Japhug language

Japhug is a Gyalrong language spoken in Barkam County, Rngaba, Sichuan, China, in the three townships of Gdong-brgyad (Chinese: 龙尔甲; pinyin: Lóng'rjiǎ,

The endonym of the Japhug language is [kɯrɯ skɤt]. The name Japhug ([tɕɤpʰɯ]; Tibetan: ja phug; Chinese: 茶堡; pinyin: Chápù) refers in Japhug to the area comprising Gsar-rdzong and Da-tshang, while that of Gdong-brgyad is also known as [sɤŋu] (Jacques 2004), but speakers of Situ Gyalrong use this name to refer to the whole Japhug-speaking area.

Japhug is the only toneless Gyalrong language. It has 49 consonants and seven vowels.

The phoneme /w/ has the allophones [β] and [f].

The phoneme /ʁ/ is realized as an epiglottal fricative in the coda or preceding another consonant.

The prenasalized consonants are analyzed as units for two reasons. First, there is a phoneme /ɴɢ/, as in /ɴɢoɕna/ "large spider", but neither /ɴ/ nor /ɢ/ exist as independent phonemes. Second, there are clusters of fricatives and prenasalized voiced stops, as in /ʑmbri/ "willow", but never clusters of fricatives and prenasalized voiceless stops.

Japhug distinguishes between palatal plosives and velar plosive + j sequences, as in /co/ "valley" vs. /kjo/ "drag". These both contrast with alveolo-palatal affricates.

There are at least 339 consonant clusters in Japhug (Jacques 2008:29), more than in Old Tibetan or in most Indo-European languages. Some of these clusters are typologically unusual: in addition to the previously mentioned clusters of fricatives and prenasalized stops, there are clusters where the first element is a semivowel, as in /jla/ "hybrid of a yak and a cow".

Japhug has eight vowel phonemes: a, o, u, ɤ, ɯ, y, e and i. The vowel y is attested in only one native word (/qaɟy/ "fish") and its derivatives, but appears in Chinese loanwords.

The mid-open unrounded vowels /ɤ/ and /e/ are only marginally contrastive: /ɤ/ does not occur in word- final open syllables except in unaccented clitics (like the additive nɤ), and /e/ only occurs in the last (accented) syllable of a word. They are clearly contrastive only with the coda /-t/.

Not all speakers of Kamnyu Japhug have a phoneme /y/ in the native vocabulary. Even for those speakers, it is only attested in the word ‘fish’ and the verbs derived from it. It nevertheless contrasts with /ɯ/ and /u/, as shown by the quasi-minimal pairs /qaɟy/ ‘fish’, /waɟɯ/ ‘earthquake’ and /ɟuli/ ‘flute’. Other speakers pronounce ‘fish’ with a medial /w/ as /qaɟwi/. However, [y] is found in the speech of all Japhug speakers in Chinese loanwords such as 洋芋 <yángyù> ‘potato’.

Jacques (2008) is a short grammar and Jacques and Chen (2010) a text collection with interlinear glosses. Other studies on morphosyntax include Jacques (2010) on direct–inverse marking, Jacques (2012a) on valency (passive, antipassive, anticausative, lability etc.), Jacques (2012b) on incorporation and Jacques (2013) on associated motion.

Japhug lacks case inflection. However, Japhug does have few adverbializing derivations that display functions for oblique cases, for example, the comitative kɤ́- and perlative reduplication. In noun phrases, grammatical relations are denoted by following clitics:

Japhug lacks grammatical number. It has two clitic number determiners, dual ni and plural ra, both do not have syntactic relationship with noun argument.

Demonstratives in Japhug can be either pronominal or post-nominal.

In Japhug, verbal inflection is overwhelmingly dominated by prefixes, though it does support limited suffix slots. The Japhug verb template can be described as following:

Japhug finite verbs can form agreement with one or two arguments, depending on the transitivity of the verb. Verb indexation can use a combination of prefixes, suffixes and stem alternation. Person indexation in Japhug in general have neutral alignment, though ergative-absolutive alignment can occur.

Japhug noun incorporation is attested in denominal derivations. The complex verb, formed from the prefixation of a noun-verb compound, has its direction following the head movement with a strong head-final tendency. The IN precedes the verb root. A Japhug verb can incorporate intransitive subject, object and semi-object, goal/location adjunct, and instrument. Indirect objects and transitive subjects are never incorporated into the verb. Japhug likely has an antipassive NI effect; the noun incorporation subject is not marked with the ergative.