Converging patterns of clause linkage in Nagaland

Issues in Tibeto-Burman Historical Linguistics (Senri Ethnological Studies 75), 2009

Indian Linguistics Vol. 79. (1-2), 2018

The Indian subcontinent represents one of the classic cases of language diversity interlaced with widespread multilingualism and contact among languages of distinct language families. The paper discusses the grammatical changes in (1) the typologically distinct languages-in-contact and (2) the re-organization of grammar of the contact languages. It is the interplay of language external and internal ecology that determines the structure and the paths for the emergence of contact features and contact languages. Language contact has been shown to bring about change in grammars by constantly providing stimulus to add, drop and internally innovate linguistic structures. Data is drawn from various tribal and lesser-known languages of India. The author discusses language contact situations in Jharkhand, Orissa, Hyderabad, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, and Meghalaya, the states marked by high rate of bilingualism and the co-existence of genetically and typologically distinct languages.

The emergence of morphologically simple ‘creoloid’ languages in the Tibeto-Burman group, including Boro and Tibetan, has been linked to their use as lingua francas in civilizations that have previously covered fairly wide geographic regions, and often in valley regions (DeLancey, 2013). Such ‘creoloid’ languages typically display less structural complexity than archaic languages of the family, which at present can only be found in more isolated hill regions. Indeed, recent work in sociolinguistic typology finds a correlation between large, unstable, high-contact communities with loose social networks and a loss in morphological complexity (Trudgill, 2011). Nevertheless, we do find Tibeto-Burman languages that display creoloid grammatical patterns but which appear to be spoken by relatively small communities in isolated hill regions. These include the various non-Konyak languages of Nagaland, North-east India. This paper considers one of these languages of Nagaland, Sumi – also known as Sema. It first presents a number of grammatical patterns found in Sumi and a few related languages that are typically associated with creoloid Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the valley regions. These patterns include: the lack of argument indexation on verbs; semantically and pragmatically motivated argument marking; and fairly transparent nominal and verbal morphology. The paper then considers the recent social history of Sumi, looking at factors such as: the rapid spread of Sumi speakers across a fairly large geographic area; a high degree of social instability; and the intense level of contact with other languages, especially Ao and Sangtam (as described by Hutton 1968/1921). Finally, it offers a tentative explanation for the lack of morphological complexity in Sumi by linking it to these socio-historical factors. Importantly, it also considers whether a similar explanation can be offered for other Tibeto-Burman languages of Nagaland. References DeLancey, Scott. 2013. Creolization in the divergence of Tibeto-Burman. In Nathan Hill & Thomas Owen-Smith (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area, 41-70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hutton, John H. 1968. The Sema Nagas. London: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1921). Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The focus of this research is to study language contact and resulting language mixing in two states of India; Arunachal Pradesh (AP) and Meghalaya. It will be argued that the effect of borrowing/interference is not compartmentalized to certain grammatical subsystems. It will also be proposed that mixed languages can have more than two participants and several participants can contribute at distinct linguistic levels. This paper focuses on the interplay of several Indo-Aryan languages such as, Hindi, Assamese, Bangla, Nepali, Maithili and Bhojpuri with the Tibeto-Burman (TB) and Austro-Asiatic (AA) languages. The paper would present certain similarities between two Contact Hindi (CHs) and also note their certain peculiar features. The data findings would be tested against several proposed theories of contact language formation. The present paper is divided into separate sections; theory, methodology, data, results and conclusions.

2022

It has been speculated by linguists and historians that the Modern Standard Nepali language evolved from a form of the Indo-Aryan lects spoken in western Nepal. This paper aims to gain a better understanding of current and historical relationships between Nepali, western lects (Jumli and Dotyali), Kumaoni, and Hindi by exploring language diversification in this complex contact situation from the perspective of lexical evidence. The analysis relies on the principles of Historical Glottometry to create a representation of the genealogical subgroups of the lects under study, represented with the Wave Model, which allows for each event of language change to intersect, instead of being nested as in the typical Tree Model. This study explores some hints to contact patterns and historical relationships by exploring 25 wordlists from 21 different lects. Rather than relying on sound changes to understand the relationships as Francois does in his research (2013), the focus is on lexical innovations, both internal and external, as suggested by Kogan (2016). Thus, the measure of “subgroupiness” from this data is a count of borrowed terms and shared non-retained lexemes. Looking at the data, this paper discusses evidence of shared retention or shared innovation, observes instances of lexical borrowing, and visualizes the patterns of shared lexemes, demonstrating the study’s conclusions. This study finds that, despite the complexities of their differences caused by constant contact over time, all the lects under study are very closely related to each other, and all retain many Sanskrit words. There is also clear evidence of contact-induced change in all the lects, even those in the most remote regions, although some have more evidence of borrowing than others. Rather than forming a dialect continuum geographically from west to east, as some scholars have proposed, the Jumli and Far Western (Dotyali) lects are both more similar to Nepali than they are to each other. Jumli is the “subgroupiest,” having the most shared innovations within its lects, and show the least evidence of borrowing. The Far Western lects do not subgroup strongly, as suggested by the literature, rather they form complex layers of overlapping subgroups with influence from Kumaoni, Hindi, and Nepali. The paper concludes that the Historical Glottometry model seems to be a good fit for describing the relationships of these varieties. Hindi, Kumaoni, Nepali, Jumli, and the Far Western lects have very complex relationships, best pictured as overlapping subgroups rather than nodes on a family tree.

This volume of 26 articles provides a wealth of information about language on the Indian Subcontinent, one of the densest and most complex language areas in the world, within whose seven political divisions are spoken varieties representing Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and the Munda subdivision of the Astro-Asiatic taxon, along with several contact languages, by one and a half billion people, about 25% of the world population, in a great ancient Sprachbund. The sheer linguistic variability of the region is staggering. The 1961 census counted the Mother Tongues of India at more than 1,600, although R.E. Asher ("Language in Historical Context," 31 -48) puts the number of languages at closer to 300. The usual difficulties of classification apply, given that in many cases a language name is a cover term for a set of varieties. South Asia's reputation as a Sprachbund, first suggested by Murray Emeneau in 1956 (India as a Linguistic Area in Language and Linguistic Areas: Essays. Stanford: Stanford University Press,1980), is well justified, as over several millennia major and minor representatives of the aforementioned language taxa have coexisted, diffused, and converged. K.V. Subbarao, in "Typological Characteristics of South Asian Languages" (49 -78) makes a survey of typological features shared by important representatives of the languages in South Asia,

Abstract This paper attempts to study variation, structural commonalities and innovations made in the formation of full-fledged (the wh-type of English) and participial relative clauses in Tibeto-Burman languages, Dakkhini Hindi-Urdu (Indo-Aryan), Bhālāvali Bhasha, Karnataka Saraswat Konkani (Mangalore Konkani; Indo-Aryan) and Saurashtra (an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Tamilnadu). We show that in contact situations, specific functional categories are reanalyzed to accommodate newly-acquired syntactic phenomena. We attempt to demonstrate that a creole may prove to be the catalyst in the innovation of a construction type that is novel to the recipient language. We provide data that show that in contact situations, a language may use the Juxtaposition strategy as a means to express noun modification, as is the case in Nagamese, an Assamese based creole, and the Konkani spoken by the Indian diaspora in South Africa. We demonstrate that the full-fledged relative clause found in some Naga languages is due to the influence of Nagamese. Syntax,

This chapter describes grammaticalization patterns in a broad selection of languages of South Asia, a multilingual region of the world known to constitute a linguistic area in which unrelated languages demonstrate evidence of linguistic convergence. In addition to presenting representative examples of grammaticalization, the chapter specifically considers whether widely recurring patterns in unrelated languages could be induced by language contact. The investigation finds robust evidence for the transfer of seemingly identical cognitive schemas across the genetic boundaries of languages in contact. These target morphemes or constructions with identical meanings in unrelated languages, and they produce grammaticalization outcomes that are not attested in related languages located outside of South Asia. Such replicated patterns must cater to a multilingual community’s communicative needs, while at the same time reducing the cognitive burden imposed by multilingualism in a linguistic area.

2009