Chapter published in:
Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony
Edited by Sonia Cristofaro and Fernando Zúñiga
[Typological Studies in Language 121] 2018
► pp. 403–424

Generic person marking in Japhug and other Gyalrong languages

This paper discusses the history of generic person marking systems in several Gyalrong languages. While closely related, Japhug and Tshobdun differ considerably: the inverse prefix marks generic A in Japhug, while it appears in the generic P form in Tshobdun. We propose a historical scenario to explain how such radically different systems came into being, proposing in particular that one of the generic human markers was grammaticalized from a nominalizer, and show that our reconstruction can also explain the origin of the local scenario portmanteau 1→2 and 2→1 prefixes. These reconstructions allow us to establish the existence of several previously unattested grammaticalization pathways.
Keywords: Gyalrong, Japhug, Tshobdun, Situ, inverse, generic, passive, grammaticalization, hierarchical agreement, nominalization
Published online: 26 July 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.121.12jac
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