Himalayan Linguistics Language and Dialect Relations in Bumthang
Himalayan Linguistics Language and dialect relations in Bumthang Mark Donohue The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages The Bhutan Oral Literature Program ABSTRACT This report presents basic wordlists from seven closely related East Bodish languages from Bumthang, northern Trongsa and far eastern Wangdue Phodrang districts in Bhutan. These wordlists are analysed, with lexico-statistical comparison to other languages of the region (East Bodish, Central Tibetan, and Indic), and preliminary notes on phonological processes and sound correspondences and change within the Bumthang varieties. KEYWORDS Tibeto-Burman, Bhutan, East Bodish, Bumthang, dialects, lexicostatistics, sound change This is a contribution from Himalayan Linguistics, Vol. 19(3): 1–45. 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(3). © Himalayan Linguistics 2020 ISSN 1544-7502 Language and dialect relations in Bumthang Mark Donohue The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages The Bhutan Oral Literature Program 1 Introduction The core of this article are the wordlists taken from five locations in Bumthang (མ་ཐང་), representing six different language varieties. In addition to the core varieties sampled within Bumthang, two additional varieties, the Trongsa (ཀྲོང་གསར་) variety of Bumthang and a wordlist of Henkha, are included. In the analysis eleven additional language varieties from the region surrounding Bumthang were included for comparison. The sample from Bumthang includes the main varieties from all of the inhabited valleys in Bumthang; they are listed in Table 1, which shows the name, the locations of the villages where wordlists were elicited, altitudes, and the iso code for that language.
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