Papers by Arup Kumar Nath
Productivity of Assamese Derivational Suffixes: An Exploration of its Nature, Methodological Issues and Challenges
Indian journal of languages and linguistics, Jun 16, 2023
The state of Assam in India is the home to the people who speak Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language.... more The state of Assam in India is the home to the people who speak Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language. Assamese is the native tongue of the people of Assam and the official language of the state of Assam. Based on linguistic standards and conventions, Assamese is a vital language for writing. However, when we attempt to see the language from the viewpoint of native speakers' attitudes towards the language, we find that the language is steadily deteriorating among the linguistic community. This deterioration is caused by Linguistic Imperialism. Linguistic Imperialism is a phenomenon in which a dominant language attempts to weaken other languages both socially and politically and in a theoretically founded way. The impact of the dominance is increasing day by day due to which a negative attitude has increased significantly among the native speakers of Assamese who considers English as superior to their mother tongue. Negative attitude is one of the reasons of language endangerment and we cannot deny the possibility of endangerment of the Assamese language in the far future if the dominance of English goes on increasing. History is evident that languages with a huge literature and population got extinct because of the reasons like negative attitude, dominance of other languages, decreasing rate of fluent native speakers, examples of such languages are Sanskrit, Hebrew, etc. This paper tries to analyse the negative attitude which is gradually increasing in the Assamese language and ways to strengthen it by reverting the dominance of Linguistic Imperialism by languages like English and Hindi.
Social Science Research Network, 2019
It is believed that Hemchandra Barua’s Hemkosh (1900) is the first Assamese Dictionary and Miles ... more It is believed that Hemchandra Barua’s Hemkosh (1900) is the first Assamese Dictionary and Miles Bronson’s A Dictionary in Assamese and English (1867) is the first bilingual dictionary published in Assamese language. But interestingly the first folio of dictionary was drafted in 1795 AD in Tai and Assamese language; on the other hand Hemkosh came out in 1900 AD. Under the framework of lexicography, this paper intends to look at the pre-Hemkosh era of dictionary writing in three different approaches: (1) A historical account of dictionary writing of pre Hemkosh era, (2) A linguistic account of select dictionaries and (3) An analysis of the beginning of Assamese standardisation. The research would be based primarily on secondary sources consisting library works and unpublished manuscripts.
GUINEIS, 2020
The productive expressions and creations of a language
reflect the dynamic aspects of language. T... more The productive expressions and creations of a language
reflect the dynamic aspects of language. The phenomenon of morphological
productivity has been explored in many global languages. These languages
have been digitally advanced with fully developed materials. This paper is an
attempt to understand thirteen suffixes of the Assamese language by applying
five statistical methods in a manually developed small sample. While doing
so, this paper addresses the issue of lack of resources and the method of
collecting the data in the absence of full-fledged large digital corpora. The
paper also tries to find out the productive suffixes, review the methods, and
examine the suitability of these methods on Assamese data. It finds that some
suffixes display relatively consistent productivity throughout the methods.
These are indeed the highest or least productive suffixes of the language.
However, some other suffixes turned out productive only in a few methods. In
this scenario, a blending of approaches can be adopted for a comprehensive
picture.
GUINEIS, 2020
The productive expressions and creations of a language
reflect the dynamic aspects of language. T... more The productive expressions and creations of a language
reflect the dynamic aspects of language. The phenomenon of morphological productivity has been explored in many global languages. These languages have been digitally advanced with fully developed materials. This paper is an attempt to understand thirteen suffixes of the Assamese language by applying five statistical methods in a manually developed small sample. While doing so, this paper addresses the issue of lack of resources and the method of collecting the data in the absence of full-fledged large digital corpora. The paper also tries to find out the productive suffixes, review the methods, and examine the suitability of these methods on Assamese data. It finds that some suffixes display relatively consistent productivity throughout the methods. These are indeed the highest or least productive suffixes of the language.
However, some other suffixes turned out productive only in a few methods. In this scenario, a blending of approaches can be adopted for a comprehensive picture.
Indian Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2023
The state of Assam in India is the home to the people who speak Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language.... more The state of Assam in India is the home to the people who speak Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language. Assamese is the native tongue of the people of Assam and the official language of the state of Assam. Based on linguistic standards and conventions, Assamese is a vital language for writing. However, when we attempt to see the language from the viewpoint of native speakers' attitudes towards the language, we find that the language is steadily deteriorating among the linguistic community. This deterioration is caused by Linguistic Imperialism. Linguistic Imperialism is a phenomenon in which a dominant language attempts to weaken other languages both socially and politically and in a theoretically founded way. The impact of the dominance is increasing day by day due to which a negative attitude has increased significantly among the native speakers of Assamese who considers English as superior to their mother tongue. Negative attitude is one of the reasons of language endangerment and we cannot deny the possibility of endangerment of the Assamese language in the far future if the dominance of English goes on increasing. History is evident that languages with a huge literature and population got extinct because of the reasons like negative attitude, dominance of other languages, decreasing rate of fluent native speakers, examples of such languages are Sanskrit, Hebrew, etc. This paper tries to analyse the negative attitude which is gradually increasing in the Assamese language and ways to strengthen it by reverting the dominance of Linguistic Imperialism by languages like English and Hindi.
Locating a cultural identity in the use of metaphorical proverbs among the Tai Ahoms of Assam: a study through oral literature
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
This article is an attempt to explore the role of Tai Ahom proverbs as a marker of cultural ident... more This article is an attempt to explore the role of Tai Ahom proverbs as a marker of cultural identity in the realm of postmodern society. Using or choosing culturally driven speech in communication is a linguistic behaviour which reflects the character of the people, their worldview, and thus their uniqueness or difference from the ‘other’. In another way, this might be a conscious way of projecting self. This qualitative study on proverbs of Tai Ahom language and culture adopts the methods of ethnography and textual analysis. A cultural hermeneutic model, along with the participant observation method, was used to collect the data. Finally, the Tai Ahom community of Sivasagar district of Assam, India was chosen as the locus for the research. The findings show that the proverbs are deeply woven by the Ahom community's cultural heritage, history, pride, advice, and satire. Hence, this article provides an insight into Tai Ahoms’ way of living and their worldview. In locating the Tai...
An Ethnolinguistic Analysis of Kinship Terms in Tai Ahom
Jadavpur Journal of Languages and Linguistics, Jan 10, 2021
The present study tries to explore and describe the phenomenon of kinship terms in Tai Ahom of As... more The present study tries to explore and describe the phenomenon of kinship terms in Tai Ahom of Assam. The Tai Ahom language is no longer used as a mother tongue but still the language is vibrant in some domains of culture and society. As a language it is dead but as a vehicle of culture it still persists the hope of endurance. The people of the community have been consistently struggling for the maintenance since last six decades. The maintenance or the using of new kinship terms based on the forgotten symbol is one of the endeavours of projecting the „self‟ and „identity‟. The paper attempts to deal with the ethnolinguistic account of Tai Ahom kinship terms through the theoretical framework of Dell Hymes‟ Ethnography of Communication. Following the ethnographic data collection technique, we observe here the changes of kinship terms along with their cultural connotation. Here we focus on the communicative goals which influence the speakers to maintain certain linguistic behaviour interlaced with cultural values, social norms, institutions, taboos etc.
Studying Kinship Relations of the Tai Ahom Community in Ethnolinguistic Perspective: Family Structure and Code of Conduct
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
The purpose of this study is to investigate the kinship relationship among the Tai Ahoms of Assam... more The purpose of this study is to investigate the kinship relationship among the Tai Ahoms of Assam and thereby to understand the community’s family structure and the code of conduct. Another purpose of this study is to look at the present cultural context of the uses of kinship terminologies where a particular kinship term may have different connotations. To carry out the research, the participant observation method was used. A set of questionnaires and a semi-structured group interview were used as a tool to collect data. Both the emic and etic understandings were used to investigate the inner cultural knot of the community. The study finds out that the Tai Ahom kinship relationship could be summarised into three categories: agnatic, matrilateral, and affinal. Family is central to kinship relations, where a relationship is given more importance than the interlocutor’s age and gender. An ethnolinguistic analysis of the Tai Ahom kinship terms would help the researchers to locate the h...
Shodh Sanchar Bulletin , 2021
Expressive is a part of morphological reduplication, where the base element does not have any ind... more Expressive is a part of morphological reduplication, where the base element does not have any individual existence in the language, but forms meaning when it is accompanied by the copied part. This paper attempts to show the differences and similarities among the color expressives in Bodo, Deori and Mising in terms of structure. The color terms in Bodo and Deori require a modifier in intensifying the colors whereas in Mising the color terms are independent in giving a complete picturesque. Mising does not require any modifier preceding or following the color expressives, the repetition of the base itself performs the function of intensification. In addition to that the syllable boundaries of the color terms will be discussed in this paper. Although expressives are subset of reduplication and less explored, they have lots of potential in linguistics. Their existence in languages can never be denied. In the context of this paper, it has been found that the importance of expressives in intensifying a particular color in the three languages, especially in Deori intensification of color terms are not possible without expressive. Expressives are indispensable part of these languages whose void cannot be filled by other lexical items. The method used in collecting data is observational, so that acquaintance can be gained while collecting data from the informants, followed by primary and secondary sources of data.
Shodh Sarita, 2020
The purpose of this study is to investigate the kinship relationship among the Tai Ahoms of Assam... more The purpose of this study is to investigate the kinship relationship among the Tai Ahoms of Assam and thereby to understand the community"s family structure and the code of conduct. Another purpose of this study is to look at the present cultural context of the uses of kinship terminologies where a particular kinship term may have different connotations. To carry out the research, the participant observation method was used. A set of questionnaires and a semi-structured group interview were used as a tool to collect data. Both the emic and etic understandings were used to investigate the inner cultural knot of the community. The study finds out that the Tai Ahom kinship relationship could be summarised into three categories : agnatic, matrilateral, and affinal.Family is central to kinship relations, where a relationship is given more importance than the interlocutor"s age and gender. An ethnolinguistic analysis of the Tai Ahom kinship terms would help the researchers to locate the human bonding and the cultural affinities and thereby to locate the basic structure of the society. This study can be useful in the identity research areas and the present scenario of the identity assertion movement in Assam.The study of the kinship terminologies from an ethnolinguistic perspective has not been discussed yet. Therefore, the study of kinship patterns is new and original to this study.
Jadavpur Journal of Languages and Linguistics, 2020
The present study tries to explore and describe the phenomenon of kinship terms in Tai Ahom of As... more The present study tries to explore and describe the phenomenon of kinship terms in Tai Ahom of Assam. The Tai Ahom language is no longer used as a mother tongue but still the language is vibrant in some domains of culture and society. As a language it is dead but as a vehicle of culture it still persists the hope of endurance. The people of the community have been consistently struggling for the maintenance since last six decades. The maintenance or the using of new kinship terms based on the forgotten symbol is one of the endeavours of projecting the „self‟ and „identity‟. The paper attempts to deal with the ethnolinguistic account of Tai Ahom kinship terms through the theoretical framework of Dell Hymes‟ Ethnography of Communication. Following the ethnographic data collection technique, we observe here the changes of kinship terms along with their cultural connotation. Here we focus on the communicative goals which influence the speakers to maintain certain
linguistic behaviour interlaced with cultural values, social norms, institutions, taboos etc.
Perfect Imagers, Guwahati, 2014
This paper tries to make a linguistic evaluation of the language of Lakshminath Bezbaroa, the doy... more This paper tries to make a linguistic evaluation of the language of Lakshminath Bezbaroa, the doyen of Assamese literature and language.
Language Forum, 2011
Tiwa, an endangered language of the Tibeto-Burman language family of the North East India which i... more Tiwa, an endangered language of the Tibeto-Burman language family of the North East India which is spoken in Karbi Anglong, Morigaon and Nagaon districts of Assam and some pockets of Garo hills in Meghalaya, has just 23,000 speakers (Census 2001). Due to the hegemony of Assamese, the dominant language of this region, Tiwa is under the tremendous threat of getting endangered. The urban people and the new generation of this speech community have started discarding their mother tongue considering it a powerless and non prestigious language. This language neither has its own script nor used in as a medium of instruction in the school level. But a couple of concerned speakers and some organizations have been trying to revive and revitalize the language. In this endeavor 'tiwa mathonlai tokhra' an autonomous literary body has been actively working by publishing folk literature, small scale dictionaries and grammars by adopting Roman script. They have also established a research institute to study and preserve this language as well as imparting some basic courses on language to the new generation speakers.
SOIL-Tech Conference, 2019
The paper discusses the state and presence of the Assamese language in the modern digital world.
Language in India, 2019
It is believed that Hemchandra Barua’s Hemkosh (1900) is the first Assamese Dictionary and Miles ... more It is believed that Hemchandra Barua’s Hemkosh (1900) is the first Assamese Dictionary and Miles Bronson’s A Dictionary in Assamese and English (1867) is the first bilingual dictionary published in Assamese language. But interestingly the first folio of dictionary was drafted in 1795 AD in Tai and Assamese language; on the other hand Hemkosh came out in 1900 AD. Under the framework of lexicography, this paper intends to look at the pre-Hemkosh era of dictionary writing in three different approaches: (1) A historical account of dictionary writing of pre Hemkosh era, (2) A linguistic account of select dictionaries and (3) An analysis of the beginning of Assamese standardisation. The research would be based primarily on secondary sources consisting library works and unpublished manuscripts.
Keywords: Assam, classical dictionaries, dictionary-making, pre-Hemkosh, dictionary-standardisation
Communication Studies and Language Pedagogy, 2016
Gender inequalities or sexism in languages is a common
phenomenon in almost all human languages, ... more Gender inequalities or sexism in languages is a common
phenomenon in almost all human languages, including the
most influential and rich language of the world – English. Like
other languages, the Assamese language is also not free from
the influence of sexists’ terminologies in various spheres of
life. Though the social scientists from this region and some
sociologists (Devi 2013) who worked on the Assamese society
are of the view that in some indices, such as, education,
decision making in the family, choosing life partners, etc.,
women in Assam have better indications in comparison to the
other states of India; the language itself is not completely out
of sexist terminologies which are totally biased and dominated
by the male folks. Women in Assam at large are cocooned by
various social customs and taboos, that they often cannot and
do not want to bring changes in their own traditional lifestyle
(Devi 2013). Hence, language is also no exception.
This paper highlights how sexism is associated with the
Assamese language, and through a survey, an attempt is made
to semantically and pragmatically analyze the gender biased
terms in the language. The analysis is purely a descriptive
analysis substantiated with the responses of the native
speakers. Along with the questionnaire results, the native
speaker’s judgment of the author is also used without being
prejudiced towards any preconceived notion.
Keywords: Sexism, sexist language, inequality, women,
Assamese
This is a paper written in Assamese on the Tiwa language spoken in the state of Assam. This chapt... more This is a paper written in Assamese on the Tiwa language spoken in the state of Assam. This chapter was included in the Peoples Linguistics Survey of India (Assamese Chapter) book.
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Papers by Arup Kumar Nath
reflect the dynamic aspects of language. The phenomenon of morphological
productivity has been explored in many global languages. These languages
have been digitally advanced with fully developed materials. This paper is an
attempt to understand thirteen suffixes of the Assamese language by applying
five statistical methods in a manually developed small sample. While doing
so, this paper addresses the issue of lack of resources and the method of
collecting the data in the absence of full-fledged large digital corpora. The
paper also tries to find out the productive suffixes, review the methods, and
examine the suitability of these methods on Assamese data. It finds that some
suffixes display relatively consistent productivity throughout the methods.
These are indeed the highest or least productive suffixes of the language.
However, some other suffixes turned out productive only in a few methods. In
this scenario, a blending of approaches can be adopted for a comprehensive
picture.
reflect the dynamic aspects of language. The phenomenon of morphological productivity has been explored in many global languages. These languages have been digitally advanced with fully developed materials. This paper is an attempt to understand thirteen suffixes of the Assamese language by applying five statistical methods in a manually developed small sample. While doing so, this paper addresses the issue of lack of resources and the method of collecting the data in the absence of full-fledged large digital corpora. The paper also tries to find out the productive suffixes, review the methods, and examine the suitability of these methods on Assamese data. It finds that some suffixes display relatively consistent productivity throughout the methods. These are indeed the highest or least productive suffixes of the language.
However, some other suffixes turned out productive only in a few methods. In this scenario, a blending of approaches can be adopted for a comprehensive picture.
linguistic behaviour interlaced with cultural values, social norms, institutions, taboos etc.
Keywords: Assam, classical dictionaries, dictionary-making, pre-Hemkosh, dictionary-standardisation
phenomenon in almost all human languages, including the
most influential and rich language of the world – English. Like
other languages, the Assamese language is also not free from
the influence of sexists’ terminologies in various spheres of
life. Though the social scientists from this region and some
sociologists (Devi 2013) who worked on the Assamese society
are of the view that in some indices, such as, education,
decision making in the family, choosing life partners, etc.,
women in Assam have better indications in comparison to the
other states of India; the language itself is not completely out
of sexist terminologies which are totally biased and dominated
by the male folks. Women in Assam at large are cocooned by
various social customs and taboos, that they often cannot and
do not want to bring changes in their own traditional lifestyle
(Devi 2013). Hence, language is also no exception.
This paper highlights how sexism is associated with the
Assamese language, and through a survey, an attempt is made
to semantically and pragmatically analyze the gender biased
terms in the language. The analysis is purely a descriptive
analysis substantiated with the responses of the native
speakers. Along with the questionnaire results, the native
speaker’s judgment of the author is also used without being
prejudiced towards any preconceived notion.
Keywords: Sexism, sexist language, inequality, women,
Assamese