Abstract
Lhokpu is a Trans-Himalayan language spoken by a dwindling number of speakers in south-western Bhutan. A grammatical description of the language is currently being completed by van Driem, Gerber, Grollmann, Hyslop and Tshering (forthcoming). The closer phylogenetic affiliation of Lhokpu has remained unclear so far and it has been agnostically treated as an isolate within the Trans-Himalayan linguistic phylum. However, new investigations in connection with the prepared grammatical description have lead to new insights concerning its phylogenetic position and point towards the fact that Lhokpu is not in fact a Trans-Himalayan isolate. Instead, Lhokpu shows several parallels, especially in its morphological material, to some other known subbranches of Trans- Himalayan. One of these branches is Kiranti. This paper presents and assesses the morphological and lexical parallels between Lhokpu and Kiranti and seeks to discuss the nature of this relationship.
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