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Kham, Western Parbate

A language of Nepal

ISO 639-3: kjl

Population	24,500 (2003 SIL), increasing.
Region	West central, Rapti Zone, Rukum, Rolpa districts. Taka-Shera is the center.
Language maps	Western Nepal, reference number 115 Western Nepal, reference number 115
Alternate names	Kham-Magar, Takale, Takale Kham, Western Parbate
Dialects	Takale, Maikoti, Mahatale, Lukumel, Wale, Thabangi. Greatest similarities between Eastern [kif] and Western Parbate [kjl]. The Parbate, Sheshi, and Gamale groups are all inherently unintelligible. Mahatale and Miruli are 2 dialects whose position within the Kham linguistic group has not been decided. Lexical similarity: 71% with Gamale Kham [kgj], Eastern Parbate; 58% with Bhujel Kham, 51% with Sheshi [kip]. 25% with Magar and Gurung, slightly below 25% with the Tibetan group, 15% with the Rai and Limbu groups.
Classification	Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Himalayish, Mahakiranti, Kham-Magar-Chepang-Sunwari, Kham
Language use	Trade language for Kham area. Vigorous. All domains. All ages. Also use Nepali [nep].
Language development	Literacy rate in L1: Some. Literacy rate in L2: Some. NT: 1985.
Writing system	Devanagari script.
Comments	Different from the Khams of eastern Tibet as spoken by the Khampa. People migrate in summer to the foot of glaciers on the western end of the Dhaulagiri massif, and in winter to the southern hills of Rolpa District. SOV; postposition; genitives, adjectives, numerals, relatives before noun heads; maximum number for nouns: 1 prefix, 8 suffixes; for verbs: 5 prefixes, 7 suffixes; objects and indirect objects partially marked by word order; case marked on NPs by affixes; verb affixes mark person and number of subject and object—obligatory; split ergative; detransitivization common, some of which is passive-like; a kind of semantic inverse marked in verb morphology; causatives; applicatives; (C)V(V)(C) where the second V is a dipthong or long vowel; tonal. Seminomadic pastoralists: sheep, goats; agriculturalists; peasants. Traditional religion, Buddhist (Tantrayana), Hindu.

Entries from the SIL Bibliography about this language:

Academic Publications

HALE, Austin, editor. 1973. Clause, sentence, and discourse patterns in selected languages of Nepal 1: General approach.  

HALE, Austin, editor. 1973. Clause, sentence, and discourse patterns in selected languages of Nepal 3: Texts.  

HALE, Austin, editor. 1973. Clause, sentence, and discourse patterns in selected languages of Nepal 4: Word lists.  

HALE, Austin; WATTERS, David E., editors. 1973. Clause, sentence, and discourse patterns in selected languages of Nepal 2: Clause.  

WATTERS, David E., author. 1971. Kham phonemic summary.

WATTERS, David E., author. 1971. A guide to Kham tone.

WATTERS, David E., author. 1973. "Clause patterns in Kham."  

WATTERS, David E., author. 1975. "Siberian shamanistic traditions among the Kham-Magars of Nepal."

WATTERS, David E., author. 1975. "The evolution of a Tibeto-Burman pronominal verb morphology: a case-study from Kham (Nepal)."

WATTERS, David E., author. 1978. "Speaker-hearer involvement in Kham."  

WATTERS, David E., author. 1985. "Emergent word tone in Kham: a Tibeto-Burman halfway house."

WATTERS, David E., author. 1995. An overview of nominalizations and relative clauses in Kham.

WATTERS, David E., author. 1995. Transitivity types and verb classes in Kham.

WATTERS, David E., author. 1998. The Kham language of West-Central Nepal (Takale dialect).

WATTERS, David E., author. 2002. A grammar of Kham.

WATTERS, David E., author. 2003. "Kham."

WATTERS, David E., author. 2004. A dictionary of Kham: Taka dialect (a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal).

WATTERS, David E., author. 2005. "An overview of Kham-Magar languages and dialects."

WATTERS, David E., author. 2008. "The semantics of clause linking in Kham."

WATTERS, David E., author. 2011. A sketch grammar of Western Parbate Kham.

WATTERS, David E., author. 2012. Some preliminary observations on the inter-relatedness of Kham dialects.

WATTERS, David E., author. 2012. Some preliminary observations on the relationship between Kham, Magar, (and Chepang).

WATTERS, David E., author. 2012. The maintenance of deictic integrity across Kham dialects.

WATTERS, David E.; WATTERS, Nancy, authors. 1972. A vocabulary of the Kham language.

WATTERS, David E.; WATTERS, Nancy, authors. 1973. An English-Kham, Kham-English glossary.

WATTERS, Stephen, author. 1995. Animacy and definiteness in Kham case marking.