The nouns and noun phrase in Raji

Abstract

Raji is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Himalayish subgroup within Tibeto-Burman group of Sino-Tibetan language family. It is an endangered language since it is spoken by only a small number of speakers. The Rajis primarily reside in different villages nearby the jungle and the river sides of Kailali, Surkhet, Kanchanpur, Bardiya and Banke districts of Mid and Far-Western Development Regions of western Nepal. According to the recent census 2001, the number of mother tongue Raji speakers is 2,413. The distinction likes, countable/ uncountable and human/ non-human is applicable in Raji. The Raji language has both consonant as well as vowel ending nouns. The personal pronouns show three pronouns, namely, first, second and third and three numbers viz. singular, dual and plural distinctions. Honorificity is expressed by the use of dual and plural numbers for second persons.The first, second and third persons are marked for possessive on the head (possessed item) with a pronominal suffix that agree with the possessors. There is no grammatical gender. Nouns inflect for singular, dual and plural. The numeral classifier is –tʰʌu which appears next to a numeral. Raji has the split-ergative system. The nominal may be inflected for a number of cases. Nouns and simple modifiers like adjectives, demonstratives and numerals are the main elements in the noun phrase in Raji. The relative clause is simply a nominalized clause used as a nominal modifier of the head noun.