ラルテー語における動詞語幹の交替

Abstract

This paper presents verb stem alternation in Ralte, a northern Kuki-Chin language of the Tibeto-Burman family. Most Ralte verbs have two phonologically distinct forms occurring in different types of clauses, which is a distinguishing grammatical feature of Kuki-Chin languages. In the first part of this paper, the author briefly describes some morphosyntactic features related to the verb stem alternation in Ralte, and in the latter half, he provides a list of Ralte’s basic verbs with pairs of alternate verb stems, namely,“Form I” and “Form II”. Since little has been reported or surveyed on this endangered language, this research is expected to directly contribute to the study of the Ralte language and its speakers.