<Vocabulary> Lamei, another dialect of Lamo (mDzogong, TAR) --Vocabulary and sentence structure--

Abstract

This article primarily explores the vocabulary and sentence structure of Lamei, a dialect spoken in Zhonglinka Township, mDzogong County, Chamdo Municipality, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), China. Lamei is one of the two principal dialects of Lamo, a recently recognised non-Tibetic Tibeto-Burman language. The article contains approximately 500 lexical entries and 166 sentence examples with glossing, as well as preliminary findings and remarks presented in the material. The data of Lamei provided in the article were collected in the summer of 2019 at the local site. We had collaborators, from Ruoba and Wamei, respectively. Slight differences in the pronunciation have been observed between the two speeches. However, they do not affect mutual intelligibility. Section 1 briefly reviews the non-Tibetic Tibeto-Burman languages in the southeastern area of TAR, and specifies the Lamei-speaking area. Section 2 provides the sound system of Lamei, divided into syllable structure, consonantism, vocalism, and suprasegmentals. Section 3 introduces essential findings of phonological and morpho-syntactic features of Lamei; it includes four features: sound correspondence of native forms between Lamei and Lamo focusing on a rhyme and uvular initials; sound correspondence of Written Tibetan forms focusing on several initial sounds; copulative and existential verbs; and verb suffixes. Section 4 and Section 5 are vocabulary and sentence examples, respectively. The vocabulary consists of English meaning, Lamei form, and notes specifying a potential origin when a given lexical item is a loanword.