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Languages and Peoples of the Eastern Himalayan Region (LPEHR)
Languages and Peoples of the Eastern Himalayan Region (LPEHR) Deictic motion in Hakhun Tangsa Krishna Boro Gauhati University ABSTRACT This paper provides a detailed description of how deictic motion events are encoded in a Tangsa variety called Hakhun, spoken in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in India, and in Sagaing Region in Myanmar. Deictic motion events in Hakhun are encoded by a set of two motion verbs, their serial or versatile verb counterparts, and a set of two ventive particles. Impersonal deictic motion events are encoded by the motion verbs alone, which orient the motion with reference to a center of interest. Motion events with an SAP figure or ground are simultaneously encoded by the motion verbs and ventive particles. These motion events evoke two frames of reference: a home base and the speech-act location. The motion verbs anchor the motion with reference to the home base of the figure, and the ventives (or their absence) anchor the motion with reference to the location of the speaker, the addressee, or the speech-act. When the motion verbs are concatenated with other verbs, they specify motion associated with the action denoted by the other verb(s). KEYWORDS Hakhun, Tibeto-Burman, deictic motion, motion verbs, ventive This is a contribution from Himalayan Linguistics Vol 19(2) Languages and Peoples of the Eastern Himalayan Region: 9 29. ISSN 1544-7502 © 2020. All rights reserved. This Portable Document Format (PDF) file may not be altered in any way. Tables of contents, abstracts, and submission guidelines are available at escholarship.org/uc/himalayanlinguistics Himalayan Linguistics Vol 19(2) Languages and Peoples of the Eastern Himalayan Region © CC by-nc-nd-4.0 2020 ISSN 1544-7502 Deictic motion in Hakhun Tangsa1 Krishna Boro Gauhati University 1 Introduction This paper describes how deictic motion events are encoded and contextually anchored in the speech situation in Hakhun, a variety of Tangsa or Tangshang (Ethnologue ISO 639-3 nst) spoken in the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, India, and in Sagaing Region, Myanmar. -
Book Review North East Indian Linguistics Edited By
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 33.1 — April 2010 BOOK REVIEW NORTH EAST INDIAN LINGUISTICS EDITED BY STEPHEN MOREY AND MARK POST New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India, 2008 [Hardcover, 270 + xiii pp.; ISBN: 978-81-7596-600-0.; Rs. 695/$32] Deborah King The University of Texas at Arlington North East Indian Linguistics is a collection of descriptively-oriented articles representing a sampling of North East Indian languages. It was produced under the auspices of the North East Indian Linguistic Society (NEILS)* and edited by Stephen Morey and Mark Post of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. This work seeks to lessen the understudied status of North East Indian languages and the dearth of associated literature by presenting the results of current research in an accessible format. It includes a broad spectrum of data which must be of interest to typologists as well as any linguist with a focus on the region of North East India or the Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan, Tai- Kadai, or Austroasiatic language families. Despite this addition to the literature, there remains a dire need for fieldwork and data analysis in the diverse linguistic area of North East India. Many of the contributors to this work point readers to the insufficiency of extant knowledge to support conclusions of wider significance. Rather, their work is presented simply as the opening of a door leading to varied avenues of possible further research. Nevertheless, it is heartening that over half the contributors to the volume are Indian scholars, many from the North East region, who bring their cultural and mother tongue knowledge to bear on the language of study, and who carry an intrinsic stake in the description and preservation of these understudied and sometimes endangered languages. -
The Naga Language Groups Within the Tibeto-Burman Language Family
TheNaga Language Groups within the Tibeto-Burman Language Family George van Driem The Nagas speak languages of the Tibeto-Burman fami Ethnically, many Tibeto-Burman tribes of the northeast ly. Yet, according to our present state of knowledge, the have been called Naga in the past or have been labelled as >Naga languages< do not constitute a single genetic sub >Naga< in scholarly literature who are no longer usually group within Tibeto-Burman. What defines the Nagas best covered by the modern more restricted sense of the term is perhaps just the label Naga, which was once applied in today. Linguistically, even today's >Naga languages< do discriminately by Indo-Aryan colonists to all scantily clad not represent a single coherent branch of the family, but tribes speaking Tibeto-Burman languages in the northeast constitute several distinct branches of Tibeto-Burman. of the Subcontinent. At any rate, the name Naga, ultimately This essay aims (1) to give an idea of the linguistic position derived from Sanskrit nagna >naked<, originated as a titu of these languages within the family to which they belong, lar label, because the term denoted a sect of Shaivite sadhus (2) to provide a relatively comprehensive list of names and whose most salient trait to the eyes of the lay observer was localities as a directory for consultation by scholars and in that they went through life unclad. The Tibeto-Burman terested laymen who wish to make their way through the tribes labelled N aga in the northeast, though scantily clad, jungle of names and alternative appellations that confront were of course not Hindu at all. -
Introduction to Tangam Language and Culture
CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Tangam Language and Culture A Who and Where are the Tangam? The Tangam language [taŋam] is spoken by around 150 Tani hill-tribespeople in the Upper Siang District of the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh, in the central Eastern Himalaya. The primary Tangam-speaking village is Kuging [kugɨŋ], a village which had twenty-six households in 2013. Nyereng [ɲereŋ] and Mayung [mayuŋ] are smaller villages in the same area in which much smaller numbers of Tangam speakers can be found. Several Tangam speakers have established households in the nearby town of Tuting [tutɨŋ], a melting pot of speakers of Bodic languages, speakers of Upper Adi varieties, and Hindi-speaking shop- keepers and Indian military personnel. However, the roots of Tangam speakers remain firmly in the village of Kuging, which is where research for this book was primarily conducted. The word “Tangam” is itself of uncertain origin, and may not have been used as an autonym for the Tangam-speaking group, or for their language, until recent times (in general in the Tani-speaking area, indi- viduals primarily identify themselves in terms of clan and village affiliations, and only secondarily – if at all – adhere to broader ethnolinguistic labels such as “Tangam” or “Adi”). Nevertheless, the label “Tangam” does not seem to be at all objectionable to Tangam speakers, and will be used in this book to refer both to the Tangam language, and to the group of people who speak it. B Linguistic and Cultural Context Tangam is a member of the Tani subgroup of Trans-Himalayan [= Sino-Tibetan or Tibeto-Burman] languages – one of the largest and most diverse language families in the world. -
Tone Systems of Dimasa and Rabha: a Phonetic and Phonological Study
TONE SYSTEMS OF DIMASA AND RABHA: A PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL STUDY By PRIYANKOO SARMAH A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2009 1 © 2009 Priyankoo Sarmah 2 To my parents and friends 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The hardships and challenges encountered while writing this dissertation and while being in the PhD program are no way unlike anything experienced by other Ph.D. earners. However, what matters at the end of the day is the set of people who made things easier for me in the four years of my life as a Ph.D. student. My sincere gratitude goes to my advisor, Dr. Caroline Wiltshire, without whom I would not have even dreamt of going to another grad school to do a Ph.D. She has been a great mentor to me. Working with her for the dissertation and for several projects broadened my intellectual horizon and all the drawbacks in me and my research are purely due my own markedness constraint, *INTELLECTUAL. I am grateful to my co-chair, Dr. Ratree Wayland. Her knowledge and sharpness made me see phonetics with a new perspective. Not much unlike the immortal Sherlock Holmes I could often hear her echo: One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature. I am indebted to my committee member Dr. Andrea Pham for the time she spent closely reading my dissertation draft and then meticulously commenting on it. Another committee member, Dr. -
Compounding and the Structure of the Tani Lexicon1
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 29.1 — April 2006 COMPOUNDING AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE TANI LEXICON1 Mark Post Research Centre for Linguistic Typology La Trobe University Compounding in Tani appears to have been a process of disyllabification, where monosyllabic forms in Proto-Tani have been lexicalised as compounds. This has resulted in a interesting division in the Tani languages, with nouns and adjectives on the one hand being closely aligned, and verbs on the other behaving quite differently. This division is interesting because of the more usual alignment in Asian languages of adjectives with verbs, not nouns. The story of this division is traced through the lexicon, with evidence from morphology, tone, segmental phonology and syllable structure, all showing a shift towards greater agglutination in Tani languages. Keywords: Tani, compounding, morphosyllabism, lexical evolution, Tibeto-Burman 1. INTRODUCTION Proto-Tani (Tibeto-Burman > Tani), as partially reconstructed by Sun (1993) and continued by Post (in progress), shows signs of having been, or having had a near ancestor which was, a “morphosyllabic” language more or less according to the Mainland Southeast Asian prototype. However, the modern Tani languages are all synthetic and agglutinating, to varying degrees. One aspect of this overall shift in morphological typology appears to have been a progressive restructuring of the lexicon, in which a basic monosyllabism shifted to a basic disyllabism as what were previously productively formed collocations (compounds and prefixed roots) were lexicalised. In the process, a division emerged in at least some Tani languages in which nouns and adjectives were closely aligned in opposition to verbs. -
The Loss of Proto-Tibeto-Burman Final Velars in Standard Jinghpaw
Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society JSEALS Vol. 11,1 (2018): 1-12 ISSN: 1836-6821, DOI: http://hdl.handle.net/10524/52417 University of Hawaiʼi Press THE LOSS OF PROTO-TIBETO-BURMAN FINAL VELARS IN STANDARD JINGHPAW Keita Kurabe ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies [email protected] Abstract The aim of this paper is two-fold: to show that the standard dialect of Jinghpaw has irregularly lost several final velars of Proto-Tibeto-Burman based on comparative evidence; and to attempt to show that the lost velars are reconstructable for an earlier stage based on both Standard Jinghpaw-internal and external evidence. Standard Jinghpaw has played an important role in Tibeto-Burman historical-comparative linguistics due to its phonological conservativeness. The loss of final velars is one notable exception, and recognizing this phenomenon enables us to identify and establish more cognate sets between Jinghpaw and closely related languages that provide a basis for a more robust reconstruction of proto-languages. The irregular loss of proto- final velars also provides some implications for the internal classification of Jinghpaw. Keywords: historical-comparative linguistics, sound change, velar deletion, Jinghpaw ISO 639-3 codes: kac, sgp, ckh, zkd 1 Introduction Jinghpaw (Jingpho) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northern Burma and adjacent areas of China and India. It has played an important role in the reconstruction of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) due to its phonological conservativeness (Benedict 1972, Matisoff 2003, among others).1 The standard dialect of the language (SJ), spoken in the southern part of the distribution of the language, is one of the most well- described and documented dialects of the language. -
History of the Scientific Study of the Tibeto-Burman Languages of North-East India
Indian Journal of History of Science, 52.4 (2017) 420-444 DOI: 10.16943/ijhs/2017/v52i4/49265 History of the Scientific Study of the Tibeto-Burman Languages of North-East India Satarupa Dattamajumdar* (Received 25 April 2017; revised 19 October 2017) Abstract Linguistics or in other words the scientific study of languages in India is a traditional exercise which is about three thousand years old and occupied a central position of the scientific tradition from the very beginning. The tradition of the scientific study of the languages of the Indo-Aryan language family which are mainly spoken in India’s North and North-Western part was brought to light with the emergence of the genealogical study of languages by Sir William Jones in the 18th c. But the linguistic study of the Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in North-Eastern part of India is of a much later origin. According to the 2011 census there are 45486784 people inhabiting in the states of North-East India. They are essentially the speakers of the Tibeto-Burman group of languages along with the Austro-Asiatic and Indo-Aryan groups of languages. Though 1% of the total population of India is the speaker of the Tibeto-Burman group of languages (2001 census) the study of the language and society of this group of people has become essential from the point of view of the socio-political development of the country. But a composite historical account of the scientific enquiries of the Tibeto-Burman group of languages, a prerequisite criterion for the development of the region is yet to be attempted. -
Dimapur Administration Tells Auto Drivers to Accept Revised Fare
WWW.EASTERNMIRRORNAGALAND.COM EASTERN MIRROR Mamata calls for shutdown withdrawal, permanent solution Mel B under criminal investigation Virat is a better ODI batsman, to hill problem | P8 for witness tampering | P10 Smith ahead in Tests: Clarke | P12 NATION ENTERTAINMENT SPORTS VOL. XVI NO. 250 | PAGES 12 ` 4/- RNI NO. NAGENG/2002/07906 DIMAPUR, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2017 Dimapur administration tells auto Activists, journalists moot formation of Northeast forum for dialogue drivers to accept revised fare Our Correspondent downcast? If you do what the people, he said much to make their presence Kohima, Sep. 12 (EMN): is right, will you not be ac- of what the people are go- truly felt. A group of social activists, cepted?” ing through at present are While discussing about ‘The usual practice of the union to force its way is educationists and senior He feels that it is time consequences of their own the way traditional prac- journalists from differ- the leaders need to end internal divisions. The tices/customs are upheld ent northeast states today crusading and shouting peace activist observed in tribal communities, being viewed seriously by the district authorities’ held a day-long informal against the wrongs and that the sufferings faced Arunachal Pradesh based Dimapur, Sep. 12 (EMN): was in response to the rates. tion has the right to cause brainstorming session at failures of other leaders by the Naga people lo- women and children ac- A tough-talking Dimapur claim made by the Di- “The DDADU is here- irreparable inconven- ‘Kerünyü Ki’ (House for and factions and show how cated in different states are tivist Jarjum Ete, asserted district administration on mapur District Autor- by notified that the fixa- ience to public to get to Listening), Sechü-Zubza, to throw light on where ‘consequences of a process that while the people of Tuesday refuted claims ickshaw Drivers' Union tion of rates are a preroga- its claims. -
Mijiic, the Miji and Bangru Languages: Distribution, Dialects, Wordlist and Classification
MIJIIC, THE MIJI AND BANGRU LANGUAGES: DISTRIBUTION, DIALECTS, WORDLIST AND CLASSIFICATION WORKING DOCUMENT ONLY [Draft circulated for comment] Roger Blench McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge Correspondence to: 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/ Ans (00-44)-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7847-495590 E-mail [email protected] http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm Cambridge, 26 March, 2018 The Mijiic languages Roger Blench. Front matter TABLE OF CONTENTS ACRONYMS AND CONVENTIONS........................................................................................................... 2 1. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 General ................................................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Locations of Miji communities............................................................................................................. 4 2. PHONOLOGY ............................................................................................................................................ 5 2.1 Miji ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Consonants ...................................................................................................................................... -
Arunachal Pradesh: a Paradise for a Linguist Dr
JOURNAL OF ASIAN ARTS, CULTURE AND LITERATURE (JAACL) VOL 1, NO 2: JUNE 2020 Arunachal Pradesh: A Paradise for a Linguist Dr. Bishakha Das [email protected] Abstract Arunachal Pradesh is a paradise for the linguist. The state is a reservoir of numerous ethnic and linguistic communities, some of which extend their fraternity to Tibet, Bhutan and Myanmar. The state is home to variegated tongues of the broader Tibeto-Burman family, although the grouping may not be all inclusive. Past records of allocation of space and reorganization of districts provide a comprehensive account of the sister languages and community settlements. The place names indicate the original settlers and the prominent community. The speakers’ identification may not match their linguistic affiliation owing to political and administrative factors. English is the official language, and Hindi and Assamese are the lingua franca of the state. The state is a paradise for diverse indigenous communities with 32-34 languages1. Three scripts are used in the state – Tai-Khamti, Wancho, and Bhoti/ classical Tibetan; the other communities write in Roman or Devnagari script. Introduction Arunachal Pradesh, the largest of the seven sister states of North-East India, is bounded by the mighty Himalayas and the undulating slopes of the Patkai ranges. The mountains are interwoven with the mighty river Brahmaputra and its tributaries Siang, Lohit, Subansiri and Kameng. The state is bounded by Bhutan in the west, Tibet in the north, Burma (Myanmar) in the east; and the Indian states of Assam and Nagaland in the south. The variegated linguistic and ethnic communities maintain a continuum across its international borders. -
2017 Saikia Smitana 1218624
This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Mizo and Bodo Conflicts in the Ethno-Federal Context of India’s Northeast Saikia, Smitana Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 King’s College London Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Mizo and