Himalayan Linguistics

We lay out the conjugation patterns for declarative affirmatives and negatives in Lamkang [lmk], a language of the South Central subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman (a.k.a.Trans-Himalayan) family. As for many languages of this family, conjugation patterns differ according to tense. This includes different patterning with respect to participant prefixes and agreement suffixes as well as stem shape. Lamkang also employs a person hierarchy; with 2nd>1st, 3rd>1st, and 3rd>2nd, a hierarchical index marker t- is used if the verb is in the nonfuture affirmative.  The verb template includes tense, negative, and copular auxiliaries which are inflected for agent except when agent is otherwise indicated, e.g., with an inclusive prefix in negative conjugations, the expected Patient-Stem Auxiliary-Agent pattern for the paradigm flips to Agent-Stem Auxiliary-Patient.  Within the clusive forms, a great deal of variation for which prefixes are used for inclusive/exclusive exists.  We also see variation in which plural markers occur. All this hints at a highly complex system in a state of flux.