Word formation in contemporary Liangmai: A morphological study

This paper attempts to discuss the different processes of word formation in contemporary Liangmai, a Tibeto-Burman (TB) language of the Kuki-Chin-Naga sub group (Bradley 1997). The language is spoken by around 50,000 speakers in the state of Manipur and Nagaland, in the northeastern part of India. This paper discusses a detailed description of the word formation processes that are relevant in Liangmai, namely affixation, compounding and reduplication. Like the other TB languages of the region, Liangmai is an agglutinative language in which almost all the syllable boundary corresponds to morpheme boundary. Most of the Liangmai words are monosyllabic. In the case of disyllabic/polysyllabic words, various morphemes which composed the word are easily segmentable

North East Indian Linguistics 8 (NEIL 8)

This is the eighth volume of North East Indian Linguistics, a series of volumes for publishing current research on the languages of North East India, the first volume of which was published in 2008. The papers in this volume were presented at the 9th conference of the North East Indian Linguistics Society (NEILS), held at Tezpur University in February 2016. The papers for this anniversary volume continue the NEILS tradition of research by both local and international scholars on a wide range of languages and topics. This eighth volume includes papers on small community languages and large regional languages from across North East India, and present detailed phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic studies of structures that are characteristic of particular languages or language groups alongside sociolinguistic studies that explore language attitudes in contexts of language shift

Evidentiality in Lamjung Yolmo

Lamjung Yolmo is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Bodish branch spoken in Nepal. Like related languages it has a verbal system that includes evidential distinctions. In this paper I look at the role of these evidentials in interaction, and in relation to other features of grammar. These features include their relationship to events, interaction with subject person, endopathic verbs and negative polarity. I also look at constructions with no overt evidential marking, and evidential elision, to give a more rounded representation of the role of evidentiality for speakers of Lamjung Yolmo, and explore its role in audience perception of utterances.Copyright Information: Copyright vested in the author; released under Creative Commons Attribution Licenc

Adjectives in Qiang

Qiang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by 70,000-80,000 people in Northern Sichuan Province, China, classified as being in the Qiang or Tibetan nationality by the Chinese government. The language is verb final, agglutinative (prefixing and suffixing), and has both head-marking and dependent-marking morphology

Evaluating the Sino-Tibeto-Austronesian Hypothesis

This paper analyses and evaluates the alleged genetic relationship between Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian, proposed by the French sinologist Laurent Sagart. The aim of the following paper is neither to prove, nor to disprove the Sino-Tibeto-Austronesian superphylum but to argue whether the data presented in favour of this proposed genetic relationship do or do not stand the scrutiny of a historical linguist. This paper also considers the hypothetical homeland of Proto-Sino-Tibeto-Austronesian people, with an eye towards competing hy-potheses, such as Sino-Indo-European. It is concluded that Sagart’s approach may be insuffi-cient for proof of controversial cases of disputed genetic relationship, given the non-obvious relatedness of the languages he is comparing.Orlandi Giorgio. Evaluating the Sino-Tibeto-Austronesian Hypothesis. Journal of Language Relationship, 16, 1-2, 1. https://doi.org/10.31826/jlr-2018-161-204

Temporal concepts and formulations of time in Tibeto-Burman languages

As a vast and diverse linguistic grouping, Tibeto-Burman languages vary in their usage of time constructs, both morphologically and semantically. Even between genetically related languages within the Tibeto-Burman language family, approaches to elements such as suffixation vary widely, while vocabulary from Indo-Aryan and distantly related Sinitic languages is differently incorporated and borrowed. In this article, we identify trends that only become apparent through the process of data collation and the careful comparison of numerous grammatical sketches and dictionaries. We further expand this rich, if understudied, area through the incorporation of original fieldwork data from the Thangmi/Thami-speaking communities of Nepal undertaken by one of the co-authors, and supplemented by the researcher‘s residence in the Himalayan region from 1996 to 2009. The literature review and linguistic scope of this survey includes multiple grammars of languages spoken across the Greater Himalayan region, with specific emphasis on the Rāī-Kiranti sub-branch of languages autochthonous to eastern Nepal. In our comparative analysis, we focus on apparent cognates and shared paradigms with an emphasis on systems of segmental time measurement (e.g. ‗two days hence,‘ ‗this year‘) rather than on relative ones (e.g. ‗now,‘ ‗then‘). Through this compilation, the relationship between Tibeto Burman languages and their often-dominant regional Indo-Aryan counterparts becomes more visible, mediated by a better understanding of the shared yet conflicting epistemological, astrological, and organisational views of time held by the communities who speak Tibeto-Burman languages

The Typological Characteristics of Maithili

Typological studies have always been fascinating the linguists as it paves the way not only for the proper classification of a language but also in defining and re-defining several language universals. Sometimes, this study becomes the main cause of the establishment of a new language universal. Indian languages have always been showing some of the unique features which make these languages distinct from many other languages of the world. The similarities among the Indian languages are found due to long area contact and sharing of features. Maithili is an Indo-Aryan and a scheduled language of India. It is spoken in the north-eastern part of the Bihar state of India and in the tarai region of Nepal. It is the 16th most spoken language of India and the 40th most spoken language of the world. The present paper takes into account some of the major typological features of Maithili languages in order to test its similarities and dissimilarities with other Indian languages. Some of the discussed features in this paper include the basic word order, the position of adjective, auxiliary verb, main verb, adverb, direct and indirect objects, interrogation, negation, anaphora, reduplication and echo-formation, etc. At the same time, this paper also makes a comparative study of Maithili with the other South-Asian languages. Finally, it also discusses some of the unique features of Maithili which requires further investigation