Clans and clanlectal contact

Abstract

Abstract This is the first variationist study of clan intermarriage and intergenerational change in Nagaland (India). The study investigates clan as a sociolinguistic variable by drawing data from the Angami (belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Naga sub-group of Tibeto-Burman languages) community of Kohima village in Nagaland. The linguistic variables examined include two alveolar fricatives and three affricates showing variable palatalization. Like many other clan-based communities (cf. Stanford, 2007, 2008, 2009), Angamis practice exogamy. Women settle down in their husband’s clans in the same village after marriage, but continue to maintain their original clanlects despite being in contact with their husband’s clanlects for many years. Exogamy practices are however weakening in Kohima, resulting in intra-clan marriages. The study examines the linguistic implications of the inter-clan and intra-clan marriages, illustrating the patterns that young learners acquire under such circumstances and the way they respond to the new changes. Labov finds evidence for an “outward orientation of the language learning faculty” (2012, 2014). The Nagaland results build on this notion but provide a new perspective: In Nagaland, children’s language learning is inwardly oriented with respect to stable variation and outwardly oriented in the case of change in progress.