The Yamphu Rai are a Kiranti tribe of the Himalayas of Eastern Nepal. The Yamphu language belongs to a group of complex- pronominalising languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. This grammar consists of a description of the Yamphu dialect of Hedangna, a collection of oral texts and a lexicon.
The majority of grammatical categories in Yamphu is expressed by means of suffixes. Nominal morphology includes number and case markers, postpositions and nominalising suffixes. Verbal morphology distinguishes auxiliary verbs, tense and agreement markers, mood suffixes and postpositions expressing inter- clausal relations. Information structure, too, is mainly expressed by means of suffixes.
The texts included in this grammar represent various styles of speech, such as formulaic, mythological and conversational styles.
Roland Rutgers studied Comparative Linguistics and conducted his research on the language of the Yamphu Rai as a member of the Himalayan Languages Project at Leiden University.
With appendices and photograps