Gurung Language Research Program

The Gurung Language Research Program is a comprehensive project dedicated to documenting and analyzing the Gurung (Tamu) language, focusing on first language acquisition and spontaneous conversations in the under-documented and under-studied variety of Lamjung District, Nepal. Through naturalistic corpora, interaction games, and psycholinguistic field experiments, the project explores how Gurung speakers use language in real-time communication and how social cognition shapes comprehension and production. The corpora provide both an empirical foundation for studying Gurung and a lasting record of its language and culture. Interaction games examine multimodal communication in social coordination, including turn-taking, repair, and common ground management. Psycholinguistic experiments test hypotheses on comprehension, production, and acquisition, leveraging Gurung’s unique pragmatic features, such as optional ergativity and converb constructions. This community-driven research ensures close collaboration with community members in language documentation and research.

• Contact: Weijian Meng
• Team: Sabine Stoll, Balthasar Bickel, Dagmar Jung, Weijian Meng, Sofya Ganieva
• Local Partner: Lekhnath S. Pathak