Galo Language Research Papers

Indigenous knowledge in Arunachal Pradesh

2024, Book edited by Tia Toshi Jamir

The chapter explores the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) systems of the peoples of Arunachal Pradesh, NE India. Arunachal Pradesh is exceptional in the region both for its ethnic diversity and the relative conservation of the natural... more

Indigenous knowledge in Arunachal Pradesh Roger Blench. Main text A number of inferences can be drawn from the linguistic geography of Northeast India. Excepting Tripura, much of NE India resembles Southeast Asia culturally and phenotypically, although valley of the Brahmaputra was colonised by Indo-Aryans from the fourth century onwards. Clearly the highly diverse languages of Arunachal Pradesh represent the probable descendants of the original populations. Scattered across the region are various branches of Sino-Tibetan, including the isolates Meithei and Karbi [Mikir]. The different branches of Sino-Tibetan languages began further expansion, presumably from the west, around 3500 years ago. As Sten Konow (in Grierson 1909:572) put it, more poetically; ‘The preceding remarks will have shown there is considerable difference between the North Assam dialects...The home of the North Assam tribes may be considered a kind of backwater. The eddies of the various waves of Tibeto-Burman immigration have swept over it and left their stamp on its dialects’. The large subgroups of Tibeto-Burman, such as Bodo-Garo, Naga/Kuki-Chin, Bodic and Tani reflect this process, although they are by no means all of the same time-depth.

Figure | represents this information as a graphic, showing the importance of vertical hierarchy.

Indigenous knowledge in Arunachal Pradesh Roger Blench. Main text 4.4 Going on a hunt A hunt is not undertaken lightly, because it is a potentially dangerous activity. The night before a hunter goes out, the igu performs a ceremony known as abu tru, which involves the sacrifice of a chicken and the use of the éka leaf. The hunter mus not eat mushrooms or onions, must not have sex with his wife and must not tell outsiders he is going hunting. If the hunting expedition is in the high altitude zone, hunting for musk deer, then further restrictions are imposed. Hunters must accept any food that is offered to them, and not wash their face. Most importantly, however, they must not speak in ordinary Idu, but use a specia register.

An aspect of Idu, and indeed Mishmi domestic space, which has struck visitors since the earliest period is the trophy wall, the long corridor which connects the hearths of individual wives and which is hung with the skulls of hunted and sacrificed animals (Photo 6). These include mithuns and pigs, which are domestic, but nonetheless, a wide array of species are found there. Cooper (1873) suggests that the skulls of tigers are hung on these walls, but this must be a mistake, since tigers are mis, and this would be prohibited. The skulls themselves may go back several centuries and the names of ancestors who hunted the animals are remembered. Present-day hunters usually hang their own skulls in a section apart, to underline their individual prowess. The wall contains not only skulls, but also hunting gear, including traps, bows and arrows, and the bamboo tubes full of dried blood prepared as part of sacrifices. The Idu are very attached to these skulls and they are often moved to semi-modernised houses, cleansed of the soot and cobwebs and hung on rather antiseptic walls.

eastward in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, are Source: Author photo recognised as regions of high biodiversity (Page et al. 2022). They are particularly significant, since elsewhere in the region uncontrolled hunting and logging has damaged these environments irreversibly. Plants are of high significance, not only because of their uses as food, for construction and material artefacts and also for medical and ritual uses. Despite this, most languages have no over-arching term for ‘plant’ which covers all life-forms. Instead they have a diverse array of categories, which seem to have no common lexical element. Table 5 shows a comparison of the names for plant categories in the Kman, Idu and Miji languages.

Indigenous knowledge in Arunachal Pradesh Roger Blench. Main text

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Himalayan Linguistics Review

by Erik Andvik

2023

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The Most Apt Experimental Investigation of English Comparative and Superlative Formation

by Nathan LaFave

2023

Figure 1: Example carrier phrase and graded adjective stimulus.

Figure 2 depicts the interaction between graded form and the number of syllables in the root for the first study. Figure 2 and other figures like it are bean plots, which are similar to box plots in that they display the range of data points along the y-axis (in this case, participants’ ratings of individual stimuli) and a line indicating the overall average value. However, bean plots differ by providing the density of data points at a given value: the wider the bean at a given point on the rating scale, the greater the number of data points which have that numerical rating. In comparing means, differences smaller than 0.5 will be interpreted as essentially overlapping ratings for the two variables (e.g., the difference between mean ratings for analytic and synthetic monosyllables in Figure 2); differences ranging from 0.5 to 1.0 reflect moderately distinct ratings, and those greater than 1.0 are meaningful differences. The beans that I produce in this figure and subse- quently are symmetrical about the vertical axis. As was the case in the corpus research discussed in the literature (summarized in Section 1), the number of syllables in an adjective’s root had a significant influence on its comparative form. Participants judged analytic disyllabic adjectives (mean rating 5.07), such as more ancient, favor- ably and showed a clear dispreference for the disyllabic adjectives using the synthetic form (2.28), such as ancienter. Consider that vowel-final disyllabic roots (a set that includes disyllables ending in /i/ and /li/) were not included in this study. Thus, the consonant- and cluster-final disyllables listed in Table 2 strongly favor the analytic form over the synthetic form.

Figure 3: Density plots for rating of comparatives by form and source language. The second significant interaction in Table 4 is between the graded form (analytic, synthetic) and the source language (Latinate, non-Latinate), which provides evidence that the language of origin of a root adjective is a significant factor in determining its comparative form.

Along with the source language of the adjectival root, the log-transformed lexical frequency of the root (logfrequency) was determined to influence the rating of the analytic and synthetic forms of graded adjectives in the second study. In Figure 5 below, each rating of an analytic form (marked with a square) along the x-axis (the log-transformed frequency of the root adjective, rang- ing here from 3.30 to 12.16) has a rating for the corresponding synthetic form (triangle) for the same root adjective above or below it on the y-axis. For example, the rightmost square is the ana- lytic form of the adjective high (thus, more high combined with most high); the corresponding rating for the synthetic form of high (higher, highest) is the rightmost triangle. The sole exception is for the adjectives stray and frail, both of which have a logfrequency of 7.54; consequently there are four stimulus ratings on the y-axis for that point on the x-axis (the higher pair of values is for frail).

Figure 5: Rating of monosyllable comparatives and superlatives by form and logfrequency of root.

Table 1: Monosyllable stimuli and their final phonological elements: V#/C#/CC#. A total of 56 tokens comprise the stimulus set of the resultant six types related to the number of root syllables, stress and phonological final element (each type is a separate column in Tables 1—2): ten tokens for each monosyllable type and eight or nine tokens for each disyllable type.

Table 2: Disyllable stimuli and their final phonological elements: initial stress (C#/CC#), final stress (C#).

A mixed effects regression model was fitted in R, using the /mer() function of the Ime4 pack- age, with normalized participant rating as the dependent variable and with the predictors listed in Table 3 as fixed effects. An additional factor group, trialnumber, was included in order to see if the presentation order of the stimuli played a role in shaping speakers’ responses. A version of these results originally appeared as a poster at NWAV 41 (LaFave 2012).

Table 4: Regression model for comparative ratings (crucial interactions highlighted).

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Word order of numeral classifiers and numeral bases

by One-Soon Her

2023, STUF - Language Typology and Universals

In a numeral classifier language, a sortal classifier (C) or a mensural classifier (M) is needed when a noun is quantified by a numeral (Num). Num and C/M are adjacent cross-linguistically, either in a [Num C/M] order or [C/M Num].... more

In terms of geographical distribution, classifier languages are commonly found in the eastern and south-eastern parts of Asia, while their presence is also sporadically attested in Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Gil, 2013). A weighted sample of classifier languages is displayed in Figure 1 via data from the World Atlas of Language Structures, with each red dot indicating a classifier language. Though the languages shown do not represent an exhaustive list of classifier languages, the map does offer a general picture of the spatial distribution of classifier languages, which are mostly found in Asia. To evaluate the wo probabilistic universals, we thus performed a systematic survey of classifier languages in Asia. More specifically, we have chosen six language groups in the hotbed of the world’s classifier languages: Sinitic, Miao-Yao, Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai, Tibeto-Burman, and from the Syntax and Indo-Aryan, dubbed SMATTI. In a database of 491 classifier languages Lexicon Lab at National Chengchi University, SMATTI accounts for 45.41% (223/491) of the data points, making these six language groups a suitable target for our preliminary stud y. We are aware that such a choice may limit the geographical and phylogenetic diversity of our samples; yet, in order to assure a certain level of quality, we narrowed the scope in a way that a sufficient amount of data is available to test our hypothesis while each data point can be cross-checked. To avoid confounding probabilistic universals and areal features (Sinnemaki, to appear), we do plan to include languages in other regions of the world in future analyses. — ™~ 1° 4 414 nrni . OAM* £ Armd qe r mm. 7 vote 4

Figure 2. A spatial overview of all languages in SMATTI

Figure 3. Spatial overview of the 219 languages surveyed systems of nominal classification such as grammatical gender (Corbett, 2013; Luraghi, 2011). We are aware that such a general picture is still subject to controversy, as some studies attest that Miao-Yao, Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai, and Tibeto-Burman widely use classifier devices (Xu, 2013, pp. 54-55). Nonetheless, no database known to the authors actually provides detailed references and examples of such statements, i.e., most examples are extracted from languages with a large population of speakers, while much less detailed data is provided for languages with a restricted number of speakers. We only included in our dataset classifier languages that are supported by actual examples and theoretical verification. Hence, this may affect the general distribution. We estimate that the general criteria of diversity are matched for the purpose of this paper as every language group is represented in terms of ratio. The same observation is made with regard to spatial distribution in Figure 3.

The proportions of the two base-parameter tokens are thus clearly different in the tw different C/M-parameter groups. We then need to investigate the strength of the effect siz and its statistical significance. Effect size is not discussed in detail in the previou probabilistic test due to the different types of data. It is necessary to do so here since we nov have one more variable. The effect size represents the magnitude of the difference betwee sroups, while the statistical significance demonstrates the probability that the observe difference across two groups is due to chance (Sullivan & Feinn, 2012, p. 279). For instance a smaller p-value shows that the probability that the divergence between the two groups is les likely to be caused by chance. However, the p-value does not tell us the strength of th association between the variables. It is therefore preferable to analyze the effect size as well. We first calculate the cstatictical sionificance of onr ohservatinnse hv carrvino ont

Figure 5. Spatial overview of word order harmonization in SMATTI Therefore, we display the distribution of the base-parameter via spatial representation in Figure 5. The gray dots represent base-final languages, and blue dots, base-initial languages, whereas red circles indicate the languages that violate the base and C/M harmonization. Due to the high ratio of harmonization within our data, the same map can also be interpreted in terms of the C/M-parameter. It shows a picture of base-initial and C/M-initial Tibeto-Burman languages being sandwiched between base-final and C/M-final languages, while the six exception cases, highlighted in red circles, are located on the fringe between the two harmonized word orders.

As for C/M, the literature is rather generous with regard to naming. For example, sortal classifiers as we define them in this paper, may be referred to as individual classifier, numeral classifier, word of measure, quantifier, unit word, or numerative, among others. Moreover, linguistic elements that are not classifiers in our definition may be labelled as classifiers by other publications. Hence, we apply the formal and semantic tests developed in the literature (Her & Hsieh, 2010; Her 2012a; 2012b) on language data provided by other researchers to maintain a unified and consistent analysis. For instance, one of our references to the Indo-Aryan language Bengali, Bhattacharya (2001), mentions the existence of the following classifiers: the human classifier jon, the inanimate count classifier khana, the collective Information on classifiers and numeral systems of these languages was collected from the existing literature. Taking Khasi (Austro-Asiatic) for example, the numeral system was provided by Chan (2017)°, as shown in Table 2. This language is then analyzed and annotated as base-final, since the morpheme of ‘ten’ [p"u] follows the multipliers from 20 to 90, e.g., in ‘thirty’ [la:j p"u], the multiplicand (i.e., the numeral base) [p"u] ‘ten’ follows the multiplier [la:j] ‘three’. The same pattern is observed in higher numbers such as hundreds and thousands e.g., [Pair sp'a?] ‘two-hundred’ is the combination of [?a:r] ‘two’ and [sp"a?] ‘hundred’.

Table 3. Genealogical distribution of the 219 classifier languages included in our survey The observed tendencies are in accordance with the literature. Sinitic languages are expected to be prototypical classifier languages (Bisang, 1999; Zhang, 2013). Thus, every language of the group is expected to be a classifier language. The high ratio of classifier languages within the Tai-Kadai group is also not surprising as most Tai-Kadai languages are expected to employ numeral classifiers (Morev, 2000). With regard to Miao-Yao, few numeral classifier languages are found, considering the fact that the literature often refers to Miao- Yao as a classifier language group. The reason for such divergence is that some of the languages in Miao-Yao actually possess noun classifiers instead of numeral classifiers (Mortensen, 2017, p. 15)’. We thus did not include them in our dataset (the same logic applies for other language groups). As for the Austro-Asiatic group, Bauer (1992, p. 374) states that “numeral classifier systems found in Austroasiatic languages are not an inherited feature, but represent a secondary, or borrowed, system”. Moreover, the structure of numeral classifiers in Austro-Asiatic also represents a high level of diversity probably due to different language contact situations (Adams, 1986, pp. 256-257). Such a phenomenon results in the fact that some languages were not validated by our formal criteria of classifiers. Classifiers are not a

The information encoded in Table 5 is equivalently shown via a bar plot of a two-dimensional table in Figure 4. The x-axis represents the two categories of C/M word order, whereas the y-axis indicates the frequency of base-final (black) and base-initial (gray) languages, respectively. The plot clearly shows that the proportion of base-final languages is greater in the C/M-final than in the C/M-initial, and vice-versa. “Teme BLUE PILOPLLLULIUTE UCL YVOCHE FLUNIEEE UL UIE) UNL CLUDE LRT Within the 219 languages for which we have information on numeral bases and classifiers, the harmonization between the base-parameter and the C/M-parameter is attested in 213 languages (97.26%), with only six exceptions. As shown in Table 5, most of the observed languages are base-final and C/M-final®. We do not discuss here the distribution of each category per language family, since it does not influence the verification of the probabilistic universal. Nevertheless, that subject is developed in Section 5. For now, we focus on testing the null hypothesis of no harmonization between numeral bases and classifiers.

this area, enjoying an enormous population of 16,000,000 s This system is borrowed from Assamese (Indo-Aryan), which is a dominant language 1 as one of the official languages in the state of Assam (Simons and Fennig, 20 the other hand, is Bengali (Indo-Aryan), which is also a prestigious language enjoying th on sta Ind as Ra most Rabha texts to be written in Assamese scripts. Due us of the official language of Bangladesh, with more than 82,500,000 s Rabha e.g., words borrowed from both languages can be found in Rab bha and Assamese are also relatively similar (e.g., in terms of phonetic im! peakers and the prestigious statu 18). In the south peakers solely 1 ia. The two languages therefore exert great influence on the other regional languages suc ha. Furthermore s), which allow o such similarities crossed wit balance in terms of population and use, it is therefore quite common for Rabha to borro\ linguistic elements from Assamese, which may gradually replace the indigenous vocabular and linguistic subsystems (Kondakov, 2013, p. 7). Some communities of Rabha speakers hav even given up Rabha and shifted entirely to Assamese (Joseph 2007). In the communitie where Rabha still survives, it is the numeral system that has almost been replaced by th Assamese one. A sample of numerals from Assamese is shown in Table 9. It not onl demonstrates that Assamese is a strictly base-final and C/M-final language, but also shows th phonetic similarity between Rabha and Assamese in terms of numerals. At first glance, Rabha behaves like a drastic violation to our probabilistic universal of harmonization, since the orders of base and C/M can vary freely. There are rules, however, underlying the use of these word orders. Two sets of numerals are attested in Rabha. The predominant version in use is a base-final system. As illustrated in Table 8, the numeral bases of this scheme are consistently positioned after the multiplier numeral.

Intriguingly, C/Ms in Rabha can also be divided into two groups, depending on their word order, which by and large corresponds to their respective origin. The C/M-final classifiers are mostly borrowed from Assamese and can only be used with base-final numerals borrowed from Assamese. The C/M-initial classifiers, mostly indigenous, can only appear with the three surviving indigenous numbers, which are part of a base-initial system no longer in use. This eads to a divergence in the paradigms of numeral phrases. As shown in (15), the C/M-initial word order is used for the three remaining indigenous numerals, i.e., one, two, and three; however, the C/M-final word order is found with other borrowed numerals such as four and five.

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Tone in speech and singing: a field experiment to research their relation in endangered languages of North East India

by Stephen Morey

2023

Cite this article: Stephen Morey, Jürgen Schöpf (2012). Tone in speech and singing: a field experiment to research their relation in endangered languages of North East India. In Niclas Burenhult, Arthur Holmer, Anastasia Karlsson, Håkan... more

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Tone in speech and singing: a field experiment to research their relation in endangered languages of North East India

by Stephen Morey

2023

Cite this article: Stephen Morey, Jürgen Schöpf (2012). Tone in speech and singing: a field experiment to research their relation in endangered languages of North East India. In Niclas Burenhult, Arthur Holmer, Anastasia Karlsson, Håkan... more

A pitch trace of these three words can be seen in Figure | (MS2.wav).

Figure 3a: First line of Manje’s sayawg goi, the sung version, as Praat pitch contour. For improved visibility the initial melisma is omitted and the display starts after the quarter rest. ® Phonetic symbols cannot be printed in the lyrics by limitations of the notation software Finale, version 2003a. See example 4 for the linguistic transcription.

The music notation has come into being by carefully listening to the recording, in half speed or even less. This is a conventional ethnomusicological method.'° The roughly aligned pitch contours from the software Praat are derived from the sung (Figure 3a), and the read (Figure 3b), version of the same first line. The interesting thing to observe here is that despite the low functional load of pitch in the phonology of Singpho the overwhelming pitches of the sung version correspond to the spoken pitches. This is a rather surprising observation, and we do not have a good explanation for this, but the phenomenon is known already for a Southern African (South- East Bantu) language, Setswana (Schépf 2008: 125). Figure 3b: First line of Manje’s sayawgq goi, the read version, as Praat pitch contour’

Figure 4a: Sung line of Manje La before manipulation. The point of manipulation being immediately preceding the long vertical cursor line (see sound file MS4.wav) Figure 4b: the manipulated file: the syllable du has been brought in line with other notes in a lower pitch (see sound file MS5.wav)

A wave form and pitch trace for each of these tones given in citation (using the words in Table 4) is given in Figure 5.

Whilst we can confidently say that at least some of the tones in this style were reflected in the melody, we are not sure that all of them are. The five syllables that make up the content of the second half of the line, mau‘ cati? co’ ctin7nai? are sung on short notes with little melodic variation and no rhythmic variation (b'-b'-b'-b'-d"), though four different tones are represented. There is no clear fall on the syllable ctin?, and it is moreover followed by nai? on a rising melody which does not convey the features of this tone (short, falling, creaky). It is curious that the content words are sung in that portion of the melody that conveys the least information about tones, whereas the following particles are given considerable melodic prominence. 2 agli Figure 7: Praat graph of Ee Neyan Kheit’s mo! kham? sa’ ai? This error is very helpful in our understanding of how the relationship between melody and tone works. The first word has a rising tone, but in the error version, that rise was not represented, and we believe it was this that caused Ee Ngyan Kheit to repeat the first three words. The rising contour of the tone is reflected in the melody by the rise de". This is followed by a long note on the syllable e © Here there is only a slightly perceptible rise, as we can see in the left hand side of Figure 7, a Praat transcription of the first line not including the error.

We exemplify these five categories in Table 2 Table 1: Tonal system in Numhpuk Singpho, after Manje La®

Table 2: Examples of the five tones from Table 1. To illustrate the three Numhpuk Singpho tones on open syllables, in (2), the names of three riverine fish are given, all preceded by the word for fish /naa‘*/.

Table 3: Re-analysis of Numhpuk Singpho with three tones Under this analysis, the tones on closed syllables are realised with less contour than the corresponding tones on open syllables; whereas there is a high rise- fall on the ‘c’ tone when it is on an open syllable, it will be simply high on a closed syllable. The fourth tone is level in citation with an open syllable and this matches the longer duration of the word under a closed syllable, in this case ‘make a basket’.

Table 4: Tones I-6 pronounced on the syllable na in Tai Phake'®

Table 5: Tones 1-6, pitch and contour On the basis of Table 5, we can see that with only features (1) pitch and (2) contour, tones 3-5 could not be contrasted. The feature of (3) duration can also be measured, as in Table 6. This demonstrates that while there is no pitch/contour difference between tones 4 and 5, there is a difference in duration. This is demonstrated clearly when we compare only the pitch and contour of the tones, using Hz values, based on the recording, as exemplified in Table 5.

Table 6: Tones 1—6, duration Historically the difference between tones 3 and 4, and the others, was one of phonation. In the modern language, however, the creaky phonation that we suggest was historically present in tone 4, is no longer present, and remains only in the form of shorter duration. Thus a new contrast is created: one of duration.

Table 7: Phake tones 1-6, summary From this, we can say that pitch is arguably not a key feature of any of these tones, although we have highlighted pitch features for tone 2 and tone 5. What is clear is that pitch alone is certainly not the key feature for any of them. For this reason, rather than using the pitch number notations seen in (6) above,

In the other styles listed in Table 8, there is much more freedom in terms of line lengths and rhyming patterns and we have yet to thoroughly investigate the relationship between speech tone and melody in all of these styles. Table 8: Types of Song-Poetry among the Tai Phake

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Psycho-collocational expressives in Burmese

by Alice Vittrant

2023, The Aesthetics of Grammar

Many languages of the world have a lexical category referred to as expressives (Fudge 1970), phonoaesthetics (Henderson 1965 1) or ideophones to refer to noise, animal cries, mental states, physical states, and actions. Expressives may be... more

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Review of \u27Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area\u27 edited by Thomas Owen-Smith and Nathan W. Hill

by Luke Lindemann

2022

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This Review is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for... more

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Formant Frequency and Cepstral Method Estimation of Galo Phonemes Using Acoustical Cues

by JYOTISMITA TALUKDAR

2022

belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages. The classification and Identification of different tribes/sub-tribes of Arunachal Pradesh can be made based on the "dialect" of the languages. There is marked variations of the... more

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Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalayas. Edited by Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn. Leiden, Brill, 2012

by Nathan W. Hill

2022, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

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Himalayan Linguistics Review

by Erik Andvik

2022

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Analytic Languages in Mainland South-East Asia

by Jean-Francois Delmer

2022, Term papers, MA Linguistics Program, Payap University, Chiang-Mai, Thailand

This paper evaluates the following proposition (often referred to in the rest the text as “The Hypothesis”): “There is no, or there are not many areas in the World like Mainland South East Asia (MSEA), where there are so many analytic... more

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Fishing in the Siang belt of Arunachal Pradesh, India: Learning Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Adi and Galo communities

by mahesh pathak

2022

This research was carried out with the Adi and Galo tribes of East Siang and West Siang districts of Arunachal Pradesh, India to understand fishing methods employed by them using stones and boulders occurring in the river beds of small... more

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Fishing in the Siang belt of Arunachal Pradesh, India: Learning Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Adi and Galo communities

by Ranjay K. Singh

2022

This research was carried out with the Adi and Galo tribes of East Siang and West Siang districts of Arunachal Pradesh, India to understand fishing methods employed by them using stones and boulders occurring in the river beds of small... more

Fig.1—Graphical representation of monthly average (2008-2012) weather condition of Pasighat (28°4’N Latitude, 95°22’E Longitude and 152 m MSL Altitude), Arunachal Pradesh. Source: Section of Agrometeorology, College of Horticulture and Forestry, CAU, Pasighat Freshwater river fish of Siang river tributaries are known to live in stone depressions during the winter (i.e. November to February). Because of this, tribal people construct artificial dwelling places, Lipum, for these fish by stacking up stone in circles of around 2 m diameter and 0.8-1.0 m height (Table 1). At the bottom centre of the Jipum, a depression is made with a special hollow as a suitable dwelling place (known as likam) for the fishes. Flat to oval shaped stones of 10-30 cm diameter, locally available, are collected and arranged in a circular fashion in such a way that the bigger stones are placed at the base and gradually smaller stones are placed on top of them. At the top of this structure, bunches of fern plant, locally known as

Fig. 2(a-i)—Photographs of activities related to Lipum. (Photographs: S.M. Hussain & Toge Riba) (a) Constructed Lipum; (b) Harvesting of Lipum; (c) Edir; (d) Locally prepared eye-piece used during construction of Lipum; (e)Mixed haul of fishes harvested from Lipum; (f) Selling of smoked dried fish in local market; (g) Local method of fish cooking; (h) Fish cooking in bamboo stem; (1) Traditional Solar drying of fishes

Fig. 3—Commonly available fish biodiversity in Lipum of Siang Belt, Arunachal Pradesh. (Photographs: S.M. Hussain & Toge Riba) (a) Local name: Ngotup, Sc. name: Garra spp; (b) Local name: Ngolap, Sc. name Macrognathus spp; (c) Local name: Orpu, Sc. name: Barilius barna; (d) Local name: Ringum, Sc. name: Acanthocobitis spp; (e) Loca name: Reibo, Sc. name: Aborichthys spp; (f)Local name: Ngopi, Sc. name: Labeo dero; (g) Local name: Kadang, Ngori, Sc. name Schizothorax spp; (h) Local name: Ngocho, Sc. name: Tor spp; (i) Local name: Orche, Sc. name: Semiplotus semiplotus; (j) Local name Ribo, Sc. name: Schistura spp(k) Local name: Ngopeeh, Sc. name: Garra spp; (1) Local name: Tayek, Sc. name: Amblyceps spp

2 m in length, respectively. The splints are woven perpendicularly in a crisscross manner so that the mesh size remains between 3-5 mm, producing an ishir 8 m in length and 2 m in width. It is also called dhari (in Assamese) or tarja (in Adi). In some places, tribal people use a modification of an ishir called chirago’ (in Galo), which is a big cylindrical basket of woven cane and bamboo. These devices are used to cover the Jipum from all sides when the fish are harvested. ootaka (Botrychum lanuginosum Wall. ex Hook & Grev), each around 1m long, are included, and held in place with another layer of stones. This vegetation provides partial shade inside the Jipum and improves it as a habitat for the fish. A barrier of boulders is placed at 1-2 m distance on the upstream side of the Lipum to reduce the impact of the water currents on he structure. The /Jipum is left for more than one month, to house and acclimatize fishes and for the maximum number of fish to accumulate. One man can prepare 3-4 lipums per day and one family requires 20-30 such units in a season to meet their dietary requirements and provide supplemental livelihood. The success rate of this traditional technology depends mainly on the availability of fish in certain pockets of rivers as well as on the skill in constructing the Lipum. Lipums are in general constructed during day time preferably in the morning hours.

Table 2—Fish catches (Kg per unit) in the Lipum surveyed in different rivers of East Siang district

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On reconstructing ethno-linguistic prehistory: The case of Tani

by Mark W. Post

2022, Lange, Diana, Jarmila Ptáčková, Marion Wettstein and Marieke Wulff, Eds. Crossing Boundaries: Tibetan Studies Unlimited. Prague, Academia Nakladatelství.

This chapter’s goal is to update the case for reconstructing the ethno-linguistic prehistory of “Tani” – a cluster of closely related ethno-linguistic groups found primarily in the mid-Eastern Himalayan region, in the modern Indian states... more

Fig. 1. Geographical concentration of Tani languages. 2020 © Mark W. Post people, in both large communities — such as the Mising, perhaps numbering up to half a million speakers — and small communities, such as the more endangered Tangam (perhaps around 300 speakers).

Tab. 2. Reflexes of Proto-Tani *s- in different Tani languages and dialects.°° 2020 © Mark W. Post Fig. 2. Diffusion of fricative changes across genealogical lines.°’ 2020 © Mark W. Post

Fig. 3. Tani diffusion model. Cells represent clan-based populations, solid lines represent population transfers, line strengths reflect degrees of transfer strength, dotted lines represent contact without trans- fer. 2020 © Yankee Modi, used with permission

Tab. 1. Trisyllabic nouns show evidence for a non-Tani (possibly non-Trans-Himalayan) stratum in Milang.* While initial syllables are known roots (usually a Tani cognate), syllables two and three are unrecognizable from a “mainstream” Tani perspective. This suggests an earlier pattern in which mono- syllabic roots of one language were compounded to the disyllabic roots of a distinct language — a com- monly-observed outcome of language contact (cp. English “wok pan” or “chai tea”). 2020 © Yankee Modi, used with permission

The Proto-Tani lexicon offers us a fairly detailed picture of its speakers’ knowledge of their physical environment. Among higher animals, domestic animals can be distinguished from wild/hunted animals on a structural basis: domestic animals take a “basic nominal” prefix *’a-, and include the dog, pig, and mithun (Bos frontalis) (tab. 3). Here, the inclusion of mithun is particularly interesting; although its sta- tus as a “domestic animal” might be considered marginal from an ethnographic perspective, mithun are quite clearly designated by Proto-Tani speakers as falling within the small set of animals whose fates are controlled by a human being. No- tably absent from this list are domestic cattle, sheep, and goats, which accordingly seem not to have been features of the Proto-Tani world. Fowl seem to have been domesticated by the Proto-Tani. Though lexically classed with “birds” rather than domestic animals — bearing a “bird” prefix *pa- — they are nonetheless lexical- ly distinct from their wild ancestor, the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus proper), at the Proto-Tani stage. Wild/hunted mammals usually take a different prefix *ea- or *sja-, which derives from a Proto-Trans-Himalayan root along the lines of *sja(-n).” A great number of roots representing mammals endemic to the Eastern Himalayan region are recon- structible to Proto-Tani (tab. 4).

Tab. 4. Proto-Tani wild/hunted animals. Forms not starred are attested in multiple languages, but cannot currently be phonologically reconstructed due to the existence of empirical gaps. 2020 © Mark W. Post

Tab. 5. Proto-Tani agriculture and grain processing. 2020 © Mark W. Post The economy of Proto-Tani speakers appears to have been closely similar to the tra- ditional Tani economies that we can observe today. Terms denoting a small set of cultivated grains can be reconstructed, together with many terms relating to their cultivation and processing (tab. 5). Maize is not reconstructible to the Proto-Tani stage, nor are sorghum, barley, oats, or buckwheat. Sorghum and maize appear to represent post-Proto-Tani introductions, showing inter-language variation, as do pumpkins and chili peppers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Research for this work was supported by a University of Sydney SOAR Fellowship. Figure | was produced by Angus Wheeler. I thank Jim Rheingans and Nathan Hill for helpful discussions regarding Tibetan historical texts, and Guillaume Jacques for suggesting a relationship between Proto-Tani ‘”buffalo” or “gaur” and Tibetan “yak’’. All remaining errors remain my own responsibility.

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Fishing in the Siang belt of Arunachal Pradesh, India: Learning Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Adi and Galo communities

by Toge Riba

2022

This research was carried out with the Adi and Galo tribes of East Siang and West Siang districts of Arunachal Pradesh, India to understand fishing methods employed by them using stones and boulders occurring in the river beds of small... more

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Review of 'Trans-Himalayan Linguistics: Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area' edited by Thomas Owen-Smith and Nathan W. Hill

by Luke Lindemann

2021, Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

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Impact of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism on English Language Education: The Case of Arunachal Pradesh, India

by Taw Azu

2021, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences

Arunachal Pradesh is a multilingual and multicultural state with twenty five major tribes, sixty dialects and two languages i.e. Boti and Thai. The region was a terra-incognito until WW II and India's independence in 1947. Against this... more

Fig.1.1: Linguistic map of Arunachal Pradesh. Source: Thurgood & Lapolla 2003, P.179

Fig. 1.2: Language map of Arunachal Pradesh. Source: RCILTS, IIT Guwahati.

7. Conclusion Multilingualism and multiculturalism is an integral part of a multi-ethnic State or a country. Migration, through the ages in the world has been taking place owing to various historical reasons. It has given rise to multilingual and multicultural societies. In the 21st century, globalization has hastened the process even faster. It is a fact with which the concerned State or country has to live with and addressed to. In the case of Arunachal Pradesh, efforts may be initiated while planning language policy and curriculum to bridge the gap and minimize the degree of difference. Initiatives may also be taken to develop the local languages/dialects, popularize it by introducing it in the school curriculum; train teachers in native and target grammar; develop academic material on the native languages; use electronic and social network media to minimize the inter-dialectical differences. ee eee ee ee ee ee eee SE, TE EE Se SOE, NOLES ae Lee A humble endeavor has been made here to analyze various features and aspects of the impact of multilingualism and multiculturalism on English language learning with special reference to Arunachal Pradesh which is inhabited by the various tribes representing multilingualism and multiculturalism with their unique and rich heritage which still remains almost unexplored to most parts of the world. The researcher has painstakingly made all efforts to bring out and highlight the linguistic complexities arising out of inherent diversities in terms of both the languages and the cultures prevalent in this easternmost State of India.

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Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalayas. By Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn, eds. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. In HIMALAYA XXXII (1-2) 2012: 52-53

by Nathan W. Hill

2021

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Areal Typology of Mainland Southeast Asia: What We Learn from the Wals Maps

by Bernard Comrie

2021, MANUSYA

Mainland Southeast Asia has long been recognized as a classic example of a linguistic area, but earlier characterizations of this language area have typically been intuitive, for instance providing seemingly impressive lists of features... more

Map 2: Order of Object and Verb As noted in section |, word order typology, or more accurately: constituent order typology, has a venerable history in recent work on linguistic typology, and is represented in WALS by no fewer than 14 chapters (excluding three that deal with correlations between features). Constituent order is, moreover, one of the sets of features that most clearly sets Mainland Southeast Asia off from the rest of Asia. Constituent order does, however, bring with it a problem, namely that there are known

Asia is highly suggestive. It will, however, be noted that in Asia the Verb—Object type does extend somewhat beyond Mainland Southeast Asia, most obviously in the case of the various varieties of Chinese. This will be important in considering other constituent order features. In the other direction, however, this feature does not distinguish Mainland Southeast Asia from Insular Southeast Asia, which is also almost exclusively Verb— Object, this will be a recurrent pattern with constituent order features. Incidentally, one might wonder whether the order of Subject and Verb (Dryer 2005j) would not serve to delimit Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia, given the frequency of Verb—Subject order among Austronesian languages; in fact, this is not the case (and thus this map is not reproduced here), since the Austronesian languages bordering Mainland Southeast Asia show a mix of Subject-Verb and Verb—Subject ordering, plus some with no dominant order. Map 3: Order of Adposition and Noun phrase Map 3 (Dryer 2005c) shows the order of Adposition relative to Noun phrase, with the two major types being Preposition (as in English in the house) and Postposition (as in Japanese uti ni). There are again languages with no dominant order, plus two rarer types that are not particularly significant given our areal interest, namely languages lacking adpositions—though two Hmong-Mien languages, Mien and Punu, are thus classified by Dryer—and languages with inpositions (ie. adpositions that occur internal to their noun phrase). As with map 2, there is a clear difference between Mainland Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia, but no dividing line between Mainland Southeast Asia and Insular Southeast Asia. However, before considering map 3 as additional evidence that divides Mainland Southeast Asia from the rest of Asia, one needs to ask to what extent the feature values illustrated in maps 2 and 3 correlate. In particular, given that Mainland Southeast Asia is overwhelmingly Verb—Object, what is

Map 5: Order of Adjective and Noun The order of Adjective and Noun within the noun phrase (Dryer 2005b), as illustrated in Map 5, shows a similar pattern, although care is needed with the precise interpretation. There are two main constituent order possibilities, Noun— Adjective (as in Thai bdan yay) and Adjective—Noun (as in English big house), with a number of languages having no dominant order, as well as a handful, all in North America, having only internally headed relative clauses as_ translation

We can now move relatively quickly through the other constituent order patterns, all of which illustrate similar patterns to those already observed, though with different dividing lines between Mainland Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia. Map 6 (Dryer 2005e) shows the In addition, there is an area to the northwest of Mainland Southeast Asia that might be considered transitional in that it contains a number of languages with no dominant order, the grey dots on map 5.’ But there is another factor that needs to be taken into account, namely that while Verb—Object languages tend strongly to be Noun— Adjective (with English as one of the just under 20% of exceptional Verb—Object languages in this respect), Object-Verb languages are in fact somewhat more likely to be Noun—Adjective (58.8%) than Adjective-Noun (Dryer 20051; these figures exclude languages that have no dominant order for one or the other feature). This has the result that languages combining Verb—Object and Noun— Adjective like those of Mainland Southeast Asia, which would be expected on the basis of chance to constitute25% of the world’s languages with some dominant order for both Verb and Object and Adjective and Noun, in fact make up a staggering 40.7%. Map 6: Order of Demonstrative and Noun

Map 7: Order of Numeral and Noun Map 7 (Dryer 2005g) shows the order of Numeral and Noun within the noun phrase, with the main possibilities being Numeral—Noun (as in English ten children)

Dryer (20051) examines the order of Relative clause and Noun within the noun phrase, with the results as displayed in map 8. The major types are Noun—Relative clause (as in English the student [who bought the book]) and Relative clause— Noun (as in Japanese /hon o katta] gakusei), with a small number of languages representing other types (none of them in Mainland Southeast Asia) or co- occurrence of more than one type in the same language. Mainland Southeast Asia is again distinct from the bulk of Asia but goes along with Insular Southeast Asia. The dividing line is somewhat similar to that found in map 4 for Genitive and Noun, with some inroad of Relative clause—Noun into northernmost Mainland Southeast Asia. Map 8: Order of Relative clause and Noun This is perhaps particularly surprising in that across the world as a whole Relative clause—Noun is by far the rarer of the two main types, outnumbered almost 5 : | by Noun-Relative clause. Indeed, the bulk of Asia (but here with the exception of southwestern Asia and parts of South Asia) is the only really large area with near-exclusive occurrence of Relative clause—Noun (in addition to smaller areas in interior New Guinea and a small part of East Africa). A genealogical factor may be at work here: The Relative clause—-Noun languages, and also the languages with no dominant order, in northern Mainland Southeast Asia are overwhelmingly Sino- Tibetan.

Map 9: Order of Degree word and Adjective Southeast Asia from the rest of Asia is clear, even if there is some extension of the “no dominant order” type into Mainland Southeast Asia. The boundary to Insular Southeast Asia is much less clear, since all three types are found in the neighborhood, despite the fact that these are all Austronesian languages. Finally, with respect to constituent order, Map 9 shows the order of Degree word and Adjective (Dryer 2005d), with the possibilities being Degree word—Adjective (e.g. English very good), Adjective-Degree word (e.g. Thai dii ndk), or dominance of neither. The separation of Mainland

Turning now to phonology, pride of place inevitably goes to tone (Maddieson 2005c). As shown in map 10, Maddieson divides the languages of the world into three types, those with a simple tone system (i.e. a binary tonal opposition), those with a complex tone system (three or more phonemically opposed tones), and those without phonemic tone. It is clear from the map that Mainland Southeast Asia is overwhelmingly characterized by complex tone systems, a pattern that extends north into Chinese. The only other part of the world of comparable size with a similar incidence of complex tone systems is equatorial Africa, though here the distribution is more patchy. In Mainland Southeast Asia there is also some occurrence of simple tone systems, including on the northwest boundary towards the rest of Asia. The rest of Asia is almost exclusively non-tonal, with occasional simple tone systems. This time, the boundary to Insular Southeast Asia is even more clear, since this area completely lacks tone systems. It should be noted that some of the minority of non-tonal languages shown in Mainland Southeast Asia have other prosodic features, such as voice register in Austro-Asiatic languages, that are known to be closely linked historically to tone, so that with a slightly different definition of features Mainland Southeast Asia might have been even more homogeneous than it appears in map 10,

The next phonological map, map 12 (Anderson 2005), shows the distribution of the phonemic velar nasal across the languages of the world, with three values: no velar nasal; velar nasal only in non- initial position in the word; velar nasal also in initial position. Mainland Southeast Asia is characterized by overwhelming incidence of initial velar nasals, the only exception in the sample being Khmer (which does have velar nasals in other positions). Incidence of initial velar nasals spreads into the Himalayas, but otherwise shades off into occurrence of velar nasals only non-initially in adjacent parts of Asia, with the isogloss separating varieties of Chinese — in Anderson’s sample, Cantonese has initial velar nasals, Mandarin does not. (In northeastern Asia the possibility of an initial velar nasal picks up again, but this is presumably a separate area, given the broad swathe of intervening languages that lack this possibility.) There is, however, no boundary for this feature between Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia, since the latter also contains many languages with word-initial velar nasals.

Map 13: Front rounded vowels Turkic, and Mongolic languages, which gives a strong impetus to having front counterparts to back rounded vowels, it is also found in languages that lack palatal vowel harmony, such as the Germanic languages and varieties of Chinese. Moreover, the area spreads almost to the boundary of Mainland Southeast Asia — the last outpost shown on the map is Cantonese — but resolutely refuses to go further. So even though this is not so clear a case as the others discussed in this article, there is still some evidence for a linguistic barrier between Mainland Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia. (Insular Southeast Asia is like Mainland Southeast Asia in lacking front rounded vowels.) The last phonological map, map 13 (Maddieson 2005a), shows the distribution of phonemic front rounded vowels in the languages of the world. Inclusion of this map may at first seem puzzling, since although Mainland Southeast Asia is homogeneous in the absence of such sounds, this is also by far the majority pattern in the languages of the world: in Maddieson’s sample, 93.4% of the world’s languages lack front rounded vowels. However, the part of the world where front vowels occur frequently cross-linguistically is clearly identifiable as northern Eurasia. While to some extent the incidence of the phenomenon coincides with the occurrence of palatal vowel harmony, as in Uralic,

Map 14: Prefixing versus suffixing in inflectional morphology morphology, and Mainland Southeast Asia stands out as the largest area that consistently shows only white dots. Indeed this feature value extends somewhat beyond Mainland Southeast Asia to the north and west, although to the west there is much geographical intermixing with suffixing languages, which represent the majority of the world’s languages and also the near-universal pattern in the rest of Eurasia. There is also some extension to Insular Southeast Asia, though here mixed geographically with both suffixing and prefixing languages. One of the often noted properties of languages of Mainland Southeast Asia is their isolating typology, with virtually no inflectional morphological categories and even relatively little use of bound morphemes in derivational morphology. Map 14 (Dryer 2005k) illustrates this with respect to inflectional morphology. In this map, the white dots represent languages with little or no affixation for inflectional

Given that languages of Mainland Southeast Asia show little or no inflectional morphology, it might seem irrelevant to go on to ask whether they encode nominal plurality, and if so how. But as map 15 (Dryer 2005a) shows, languages can code nominal plurality not only through affixal or other morphology, even if this is by far the most usual means cross-linguistically, but also by means of plural words, as in Vietnamese nhitng cho ‘dogs’, literally “PLURAL dog’. Map 15 shows that while Mainland Southeast Asia does contain a fair number of languages lacking plural marking, it also contains a number of languages, including Khmer and Vietnamese, with plural words. The orange circles indicating plural words and the orange lozenges indicating plural clitics extend well to the north and west, though in the northwest there are some languages that have plural suffixes, not shown clearly in the map resolution used here. But the rest of Eurasia is almost exclusively characterized by plural suffixes. The boundary to Insular Southeast Asia is less clear, since in regions adjacent to Mainland Southeast Asia one finds languages with no plural and with plural words, as in Mainland Southeast Asia, but also languages using prefixes and reduplication to mark plurality. It should be noted that in Dryer’s sample only one language of Mainland Southeast Asia, the Austro-Asiatic language Sre, has a plural affix, namely a prefix.

Map 16: Distributive numerals A distributive numeral is a special numeral form with meaning ‘n each’ for a numeral n. English and the languages of Mainland Southeast Asia are alike in lacking such special forms, although many other languages do have such forms, e.g. German je drei ‘three each’, where drei is the numeral ‘three’ and je is a preceding word dedicated to marking distributive numerals. While it might seem surprising to speakers of English or Thai to consider lack of distributive numerals a striking feature of a language, in fact map 16 (Gil 2005a) shows that this is the minority possibility across the world’s languages, with just under 25% of the world’s languages having no dedicated distributive numerals. In this sense, then, Mainland Southeast Asia is again a linguistic area,

Map 17: The Perfect Most of the maps referring to tense—aspect categories are restricted to inflectional marking, so predictably languages of Mainland Southeast Asia lack such inflectional categories by virtue of lacking inflectional morphology. However, one of the maps (Dahl and Velupillai 2005), dealing with the Perfect, includes also non-inflectional means of marking the Perfect, in particular possessive-derived constructions (as in English we have eaten) and those using a word meaning ‘finish’ or ‘already’ (e.g. /eew in Thai raw kin khdaw leew. As map 17 shows, this latter construction, indicated by red dots, is widespread in Mainland Southeast Asia, spreading somewhat to the northwest and

Map 18: Numeral classifiers Numeral classifiers, such as khon in Thai lauk sip khon ‘ten children’, are a well- known feature of languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, and map 18 (Gil 2005b) clarifies the sense in which this holds. First, Mainland Southeast Asia belongs to an area where, with very few exceptions, the use of numeral classifiers is obligatory. This includes all languages in Gil’s sample except for Khmer, where their use is optional, but also extends well beyond Mainland Southeast Asia to the northwest and especially to the north, running through Chinese, Korean, and Japanese up to Nivkh on Sakhalin island and the mouth of the Amur River; in Gil’s sample, only the Chinese variety Hokkien and Ainu stand apart in having only optional use of classifiers. The boundary to the northwest is marked by a small area of intermingling with languages having optional classifiers followed by absence of classifiers, the norm in the rest of Asia. Moving towards Insular Southeast Asia, one encounters an area where most languages have optional classifiers, a few none or obligatory classifiers, in Peninsular Malaysia and western Indonesia; the Austronesian languages of Taiwan and the Philippines lack numeral classifiers, thus providing an abrupt boundary to the east.

Map 19: Predicative possession Map 19 (Stassen 2005c) shows that the languages of the world vary considerably in their translation equivalents of the English construction ‘you have a house’, the English construction here reflecting the ‘have’ type. The type that interests us particularly in map 19 is that represented by the pink dots, the so-called topic type, as in Thai khun mii bdaan (lit. you be house, or, somewhat more revealingly: as for you, there is a house). This type is found in 20% of the languages in Stassen’s sample, which is in one sense as close to chance as one could get given that there are five types in his typology, but nonetheless the distribution of the topic type is striking: All languages of Mainland Southeast Asia belong to this type, which extends somewhat to the northwest and north (encompassing Mandarin Chinese), although it is absent from the rest of Eurasia. In the other direction, there is no such boundary, since the topic type is also characteristic of the western part of the Austronesian-speaking world, and is also found (though not exclusively) further east, e.g. in the New Guinea area, where it includes some non-Austronesian (so-called “Papuan”) languages. Where it occurs elsewhere in the world — equatorial Africa, the Americas — it is sporadic.

Another aspect of predication is covered by map 20 (Stassen 2005b), namely the question of whether adjectives are encoded primarily like verbs or not. Exclusively verbal encoding is found in some 39% of the languages in Stassen’s sample, more than either of the other two types, but it is nonetheless striking that Mainland Southeast Asia is a solidly “verby” area, contrasting with most of Eurasia, which is equally “non-verby”. With respect to this feature, Mainland Southeast Asia extends a little further to the northwest and to the north (to encompass Mandarin Chinese), with a number of languages with mixed encoding of adjectives on the northwest boundary. Further to the northeast there is the intriguing observation that Korean and Japanese have mixed encoding, but a line of verbal encoding then takes up again with the isolates/small families Ainu, Nivkh, and Yukaghir, though it is not clear to what extent this is a real areal phenomenon. With respect to this feature, however, there is absolutely no boundary between Mainland Southeast Asia and Insular Southeast Asia, which is equally “verby” in its encoding of adjectives; only towards New Guinea and Australia do we find a boundary, with mixed languages and then exclusively “non-verby” languages.

Map 21: Nominal and locational predication Asia and most of the rest of Eurasia, with Mainland Southeast Asia containing exclusively languages that make _ the distinction, whereas most of Eurasia is the single largest area of languages that do not (with only sporadic exceptions). However, the area that encompasses Mainland Southeast Asia is considerably larger for this feature than for the others discussed, first in that this time all of Insular Southeast Asia is included, and second in the extent to which this type extends to the west and north, well into eastern India and across the eastern part of northeastern Asia. One striking difference between English and Thai is that English uses the same verb be to introduce both nominal and locational predicates, as in you are a teacher and Malee is at the market, whereas Thai distinguishes these two as pen and yim, as in khun pen khruu and maalii yia thii talaat. Thai here represents by far the majority pattern among the languages of the world, as can be seen from map 21 (Stassen 2005a). In Stassen’s sample, 69.7% of the languages make the distinction. There is, nonetheless, a clear difference between Mainland Southeast

Southeast Asia and Indonesian in Insular Southeast Asia. The remaining two languages, Korean and Japanese, are separated from Mainland Southeast Asia by China, so the extent to which we might be dealing with a single area rather than two distinct areas here would require further investigation. | Nonetheless, pronoun avoidance as a politeness strategy clearly characterizes at least all the socially dominant languages of a somewhat extended Mainland Southeast Asia and sets this area apart not only from the most of the rest of Asia but indeed from most of the rest of the world. While most features discussed in this article have been purely structural, the last one to be considered hovers on the boundary of structural properties and sociolinguistics, since it deals with politeness distinction in pronouns (Helmbrecht 2005). Map 22 shows that only 34.3% of the languages in Helmbrecht’s sample show politeness distinctions, with the rarest way of encoding politeness being the avoidance of pronouns, found in only 7 out of 207 languages (3.4%). Three of these languages are spoken in core Mainland Southeast Asia, namely Thai, Khmer, and Vietnamese, with Burmese on the periphery of Mainland

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The morphosyntax of Muklom psycho-collocations

by Mijke Mulder

2021, Proceedings of the 11th Payap University and UNRN Research Symposium

Cross-linguistically, languages use two strategies to encode emotions, qualities of personality, and intellectual activities. The first strategy is the use of overt class expressions that explicitly state the seat of emotion, property, or... more

Figure 1 - The location of the Muklom community indicated by a pin. Source: Google.

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Subject autonomy marking in Macro-Tani and the typology of middle voice

by Mark W. Post and

2021, Linguistics

Middle voice constructions are generally understood as syntactically detransitivizing and as semantically characterized by a “low degree of event elaboration” (in Kemmer’s terms) involving a relatively affected subject. Middle voice... more

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SYMPOSIUM PAPER_ARUNACHAL_SWASTI _SEPT.docx

by Swasti Ghai

2018

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Alignment of grammatical and phonological “words”: Is it as important to languages as it is to linguists?

by Mark W. Post

2018, Paper presented at the 12th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT), Canberra, Australia

It is by now well known that “words” as defined independently by the grammars and phonologies of languages can fail to correspond (Dixon and Aikhenvald 2002, Hall, Hildebrandt et al. 2008, among others), sometimes quite radically (Post... more

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Grammatical and phonological words in Galo and Tangam: Is “wordhood“ as important to speakers as it is to linguists?

by Mark W. Post

2016

In many languages, "words" as defined from phonological and grammatical perspectives tend to align well, while in others, there is a strong disconnect. Galo (Tibeto-Burman > Tani, Eastern Himalaya) is a language of the second type: in... more

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ADI-GALO

by ongseng phunin

2016

(Source: Statistical Department, Aalo, West Siang)

The geographical isolation from each other has brought amongst them certain identities which present a unique scenario of unity in diversity in North-East India. The

Fig. 1.1: Map showing the seven North-Eastern States of India 7090 m above sea level in West Kameng district. form the tributaries of the mighty Siang River. ‘Kangte’ is the highest peak in the state

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Word Order in Assamese and its neighbouring TBLs and Khasi

by Manas J Bora

2016

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A new approach to a posteriori language sampling (Kalyan & Donohue)

by Siva Kalyan and

2016

One task of a typologist is to arrive at a sample of languages that provides an adequate basis for drawing generalisations about Language. Typically, typologists try to choose languages to allow an even representation of language... more

One task of a typologist is to arrive at a sample of languages that provides an adequate basis for drawing generalisations about Language. Typically, typologists try to choose languages to allow an even representation of language families, or else to allow an even representation of geographical areas. The trouble is that these two criteria are often in opposition: if we balanced a world sample by language family, Australia would be underrepresented. If we balanced the same sample by geography, Pama-Nyungan would be overrepresented.
One way to get around the problems of balancing areal and genealogical criteria is to ignore areas and genealogy completely, and simply focus on the distribution of languages in terms of their typological features. Then we can define a “representative sample” of languages as a set of languages that (a) is “maximally dispersed” through the feature space (in order to maximally represent diversity), and (b) is such that no two languages are “too close together” (in order to avoid over-representing very similar language types). Dahl (2008) makes an initial attempt at defining such an a posteriori approach to typological sampling, by simply computing the distance between every pair of languages, and then for every pair of languages that is “too close”, removing the one that is less well-described. However, this approach is limited by two factors: Firstly, it is deterministic, i.e., it produces only one sample for a given input set of languages, even though intuitively there should be many samples that are comparably good. Secondly, the threshold for languages being “too close” is arbitrarily determined by the desired sample size; in fact, we would like to argue that the sample size (and the criterion for when two languages are “too close”) should be determined by the inherent variation in the total set of languages
We propose that a typologically representative sample can be built in the following way: (1) Rescale the inter-language distances so as to maximise the variation between languages in dense neighbourhoods and languages in sparse neighbourhoods. (2) Pick one language at random, and add it to the sample. (3) Pick another language at random, and decide whether to include it in the sample based on how far (typologically) it is from the language already in the sample (if it’s far away, it’s very likely to be added; if it’s close by, it’s unlikely to be added). Continue picking languages at random, and decide the likelihood of including each one by how well-separated it is from the languages already in the sample. Continue until every language has been considered.
We present a posteriori typological samples computed on the basis of two typological feature sets: the morphosyntactic features in WALS (Dryer and Haspelmath 2013), as coded in the extended World Phonotactics Database (Donohue et al. 2013), and the phonological features in the WPD. We show that the number of languages in a morphosyntactically representative sample of the world’s languages is greater than the number of languages in a phonologically representative sample. This shows the economy achieved when using typology to drive typological sampling, and highlights the loci of global linguistic diversity.

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Towards an understanding of language distribution in the Tani area: Social organization, expansion and migration

by Yankee Modi

2016, (2015) In Mark W. Post, Stephen Morey and Scott DeLancey (Eds.) Language and culture in Northeast India and Beyond: In Honor of Robbins Burling. Canberra, Asia-Pacific Linguistics: 245-264.

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Tones in Northeast Indian languages, with a focus on Tani: A fieldworker's guide

by Mark W. Post

2016, 2015. In M. W. Post, S. Morey and S. DeLancey, Eds. Language and Culture in Northeast India and Beyond: In Honor of Robbins Burling. Canberra, Asia-Pacific Linguistics: 182-210

FIGURE 1 - Northeast India, with Tani language area in rough outline

TABLE 1 - The basic tones of Mandarin Chinese When tone-bearing morphemes are concatenated in a syllable tone language - for example, when two lexical roots are combined to form a compound, or when certain types of affix are added - the lexically-specified tones of individual morphemes are typically preserved. In some cases, we find a ‘sandhi’ tone; that is, a change from one tone to another. Or, we may find tonal ‘neutralization’, in which a particular tone is lost. In Table 2, again from Mandarin Chinese, we see that tones 1-2 and 4 are preserved when the lexical morphemes from Table 1 occur as compound initials, whereas in 3 the tone is converted from low-nising to high-rising (effectively, from tone 3 to tone 2). On the other hand, tone 1 is lost when occurring as a compound final. For a recent overview of sandhi ef- fects in Sinitic and other eastern Sino-Tibetan languages, see Evans (to appear). The crucial thing to note for our purposes here, however, is that these are indi- vidual changes to individual tones at particular places in the word, and that such changes are exceptional; in general, the tones of particular syllables/morphemes tend to be preserved in larger contexts.

TABLE 4 - Reduction of maak ‘betelnut > fruit prefix’ in Thai 2.2 Tone in NEI Trans-Himalayan languages

TABLE 2 - Mandarin Chinese tones in compounds 11. Tones in Northeast Indian languages * 185

TABLE 7 - Assignment of a set of Thai words to tone categories When describing a syllable tone language, we typically work ‘bottom-up’. That is, we start by identifying the number of basic pitch contours (and any associat- ed features, such as voice quality) in morphologically simplex and, ideally, monosyllabic words. For example, in Thai we might find a set of words such as the following (Table 7):

11. Tones in Northeast Indian languages « 193 TE SERENA! NESE STAN eesti nen) SONEERWNTaNNE SEREGS OEY SEARING ea Beaes ESRI: SERENE ORT SEE SRE ENERO, RAS oe EL MENON OPTED TI NET oo SA eee Now that we know the number of categories in the language and the pho- netic expression of each category, and have assigned a good number of simplex lexemes to each category, we can move on to complex, polysyllabic forms to look at how tone operates on these larger phonological units. As we saw in §2.1, it is common in syllable tone languages for the pitch contour of a larger phono- logical unit to simply reflect the pitch contours of its smaller, constituent units. Or, we may find some sandhi behaviour - for example, tone 1 may change to tone 2, or be neutralized, as was also discussed. Even in such cases, however, we can analyse the tone of a complex, polysyllabic word as the concatenation of simplex word tones, plus the addition of some sort of phonological rule that specifies the nature of their interaction. Put simply, in a syllable tone language, the tone of a complex, polysyllabic word is generally understood as a product of the tones of simplex, monosyllabic words, plus any applicable rules. Ln se es i a, a a a a, ee a: as oe |

TABLE 8 - Some morphologically simplex H and L words in A patani

TABLE 10- A selection of minimal tone pairs in Galo complex, disyllabic words However, note that unlike in a syllable tone language, these larger word tone contours cannot simply be derived from the concatenation of their constituent roots and/or affixes. The minimal pair tinam ‘to kick’ and tinam ‘to garland’ makes this fact clear: the second syllable is in both cases a nominalizer -nam, however it has a different pitch in each word. The semantic contrast, therefore, is obviously coming from the first morpheme, which must therefore also be responsible for the overall tone contrast of these two words - however, the actu- al pitch contour over the syllable [tu] in each word is relatively similar. So what is actually going on here? om

TABLE 11 - Derivation of H and L word tones from [PFX-ROOT] and [ROOT-SFX] compositions in Galo Once we understand this principle, elicitation of a great many Galo root tones becomes possible due to the very common occurrence of these and several other non-tone-bearing affixes in Galo. For example, any verb root can occur with the nominalizer -nam, which makes citation forms in Galo; accordingly, it now be- comes possible to elicit the underlying tones of the entire simplex verbal lexicon - despite that we cannot actually elicit (or hear) any simplex verb roots at all! We simply identify a verb root, attach -nam, listen to the resulting word tone, and deduce that our target verb root must be underlyingly specified as H or L accordingly. It is not as simple to attach a- or ta- to any given noun or adjective root - these prefixes are much less productive in modem Galo than is -nam - however, they do occur on a large number (certainly hundreds) of basic lex- emes, so knowing this principle will tum out to be very helpful indeed. Other Galo prefixes that do not seem to be TBUs include ja- (for colours and femi- nine/negative items), ho- (for animals) and pV- (for birds).

TABLE 12 - A selection of complex, disyllabic words in A patani The additional factor of syllable weight complicates matters in A patani. Note in Table 12 that words with ‘level’ and ‘falling’ contours have light final syllables (cf. Figure 3 above), while ‘rising’ words have a heavy final syllable; here, note again that nasalized vowels are treated as bimoraic and therefore heavy in Tani languages. To understand what’s happening here, we need to look to tone spreading. While an exhaustive analysis of tone spreading in Tani languages would expand this paper beyond its intended scope, we do need to be aware of at least a few facts:

TABLE 13 - Tone spreading to indefinite article ke in A patani: H words

TABLE 14 - Tone spreading to indefinite article ke in A patani: L words The best explanation for these facts is that the single constituent roots in our ‘rising’ column underlyingly bear the same tone as the roots in either our ‘level’ or our ‘falling’ groups. Although the words in our ‘level’ and ‘falling’ groups directly project these pitch contours, the heavier syllable structure of the words in our ‘rising’ group causes these syllables to be accented, and for the pitch con- tour to be neutralized to rising. However, we can see that the underlying tone is still effectively present, since it spreads across a phonological word boundary to the article ke. This analysis allows us to reduce the number of tone categories in Apatani to two - just as with simplex, monosyllabic Apatani words - and to refer to them using the same labels H and L that we used for the Galo words. Thus, we can assign H and L tones to A patani prefixed roots in the follow- Mma wav:

5.3.3 Compounds in Galo and A patani nn nn nnn enn _e nn EE EEE EEE Up to now, we have considered only Galo and A patani words in which there is a single constituent TBU: a root. While the techniques we have reviewed will enable analysis of a large amount of data - perhaps at least 30% of the lexicon, depending on the language - the majority of Tani lexemes actually have two constituent roots; that is, they are either compounds of the form [ROOT-ROOT] (if nouns or adjectives), or are predicates of the form [ROOT-DERIVATION]. Alt- hough the analysis of predicate derivations in Tani languages is complex and lies beyond the scope of this paper (see Post (2010)), the only point we need to note here is that for the purpose of analysing Tani tones, predicate derivations can be treated as roots. As we have seen, Tani roots can be divided into two tone categories H and L. Given this, we can assume that compounds will yield the set of combinations shown in Table 16.

TABLE 18 - Tone spreading in Galo L words with two heavy syllables

TABLE 17 - Determining tone derivations in Galo compounds t is therefore easy to each constituent. words, which migh son’,® and because i o handle HH words - we now know that both constituent TBUs must be H, so any time we hear an HH compound, we can assign H tones But how can we analyse the internal composition of HL have any of three underlying structures HL, LH or LL’ Sometimes, knowing the tone of at least one root will help us. For example, we know that ji- ‘person’ is H, both because it occurs in simplex form as pi ‘per- occurs in the HH compound pibo ‘guest’. We can therefore deduce that bo- ‘priest’ in pibo ‘priest’ must be L, since the resulting word is HL. Since most roo ts are used in more than one word, with a large enough data- base of roots whose tones have been discerned through one of the abovementioned methods, it is very often possible to find the right context tc enable one to discern the tone of a newly-discovered root. Thaw: to Arn Abhes fbn! Dhntbonweabmac temenco Aorcate with ankbenthnes Tac

TABLE 19- Apatani compounds behving differently from Galo compound:

TABLE 20 - Some minimal pairs on tone in Upper Minyong

TABLE 21 - Some minimal pairs on tone in Tangam One very important thing to note here is that there does not seem to be more than a two-way contrast in Eastern Tani tone languages either. So, one is hope- ful that an analysis which is comparable to our Western Tani analyses will eventually be made possible for an Eastem Tani language as well.'' However, we are not yet at that stage, and when dealing with a two-category system in which one has certain alignment expectations based on previous experience with a related language - particularly in the case of Minyong, many of whose speakers are in regular contact with Galo speakers - considerable caution needs to be exercised to ensure that external factors do not bias transcriptions of and judgements regarding the data!

Table 17 of Post 2005 - Low verbs be two-tone languages. Unfortunately, however, the matter remains more or less as it stood in 2005. The Tani two-tone system has proved to be both a blessing, from a com- parative perspective, and a curse. On the one hand, so many languages with two-tone systems, and with categories in general corresponding, no doubt imply an ancestor with a two-tone system, and few if any changes since that time. What could be simpler? At the same time, however, with such uncertainties due 0 low functional load on the Eastern Tani side, and with a 50% chance of tones corresponding among two languages even if we blindly guess, we need to exer- cise considerable caution - perhaps more than we otherwise would. For example, suppose we elicit a Minyong word donam ‘to eat’, which we know should be H, because it is H in both Galo and A patani, and our Minyong con- sultant returns what sounds like an H. Fine; that’s what we expected, so we mark it and move on. We next elicit gognam ‘to call’, which we also know should be H, but we hear what sounds like L. So we pause, and ask our consult- ant, ‘could you say that again?’ This time, we hear something that sounds more like H, and after several repetitions, we feel that the H is confirmed. Phew! A problem was averted. Or was it? How do we know that the later repetitions were better? And wasn’t it only our knowledge of another language that allowed us to be more confident with donamH ‘to eat’, but less confident with gognamL ‘to call’? If we had asked for further repetitions of donamH, might we not have

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An Introduction to the Apatani Alphabet

by Kanno Tage

2015

The Apatani Cultural and Literary Society (ACLS), Ziro organized a symposium to standardize the script to write in Apatani in 1997. This document is the recommendation of the ad-hoc committee to finalize the script.

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Review of Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalayas. Edited by Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn. Leiden, Brill, 2012.

by Nathan W. Hill

2015

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The Naga language groups within the Tibeto-Burman language family

by George van Driem

2015, pp. 311-321 in Michael Oppitz, Thomas Kaiser, Alban von Stockhausen and Marion Wettstein, eds., Naga Identities: Changing Local Cultures in the Northeast of India. Gent: Uitgeverij Snoeck.

A Fig, 2. Major branches of the Tibeto-Burman language family (van Driem 2001).

A Fig.1. One of the language families identified by Julius Heinrich von Klaproth in his polyphyletic view of Asian linguistic stocks (1823a, 1823b). He explicitly excluded languages today known to be Kra-Dai or Daic (e.g. Thai, Lao, Shan) and known to be Austroasiatic (e.g. Mon, Vietnamese, Nicobarese, Khmer).

inextricably connected with the question of the homeland and provenance of the Austroasiatics, whose current geo- graphical centre of gravity lies in this very region. In addi- tion to the geographical distribution of modern Tibeto- Burman and Austroasiatic language communities, we can examine the findings of population genetics and attempt to trace the spread of agriculture and crops. A Fig. 4. Brahmaputra basin and surrounding hill tracts colonised by ancient Tibeto-Burmans from Sichuan (van Driem 2001: 415). The dating of the Eastern Indian Neolithic is currently a matter of archaeological conjecture and still not yet based on any sound stratigraphy or reliable radiocarbon or accelerator mass spectroscopy dates. before they appeared in Southeast Asia. Therefore, most archaeologists now tend to ascribe younger dates to the In- dian Eastern Neolithic. Yet such archaeological dating esti- mates lie in the realm of conjecture, since a solid stratigra- phy and calibrated radiocarbon dates are still unavailable for this major South Asian cultural assemblage.

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AHP28 Review - Origins and Migrations in the Extended Eastern Himalayas

by Asian Highlands Perspectives JOURNAL

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Morphosyntactic reconstruction in an areal-historical context: A pre-historical relationship between North East India and Mainland Southeast Asia?

by Mark W. Post

2014, 2015. In N. J. Enfield and B. Comrie, Eds. Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter: 205 – 261

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D ETER M IN ATION O F TH E IN D ETER M IN ATE B AR E N OUN IN K AR BI

by IASET US

2014

Nouns refer either to objects (i.e. things which are bounded in space, e.g. cars) or masses (i.e. things that tend to exist in space as something unbounded, i.e. water). Thus, semantically nouns constitute two broad groups. In a language... more

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Tones in Tani languages: A fieldworker's guide

by Mark W. Post

2014

This paper will have two purposes. The first will be to describe the tone systems of the three Tani (Tibeto-Burman) languages for which tones have been attested: Apatani, Galo (Western Tani) and Upper Minyong (Eastern Tani). The second... more

This paper will have two purposes. The first will be to describe the tone systems of the three Tani (Tibeto-Burman) languages for which tones have been attested: Apatani, Galo (Western Tani) and Upper Minyong (Eastern Tani). The second will be to provide a sort of guide for fieldworkers investigating tones in Tani languages.
Here’s the basic overview: Tani languages have two underlying (or basic) tonemes, which can be called H and L, Level and Falling, Toneless and Toneful or Unmarked and Marked, depending on how one feels about the balance between theoretical implications and descriptive clarity. The point is that there are two categories, one of which is associated to a relatively mid-to-high and level pitch contour, and the other of which is associated to a low, falling, rising, or rising-falling pitch contour, depending on a number of contextual factors. The second category is more “marked” than the first, on phonological, perceptual, and phonetic grounds.
All lexical morphemes are underlyingly specified for one of these two tones. If a word is monosyllabic and monomorphemic, the specified tone will be projected directly onto the surface pitch contour. However, the overwhelming majority of words in Tani are in fact disyllabic or larger, and generally dimorphemic, or larger. In these more complex words, certain derivations apply. These derivations are slightly different from language to language, but all obey a similar set of principles requiring reference to the structure of a word’s constituent syllables: light or heavy, i.e. monomoraic (V rhyme) or bimoraic (VV, Ṽ or VC rhyme) - as well as, to some extent, the rhythmic template of a language (generally trochaic) and some morphophonological processes (such as syncope) which are associated with it.
Due to the interaction of all of these factors, it can be a real challenge to unify one’s account of the relationship between the underlying tones of morphemes and the phonetic pitch contour of words in which they are expressed. By the same token, it can be a real challenge, from a fieldworker’s perspective, to work one’s way from the quite complex surface pitch contour of a string of morphemes all the way down to the underlying (and quite simple!) set of tonal categories that ultimately motivate it. My main hope in writing this paper is that I’ll be able to outline a set of procedures to render the discovery and representation of tones in Tani languages less painful, less time-consuming and less error-prone, and - ideally - maximize the chances that other fieldworkers will be able to expand our Tani language tonal database, so that we can get ourselves on a more solid comparative-historical footing!

Figure 3 — Provisional Tani Stammbaum, based on Post and Modi (2011), following Sun (1993) ET/WT affiliation of Tangam is uncertain. Solid lines are languages for which tone has been studied systematically, and reported-on in this paper. Dotted lines are languages for which tone has been identified, but has not been studied systematically. The status of tone in languages not circled is unconfirmed.

Table 6 — Some morphologically simplex H and L words in Apatani

Phonetic characteristics of the H contour: tu-nam (level, slight downstep on a syl.) Phonetic characteristics of the L contour: ti-nam (falling from a higher “peak’’) Disyllables in A patani have three possible pitch contours, level, falling or rising: Tani languages differ somewhat in how tones are realized over such words:

As of this writing, it has only been possible to determine that tones exist in Minyong and Tangam. When my consultants are feeling relatively confident in their judgments, it has been possible to find some minimal pairs, which groups of several people agree are distinctive.

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A Microsatellite Guided Insight into the Genetic Status of Adi, an Isolated Hunting-Gathering Tribe of Northeast India

by Suvendu Maji

2014, PLOS One

Tibeto-Burman populations of India provide an insight into the peopling of India and aid in understanding their genetic relationship with populations of East, South and Southeast Asia. The study investigates the genetic status of one such... more

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The environmental shaping of language: Topographical deixis from the Himalayas to Far North Queensland

by Mark W. Post

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Topographical deixis in Tani and beyond.

by Mark W. Post

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The ways in which languages encode…features of the context of utterance. (Levinson 1983:54) When we communicate, we communicate in a certain context, and this context shapes our utterances. (Senft 1997a:2) The way in which the reference... more

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Inter tribal and temporal allele frequency distribution at ABO locus among the TB Speaking Adi subtribes of Arunachal Pradesh, India. S. Krithika, Suvendu Maji and T.S. Vasulu Human Biology 79 (3):356-362

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A Microsatellite Guided Insight into the Genetic Status of Adi, an Isolated Hunting-Gathering Tribe of Northeast India

by vasulu TS

2011

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Language contact and the genetic position of Milang (Eastern Himalaya)

by Mark W. Post and

2010, 2011. Anthropological Linguistics 53.3: 215-258.