Direct speech reporting is a rhetorical strategy used frequently in the production of Dolakha Newar narrative. Direct speech reports are syntactically uniform in constituting center-embedded objects of ditransitive verbs. Prosodically, they show a wide range of behaviors. They may be set off from the surrounding quotative frame by intonation-unit boundaries, variations in pitch or loudness, and/or the production of contours typical of conversational speech. They may also be produced across multiple intonation units and may show patterns of macro-level prosodic structuring indicative of internal prosodic coherence and embedding within higher-level structures. On the other hand, they may exhibit none of these prosodic characteristics and be prosodically integrated with respect to the quotative frame. This variable behavior results from competition among a variety of pressures, including speakers’ performative goals, the syntax of complementation, the rhetorical impact of the quoted speech, performance factors, and inter-speaker variation in style, among others. While statistical analyses might fruitfully be applied to objectively quantifiable factors, a purely statistical model will never fully predict prosodic behavior, due to the meaningful nature of prosody and intangible features of individuals in the production of discourse.

Like other languages of the Western Sichuan linguistic area, the Yonghe variety of Qiang has robust grammatical systems for spatial concepts. Within the noun phrase, there are specialized locative casemarkers for different degrees of distance of the object being located. There is also a set of locational nouns, which are structured based on an intrinsic frame of reference, at least for some speakers. In the verb phrase, there is a system of five existential verbs, four of which have locational semantics; choice of existential depends on containment and attachment, then secondarily on the animacy of the referent being located. There is also a set of eight directional prefixes. These have different discourse frequencies, reflecting different levels of prefix-verb collocation. In addition, the prefixes primarily occur in perfective clauses and imperatives; however, they are optional when an adverbial phrase is also used. Thus, the system approximates derivation rather than inflection. These patterns of distribution, together with comparative data from other Western Sichuan languages, suggest a grammaticalization pathway from directional prefix to perfective to imperative.

This study explores the relationship of prosodic and syntactic structure in a Dolakhā Newār

rendering of a portion of The MahΩbhΩrata. Six intonation types are identified and described. The strongest syntax/prosody correlation is between final intonation and finite verb morphology. Finite clauses may be found with continuing intonation; in these cases the speaker manipulates the syntactic and prosodic levels for functional reasons. Prosodic units combine to form larger structures which we call prosodic sentences. These are defined as prosodic marcro-units optionally containing any number of continuing intonation units and ending with final intonation. Prosodic sentences may be internally complex and exhibit embedding. Boundaries between narrative sentences are produced by the convergence of finality at the syntactic and prosodic levels.

The current volume arose from a one-day pre-meeting workshop entitled “How Grammar Encodes Space in Tibeto-Burman” at the 48th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, which was held at the University of California, Santa Barbara in August of 2015.

This thesis is a description of suprasegmental phenomena in Yonghe Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Western Sichuan, China. The analysis, based on original data from fieldwork, presents Yonghe as having an obligatory word-level accent overlaying a privative /L/ vs. Ø tonal contrast. The thesis includes a discussion of issues of tone and prominence in the typology of suprasegmental phonology. The analysis includes an overview of Yonghe segmental phonology, a phonetic and phonological account of both tone and accent on monosyllabic and disyllabic nouns, as well as tone and accent sandhi phenomena. The discussion of the Yonghe data broadens typological knowledge of possible tonal systems and contributes to wider discussions regarding the validity of the phonological category of ‘accent’ (van der Hulst 2011, Hyman 2006, inter alia). The facts of the Yonghe tone system demonstrate the necessity of both tone and accent as units of analysis and the importance of recognizing language-specific phonological categories in phonological typology. The Yonghe system also suggests a need to reconsider and refine classifications of languages as having either ‘Register-tone systems’ or ‘Contour-tone systems’ (Pike 1948).

This dissertation presents the verbal morphology of the Yonghe variety of Qiang through the lens of Radical Construction Grammar. Yonghe Qiang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken primarily in Yonghe Township, Mao County, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province, People’s Republic of China. Chapter 1 (Context) provides background information on the Qiang language as well as the people who speak it. It discusses the place of Yonghe within the Qiang language-complex and gives comparative and philological evidence for the uniqueness of Yonghe compared to other varieties. It introduces and motivates the choice of Radical Construction Grammar as the framework for this dissertation. The conventions and empirical materials used throughout this work are also presented. Chapter 2 (Segmental Phonology) presents the segmental phonology of the language, including the consonants and vowels. Empirical measurements such as waveforms and spectrograms are given for each relevant segment. Attention is given to the phonology of borrowings from Mandarin Chinese. Syllable structure is also discussed, along with utterance final phenomena such as glottalization. Chapter 3 (Suprasegmental Phonology) presents the tonal melodies in lexical Nouns and Verbs in the language. The typological profile of tone in the language is given consideration. The ways in which tonal Chinese loans are incorporated are treated in depth. The interaction between tone type and syllable length is explored through quantitative methodologies. Chapter 4 (The Verb-Complex) introduces the verbal template, including the prefixal and suffixal slots. Yonghe constructions are sorted into four categories based on distributional analysis: Verbs, Nouns, Ideophones, and Interjections. Verbs are sub-classified into Active, Stative, and Existential based on their distributional and semantic properties. The chapter discusses the subtypes with respect to tone classes and reduplicative patterns. Noun-Verb compounds and their resulting tonal patterns are analyzed. A small class of bipartite verbs are introduced. The ways in which Chinese loanwords are incorporated into the Verb-Complex is discussed. Chapter 5 (Prefixes) covers the orientational, aspectual, and modal prefixes. Of particular interest are the set of eight orientational prefixes, which have complex semantics ranging from literal direction marking to aspectual and modal meanings. The prefixes are discussed with reference to their phonological alternations which include tonal alternations and vowel harmony. The use of Chinese loans with Qiang prefixes is also discussed. Chapter 6 (Suffixes) presents the numerous suffixal forms. The nominalizing suffixes, which have broad use and are a core feature of the morpho-syntax, are presented with some discussion as to their possible etymologies. Two Associated Motion suffixes are discussed in the context of their interaction with orientational prefixes. Two valency increasing suffixes, the applicative, and the causative are analyzed. Lastly, discussion of the person marking suffixes is framed within the wider debate as to the antiquity of the paradigm and also within the broader system of epistemic marking suffixes. Chapter 7 (Summary) examines the advantages and disadvantages of a Radical Construction Grammar approach to describing the language. The dissertation is then concluded with a discussion of future directions for the study of Yonghe Qiang verbal morphology.

This thesis aims to advance the idea that prosody is fundamentally about creating cohesion, that is, signaling the “relations of meaning that exist within the text” (Halliday & Hasan 1976:4). Building on research on the cohesive function of prosody by Wichmann (2000) and Wennerstrom (2001), I show how each of the features generally referred to as prosodic are used by speakers to lend cohesion to their discourse by signaling the transitions from one unit of discourse to the next, the relations that hold between those units, and their relative prominence. To accomplish this, I look at six prosodic cues in Ékegusií, a Great Lakes Bantu language of southwestern Kenya with lexical and grammatical tone (Cammenga 2002; Nash 2011). Those cues are pause, vowel elision, prosodic accent, pitch reset, isotony (intonational parallelism), and intonational contour. For each feature, I exemplify the ways in which it demarcates conceptually cohesive units of discourse, and/or signals the relations between one unit of speech and another. I show that when these prosodic cues appear, they create cohesive ties between one segment of discourse and another by signaling where one discourse topic ends and another begins, and indicating how – and how closely – the new discourse topic relates to the old (Couper-Kuhlen 2004; Swerts & Geluykens 1994). Together with morphosyntactic devices for cohesion, such as anaphoric pronouns and reference, the cohesive ties created by prosody are what give coherence to the text, thus distinguishing it from a random assortment of unrelated utterances (Halliday & Hasan 1976). I conclude by discussing how an understanding of prosody as a means for signaling discourse cohesion complements more interactional approaches to prosody (Barth-Weingarten 2013; Barth-Weingarten & Reber 2010; Couper-Kuhlen & Ford 2004), and provides a language-independent means of examining prosody crosslinguistically, thus laying a foundation for future typological studies.

This memoriam honors Barbara Frances Kelly, our friend and colleague, who passed away on 14 December, 2022.

This issue of Himalayan Linguistics marks twenty years for the journal. We reflect on the early history of Himalayan Linguistics, its contribution to the field, and the future of the journal.