This is a valuable grammar of the endangered Lepcha language, an important member of the Tibeto-Burman family spoken in Sikkim, Darjeeling, southwestern Bhutan, and southeastern Nepal. It supersedes old Latinate studies and monolingual didactic grammars and finally provides solid morphosyntactic data to classify Lepcha within Tibeto-Burman.
Apart from useful additions (a map, eleven plates, and two additional texts totaling eighteen pages) and some minor typographical corrections, the volume is identical to the author's Leiden University doctoral thesis, defended in 2006.
There are six chapters: introduction (pp. 1–16), phonology and orthography (pp. 17–44), parts of speech (pp. 45–51), nominal elements (pp. 53–102), verbal elements (pp. 103–29), and clause linkage (pp. 131–44). Six texts of various genres are provided in Lepcha orthography, transcription, glosses, and translation (pp. 145–213). Finally, there is a glossary (pp. 215–45), an excellent bibliography (pp. 247–52), and a brief index (pp. 253–54).
Lepcha has a complex deictic system...
