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East Himalayish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

Brian h. hodgson's vocabulary of the ‘Kirānti’ contains a jumble of dialects, those in adjoining columns seldom being closely related to each other. But his vocabulary has the advantage that all the dialects listed by him belong to one Tibeto-Burmic group, which we may call East Himalayish.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1953

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References

page 356 note 1 ‘Comparative Vocabulary of the Several Languages (Dialects) of the Celebrated People Called Kirāntis, now Occupying the Eastern-most Province of the Kingdom of Nēpāl, or the Basin of the River Ārun, Which Province is Named after Them Kirānt’, JASB., 26 (1857), 333371.Google Scholar

page 356 note 2 Konow included all these under the section on ‘Eastern Pronominalized Languages’. But on p. 274 of pt. 1 of Vol. 1, Linguistic Survey of India, he stated: ‘Some other Nepalese dialects such as Vāyn, Chēpāng, etc., will be added as a kind of appendix’. Perhaps he was intentionally vague because of uncertainty of the genetic relationship.

page 356 note 3 Kusunda am ‘eat’ corresponds to Karenic, and Kusunda ip-tu ‘sleep’ to Tibeto-Burmic ip ~ im; and a few words are obvious borrowings from Indic. But the greater part of the vocabulary does not correspond to that of any language I recall.

page 357 note 1 Studies in the comparative grammar of Tibeto-Burmic languages are rather widely scattered, and it may be well to give a résumé here of work so far published on particular groups.

Bodic

‘Studies in the Morphology of Bodic Verbs’, BSOAS., 12 (1951), 702724, 10171031.Google Scholar

West Central Himalayish in ‘Classification of Some Languages of the Himalayas’, Journ. Bihar Res. Soc., 36, pts. 3–4 (1950), 208214.Google Scholar

Gurung Branch of Bodish, ibid., 196–203.

‘Prefixed n-, ng- in Tibetan’ and ‘Prefixed m- in Tibetan’, Sino-Tibetica, nos. 1 and 3 (1938).Google Scholar

The present paper.

Burmic

‘The Link between Burmese and Lolo’ and ‘Phunoi and Akha Tones’, Sino-Tibetica, nos. 2 and 4 (1938).Google Scholar

‘Phonétique historique des langues lolo’, TP., 41 (1952), 191229.Google Scholar

‘The Linguistic Relationship of Mru’, Journ. Burma Res. Soc., 31 (1941), pt. 2, no. 2.Google Scholar

‘Further Analysis of the Pyu Inscriptions’, HJAS., 7 (1943), 348355.Google Scholar

‘Khimi Grammar and Vocabulary’, BSOAS., 11 (1944), 386434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

‘Phonetik der Alt-Kuki-Mundarten’, ZDMG., 102 (1952), 262279.Google Scholar

Unclassified

‘Hruso’, BSOAS., 12 (1947), 184196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Dhimalish, in Journ. Bihar Res. Soc., 36, pts. 3–4 (1950), 203–7.Google Scholar

I have not marked the length of vowels, for the record of them is either too imperfect to be significant or vowel length depends upon factors too complex to determine here. I have occasionally noted a short vowel where it appears epenthetic.

In the formulation of the phonetic equations, aspiration of sonant initials has been disregarded on the assumption that initials, as in Bodish, are somewhat more aspirated than in English and that this has been irregularly noted.

Old Bodish verb forms are given in the perfect.

Besides Hodgson's article (cited in n. 1, p. 356) and the LSI, the writer has referred to the following articles by Wolfenden, Stuart N.: ‘A Specimen of the Sāngpāng Dialect’, AO., 12 (1933), 71–9Google Scholar; ‘Specimen of a Khambu Dialect from Dilpa, Nepāl’, JRAS., (1933), 845856Google Scholar; ‘A Specimen of the Kūlung Dialect’, AO., 13 (1934), 3543Google Scholar; and also to Campbell, A., ‘Note on the Limboos, and other Hill Tribes hitherto undescribed’, JASB., 9 (1840), 595615.Google Scholar

page 361 note 1 Cf. O. Bod. rgod.

page 361 note 2 But not in ‘eight’, where the phonetic cluster creates complications.

page 361 note 3 But -l- when medial.

page 361 note 4 I.e. r grasseyé?

page 361 note 5 I.e. r′?

page 361 note 6 Assuming that the word for ‘salt’ is borrowed from another dialect.

page 362 note 1 This is not true of Tśaurasya: do-bu ear, Kulung no-bo; di name, Kulung min dwam sun, Kulung nam; du-tśo good, Waling nu; bi-si eye, Thulung mik'-si; bim-sta understand, Thulung mim-da. Nasals generally become the corresponding sonant stop in Tśaurasya; but we find Tśaur. mi fire without this shift.

Also it is not true of the initial in ‘name’ where we find only in Limbu the m we should expect, but elsewhere in East Himalayish n (see Table 8). This is probably due to palatalization of m by the following front vowel, which in this root is peculiar. I have never been able to define the peculiarity of this vowel, perhaps yi or ī, but I am not sure. I have only noted that phonetic pecularities do show up in this root in various Tibeto-Burmic languages.