Lhokpu morphology: a first functional and comparative account

Lhokpu is a Trans-Himalayan language spoken in southwestern Bhutan in the district of Samtsi. Lhokpu, along with Gongduk and Black Mountain Mönpa, represents the oldest linguistic layer of Bhutan. Lhokpu is nowadays seriously endangered and its phylogenetic affiliation within the Trans-Himalayan phylum is unknown. This talk will present a first account on Lhokpu nominal and verbal morphology and on the phylogenetic position of Lhokpu. A discussion of selected individual morphemes and their functions will be followed by a comparative analysis of the morphological material within the Trans-Himalayan context.

Initial fieldwork was done by George van Driem in 1990, 1992 and 2002 and further by Gwendolyn Hyslop and Karma Tshering in 2012/2013. In summer 2015, a team consisting of George van Driem, Gwendolyn Hyslop, Karma Tshering, Pascal Gerber and Selin Grollmann worked with a Lhokpu speaker in Bern, Switzerland, to supplement the existing data and to write up a first grammatical description of the language.