Nathaniel Sims

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of California, Santa Barbara

This paper looks at the vowel harmony system of Ronghong Rma (Qiang). This system has previously been described in terms of synchronic vowel alternations. This paper takes a different approach to explore the diachronic element of vowel harmony. The finding is that ‘harmonization’ is epiphenomenal and that the vowel alternations are the results of r...

In 1853, Brian Houghton Hodgson published linguistic data for Rma (< Trans-Himalayan) under the label ‘Thochu’. Nonetheless, his work has not been fully considered in the study of Rma historical linguistics. Recent advances in the study of Rma phonology allow for us to more confidently identify the position of the variety described by Hodgson as we...

Evans’ 2006b recognition of a phonological opposition between plain and uvularized vowels in the Hóngyán variety of Northwestern Rma was an important discovery for Rma linguistics, yet the diachronic origins of this phenomenon have not been fully considered. This paper considers the origin of uvularized vowels in the Hóngyán dialect through compari...

The aim of this short paper is to examine the morphological categories of direction and direct-inverse marking in Northwestern Rma/Qiang (< Trans-Himalayan/Sino-Tibetan). Based on evidence from published sources (LaPolla and Huang 2003; H. Sūn 1981; Liú 1998, 1999; Sun and Evans 2013), it is argued that the verbal systems of some northern varieties...

Tonogenesis is a topic of perennial interest in Trans‐Himalayan linguistics (The name of the family is the subject of some debate. Other terms for the family are Sino‐Tibetan and Tibeto‐Burman). The phonetic origins of the tones of the many languages in the family, such as Tibetan (Huáng 1995), Burmese (Nishi 1999; Hill 2019), and Chinese (Haudrico...

This study analyzes systems of direction and associated motion in 23 languages of the Tibeto-Burman family. Both direction and associated motion can be encoded by a range of grammatical strategies, including affixes, clitics, particles, serial-verb constructions, and auxiliary verbs. While some languages have only associated motion or direction, ot...

Efforts on language documentation have been increasing in the past. While the amount of digital data of the world's languages is increasing, only a small amount of the data is sustainable, since data reuse is often exacerbated by idiosyncratic formats and a negligence of standards that could help to increase the comparability of linguistic data. Th...

Prior work has suggested that proto-Rma was a non-tonal language and that tonal varieties underwent tonogenesis (Liú 1998, Evans 2001a-b). This paper re-examines the different arguments for the tonogenesis hypothesis and puts forward subgroup-internal and subgroup-external evidence for an alternative scenario in which tone, or its phonetic precurso...

Picus Sizhi Ding : A Grammar of Prinmi: Based on the Central Dialect of Northwest Yunnan, China. (Brill's Tibetan Studies Library: Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region.) xxi, 383 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2014. €139. ISBN 978 90 04 27782 3. - Volume 80 Issue 2 - Nathaniel Sims

Dialectology in the Qiang languages is still an underdeveloped field of study. Previous accounts of Qiang varieties have over simplistically described all varieties as belonging to one of two groups, Northern Qiang and Southern Qiang, based on broad typological features. This article demonstrates that previous subgroupings are inadequate and cannot...

Yonghe, a variety of Qiang (Tibeto-Burman, China) has never been described in the literature. This paper is the first publication specifically about the Yonghe variety. This variety is interesting in that it has a rather simplified segmental phonology, but has not undergone tonogenesis. This paper also appends a lexicon which will be useful for fut...