Examining approaches to describing complex verbal morphology for an unwritten language

Aimée Lahaussois (1)

1 HTL - HTL - Histoire des Théories Linguistiques - UMR 7597

In this presentation I compare the effectiveness of two descriptions of the verbal system of Khaling Rai, a language of Nepal. The verbal morphology of Khaling is notoriously complex, indexing both agent and patient on transitive verbs, and with a unique verb stem alternation patterns. Yet because of the exclusively oral nature of the language, there is no written record that can be explored; diachronic data based on reconstruction can however provide insights essential for explaining complex synchronic phenomena. The larger questions I will explore are how the grammatical models one brings to a descriptive context affect the effectiveness of the description of a verbal system.

Mots clés: oral languages; verbal morphology; language description; reconstructed verb roots

Domaines: Linguistique

Aimée Lahaussois. Examining approaches to describing complex verbal morphology for an unwritten language. Bernard Colombat; Bernard Combettes; Valérie Raby; Gilles Siouffi. Histoire des langues et histoire des représentations linguistiques, Honoré Champion, 2018. ⟨hal-01895550⟩