Himalayan Linguistics

Person indexation in Monsang (Northwestern South-Central or “Kuki-Chin”) consists of a set of prefixes as well as a basic set of postverbal person markers with three variants. Based on which of these sets are used, this study finds four types of intransitive and four types of transitive paradigms of verbal person indexation. As for the three variants of postverbal person markers, a diachronic order is proposed: one set is clearly conservative; one set is clearly innovative and represents a fusion with a reconstructed palatal copula; and a third hybrid set appears to represent analogical change in the first person plural inclusive form. Finally, out of the four intransitive and four transitive types of person indexation, three of each closely match. In the case of the divergent intransitive type and transitive type, it is argued that the transitive type represents an innovative nominalization construction while the intransitive type did not undergo the same type of nominalization.