Pronominalization in Tibeto-Burman

of the ICSTLL-39, September 15-17, Seattle, U. S. A Pronominalization in Tibeto-Burman Prof. Hongkai Sun Institute of Ethnology & Anthropology Chinese Academy of Social Sciences E-mail: [email protected] It is no doubt that there is pronominalization phenomenon in Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages. During the end of the 19th Century to the early 20th Century, the authors of Linguistic Survey of India had classified Himalayan languages as pronominalized languages and non-pronominalized languages. In the 40’s of the 20th century, Professor Luo Changpei had found a typical pronominalization phenomenon in the Dulong language. But there is divaricating among the scholars on which languages have pronominalization phenomenon, and which languages do not have. In particular, pronominalization in some languages has not been systematic anymore. It’s difficult to identify them from surface form within TB. The author will be trying to analyze and to explain the proniminalization phenomenon in TB languages according to his own data in this paper. Apart from pronominalization in Tibeto-Burman, this paper will also illustrate remains of pronominalization phenomenon in Modern Chinese Han dialects that is not mentioned in Chinese linguistics literature.