CLASSIFIERS IN REANG

Abstract

Language is an identity as well as a means of passing down knowledge from one generation to the next, serving as the foundation for a particular native speaker's understanding. The Reang is one of the languages belonging to the Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan language family (Reang, 2021). It is spoken in Mizoram, Tripura, and Assam. It is also spoken in neighbouring nations, particularly Bangladesh and Myanmar. According to the Census of India 2011, Reang has a total population of 1,88,080. The study area of this present work focuses on the Reang spoken in the west, south, and northern regions of Tripura. Reang is a Tibeto-Burman language, and it has numerous classifiers for virtually anything or every shape, just like other TibetoBurman languages, including Boro, Garo, Rabha, Dimasa, and Kokborok. There are very scanty linguistic works done on the classifiers of Reang. The current work makes an effort to discuss the range of classifiers in Reang. “Classifiers are affixes that are used in various languages to indicate the grammatical or semantic classification of words." The term ‘classifier’ is commonly used for a wide range of noun categorization devices. Classifiers are generally defined as morphemes that classify and quantify nouns according to semantic criteria. Classifiers classify a noun inherently. They designate and specify semantic features inherent to the nominal denotatum and divide the set of nouns in a certain language into disjunct classes. "(Senft 2000: 21).