A grammar of Qiang : with annotated texts and glossary / by Randy J. LaPolla with Chenglong Huang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

LaPolla, Randy J.

Contributor:

Huang, Chenglong.

Series:

Mouton grammar library ; 31.

Mouton grammar library ; 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Khyang language--Grammar.

Khyang language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 445 pages) : illustrations, map

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, c2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book is a full reference grammar of Qiang, one of the minority languages of southwest China, spoken by about 70,000 Qiang and Tibetan people in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in northern Sichuan Province. It belongs to the Qiangic branch of Tibeto-Burman (one of the two major branches of Sino-Tibetan). The dialect presented in the book is the Northern Qiang variety spoken in Ronghong Village, Yadu Township, Chibusu District, Mao County. This book, the first book-length description of the Qiang language in English, is the result of many years of work on the language, and is as typologically comprehensive as possible. It includes not only the reference grammar, but also an ethnological overview, several fully analyzed texts (mostly traditional stories), and an annotated glossary. The language is verb final, agglutinative (prefixing and suffixing), and has both head-marking and dependent marking morphology. The phonology of Qiang is quite complex, with 39 consonants at seven points of articulation, plus complex consonant clusters, both in initial and final position, as well as vowel harmony, vowel length distinctions, and a set of retroflexed vowels. The grammar also is complex, with a paradigm of eight direction marking verbal prefixes, and two paradigms for person marking, one for actor, one for non-actor, and a variety of other verbal prefixes and suffixes, as well as definite and number marking on nouns. Noun phrases take classifiers and relational pospositions as well.

Contents:

Front matter

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. The phonological system

Chapter 3. The noun phrase

Chapter 4. The verb complex

Chapter 5. The clause and complex structures

Texts

English-Qiang glossary arranged by semantic field

Back matter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [433]-442) and index.

ISBN:

9786612193804

9781282193802

1282193805

9783110197273

3110197278

OCLC:

191935720