Structural Form and Utterance Context in Lhasa Tibetan: Grammar and Indexicality in a Non-Configurational Language

Structural Form and Utterance Context in Lhasa Tibetan is a comprehensive study of the major morphosyntactic features of Lhasa Tibetan, giving special emphasis to the role of indexical categories in grammatical description. The author examines such universal morphosyntactic phenomena as case marking, topicalization, clause structure, verbal aspect and mood. This volume also offers detailed treatments of phenomena that have classically resisted straight-forward grammatical analysis as a result of their inherent dependence on utterance context - phenomena such as fluid case marking, evidential categories, honorific register and verbal perspective marking. This book will be a basic text for linguists interested in the interplay between grammar and discourse, a research tool for the study of morphosyntactic typology, a major contribution to the theory of indexical categories and a reference manual for all linguists working on Tibetan languages.