tibeto-Burman linguistics, sociolinguistic survey and language documentation.

This is a grammar sketch of Khwopa Newar, a dialect of Newar, from a functional-typological perspective. This dialect is spoken by 200,000 Newar in Bhaktapur district of Nepal. Unlike other dialects, it exhibits phonemic velar nasal, nasalized vowels, consonant-glide clustering, devoicing, overt genitive marking and evidentiality marked by tense. Only in Khwopa Newar, the nouns may be followed by pronouns in constructions to express high honorificity. Nonetheless, it shares a number of structural features with other dialects of Newar. Some of them include a five-vowel system with length and nasal distinction, atonality, consistently ergative marking, duality and inclusive-exclusive distinction. Moreover, both tense and aspect in Khwopa Newar heavily interact with the semantic feature of conjunct-disjunct, as in standard Newar. It makes use of both nominal and verbal classifiers. SOV is the basic word order; however, the word order seems to be relatively free as in other dialects. A change in word order generally triggers a change in meaning. A noun is modified by both pre-modifiers and post-modifiers. It employs both lexical and clausal nominalization; and nominalized clauses are realized in a number of syntactic constructions. Clause combining in Khwopa Newar is controlled by both finite and non-finite verbal forms.