Comparative Bodic Syntax

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ABSTRACT The project entails informant work on four languages of the Bodic branch of Tibeto-Burman. Work on Lhasa Tibetan, Newari, and Sunwari will be carried out in Eugene, Oregon; work on Kinnauri in Almora and Simla, India. In all of these languages, newer tense-marking systemms have developed from older complement clauses with copulas. The goals of the research are full des- criptions and analyses of the relevant aspects of the syntax and morphology of the languages to be studied, and a reconstruction of the copula system, nominalization constructions, complementa- tion and tense-aspect marking in Proto-Bodic, with an account of the processes of syntactic change which have led to the patterns found in the daughter languages. The project will make an important contribution to our understanding of a major but still surprisingly poorly known language family. The present time is an ideal time to carry out a project of this nature: improvements in the political climate have made it possible for the Principal Investigator and his associates to work with native speakers of the relevant languages and dialects. Parts of the project require urgent completion, as a number of the smaller Tibeto-Burman languages are moribund. The project will have implications not only for Tibeto-Burman linguistics, but also for the general theory of language change.