Dr. Marius Zemp

Member of scientific staff

Phone
+41 31 684 36 07
E-Mail
marius.zemp@unibe.ch
Office
B 169
Postal Address
Universität Bern
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
Länggassstrasse 49
3012 Bern

Research Profile

Reconstructing the history of the Tibetic languages

Hundreds of verb stems have different meanings in an eastern and a western branch of Tibetan – a comprehensive account of these functional divergences goes hand in hand with a detailed reconstruction of a Proto-Tibetan which, on the one hand, facilitates a neat explanation also of how evidentiality developed in different modern varieties, and on the other, suggests that the language originates from an expanded pidgin. (More...)

I have recently been able to identify dialectal features in Old Tibetan texts from the 9th century CE, and I postulate that a nasal prefix marking present-imperfective stems was characteristic of Amdo region, and a non-aspirated initial p- marking transitive verbs of dBus.

A diachronic typology of evidential contrasts (from a Himalayan perspective)

While work on evidentiality traditionally (e.g. Aikhenvald 2004, 2018) ignores agentive markers, an adequate account of the evidential contrasts found in Tibetan and neighboring languages needs to include them. In fact, most of the evidential contrasts we find in this region involve one verb form which mainly occurs when the speaker/addressee is the subject in a statement/question (‘egophoric’) and another mainly when s/he isn’t (‘allophoric’). (More...)

Reconstructing the history of the Kaike-Ghale-Tamangic languages

My work on Kaike and Kutang and Northern Ghale suggests that these languages belong to the Tamangic family, and that most if not all languages of this family have been heavily influenced by the Tibetic varieties with which there is widespread bilingualism – a  comparative dictionary of the Kaike-Ghale-Tamangic languages would allow us to identify features that are shared by (some of) these languages and thus need to be reconstructed for their common ancestors and features that were borrowed from (or modelled after) a Tibetic or another contact language. (More...)

Towards a dialect geography of intonation in Swiss German

Having captured a salient intonational difference between Valais and Midland varieties of Swiss German (Zemp 2018), I taught a field linguistics class here at the ISW in 2024 where we identified intonational characteristics of various other Swiss German dialects – we presented our major findings at the Alemann:innentagung 2024 in Bern (see below for the abstract). An SNF-Spark-Grant currently allows me to pursue work on this topic.

Publications

Under review

Zemp, Marius, Benjamin Brosig and Fernando Zúñiga (eds.). Equipollent evidential contrasts: A perspective from the roof of the world. (Collected volume on the workshop ‘Evidentiality 2.0’ organized by our project ‘Evidentiality in Time and Space’ at the University of Bern, September 5–6, 2021.)

Zemp, Marius and Erika Sandman. The old/new knowledge contrast between Wutun -yek, a suffixed form of the existential copula, and -li, an “ostensive” cooptation of the locative case marker.

Zemp, Marius and Sara Schindler. Evidential contrasts in Kaike (Dolpa District, Nepal), and their Tamangic and Tibetic sources.

Accepted

Zemp, Marius. Linguistic evidence for dialectal diversity and migrations in Imperial Times, and its potential for structuring Old Tibetan. In Kazushi Iwao, Ai Nishida & Brandon Dotson (eds.), Proceedings of the Panel Old Tibetan Studies VII, IATS 2022.

Zemp, Marius. On the origins of Tibetan. In Gwendolyn Hyslop, Selin Grollmann & Pascal Gerber (eds.), Name of the volume yet to be announced.

Zemp, Marius and Fernando Zúñiga. Evidential contrasts in Amazonian languages, and reversing the burden of proof regarding verb forms unmarked for evidentiality. In Marius Zemp, Benjamin Brosig and Fernando Zúñiga (eds.), Equipollent evidential contrasts: A perspective from the roof of the world.

2024

Sims-Williams, Helen and Marius Zemp. 2024. Classical Tibetan Verbal Paradigms (1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12685123

2021

Zemp, Marius. 2021. Traces of clause-final demonstratives in Old Tibetan. Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 60 (New Research on Old Tibetan Studies, Proceedings of the Panel Old Tibetan Studies VI, IATS 2019): 398–438.

2020

Zemp, Marius. 2020. Evidentials and their pivot in Tibetic and neighboring Himalayan languages. In Stef Spronck, An Van linden, Caroline Gentens, and María Sol Sansiñena Pascual (eds.), Notes from the field on perspective-indexing constructions: Irregular shifts and perspective persistence (Special Issue of Functions of Language 27:1), 29–54. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

2018

Zemp, Marius. Eine Eigenheit der Walliserdeutschen Intonation: default L+M*+H in Aussagesätzen . Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 85(2): 205–233.

Zemp, Marius. A Grammar of Purik Tibetan. Leiden: Brill.

Zemp, Marius. On the origins of Tibetan. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University. (https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2433/235316)

Bielmeier, Roland (†23.12.2013), George van Driem, Chungda Haller, Felix Haller, Katrin Häsler, Veronika Hein, Brigitte Huber, Thomas Preiswerk, Marianne Volkart, Manuel Widmer, Ngawang Tsering and Marius Zemp. Comparative Dictionary of the Tibetan Dialects, Vol. I: Verb. Mouton de Gruyter.

2017

Zemp, Marius. The origin and evolution of the opposition between testimonial and factual evidentials in Purik and other varieties of Tibetan. In Seppo Kittilä and Henrik Bergqvist (eds.), Person and knowledge: from participant-role to epistemic marking (Special Issue, Open Linguistics 3), 613–637.

Zemp, Marius. Evidentiality in Purik Tibetan. In Nathan Hill and Lauren Gawne (eds.), Evidential systems in Tibetan languages, 261–296. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Widmer, Manuel, und Marius Zemp. The epistemization of person markers in reported speech. Studies in Language 41(4): 33–75.

2016

Zemp, Marius. A functional reconstruction of the Proto-Tibetan verbal system. Himalayan Linguistics 15(2): 88–135.

2014   

Zemp, Marius. Purik. In Jackson T.-S. Sun (ed.), Phonological Profiles of Little-Studied Tibetic Varieties, Vol. I (Language and Linguistics Monograph Series), 127–214. Taipeh: Academia Sinica.

2012   

Zemp, Marius. Dramatizers in Purik and how they – smack! – evolved. In Tsuguhito Takeuchi and Norihiko Hayashi (eds.), Historical Development of the Tibetan languages. Proceedings of the Workshop B of the 17th Himalayan Languages Symposium in Kobe, 6.–9. September 2011 (Journal of Research Insitute 49). Kobe: Research Institute of Foreign Studies, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies.

2008

Zemp, Marius. Anredekonturen im Luzerndeutschen: Eine intonationale Teilgrammatik. Universität Bern: Arbeitspapier des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft 44. 69 pages.

2006

Zemp, Marius. Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology of the Tibetan Dialect of Kargil. Lizentiatsarbeit am Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Bern.

2004

Zemp, Marius. Noun-Modifying Constructions in the Tibetan Dialect of Southern Mustang According to a Frame-Semantic Approach Developed by Yoshiko Matsumoto. Seminararbeit am Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Bern.

Talks

Selected conference presentations / invited talks

Zemp, Marius (2025b) : “Evidence for dialectal diversity in Imperial Times, and linguistic parameters for determining the provenance of Old Tibetan texts.” 58th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, Bern, 3.–5. Sept.

Zemp, Marius (2025a) : “Linguistic evidence for two waves of tibetanization.” 21st Conference of the International Association for Ladakh Studies, Kargil, 28.–30. Aug.

Zemp, Marius (2024e) : “The evidential contrasts of Kaike and Kutang and the tones of Northern Ghale: Tibetic influence on peripheral members of the Tamangic language family.” Österreichische Linguistiktagung, Innsbruck, 17.–19. Dez.

Zemp, Marius (2024d) : “Einblick in die Herkunftsabklärungen der Lingua-Sektion des Schweizerischen Staatssekretariats für Migration (SEM).” Österreichische Linguistiktagung, Innsbruck, 17.–19. Dez.

Zemp, Marius (2024c) : “Intonatorische Eigenheiten einiger Dialekte des Schweizerdeutschen.” 21. Arbeitstagung zur alemannischen Dialektologie (Alemann:innentagung), Bern, 9.–11. Sept.

Zemp, Marius (2024b) : “Copulas in Kutang (Northern Gorkha, Nepal): caught between descriptive   systems – and evidence for the unity of these systems.” 57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Helsinki, 21.–25. Sept.

Zemp, Marius (2024a) : “Stylized intonation in a tone language – evidence from Northern Ghale (Gorkha district, Nepal).” 27th Himalayan Languages Symposium, Guwahati, 12.–14. Juni. https://event.iitg.ac.in/hls27/Documents/HLS27_Abstract_book.pdf

Zemp, Marius (2023c) : “Tichurong-Tibetic influence in the grammar of Kaike.” 26th Himalayan Languages Symposium, Paris, 4.–6. Sept.

Zemp, Marius (2023b) : “A new look at the conjunct/disjunct opposition of the Kaike (Dolpa District, Nepal) past tense.” 56th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Athens, 29. Aug. – 1. Sept.

Zemp, Marius (2023a) : “Die besondere Stimmmelodie der Walliser Dialekte.” Guest talk in a series of talks held by Werner Bellwald at the Mediathek Wallis, Brig, 30. March. https://agenda.culturevalais.ch/de/event/show/27367

Zemp, Marius (2022b) : “Evidential contrasts in Amazonian languages, and reversing the burden of proof regarding verb forms unmarked for evidentiality.” Association for Linguistic Typology, Austin, 15.–17. Dec. https://www.academia.edu/110607099/ALT2022_Reversing_the_burden_of_proof_regarding_verb_forms_formally_unmarked_for_evidentiality

Zemp, Marius (2022a) : “Grammaticalized evidentiality in the Greater Himalayan Region.” Typology of evidential languages, Paris (online), 25. Feb. http://www.inalco.fr/sites/default/files/asset/document/zemp_grammaticalized_evidentiality_in_the_greater_himalayan_region.pdf

Zemp, Marius (2021) : “On the link between evidentiality and egophoricity in languages of the Greater Himalayan Region.” (with co-authors Benjamin Brosig & Fernando Zúñiga) 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Athens (online), 31. Aug.–3. Sept.

Zemp, Marius (2020) : “Revisiting the development of phonemic tone (tonogenesis) in Tibetic languages.” 53rd meeting of the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, University of North Texas, 1.–4. Oct.

Zemp, Marius (2019) : “The genesis of evidentiality in Tibetan.” Evidentiality in Tibetic languages and beyond – a closer look (workshop), Tübingen, 16.–17. Feb.