Publications
This page gives an overview of publications emanating from the 5th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th and 16th Himalayan Languages Symposium.
5th Symposium volume: Themes in Himalayan Languages and Linguistics
Edited by Tej Ratna Kansakar and Mark Turin. 2003. Heidelberg and Kathmandu: South Asia Institute and Tribhuvan Univerisity. ISBN. 9993354163. 293 pages.
Themes in Himalayan Languages and Linguistics contains 24 papers presented at the fifth annual Symposium on Himalayan Languages, which was held in Kathmandu, September 13-15, 1999. All proceeds of this book, jointly published by the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg and Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, go toward supporting fieldwork by Tribhuvan University graduate students.
7th Symposium volume: Himalayan Languages: Past and present
Edited by Anju Saxena. 2004. Trends in Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3110178419. viii + 434 pages.
This collection of articles grew out of the Seventh Himalayan Symposium, held at Uppsala University in Sweden, August 79, 2001. In addition to twelve papers which were presented at the conference, there are also three contributions from Balthasar Bickel, George van Driem and Anju Saxena in this book.
In the introduction, Anju Saxena provides a history of the study of Himalayan languages and is a powerful addition to the book in its own right. She provides a clear and concise introduction to the rich smörgåsbord, as she explains, of languages comprising the area. She also includes a history of the Sino-Tibetan theory, valuable to any Sino-Tibetanist with an interest in comparative or historical linguistics.
The other contributions to this book are divided into two categories. The first category provides synchronic descriptions for topics ranging from phonology to syntax to discourse, within Dardic and Tibeto-Burman languages. The second category offers articles on Tibeto-Burman historical and comparative linguistics ranging from morphosyntax to semantics and genetic classification.
8th Symposium volume: Linguistics of the Himalayas and Beyond
Edited by Roland Bielmeier and Felix Haller. 2007 | Hardcover | RRP Euro [D] 104.95 / for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 160.00. ISBN 978-3-11-019828-7
Linguistics of the Himalayas and Beyond contains 21 papers dealing with the languages spoken in the Himalayas, on their southern slopes and on the high Tibetan plateau in the north constitute the core of this diversity.
Ten papers are dedicated to Tibetan linguistic studies. Other papers deal with the western Himalayan languages Kinnauri and Bunan, the Tamangic languages of northern Nepal, the two East Bodish languages Dzala and Dakpa, Rabha and Manipuri in northeastern India and the Kiranti languages Sampang, Limbu, Chaurasia and Sunwar in eastern Nepal.
The impressive selection of languages and linguistic topics dealt with in this book underlines the diversity of the Tibeto-Burman languages in Central and South Asia and highlights their place within present-day linguistic research. The results achieved by leading experts are remarkable in general, and the book is of interest to linguists, anthropologists and geographers.
11th Symposium volume: Himalayan Languages and Linguistics
Edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler. 2011. Leiden and Boston: Brill. 322 pages.
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics contains 9 papers, most of which were presented at the eleventh annual symposium on Himalayan languages, and some individually solicited by the editors. The 11th Himalayan Languages Symposium was held in Bangkok and organised by Krisadawan Hongladarom of Chulalongkorn University. The nine papers are divided into four parts: Part One: The Himalayas in history, containing a paper by George van Driem; Part Two: Phonology and script, containing a paper by Heleen Plaisier and a paper by Hiroyuki Suzuki; Part Three: Semantics (words and word classes), containing a paper by Brandson Dotson and an article by Kazuyuki Kiryu; Part Four: Morphology and syntax, containing four contributions by Ellen Bartee, René Huysmans, Khawaja A. Rehman and Bettina Zeisler.
12th Symposium volume: Recent Studies in Nepalese Linguistics
Edited by Novel Kishore Rai, Yogendra Prasad Yadav, Bhim N. Regmi and Balaram Prasain. 2007. Kathmandu: Linguistic Society of Nepal. 492 pages.
Recent Studies in Nepalese Linguistics contains twenty-nine papers, representing a selection of the contributions which were presented at the 12th Himalayan Languages Symposium and the 27th Annual Conference of the Linguistic Society of Nepal, the two events having been hosted simultaneously by the Linguistic Society of Nepal at Tribhuvan University in Kirtipur from the 26th to the 28th of November 2006. The contributions range from phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, language typology, pragmatics and applied linguistics. The volume also contains the published version of the Dallas Manifesto, first presented at the Grammar Writing Symposium of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas on the 19th of October 2002, and the volume concludes with the presidential address delivered by Jai Raj Awasthi.
16th Symposium volume: Trans-Himalayan Linguistics
Edited by Nathan W. Hill and Thomas Owen-Smith.
The 16th Himalayan Languages Symposium was hosted by Nathan Hill at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London from the 2nd to the 5th of September 2010. With the assistance of Tom Owen-Smith, Nathan Hill edited a volume on the historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area. The book contains several studies on the phylogeny of the Trans-Himalayan linguistic phylum a.k.a. the Tibeto-Burman language family. The volume contains comparative historical studies of the Tibetic, Tamangic and East Bodish subgroups and of Bursushaski. Analyses and descriptions of new language data are presented for Tshangla, Tilung, Rengmitca, Shumcho and Yongning Na.