PROTHESIS AND ELISION FOUND IN MECH (BODO) DIALECT OF NORTH BENGAL

Abstract

Mech (Bodo) is one of the regional Bodo dialects and it falls under the group of Western Bodo Dialect. The dialect is mainly spoken in Darjeeling, AlipurDooars, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts of North Bengal of West Bengal (India). As a dialect, it has been maintaining some linguistic variety in different levels of linguistics. This variety can be displayed by comparing with standard form of Bodo spoken in Kokrajhar district and its adjacent areas of Assam, India. There are some examples in Mech, where extra sounds are found inserted in the beginning of words without changing the structure of word and the meaning. For example, the word ɔkha (rain) of standard Bodo is termed as nɔkha (rain) in Mech. Here, an extra sound nasal alveolar voiced consonant /n/ has been inserted in the beginning of word in Mech. Likewise, some examples of elision are also present in this dialect. For example, the word barsin (jump upon) used in standard Bodo is termed as basin (jump upon) in Mech. In this example, trill alveolar voiced consonant phoneme /r/ has been found deleted from the medial position of word. The main purpose of this paper is to observe and show up the prothesis and Elision present in Mech Dialect.