Dissertation
A grammar of Bantawa: Grammar, paradigm tables, glossary and texts of a Rai language of Eastern Nepal
This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of the grammar of Bantawa, a Kiranti (Rai) language spoken in Eastern Nepal.
- Author
- Marius Doornenbal
- Date
- 03 November 2009
- Links
- Full text in Leiden University Repository
Bantawa is an SOV language featuring rich verbal morphology. In Bantawa we find both ergative and accusative alignment patterns in verbal affix agreement, and an ergative/absolutive pattern of case marking.
The grammar treats the syntax of all major syntactical constructions, including the highly productive verb compounding process, embedding of converbial and finite clauses, nominalisations and evidentiality. The semantics of nominalisations and the aspectual nuances of verbal compounds are discussed in detail. An annotated text corpus, comprehensive paradigm tables and a glossary complete the grammar.