The ancestry of Horpa: Further morphological evidence
霍尔语的祖源：进一步的形态证据
Jackson T.-S. Sun 孙天心
Abstract 摘要
Horpa is an understudied, internally diverse Rgyalrongic cluster (Qiangic branch, Sino-Tibetan family) spoken across six counties in two prefectures of northwestern Sichuan. As this author demonstrated in an earlier article using individual-identifying morphological evidence, Northern Horpa (Stodsde) clearly belongs under Rgyalrongic (J. Sun 2000b). The phylogenetic affinity of less conservative Horpa languages (e.g., Rta’u) is however far less obvious. This paper, drawing on extensive recent fieldwork, offers a fuller range of cross-dialect evidence in important areas of Horpa verbal morphology to vindicate the ancestry of Horpa as a Rgyalrongic subgroup. It is shown that quite banal phonological and grammatical evolutions have caused the innovating Horpa languages to cast off much of their characteristic morphology, masking their true Rgyalrongic origins.
Subject Keywords 主题词
Sino-Tibetan family 汉藏语系 Qiangic branch 羌语支 Rgyalrongic subgroup 嘉戎语组 Linguistic ancestry 语言祖源 Phonological and grammatical innovation 音韵与语法创新 Contact-induced language change 接触引发的演变
Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series (ISSN 2409-2878), Number 29 (2019): 24-43
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