Some Grammatical Features of Luzu

Abstract

Luzu 呂蘇 is a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the Qiangic branch spoken in Sichuan, southwest China. This report describes some grammatical features of the Luzu dialect of Naiqu 乃渠 Township in Jiulong 九龍 County, Ganzi 甘孜 Prefecture, using the descriptive method of Huang and Renzeng (1991). The phonological system, vocabulary, and grammar of the Naiqu dialect have obvious correspondences with the Mili 木里 dialect described by Huang and Renzeng, indicating that Naiqu and Mili are two quite close subdialects of the same language. According to our language consultant's observation, the local dialects of Luzu are as follows: [ŋgu³³ɹe⁵⁵xõ³³] 九龍県縣城話, spoken in Jiulong 九龍 Town; [ɕɐ³³kʰɐ⁵⁵xũ³³] 斜卡話, spoken in Xieka 斜卡 County; and [dʐi³³wɐ⁵⁵xõ³³] 雅礱江對岸話 ([dʐi³³wɐ⁵⁵] ‘waterfront') spoken on the opposite bank of the Yalong 雅礱 River. The Mili dialect described by Huang and Renzeng is considered to belong to this “waterfront” dialect. In this report, we describe the basic syntax of the Naiqu subdialect, which belongs to the above-mentioned Xieka area, mainly focusing on case markers to express the grammatical relationship among arguments, aspect markers to appear at the end of verb phrase, and auxiliary verbs to describe the semantic distinction between “inner/outer.” Even though the Naiqu and Mili dialects share a common grammatical framework, the Naiqu dialect has its own features, that have not previously been well described. We clarify the characteristics and analytical problems of the above three grammatical points and note differences between the dialects.