Sememic and grammatical structures in Gurung (Nepal)

Abstract

Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in central Nepal. This tagmemic description of Gurung sketches the way meaning (sememic structure) is expressed in surface forms (grammatical structures). 111 Chapter 1 outlines the geographical location and linguistic classification of Gurung, reviews previous descriptive work on the language, and sets out the theoretical position underlying the description. The orientation is tagmemic, positing separate sememic and grammatical hierarchies. Sememic structure is a representation of the semantic content of a communication, which is expressed through the forms, or grammatical structures, of a particular language. Chapter 2 defines four levels of sememic structure 1n terms of the types of relation operative at each level: participant roles at role level, attribution at increment level, logical connection of propositions at statement level, and the interaction of stimulus and response at response level. Chapters 3 to 8 describe grammatical structure at the clause, phrase, word, sentence, paragraph, and discourse levels, respectively, of the grammatical hierarchy in Gurung. The description of grammatical structures notes the sememic relations encoded by particular grammatical forms. An appendix includes three Gurung texts analyzed to show grammatical structure at paragraph and discourse levels.