Tibeto-Burman Research Articles

First notes on the phonology and classification of the Bangru language of India

This is the first description of the Bangru language spoken in a remote corner of Kurung Kumey district, Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India. On the basis of our data and analysis, we identify Bangru as a Tibeto-Burman language with as its closest genetic relatives Miji and Hruso, spoken further to the southwest in East and West Kameng districts. Based on these preliminary data and their analysis, Bangru is described as having 18 distinctive consonants, seven distinctive simple vowels and three distinctive diphthong vowels. The basic syllable structure is Ci(G)V(Cf). Bangru is furthermore characterised by the retention of Proto-Tibeto-Burman prefixes as reduced syllables. This paper also provides additional evidence for the validity of Shafer’s ‘Hruso’, with Hruso itself as its most aberrant member.

On Colexification among Basic Vocabulary

The paper presents a typological database of colexifications among basic vocabulary, derived from the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) database. Some uses of the inventory of colexifications are proposed. Some heuristics are introduced regarding the discrimination of polysemy from homonymy in a typological database, as well as such pertaining to the determination of common membership of two languages in the same language family. In particular, it was found that shared colexifications corroborate the postulation of the Austric stock and the attribution of Sumerian to the Tibeto-Burman language family.

A sociotonetic study of Lalo tone split in progress

Since Labov’s early work (e.g., 1963, 1966), sociolinguists have frequently examined change in progress on the segmental level, but much less is known about tone change in progress. The present study finds evidence of a tone split in progress in Lalo, a Tibeto-Burman language of China. While many of the world’s tone languages show historical evidence of tone splits, to our knowledge this is the first time that a tone split has been observed while it is occurring, making it possible to closely examine phonological, social, and perceptual factors. In this sociotonetic study of Lalo, 2,938 tone tokens were extracted from recordings of 38 speakers and analyzed in terms of age, sex, and educational level. Multifactorial analyses show that the temporal extent of voiced stops’ depression of Tone 1 F0 is increasing in apparent time, especially among women, while VOT of voiced stops is decreasing as educational levels improve, giving speakers more contact with Mandarin Chinese. The same 38 speakers were also given a perceptual identification task in which F0 was systematically adjusted. Mixed-effects modeling showed that listeners used multiple acoustic cues (consonant voicing, F0 onset, and F0 shape) to identify the voiced initial. These findings suggest that Lalo is undergoing a tone split that follows Beddor’s (2009) coarticulatory path to sound change.

Sino-Tibetan Negation and the Case of Galo: Explaining a Distributional Oddity in Diachronic Terms

While the vast majority of Sino-Tibetan (=Trans-Himalayan) languages have a pre-head predicate negator, Tani is one of a small handful of subgroups whose languages display an exclusively post-head negator. This negator, furthermore, is somewhat unusual in having both derivation-like and inflection-like properties, and in occupying an ‘intermediate’ position between derivations and inflections in the predicate stem. This article proposes a common explanation for both facts, by hypothesizing that reanalysis of an AUX-final serial verb construction as a single predicate word has resulted in realignment of an earlier pre-head auxiliary negator as a predicate suffix with leftward scope over the predicate stem. This is similar to another channel found in some Tibeto-Burman languages in which a prefixal negator fuses with a clause-final auxiliary to become a suffix (as in Kuki-Chin and ‘Naga’); however, I argue it to be ultimately somewhat different. These arguments are made on the basis of a more comprehensive description of negation in Galo (Tibeto-Burman > Tani, Eastern Himalaya) than was provided in Post (2007); as such, a second goal of the paper is to contribute to the typology of negation in Asian languages more generally.

Why do languages change?: A Report of the International Workshop on Language and Human Complexity

The International Workshop on Language and Human Complexity took place on October 25-28, 2014 at Peking University, with language change as the theme. This four-day workshop covered eight important topics of language change, i.e. the emergence of syllabic languages, special changes in Tibeto-Burman languages, Literal/Colloquial competition, formation of the Huihui language, bilingual development, phonemic load, dynamic studies of Chinese, and the Sino-Tai hypothesis.

Word formation in Thadou

This paper attempts to discuss word formation in Thadou, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Kuki-Chin subgroup spoken by around 231, 200 (Lewis 2009) speakers of northeast India and Myanmar. This paper discusses three processes that are relevant for word formation in Thadou –affixation, compounding and reduplication. Thadou like the other Kuki-Chin languages of the region is an agglutinative language in which almost all the syllable boundary corresponds to morpheme boundary. Most words in Thadou tend to be largely monosyllabic, but even with bisyllabic words it is not difficult to segment the various morphemes which composed a bisyllabic word.

Stemming resource-poor Indian languages

Stemming is a basic method for morphological normalization of natural language texts. In this study, we focus on the problem of stemming several resource-poor languages from Eastern India, viz., Assamese, Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri and Bodo. While Assamese, Bengali and Bishnupriya Manipuri are Indo-Aryan, Bodo is a Tibeto-Burman language. We design a rule-based approach to remove suffixes from words. To reduce over-stemming and under-stemming errors, we introduce a dictionary of frequent words. We observe that, for these languages a dominant amount of suffixes are single letters creating problems during suffix stripping. As a result, we introduce an HMM-based hybrid approach to classify the mis-matched last character. For each word, the stem is extracted by calculating the most probable path in four HMM states. At each step we measure the stemming accuracy for each language. We obtain 94% accuracy for Assamese and Bengali and 87%, and 82% for Bishnupriya Manipuri and Bodo, respectively, using the hybrid approach. We compare our work with Morfessor [Creutz and Lagus 2005]. As of now, there is no reported work on stemming for Bishnupriya Manipuri and Bodo. Our results on Assamese and Bengali show significant improvement over prior published work [Sarkar and Bandyopadhyay 2008; Sharma et al. 2002, 2003].

Numeral Classifiers in Ersu

This paper analyzes the numeral classifier system in Ersu, a previously under-documented Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Sichuan Province, China. Ersu numeral classifiers obligatorily follow a numeral in the context of counting. The language has a rich set of numeral classifiers, including sortal classifiers, mensural classifiers, time classifiers and repeaters. Their functional range involves individualization, classification, referentialization and emphasis. The paper concludes that Ersu not only shares common features with other Tibeto-Burman languages in this area, but also has some unique typological characteristics.

Negation in Thadou

This paper attempts to discuss the different types of negative particles in Thadou, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Kuki-Chin subgroup spoken by around 231, 200 (Lewis 2009) speakers of northeast India and Myanmar. Thadou has three main negative particles – pòo, hìq, and lòw, in addition to the negative particles dàa and mɔ̀ɔ which most often occur as sentence final particles. Previous scholars working on the language, viz. Grierson (1904), Thirumalai (1971) and Krishan (1980) have discussed three of these negative particles, viz. pòo, hìq and lòw, in a much narrower sense by assigning only one negative construction for each negative particle. In this paper, I provide three constructions – declarative, interrogative and imperative – for the occurrence of each of the negative particles and argue that with the exception to the imperative construction, two or more negative particles can be used in the same construction with slight nuances of meaning.

Report on the relationship between Yolmo and Kagate

Yolmo and Kagate are two closely related Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal. This paper provides a general overview of these two languages, including several dialects of Yolmo. Based on existent sources, and my own fieldwork, I present an ethnographic summary of each group of speakers, and the linguistic relationship between their mutually intelligible dialects. I also discuss a set of key differences that have been observed in regards to these languages, including the presence or absence of tone contours, verb stems and honorific lexical items. Although Yolmo and Kagate could be considered dialects of the same language, there are sufficient historical and political motivations for considering them as separate languages. Finally, I look at the status of the Kyirong-Kagate sub-branch of Tibetic languages in Tournadre’s (2005) classification, and argue that for reasons discussed in this paper it should instead be referred to as Kyirong-Yolmo.

Observations on the phonology of Gamāle Khām

The aim of this study is to present preliminary findings from ongoing research of the Gamāle Khām language. The Gamāle variants presented here are spoken in the Gām, Kuipādhārā and Tamāli villages in north-eastern Rolpā of mid-western Nepal. I concentrate on the vowel and consonant contrasts of words elicited in isolation. Observations concerning phonotaxis are also considered. Phonation, tone and stress are only treated cursorily at present since their patterns are yet to be determined with any certainty. Where necessary, certain aspects of Gamāle phonology are compared with related Tibeto-Burman languages.

Direct Speech as a Rhetorical Style in Chantyal

Author(s): Noonan, Michael | Abstract: In this paper, I will elaborate somewhat on Slobin's notion of 'thinking for speaking' by introducing the construct of 'rhetorical style', by which I mean a set of related constructions employed to achieve a particular discourse effect. Just as the presence of a particular grammatical category may impel speakers to organize their thinking to meet the demands of the linguistic encoding of that category on-line, so the use of a given rhetorical style may require similar adjustments in thinking for speaking.The goals of this paper are threefold. First I will present data, drawn primarily from narrative discourses, on the use of direct quotes in Chantyal, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. In Chantyal, direct quotes are conveyed by a set of constructions which I will refer to collectively as 'quotatives': quotatives always include a form of the verb 'say' together with a complement of 'say' presented as a direct quote. Second, I will argue that quotatives are used in Chantyal to affect the 'direct speech style', a mode of exploiting quotatives to further narrative goals that in many other languages are achieved by means other than quotatives. And third, I will discuss the direct speech style as a 'rhetorical style', and go on to present an overview of rhetorical styles, their uses, their status as areal features, and their diachronic developments.

Morphological Innovation and Subgrouping: Some Tibeto-Burman Notes

Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1983), pp. 257-265

The Duoxu Language and the Ersu-Lizu-Duoxu relationship

Duoxu is a terminally endangered and virtually undescribed Tibeto-Burman language, spoken in the historically multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Miǎnníng county of Sìchuān province in the People’s Republic of China. Until recently, Duoxu was known only through a 740-word vocabulary list in the Sino-Tibetan vocabularies Xīfān Yìyǔ [Tibetan-Chinese bilingual glossary], recorded in Chinese and Tibetan transcriptions in the 18th century, and a grammatical sketch (Huáng & Yǐn 2012). Researchers who have worked on the language (Nishida 1973, Sūn 1982, Huáng & Yǐn 2012) have expressed different views about the features and the genetic position of Duoxu, variously viewing it as (1) closely related to Lolo-Burmese languages (Nishida 1973), (2) closely related to Ersu and Lizu, two neighboring languages that are currently classified as members of the Qiangic subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman language family (Sūn 1982), or (3) distantly related to those two languages and to Qiangic languages at large (Huáng & Yǐn 2012). The Duoxu language is critically endangered and urgently requires documentation. It is of great value for our understanding of the linguistic diversity of the region, and of its linguistic history. It is also of great value as a modern reflection of a language that was recorded in the 18th century. This paper makes a significant contribution in all these areas. Based on new fieldwork with all remaining elderly Duoxu speakers, this study provides newly collected data and a new analysis. It compares the newly collected data with the 18th-century attestations of Duoxu as well as with its two putative sister languages Ersu and Lizu. The conclusion of the study is that Duoxu is closely related to Ersu and Lizu, with superficial differences attributed to long-standing and on-going contact influence from Southwestern Mandarin.

Reflexive and Middle Marking in Dulong-Rawang

Middle voice marking is very rarely recognized as such in the grammars written on Tibeto-Burman languages. It is often simply treated as a normal direct reflexive or as an intransitivizer. In order to draw the attention of Tibeto-Burman scholars to the existence and function of middle voice marking, the present paper discusses reflexive and middle marking in the Dulong-Rawang languages.

Aspect Markers in Hmar

This paper attempts to highlight the aspect markers in Hmar. Hmar is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Hmar people. They are mainly concentrated in Churachandpur district, the southern part of Manipur. And other villages outside Manipur are also scattered over a vast area comprising of northern Mizoram, Cachar district of Assam and Chittangong hill tracts of Bangladesh. Hmar is one of the recognized tribes of Manipur. It is regarded one of the nuclei of the Central Chin sub-group of Kuki-Chin group of Tibeto-Burman family (Grierson, LSI Vol. III, part III, 1904). There are four aspect markers in Hmar. They are simple aspect, progressive aspect, perfective aspect and unrealized or non realization aspect. Simple aspect is marked by ‘zero markers’, progressive aspect is denoted by /jiŋ/ or /mek/ and /lai/. The progressive aspect markers /jiŋ/ or /mek/ can be used separately. Again, the progressive aspect marker /lai/ can be used with a progressive aspect marker either /jiŋ/ or /mek/ in progressive sentences, perfective aspect is expressed by /tak h a/ and unrealized or non realization aspect marker is denoted by /tih/ or /diŋ/.

Kokborok: A Major Tribal Language of Tripura

Kokborok: A Major Tribal Language of Tripura

Differential subject marking without ergativity

While differential object marking seems to be widespread and is well represented in the linguistic literature, differential subject marking appears to be much less common. Burmese is one example of a language that marks some, but not all subjects, depending on a number of pragmatic factors. This phenomenon is widespread in Tibeto-Burman languages, but Burmese apparently differs from these in not having an underlying ergative alignment or an agentive source of the subject marker, suggesting that there are other sources for DSM than the ones identified in the literature. This study looks at the functions of the marker ká with subjects in colloquial Burmese and discusses factors favoring its occurrence and possible paths of its development.

Lexical Anaphors and Pronouns in Liangmai

Abstract This paper discusses some aspects of the behavior of anaphors and pronouns in Liangmai, belonging to the Tibeto-Burman language family. W e show that Liangmai offers a unique combination of “reflexivization strategies”. Like other languages it exhibits the strategy of reflexivizing the predicate by reduplication of an anaphoric element, but it simultaneously marks the predicate with a self-element. Two more properties of anaphoric properties of Liangmai are interesting from a cross-linguistic perspective. It shows cases of “swapping” - reordering of differently case-marked elements within the complex anaphor - and long-distance binding - allowing an anaphoric element to refer to an element that is not a co-argument.

REDUPLICATION IN KANASHI

Kanashi, a Tibeto-Burman language is spoken in the Malana district of Himachal Pradesh in India. The present discussion concentrates on a particular grammatical phenomenon known as ‘reduplication’. By definition the concept of Reduplication stands for repetition or copying of a word or a syllable either exactly or with partial change in the phonological or morphological structure and the copied part is affixed to the base element in order to bring some modification in the semantic interpretation of the base element or to convey some special meaning. (Dattamajumdar, 2001:3). This study of reduplication is a part of the grammatical study of the Kanashi language which is an ongoing work. The data of the present work has been collected from Kanashi mother tongue speaker, an inhabitant of Malana district of Himachal Pradesh. The data has been collected and presented here using International Phonetic Alphabet.