Lost in Change

Koĩc ([kɔĩts]; English: Sunwar) is a Kiranti language spoken in eastern Nepal. In the past, Koĩc had a biactantial indexing system with transitive verbs indexing subjects and objects, a typical feature of Kiranti languages.1 In modern Koĩc, transitive verbs are not indexed for object. A comparison shows connections in form and function between old and new argument indexes. Now Koĩc has a system of different conjugations, and for the majority of verbs membership in a conjugation is lexically fixe