Koyi Rai: an initial grammatical sketch

Aimée Lahaussois (1)

1 LACITO - Langues et civilisations à tradition orale

Koyi Rai is a previously undescribed language of the Kiranti group of the Himalayan branch of Tibeto-Burman. Koyi, also referred to by speakers as Koyu or Kohi, is spoken in the Khotang district in Eastern Nepal, near the headwaters of the Rawa Khola, in the villages of Sungdel and, to a lesser extent, Dipsung. There are also some speakers in the villages of Lethang and Bharauli in the Tarai. My work was carried out in the Kathmandu Valley, political conditions at the time (2004) not being well-suited to fieldwork in the villages. There are said to be 2~3000 speakers.

Mots clés: Koyi Rai; Tibeto-Burman; Nepal; Kiranti group; endangered language; morphosyntax

Domaines: Linguistique

Aimée Lahaussois. Koyi Rai: an initial grammatical sketch. Himalayan Linguistics, 2009, Archive 4, pp.1-33. ⟨hal-00447497⟩