Person Marking in Stau

Abstract

This paper offers an overview of the verb system and person marking in a hitherto poorly described Sino-Tibetan language. We posit the existence of six verb classes based upon alternations of the final stem vowel, both for transitive and intransitive verbs. Person marking is described in comparison with that of closely related Rgyalrongic languages is found to be of interest for the reconstruction of the protosystem. The data analysed show that Rtau is also interesting from a typological point of view as it illustrates of a hitherto undescribed subtype of hierachical agreement.