Himalayan Linguistics

Case in Lotha, (a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Wokha District of Nagaland) is marked by suffixes that appear to the right of the noun it marks. In Lotha the ergative marker can combine with both nouns and pronouns, however, the nominative markers can only occur with pronouns. Lotha has aspectual split ergativity in which word class (noun vs. pronoun), aspect, and tense are determining factors. The ergative marker occurs mainly with the A argument of a transitive clause when it is in the past and the future. However, a highly volitional or powerful S may receive ergative marking as well. So, in Lotha, the A argument NP is generally marked distinctly from the S argument or O argument.  The nominative markers occur in perfective and imperfective clauses marking the A argument (transitive) and S argument (intransitive). The nominative markers take different shapes on pronominals where, ‑j ɔ marks exclusively first person singular, ‑n ɔ marks second person singular and first, second and third person plural, ‑ɔ marks first, second and third person dual whereas the third person singular either receives null marking or is marked by the topic marker ‑dʒ ɔ .