Khroskyabs (Chinese: 绰斯甲语; pinyin: Chuòsījiǎ yǔ, previously known as Lavrung, native name in the Wobzi dialect: bósʁæi "Tibetan language"[2]) is a Gyalrongic language of China.
[2] It is called Guanyinqiao in Ethnologue after a town in western Sichuan where one dialect of the language is spoken, Thugsrje Chenbo (Wylie: thugs rje chen bo).
The Thugschen dialects include Siyuewu (斯跃武), Wobzi (俄热), 'Brongrdzong (木尔宗) and Guanyinqiao (观音桥).
Huang (2007:155)[1] recognizes 3 main dialects of Khroskyabs (, using the term Lavrung Chinese: Lawurong 拉坞戎) by a total of about 10,000 people dispersed along the Duke River (杜柯河) Valley of northwestern Sichuan, just to the west of Barkam Town.
A consonant cluster in Wobzi is composed of three parts, preinitial(s), initial and medial, which can be tested through a partial reduplication process.
A single cluster can contain up to six consonants in a row: ʁjnlzdə̂ "to be made to buy for one's benefit".
The ordering of preinitials in a consonant cluster follows a language-specific sonority hierarchy (Lai 2013a, 2013b): ʁ- > j- > N-, m- > v- > r-, l- > s-, z- Wobzi Khroskyabs has 9 vowel phonemes, listed in the table below.
In Phosul, a complete series of velarised vowels are attested (Huang 2007, p. 166): iˠ, uˠ, eˠ, oˠ, ʌˠ.
In the Wobzi dialect, complex codas are prohibited even in conjugated verbs.
The rhymes attested in Wobzi Khroskyabs are listed in the table below, with forms in conjugated verbs between parentheses.
A non-exhaustive list of classifiers in the Wobzi dialects is shown below (with the numeral prefix ə̂- "one").
Vocative is formed by assigning a high-falling tone to the penultimate syllable of a noun phrase.
They precede the noun they attach to, and are obligatorily accompanied by the definite article tə.
The Khroskyabs verb exhibits a templatic morphology with a strong prefixing preference, which means every affix is obligatorily positioned in its own slot which is impossible to change.
The table below shows the verbal template of Wobzi Khroskyabs (Lai 2017, p. 293).
The causative prefix s- in Wobzi Khroskyabs undergoes various morphophonological processes, including voicing assimilation, lateral dissimilation, affrication, metathesis and lateral assimilation.
Autobenefactive N- appears as an archiphoneme having several surface forms according to the phonological environment, especially the place of articulation.
Guanyinqiao, Siyuewu and 'Brongrdzong all present the distinction between singular, dual and plural for first and second persons.
The following description is mainly based on the Wobzi dialect, if not specifically mentioned differently.
Verb stems usually combine with orientational prefixes to express different properties of tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality.
It can also combine with the orientational prefix rə- in a sensory or inferential non-past context.
"Dynamic verbs do not make the distinction between imperfective and perfective, therefore, their meaning in Stem 2 depends on the context.
There are five denominal prefixes attested in Wobzi Khroskyabs, listed in the table below.
In Siyuewu Khroskyabs which preserves more stop codas, a -d suffix is attested with certain denominalised verbs: rvî "axe" vs. rvæ̂d "to chop", dzí "food" vs. dzîd "to eat", etc.