1.

Introduction
Thulung is one of the Rai group of Tebeto Burman (TB) language spoken in the middle hills of eastern Nepal and mainly spoken in south east of solukhumbhu, okhaldhunga, Bhojpur, and Khotang district. Most of the Thulung people like to call it Thulung. However, it is also known as some other alternative names: Thulung Lo, Thulung Luwa, Thululoa, Thulung Jemu, Thulung La, Thulunge Rai, and Toaku Lwa (Paul 2009). Thulung is a Kiranti language. Kiranti languages are considered part of the Bahing-Vayou group of Benedict (1972), but Matisoff (1991) proposes a variation on Benedict's scheme. Matisoff's scheme is much more up-to-date than previous classification schemes. According to him, TB languages can be classified into Kamarupan, Himalayish, Qiangic, Kachin-Nung, Lolo Burrmese, Baic, and Karenic. He further divides Himalayish into West -Bodish, Tamangish , Chepangish, Rai (Kiranti), Newari, and Lepcha. Thulung along with its immediate geographical neighbors (Bahing, Dumi, Khamu, Lambichong, Limbu, Lohorong, Todong, Chulung, Yambhu, Chamling, Athpare, Waling, and Yakha) is in the Kiranti branch. Allen (1975:3) judges that Thulung's closest relationship is with Bahing in terms of lexical evidence. So far as its number of native speakers is concerned, (Paul 2009) records that there are 30,000 Thulung speakers in Nepal. However, according to census (2001), the number does not exceed 14034. Allen (1975:1) says, "I would very tentatively put the figure at around 8,000." Therefore, it is very difficult to determine the exact number of Thulung native speakers. Allen (1997:305 as cited in Lahanssois 2002) divides the history of Thulung into four generation periods: 1. a first period when the hills of Nepal were densely forested, at which time the population density was very low and hunting played a considerable part in the Thulung economy; 2. the establishment of the first sedentary village at Mukli followed by secondary foundation of other sedentary villages.; 3. the Gorkha conquest of 1770, and the subsequent use of local clan headmen to rule indirectly; 4. the period since 1950, corresponding to the introduction of education, weekly regional markets and the (limited) influx of cash into the economy.

This study is an attempt to bring out the latest morphological features of verb prevalent in Thulung spoken in Udayapur particularly spoken in Basaha village. Basaha is the village established by late Narad Muni Thulung when he was the forest minister. The most of the Thulung people migrated to this village from Solukhumbu and Khotang Districts and settled withstanding the frequent attack by the so called Panchayaet police as they had captured the forest area.

2. Statement of the problem

Most of the Kiranti languages in Nepal still wait for serious investigation and Thulung is not an exception. Very few linguists and anthropologists home and abroad has made Thulung their area of research. It has become an endangered language due to the inroads of the IndoAryan National language of Nepal, Nepali. In such a context, this study will be an attempt to answer mainly these two questions: how can the Thulung verbs be categorized? What is the general structure of the verb phrase in the Thulung language?

3. Objectives of the study

The intended research aims to examine the Thulung verb morphology from diachronic prospective. Specifically the objectives of the study are: i. to collect the relevant data on the Thulung verb morphology ii. to describe and analyze the verbal system of Thulung language iii. to present the findings of different aspects of Thulung verb morphology.

4. Review of literature
The history of the study of Thulung language goes back to 1857 when Hodgson brought out a list of Thulung words. After that, there appeared Agam Sing Deusa with a small booklet in 1944. However, major work prior to 1997 is that of Allen (1975). He wrote 'A Sketch of Thulung Grammer'. This is a grammatical overview of the language along with some texts. Allen (1975) studied Thulung while doing anthropological research on the Thulung Rai's during 1969-71 in Mukli ; a village of southern Solukhumbu district. He presents personal pronouns and verb in chapter iii, parts of speech in chapter IV, and in chapter VI, he collects

Thulung text. Allen (1975) says that the nearest linguistic relative of Thulung may be Bahing Rai, its southern neighbor, but that the two languages are not mutually intelligible. Sunwar, to the west and khaling to the north, are also closely related. Thulung resembles Neplai in word order and overall syntax, but the case marking is more thoroughly ergative case( which , like Nepali-le, is the same as the instrumental) in all tenses, not just the past as in Nepali but first and second person pronouns never receive eragative marking. Objects of transitive verbs, like the subjects of intransitives are unmarked (the absolutive case, which Allen calls the affected case). The pronouns and the verbal morphology and agreement are much more complex than in Nepali: pronouns show singular, dual, and plural number, and there is a distinction between inclusive 'we' ('I' and 'you'), and exclusive 'we' ('we' not including 'you': these are also a complete set of possessive pronouns (included in chapter IV). According to Allen (1975), "verbal agreement reflects all the pronominal categories of person and number and transitive verbs agree with both their subject and their objects". It is because of these relationships that the language, to which Thulung belongs, has been called pronominalized. Although he carefully notes details of morphophonemic alternations and phonological distributions and points out their significance for internal reconstruction, it was more anthropological study then linguistics. In the Introduction part of the study, Allen (1975) himself explains that the orientation of his study is anthropological. The study is not much succeeded in presenting in depth information on morphosyntactic aspect because he has relied (in many places) on B. H. Hodgson unpublished notes from the last century and the grammar in Nepali by Agam Sing Devasa Rai . Both of these works does not depict the resent linguistic development of the language in question. Another monumental work in Thulung linguistics is that of Lahaussois (2002). In his 'Aspects of the Grammar of Thulung Rai: an endangered Himalayan language'. He discusses phonological system of the language, the case marking system, the use of discourse particles, nominalization, and its etymological and semantic relationship with relativization, and genitivization ; the finite verbs, with their complex agreement system and stem alternations; the argumentation of verbs with aspect-bearing derivational suffixes; clause-combining by means of converb and sequencers. In chapter v, he examines the finite verb system of Thulung, through the following issues: verb paradigms for personal endings, stem alternation, tense-aspect-mood, evidentiality, negation, and adjective formation. Some of his typological findings are:

Basic SOV order. Nouns can be inflected for dual or plural number. Morphological ergative split, with ergative marking for second plural third persons and other NP. Verbs are inflected for person and number, with up to two arguments marked.

Talking about the inflection system of the language in chapter V, he says, "Inflection in Thulung is expressed through personal endings which are suffixed to verb root. For transitive verbs, two endings are suffixed to the root, encoding two participants in the event. Additionally certain verbs show stem alternation of a complex nature. In addition to the above works, Lahaussois (2002) talks about a dictionary: "Another source is a dictionary complied by Yelung Kirant, with the assistance of Major Mani Prasad Rai, which is a result of data collection from numerous native speakers of various age. This is a Thulung-nepali dictionary, with the Thulung transcription using devanagari and includes paradigms of verbs: it is called Iki Lwa (your language)" (Lahaussois2002). This study will be justified on particularly two grounds. First, the above researches have focused the Thulung spoken in Mukli: a southern village of solukhumbhu district. Second, there has been a considerable time gap in which many changes (because of the influence of the Nepali) might have taken place. This study will study the Thulung spoken in Basaha: an eastern village of Udayapur district and aims to provide up-to-date information.

5. Methodology
This study will be based on the elicited data of Thulung in Udayapur district particularly spoken in Basaha, which is about 32 k. m. east of the district headquarter, where the researcher himself lives and works. The study will follow the typological -functional framework in reference to Diction (2002), Givon (2001), and Pyne (1997). Descriptive research design will be followed throughout the study and both primary and secondary data collection procedures will be adopted. However, the study will primarily be based on the primary data collected from the field work. Diction

(2002), Givon (2001), Pyne (1997), and Katamba (1993) will be consulted for the theoretical and terminological clarity. The data collection tools to be used are questionnaire and interview. The Swades two hundred ten word list, four thousands word list used by the linguistics department, T. U. for linguistic field work will be used to obtain data. Narrative and conversational text will also be recorded and phonetically transcribed. At times when content of the data demands, charts, tables, diagrams will also be used.

6. Significance of the study

Though the study will focus only an aspect of grammar, it certainly will be another brick in Thulung linguistics. It will contribute to the descriptive linguistics of TB languages spoken in Nepal. I hope that it will help those who opt for the further research in Thulung. As the concept of including mother tongue in the educational syllabus is coming fore, it may be helpful for curriculum and teaching materials developer.

7. Limitations of the study

Due to financial, temporal, and technical constraints, the study poses some limitations: i. The study will entirely be based on the data obtained from the few speakers of Basaha VDC, Udayapur. ii. The study only deals with the verb morphology of the language. iii. The study will mostly be based on elicited data by the researcher. iv. The study analyses the transcribed data. Since the researcher transcribe what he hears not what actually exist in the language. Therefore, the researcher cannot claim hundred-percentage accuracy of the findings.

8. Organization of the study

The overall tentative organization of the study will be as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: People and Language Chapter 3: Verb Morphology Chapter 4: Summary and Conclusion References Appendices

8. Time Frame
The tentative time frame will be: Work Preliminary study Data collection Data analysis Data Presentation Finalization of the study Total Duration 4 weeks 4 week 4 weeks 4 weeks 4 weeks 20 weeks