A Grammar of Limbu.

• Author: Riccardi, Jr., T.

The Limbus are a people who live in the hills of eastern Nepal, Sikkim, and the Darjeeling district of Bengal. Because of their migration throughout the Himalayas and to the various countries of the subcontinent, their total population is unknown, but approximately 180,000 are said to live in Nepal. The term "Limbu," a designation applied both to the people and their language, is really a Nepali ethnonym through which these people have been categorized and defined by the Nepali Hindu state and have become known to Western linguists and ethnographers. An older pair of ethnonyms, kirata/kiranti, found mainly in Sanskrit texts, is often associated with them, though how these ancient terms apply to them is not at all clear. Of the history of the Limbus, we know nothing definite until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when their "nation," known to the Gorkhalis as Limbuvan, begins to be absorbed into the nascent Nepalese state. Since that time, the Limbus have appeared as one of the more independent, even obstreperous groups, demanding from their Hindu rulers, and often receiving, rights and privileges not granted to others.

The Limbus call themselves "yakthunba" and their language "yakthunba pan." The language has four major dialects: phedappe, pacthare, chathare, and taplejune. Only the first of these is a Yakthunba term, the others being Nepali, and it is this dialect that van Driem presents in the work under review. For the research, the author lived with a Yakthunba family in Tamphula, a village in Tehrathum district in the Kosi zone of eastern Nepal, for a total of nine months in 1984 and 1985.

The book consists of four main sections: an introduction, ten chapters of linguistic analysis, appendices consisting of Yakthunba texts and verbal paradigms, a section on the writing system, and a glossary.

The work is of very high quality and the author is to be commended for presenting so detailed and elegant a grammar. The work is a most valuable contribution to the field of Tibeto-Burman linguistics. Few Himalayan languages have received such excellent treatment.

The core of the book is the ten chapters of linguistic description in which van Driem presents the phonology and morphology of Yakthunba. Verbal analysis dominates the grammar. Over two hundred pages are devoted to it. Overall the analysis is clearly and systematically presented, and specialists in the area should have no trouble in using van Driem's data. There is one general...