Preliminary study of the verbal morphosyntax of Dolpo

Abstract The goal of this article is a description of the verbal system of Dolpo, a Tibetic language of Nepal, and to demonstrate some of its original features concerning verbal morphosyntax. Dolpo no longer reflects Old Tibetan verb inflections: instead, tense-aspect is conveyed by a system of verbal endings that are combinations of nominalizers and equative or existential verbs. Unlike Common Tibetan and other Tibetic languages, Dolpo exhibits original morphophonemic variations of verbal morphosyntax, a description of which comprises the main part of this article. Morphophonemic variations also apply to negation markers and interrogative enclitics. This complex system of morphophonemic variations is demonstrated by examples obtained during our linguistic fieldwork in Dolpo in 2022 and 2023.