Part of
Lost in Change: Causes and processes in the loss of grammatical elements and constructionsEdited by Svenja Kranich and Tine Breban
[Studies in Language Companion Series 218] 2021
► pp. 333–362
Koĩc ([kɔĩts]; English: Sunwar) is a Kiranti language spoken in eastern Nepal. In the past, Koĩc had a biactantial indexing system with transitive verbs indexing subjects and objects, a typical feature of Kiranti languages. In modern Koĩc, transitive verbs are not indexed for object. A comparison shows connections in form and function between old and new argument indexes. Now Koĩc has a system of different conjugations, and for the majority of verbs membership in a conjugation is lexically fixed.
Most speakers of Koĩc are bilingual with Nepali (Indo-Iranian), and the longstanding Nepali influence will be discussed as one possible cause of language change.