Himalayan Linguistics

The Tibetic language Brokpa exhibits a number of archaic properties regarding its phonology. However, one also finds some shared Tibetic innovations and features which likely arose due to contact with non-Tibetic languages. This article discusses selected features belonging to the three above-mentioned categories such as the retention of initial clusters of bilabial plosives and /r/, the reflexes of other selected initial clusters, correspondences of syllable-final Written Tibetan <b>, <d>, <g> and <s>, the lack of a voiced dental fricative /dz/ as well as the loss of voicing distinction of the syllable onsets as a starting point of tonogenesis.