Monographs by Jesse P Gates
A grammar of Mazur Stau
Paris, EHESS, May 26, 2021
The language varieties classified under the official ISO heading Jiarong [ISO 639-3: jya], a.k.a.... more The language varieties classified under the official ISO heading Jiarong [ISO 639-3: jya], a.k.a. rGyalrong, spoken in parts of the mountainous north-western Sìchuān province of China, have been generally accepted as a single, distinct, synchronic language belonging to the rGyalrongic subgroup within Tibeto-Burman. The research provided in this thesis casts doubt on the hypothesis that rGyalrong is a single synchronic language and reveals some of the previously undocumented variation within rGyalrongic. The research in this study provides evidence that intelligibility of a representative lect from the east-central rGyalrongic region is low among speakers of many lects in the southern rGyalrongic region. In addition, ethnic identity at the lowest embedded layer is not cohesive throughout the rGyalrongic regions. Language attitudes, contact, ethnohistory, perceptual dialectology, core lexical comparisons, and structural comparisons are also examined. As a result rGyalrong emerges as five distinct languages—Situ, South-central, Japhug, Tshobdun, Zbu—with Situ and Japhug having the most robust evidence. This study integrates the field research of the author—including the first rigorous intelligibility testing among rGyalrongic language varieties—as well as previous research by external sources.
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Monographs by Jesse P Gates