In this monograph, I reconstruct Proto-Western Kho-Bwa, the hypothetical ancestor language of the eight varieties of the Trans-Himalayan languages known as Khispi, Duhumbi, Sartang and Sherdukpen. These languages are spoken in the western part of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, by a total of around 6,000 people. I describe the ethnolinguistic and historical background of these languages and provide the most detailed phonological descriptions of each variety to date. By applying the comparative method of historical linguistics to a little over 700 sets of cognate lexical forms, I set up a total of 192 sound correspondences and reconstructed 681 proto-forms, of which 630 represent inherited concepts. I compare these proto-forms to the forms in the other languages of the Kho-Bwa cluster – Puroik and Bugun – as well as to other Trans-Himalayan languages. Finally, I attempt to reconstruct the world of the speakers of Proto-Western Kho-Bwa through the linguistic evidence presented by the proto-forms.

Keywords: linguistic reconstruction, Trans-Himalayan, Western Kho-Bwa, Sartang, Sherdukpen, Khispi, Duhumbi