SYLLABLE STRUCTURE IN BISHNUPRIYA MANIPUR

Abstract

The key purpose of this paper is to investigate the phonological aspect of syllable structure in Bishnupriya Manipuri. The language is spoken in the North-East Indian states of Assam, Tripura, Manipur, and Meghalaya, as well as in the neighbouring country Bangladesh. It is a member of the Eastern form of Indo-Aryan language family. According to India’s 2011 census report, the total population of Bishnupriya speakers is 79,646. The research area focuses on Bishnupriya speakers in the state of Assam. When it comes to nomenclature, the language is surrounded by a lot of controversy. Some people refer to it as Bishnupuriya, while others refer to it as Bishnupriya Manipuri or just Bishnupriya. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently published a list of endangered languages, and Bishnupriya is listed as vulnerable on that list. The language doesn’t have a script of its own, so it uses the Bengali script. Bishnupriya's syllabic structure is V, VV, VC, VCV, VVC, CVC, CV, CVV, and so on. The different types of Bishnupriya syllables are: (i) Mono-Syllabic, (ii) DiSyllabic, (iii) Tri-Syllabic, (iv) Tetra-Syllabic, (v) Penta-Syllabic and (vi) HexaSyllabic.