Abstract

We shall examine patterns of syncretism with participant marking in Limbu (van Driem 1987), where verbs are inflected for person/number of core A, P, and S roles. While on the one hand, participant marking in Limbu appears highly transparent, witnessing discrete person and number markers for each role, we find a number of different syncretism patterns that obscure the general transparency. Such syncretisms range from almost full neutralisation of number for both participants (2 > 1), via neutralisation of P number (1NON-SG > 2), to neutralisation of the dual/plural distinction for third person A and P, a case of bidirectional divergent syncretism (Stump 2001). A most peculiar syncretism pattern involves the tense/agreement portmanteau mPna, giving rise to a morphomic split we call ªpseudo-PÅan˙inianº. In our formal analysis, we show how pseudo-PÅan˙ inian splits can be assimilated to standard PÅan˙ inian splits and apply this approach to the treatment of bidirectional syncretism. Essentially, we shall propose that the ªdualº marker -si is actually a general non-singular marker. We shall show how these instances of competition and syncretism can be formalised in Information-based Morphology (Crysmann & Bonami 2016).