Pro to ~ TibetoaBurman Mm·phosyntax, and the Linguistic Position of Chinese

In the following, an account is given of Black Mountain verbal agreement morphology. The existence of conjugational morphology of the Black Mountain type in a Bodish language, the first and only language of Shafer's (1974) Bodish branch for which such a system has been d~scribed, has implications for our understanding of Proto-Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax.lJ It is in this context that Benedict's recent claims about agreement markers in Old Chinese are discussed and related to new insights into Chinese afforded by Baxter's (1992) reconstruction. Bodman's (1980) 'tentative new view ' is reassessed. 1. THE BLACK MOUNTAIN MONPA The Black Mountains are a southern spur of the Great Himalayas, which runs from north to south over a distance of some 200 km and separates western from central Bhutan. The range was allegedly so called by the British because of its dense vegetation and its formidable and precipitous, dark grey escarpments. In the Black Mountains, a small aboriginal group resides, locally called Monpa. To distinguish this indigenous East Bodish group of central Bhutan from the many othe