A grammar of Qiang

This book serves as a comprehensive reference grammar of Qiang, a minority language spoken by approximately 70,000 Qiang and Tibetan individuals in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of northern Sichuan Province, China. It focuses on the Northern Qiang dialect from Ronghong Village, Yadu Township, Chibusu District, Mao County. As the first extensive description of Qiang in English, it reflects years of dedicated research and aims for typological thoroughness. The content includes the reference grammar, an ethnological overview, fully analyzed texts (primarily traditional stories), and an annotated glossary. The language is characterized as verb-final and agglutinative, featuring both prefixing and suffixing, with head-marking and dependent marking morphology. Its phonology is intricate, comprising 39 consonants across seven articulation points, complex consonant clusters, vowel harmony, vowel length distinctions, and retroflexed vowels. The grammar is equally complex, with eight direction-marking verbal prefixes, two person-marking paradigms (for actor and non-actor), and various verbal prefixes and suffixes, along with definite and number marking on nouns. Noun phrases also utilize classifiers and relational prepositions.