Tibeto-Burman Family Research Articles

Tense and Aspect in Balti Language: Morphological Perspective

Pakistan is a multilingual and multicultural country where 72 language diverse languages are used for communication. Gilgit-Baltistan is one of the most well-known northern regions for its stunning natural beauty, distinct landscapes, evergreen forests, snow-capped mountains, and rich cultural heritage. Most of the Gilgit-Baltistan regional languages have been studied historically and culturally, but a few studies address this from a linguistic perspective. Balti language is one of them. Balti is a member of the more extraordinary Tibeto-Burman language family, specifically the Western Tibetan branch of the Tibetan language family. The present study analyses the tense and aspect markers in the Balti language. This study contributes to the regional language of Pakistan and analyzes the language in the morphological domain that is not mostly touched yet; also, studying tense and aspect markers in the Balti language from a morphological perspective is crucial for understanding the language’s nuances within temporal expressions. The present study results show that Balti has a complex system of tense and aspect markers; using the qualitative research design, n= 50 root words (verbs) were collected from the Balti language within the framework of inflectional morphemes of tense markers for this study. Nine markers for tense and some of their aspect, including eḑ, en, s, yoḑ, and yoḑpə: set̪, ʊk, t̪ʊk, and sed̪ʊkt̪ʊk, are identified in the current study. These markers are attached to the corresponding root verbs to indicate the present simple, present progressive, past simple with progressive, future simple, and future participle. The study also develops a deep understanding of various future tense markers as connectors to root words based on the consonant and vowel sounds at the end of root words.

An ultrasound investigation of Hnaring Lutuv (high?) vowels

Lutuv (also known as Lautu) is an under-documented Chin language from the Tibeto-Burman language family spoken by 18,000 people, both in Chin State in western Burma and in diaspora communities worldwide, including approximately 1000 people in the Indianapolis Chin refugee community. Lutuv utilizes a typologically rare six-way contrast in the higher part of the vowel space (i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u, see Bohnert et al. 2022), with an additional four high diphthongized vowels (ie̯ yə̯ ɯə̯ uo̯). Previous work has also identified that the high central vowels (/ɨ ʉ/) are poorly disambiguated—acoustically, they show considerable overlap with both each other and the high back vowels, and in terms of lip posture, they do not display the characteristics of a typical rounding contrast (Bohnert & Berkson 2023). The present work utilizes 3D ultrasonography to provide detailed lingual articulatory data of Lutuv vowels with special attention paid to the high central vowels, adding a new dimension to the existing acoustic and articulatory data. Real-time images of tongue position and motion provide new insights into the complex articulatory gestures involved in the production of these sounds and constitute the first ultrasound investigation into this underdocumented language.

Classifiers in Dimasa and (in-)definite marking

Abstract Dimasa (ISO 639-3 dis) is a Bodo-Garo language within the Tibeto-Burman family of languages. Like other Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India, it has a system of numeral classifiers which occur prefixed to their respective numerals. Across the dozen or so languages of Bodo-Garo, it has been noted that the classifier-numeral word can be placed either before or after the counted noun. The existence of numeral classifiers, as well as the clf-num order may have arisen in this area due to contact with Tai languages during the Ahom kingdom period from the 1200’s to 1800’s. In the Tai languages, classifiers precede the number “one”. By comparing occurrences of classifiers in Dimasa texts, it can be seen that the order N clf-num corresponds to definite nouns, while the order clf-num n marks indefinites. In addition to classifier placement, Dimasa definiteness is also marked by demonstratives, case marking, topic marking, and/or combinations of these strategies.

Vocalic contrasts in Hnaring Lutuv

Lutuv, sometimes called Lautu, is an under-documented Chin language from the Tibeto-Burman language family spoken in Chin State in western Burma by 15 000 to 18 000 people (Eberhard et al., 2022, citing 2005 data that do not account for current military violence and displacement). Lutuv is also spoken in diaspora communities worldwide, including by about 1000 people in the Chin refugee community of Indianapolis (community estimate). Ongoing fieldwork with the Hnaring variety has revealed that, compared to related languages, Lutuv has undergone radical syllable structure simplification and attendant vowel inventory expansion. In addition to the low vowel /a/ and mid vowels /e, ə, ɔ/, Lutuv contains six to ten high vowels. These tentatively include four diphthongal vowels (/ie, yə, uɔ, Ɯə/) as well as six monophthongs /i, y, ɨ, ʉ, Ɯ, u/. We explore the distribution of the vowels via a combination of acoustic and comparative data in an effort to better understand the articulatory and featural specifications thereof, with special attention paid to the high vowels. If all of these monophthongs truly are high, it would represent a startlingly large and typologically uncommon high vowel inventory.

Comprehensive Documentation of Mewahang

The Mewahang language belongs to the Kiranti branch of the Tibeto-Burman family and is predominantly spoken in Sankhuwasabha district of eastern Nepal. No linguistic fieldwork has been undertaken so far and the language remains undescribed. The paper characterizes a first comprehensive documentation of Mewahang, and presents data collection and ethnography.

The kinship system of Tiwa

Abstract This paper provides a systematic description of the kinship system of Tiwa, a Boro-Garo language of northeast India. It complements existing partial descriptions by Ramirez (2014) and Bouchery and Longmailai (2018), including documentation of affinal relationship terminology and kinship-based politeness strategies. A key new finding of this work is that Tiwa has a series of dyadic group kin terms which behave in similar (though not identical) ways to what Bradley (2001) identifies as family group classifiers in several Ngwi languages. To my knowledge, this is the first time such dyadic kin terms have been identified beyond the Ngwi and Ersuic branches, suggesting they may be more widespread throughout the Tibeto-Burman family than previously believed.

Vocalic contrasts in Hnaring Lutuv

Lutuv, sometimes called Lautu, is an under-documented Chin language from the Tibeto–Burman language family spoken in Chin State in Western Burma by approximately 15 000 people (Eberhard et al., 2021, citing 2005 data that do not account for current military violence and displacement). Lutuv is also spoken in diaspora communities worldwide, including by about 1000 people in the Chin refugee community of Indianapolis (community estimate). Ongoing fieldwork with the Hnaring variety has revealed that, compared to related languages, Lutuv has undergone radical syllable structure simplification and attendant vowel inventory expansion. In addition to the low vowel /a/ and mid vowels /e ə ɔ/, Lutuv contains six to ten high vowels. These tentatively include four diphthongal vowels (/ie yə uɔ Ɯə) as well as six monophthongs /i y ɨ ʉ Ɯ u/. We explore the distribution of the vowels via a combination of acoustic and comparative data in an effort to better understand the articulatory and featural specifications thereof, with special attention paid to the high vowels. If all of these monophthongs truly are high, it would represent a startlingly large and typologically uncommon high vowel inventory.

Numerals in Kokborok

This paper will describe the numerals used in the Kokborok language. Kokborok belongs to the Bodo-Garo sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman language family, spoken in the Northeastern state of Tripura, India. According to the 2011 census, the Kokborok speakers' total population is around 8,80,537 (23.97% of the total population). This language happens to be one of the lingua-franca among the tribes. The numerals in Kokborok are of decimal type, i.e., ten base and purely absent of vigesimal, i.e., twenty base. Structurally, Kokborok categorizes into six numerals viz., (i) cardinals, (ii) ordinals, (iii) multiplicative, (iv) fractional, (v) distributive, and (vi) restrictive numerals. The raw numbers from one to ten are the basic numerals used as compounding for forming higher numerals by addition or multiplication. Syntactically, in compound nouns, the numeral always follows the head noun in Kokborok.

NEGATION MARKING STRATEGY IN HRANGKHOL

The present paper attempts to discuss the negation marker of Hrangkhol. Hrangkhol is a sub branch of Kuki-Chin language of Tibeto-Burman language family. Hrangkhol language is mainly spoken in Dima Hasao and Karmiganj districts of Assam and Dholai district of Tripura. This paper focuses mainly on Hrangkhol speakers of Dima Hasao district of Assam. In Hrangkhol most of the negations are expressed by means of suffixation. The present paper will attempt to explore different strategies of negation marking of Hrangkhol.

NEGATION IN RANGLONG

Ranglong is one of the sub-tribes of Halam community of Tripura. Ethnically, they are Mongoloid and their language belongs to the Kuki-Chin sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman language family (Grierson 1903). The present paper attempts to explore the negative marking in Ranglong. The negative formation can be expressed by suffixing negative markers to the main verb. The negative marker mək is the common negative marker in Ranglong used with realis construction. The present paper discusses the various negative construction in Ranglong which includes, agreement particles, declarative, interrogative, existential, possessive, locative, imperative, negative strengthening and double negation.

SEGMENTAL PHONEMES OF LAIRAMLO

Lairamlo is the name of the dialect, which is spoken by the Ringpam people in the Ringpam village of Chandel district of Manipur which have 440 (approximately) speakers. Lairamlo is a dialect of Tangkhul. Lairamlo belongs to the Kuki-Chin-Naga sub-group of Tibeto-Burman family (Grierson’s LSI, 1903). The paper will describe the phonemic inventory of the dialect in terms of number of vowels, consonants and diphthongs including their distribution and arrangement in the dialect. The data was collected from Ringpam village of Tengnoupal district of Manipur through questionnaire and interview method.

Reported Evidentiality in Tibeto-Burman Languages

Classifications of evidentiality all include at least one ‘reported’, ‘quotative’ or ‘hearsay’ category. This category is found in many language groups that are attested to have evidentiality, including the Tibeto-Burman family. Although attested, reported evidentiality is often under-described in both descriptive grammars of specific languages, and typologies of evidentiality across the family. This survey of reported evidentiality in the Tibeto-Burman family found mention of reported evidentiality in descriptions of 88 of 130 languages. While there are clear patterns with regards to the morphosyntactic features of reported evidentiality across these languages, there is a great deal of variation in the semantic features, including the number of reported evidential distinctions and the specificity of source. This survey demonstrates that reported evidentiality is complex and varied across languages, even within the same family, and outlines ways to improve future documentation and description.

A Context-Free Grammar for Parsing Manipuri Language

Parsing, i.e., identifying the underlying hierarchical structure of natural language expressions is important for several natural language processing applications. In recent times Machine Learning (ML) approaches have been developed for this study for many languages. Most of the effective techniques require an annotated corpus of the language for training and validation. For the Manipuri language of the Tibeto-Burman family, neither such a corpus nor a grammar framework to automatically analyse and represent the structure of sentences exists yet. This study proposes a context-Free Grammar (CFG) that provides the framework to represent the structure of Manipuri sentences. This paves the way for parsing Manipuri sentences using CFG-based parsers for various applications and to conveniently build a Treebank for developing ML-based parsers for Manipuri. The rules of the proposed CFG are handcrafted after extensive analysis of the structure of Manipuri sentences. The grammar covers simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences. For evaluation, we induce an Earley’s parser with the proposed CFG and test it over a collection of sentences that covers the possible varieties of structure. A recognition rate of 83.20% achieved in these experiments indicates the effectiveness of the proposed grammar.

Morphological processes in Sanzari Boro

This paper is an attempt to present the morphological processes that have been observed in Sanzari Boro, an eastern variety of the Boro language. Boro belongs to Tibeto-Burman language family. The Standard variety of Boro is mainly spoken in the present Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) of Assam, India but Sanzari Boro speakers primarily reside outside and eastern part of the BTR. For this research data have been collected from native Sanzari Boro speakers of Nagaon district of Assam. After examining the data, it has been noticed that affixation, mainly suffixation and prefixation, plays important role in the morphological processes in Sanzari Boro. The major morphological processes that have been observed in the language variety are inflection, derivation, compounding and reduplication.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SENTENCE SYSTEM BETWEEN SHERPA AND TAMANG LANGUAGE

Sherpa language is spoken by Sherpas and Tamang language is spoken by Tamangs. Both of these languages fall under Tibeto-Burman language family. The present comparative study between these two languages is qualitative in nature. Data collection for the study was made with purposive interview and conclusion has been drawn. Both language bear resemblance in the sentence structure as subject + object + verb pattern. Both the languages have similarity in sentences meaning as declarative, interrogative, optative, imperative, subjunctive, indicative and exclamatory sentences from the formal point of view. Both the languages have similar simple, compound and complex sentences. These languages differ from Nepali language in grammatical structure. Both the languages do not have sentence congruity in the structure. They seem a grammatical on the basis of number and gender. KEY WORDS: A grammatical, sambhota, Target language, phonological linguistic competence/ linguistic power.

THE COVID PANDEMIC: RESPONSE OF THE RAJI REVITALIZATION PROGRAMMES

Raji is a little known tribal community that resides in twelve geographically scattered hamlets in the state of Uttarakhand, India. According to 2011 Census, their total population is 732. Their language belongs to Tibeto-Burman family. Since, last twenty years or so the author has been working with this group and trying to document, preserve and revitalize their language and culture. Language revitalization requires tackling problems on many fronts and its different approaches depend upon the unique local conditions of the speech community. The author is trying to develop a new revitalization model called 'South Asian Model of Language Revitalization'. This paper discusses the Response of the Raji Revitalization Program towards the present pandemic and sheds light upon the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Raji community and the status of their language.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SHERPA AND NEPALI LANGUAGE ON THE BASIS OF CASE

Sherpa language spoken by Sherpas, the inhabitants of Himalayan region, falls on Tibeto-Burman language family. While comparing the case grammar of Sherpa language and Nepali language both have similarly types of case and case marker (Bibhakti). Sherpa Subjective case takes ki suffix as case marker and Nepali case takes [le]. Sherpa objective case takes la suffix as case marker and Nepali case takes [lai]. Instrumental case takes ki/gi] suffix as case marker in sherpa and Nepali case takes le/ ba;ta. Dative case take la: as case marker in Sherpa and Nepali case takes [lai]. Ablative case takes tja:su as case marker in Sherpa and Nepali case takes [ba:ta/ ᵭekhi]. Locative case takes la: as case marker in Sherpa and Nepali case takes [ma] and possessive case takes ki as case marker in Sherpa and Nepali case takes[ ro/ no/ ko]. Sherpa language and Nepali language are similar on the basis of case grammar study. The sentence structure in Sherpa language is different from Nepali language. There is no gender system in this language. Verbs are not changed on the basis of number either. SPECIAL WORDS: Tibeto-Burman, Sambhota Script, Kham, tan, Linguistic Universal.

On the genetic position of Chakpa within Luish languages

Chakpa is a ritual and heritage language which is usually classed under the Luish group of Tibeto-Burman language family. It was once spoken in the Imphal valley by such clans as Andro, Sengmai, and Phayeng (McCulloch 1859). However, they do not speak Chakpa anymore. They now speak a variety of Meitei and are collectively known as Lois (Devi L. B. 2002). The Luish languages are divided into three major goups: (i) Cak-Sak, (ii) Chakpa, and (iii) Kadu-Gnan (Matisoff 2013). In this paper, based on my field data (Cak, Sak, Kadu, and Ganan) and secondary sources (McCulloch 1859 and Basanta 2008), I will try to classify Chakpa within Luish.

Direction and associated motion in Tibeto-Burman

AbstractThis study analyzes systems of direction and associated motion in 23 languages of the Tibeto-Burman family. Both direction and associated motion can be encoded by a range of grammatical strategies, including affixes, clitics, particles, serial-verb constructions, and auxiliary verbs. While some languages have only associated motion or direction, others have both, either via distinct subsystems, syntactic ambiguity, or context-dependent interpretation. While directional encodings can be interpreted as associated motion in some contexts, the reverse can also be true. Verbal semantics is key to the pragmatic interpretation of examples in context; some types of motion verbs are more compatible with directional interpretations and others with associated motion. In addition, certain types of motion verbs were found to be compatible with different temporal relationships that hold between the activity of the primary verb and the motional component. Finally, the grammatical role of the figure in such constructions depends on both the temporal relationship and the semantics of the verb.

Nuitah Zophei Swadesh List

This paper presents a preliminary 100-item Swadesh word list for Nuitah Zophei. Zophei or Zyphe (ISO 639-3 ZYP) belongs to the Maraic branch of Kuki-Chin within the Tibeto-Burman language family (Eberhard et. al, 2020). Nuitah (also known as Leitak) is a village in the southern part of the Zophei-speaking area in Thantlang Township, Chin State, Myanmar. The word list comes from the intuitions of our co-author Kimberly Biakthapar Sakhong, a 21-year-old native speaker born in Nuitah village of Zophei parents (both from Nuitah), who lived for some of her childhood in Hakha and Malaysia before moving to the US. She currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. She also speaks Hakha Lai, Senthang, and English.