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Himalayan Linguistics, Vol 10(1)
Mickey was also known for his work on syntactic typology, including contact-effects and
areality in greater South Asia. His 1985 chapter on complementation (republished in 2008), part of
the larger three-volume work Language Typology and Syntactic Description edited by Timothy Shopen
(Cambridge University Press), is standard reading and reference, not only for field linguists,
but also for most graduate-level university students. It is worth noting that this chapter ends with
instructions to aid in the field-worker’s investigation of complement-taking predicates, further underscoring
the connections between documentation and typological applications.
Other topics that Mickey addressed in his work include nominal case marking (2008,
2008) and patterns of syncretism, specifically ablative-genitive syncretism and nominalizationattribution
syncretism (1997, 2008, 2008, in press). In fact, Mickey and David (1995, 2008) both
shared a long-standing interest in nominalization, which they regarded as a salient and defining
feature of Bodic languages.
Mickey also substantially contributed to the promotion of linguistic studies at Tribhuvan
University, especially through his initial conception of the ongoing Linguistic Survey of Nepal
(LinSuN) and through his regular donation of books and journals to the Linguistics Library.
David Watters’ involvement in Nepal and the Himalaya spanned a period of four decades.
Shortly after arriving in Nepal in 1969, he began living and working, along with his family, among
the Kham Magar community under the auspices of SIL and Tribhuvan University. His involvement
with the Kham Magar continued until the time of his passing. In 2006, he was honored by
the Kham Magar at a formal ceremony in Kathmandu, on which occasion he was named a ‘champion’
of their nation. Many among the Kham affectionately refer to him as ‘grandfather’.
David completed a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Oregon in 1998, where he was
also adjunct faculty. He served as a visiting scholar at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal
and at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT) at LaTrobe University in Melbourne,
Australia. David also was the Director of the Oregon SIL school from 1999 to 2002.
David’s dissertation was revised and published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 as
A Grammar of Kham; the digital edition was made available in the same series in 2009. It was this
monumental work, particularly, that made David known and respected in the arenas of Himalayan
and typological linguistics. Especially notable was its depth and breadth of study. It included
multiple varieties of Kham, as well as extensive historical-comparative work on the verb morphology
of Kham dialects. In a review of David’s grammar, Mickey wrote, “Watters’ work is the best
grammar yet published of a Nepalese language and one of the best available for any language in the
Sino-Tibetan family” (Noonan 2005: 89). The richness of this work was appreciated well beyond
Himalayanist circles; in a review published in Language, Edward Garret stated, “THIS is how to
write a grammar” (Garrett: 2007: 477).
David also published the (modestly-titled) 182-page “Notes on Kusunda Grammar: A
Language Isolate of Nepal” (Himalayan Linguistics Archive 3). Aside from Kusunda being a genealogical
isolate, David highlighted the great typological interest of the language, including the
existence of a typologically rare and complex morpho-phonological process of stem consonant and
vowel “mutation” for a subset of verbs in irrealis form (e.g. n-əg-ən [2-go-realis] ‘you went’ versus
ɲ-aɢˤ-an [2-go-irrealis] ‘you are going’ (2006: 68)). Watters also documented the (areally unusual)
lack of morphologically-marked nominalization strategies in Kusunda subordination (2006: 106,
113).
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