Linguistics

This paper attempts to present a sociolinguistic profile of Saihriem dialect spoken mainly in the five villages of Cachar district of Assam, viz., Balisor, Noxa, Nagathol, Bagbhar and Saihriemkho. More exclusively, this paper presents a sketch of location of speakers, genetic affiliation, population, bilingualism, language uses and maintenance, attitude, culture, festival, religion and lastly its comparative vocabularies with Hmar language.

The present paper attempts to describe some aspects of the morphological features including the morphophonemic changes in pronouns of three Barish languages namely Dimasa, Kokborok, and Tiwa (aka Lalung). This study mainly focuses on the pronouns marked for plural, possessive, proximate and remote, and indefiniteness in pronominal system of the said languages.

The process of assigning morpho-syntactic categories of each morpheme including punctuation marks in a given text document according to the context is called Part of Speech (POS) tagging. In this paper we represent the rule-based Part of Speech Tagger of Manipuri by applying a set of hand written linguistic rules of Manipuri language. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to classify the lexical categories of Manipuri, an agglutinating Tibeto-Burman language of Northeast India. So, in this tagger we are using the affix stripping technique to segment the affixes from the root. As Manipuri has limited POS tagged corpus, the tagged output of this tagger will be very helpful to analyze Manipuri Part of speech by using many statistical models.

The paper proposes to study the morphological and semantic features of the complex predicates in Liangmai, a Tibeto-Burman language. The used of complex predicate is widespread in the language and this paper intends to study and to understand the types of complex predicate that occur in the language. The grammatical constructions such as compound verb or conjunct verb will all be expressed under the term 'complex predicate' in this work. In Liangmai, complex predicates occur in the form of Verb1 + Verb2 or Verb + Adjective or Noun + Verb. In complex predicates V2 or the vector is combined with main verb or V1 of the sentence either to modify or to add something more to the meaning or to make the predication of intended action possible. In compound verb, the central meaning of the predicate is obtained from the first verb, i.e., V1, which is in the root form, whereas the second verb (V2) is semantically delexicalized or grammaticalized. The paper also looks into the degree of grammaticalization of different vectors in the language.

This paper investigates the typological perspective of Liangmai, a language of the Tibeto-Burman family which is spoken in the states of Manipur and Nagaland in the northeastern region of India. The language has SOV type of word order. The goal of the present paper is to examine the typological characteristics of the language in the light of Greenberg's principles of language universals and see the features it attests to as a verb final language.

India is a land marked by its rich traditional heritage of folk arts and culture. The diverse art and cultural forms of the tribal and rural people formed the colorful fabric which holds the different ethnic people of the nation together. Besides its beauty and splendor, the art and culture of different community played a vital role in reinforcing national integrity, crystallizing social solidarity, fortifying communal harmony, uplifting value system and promoting brotherhood among the people of the country. However, with the advent of modernization and globalization many indigenous cultures are under constant threat. Unless certain measures are taken up for preservation and promotion of tribal and folk art and culture, we are at risk of losing out much important traditional knowledge and worldview of these people. Liangmai is one of the tribal communities of Manipur and Nagaland. Being a minor tribe, the language and culture of Liangmai is under constant pressure from a more dominant culture of the area. The advent of Christianity and modern education has also immensely affected the age-old traditional practices of the community. Though there is nothing wrong in people turning to Christianity or getting modern education, the responses of the people conveyed regret that their youths are gradually losing their bonds with their own roots. Through this study, I would like to highlight brief ethno-linguistic account of the people and show that there are certain positive elements in tradition and culture of the people which need to be revive and kept alive.

Language play's an important role in the promotion of one's culture and protection of the rights and identities of a speech community. The United Nations, in one of its forum in 2012 summed up the importance of language in the following quote: "Language is an essential part of, and intrinsically linked to indigenous peoples" ways of life, culture and identities. Languages embody many indigenous values and concepts and contain indigenous peoples" histories and development. They are fundamental markers of indigenous peoples" distinctiveness and cohesiveness as peoples." Our language is sacred to us. It is even more important because we follow oral tradition, i.e. our history, tradition, culture and practices are passed down to us orally. We, the people of Zeliangrong, believe that our ancestor spoke one language before their exodus from Makuilongdi. After departure from Makuilongdi, with the passage of time speech variations develops, this is typical of languages. Though there are variations, the fact remains till today that there many common root words among the Zeme, Liangmai, and Rongmei. It is very interesting and encouraging to see some features in our languages which attested that we are closely related. It is possible we spoke one language in the past. In the classification of the Tibeto-Burman languages, where Zeliangrong languages are affiliated, our languages (Kachcha Naga and Kabui) were placed in the Naga-Bodo subgroup by Grierson (1903). More recently, Bradley (1997) put the Zeliangrong under the southern Naga of the Kuki-Chin-Naga group. We share many common features like SOV word order, postpositional, genitive preceding the governing noun, lack of agreement etc. with other TB langauges of Northeast India but beyond that there are features in our languages which established our linguistic affinity. There are hundreds of similar root words in our languages but I won't be listing them here. One feature that stood out is the presence of pre-nasalized sound or phoneme in our languages, which is absent in most of the TB languages surrounding us. Pre-nasalized sound means when we utter or make sound, it first comes from the nasal cavity (nose) and then goes to oral cavity (mouth). Example will words like nking "listen", nruai "bird", etc. In phonology, there are dissimilarities in our languages but what is more interesting is that there is uniformity in this dissimilarity. For example, Zeme /ch/ sound will be /s/ in Liangmai and /th/ in Rongmei. Let's take the word "know", Z-chi, L-si, R-thai, and "who", Z-chou, L-sou, R-thou. If a Rongmei word begins with /s/, Liangmai will take /th/ and Zeme /t/ as in "hair", R-sam, L-tham, Z-tam, and "sing", R-suan, L-thiu, Z-teu. In vowels (diphthongs), /eu/ in Zeme becomes /iu/ in Liangmai and /u/ in Rongmei as in the word "father", Z-peu, L-piu, R-pu, and "eat", Z-teu, L-tiu, R-tu. There are many more such examples but I cannot provide them all here. The question is 'is it just coincidence or something else'? The scientific study of our languages reveals many interesting facts about our people. The features I presented here are just a 'tip of an iceberg'. I firmly believe that with more input we will be able to reconstruct our proto-Zeliangrong.

The NorthEastern part of India is well-known for its linguistic diversity. Bilingualism and sometimes trilingualism is common both in urban and rural areas. Similarly, in Nagaland, there are 16 recognized Naga tribes, each with their own native tongue and culture. Nagamese, English and sometimes Hindi are used as lingua franca. Nagamese is the most popular among the spoken languages. It has been stated that Nagamese is the fastest growing language in the Naga society today. Besides their own mother tongues, about 80% of the Naga population knows and communicate in Nagamese. It first started as a market language amongst the various tribes and eventually it has come to be accepted by all section of the society. At this rate there are chances of many Naga languages being swallowed up by Nagamese. It posts a great threat to the local tribal languages, especially to minor languages like Liangmai. Liangmai (ISO 639-3) belongs to the Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages family under the Zeme-Naga group (Burling 2003). Liangmai is spoken in Manipur and Nagaland. In Nagaland, Liangmai is clubbed together with Zeme and is collectively recognized as Zeliang tribe. According to the census of India 2001, the total population Zeliang tribe is 36012, of which 2315 are Liangmai. There are five Liangmai villages in Nagaland. The dominant languages spoken in Peren district are Zeme and Nagamese. Being a minority, the Liangmai community is experiencing enormous pressure of language assimilation by surrounding dominant languages. Outside their villages and homes, Liangmais had to switch to either Zeme or Nagamese to communicate with the non-Liangmais. The impact of this shifting may ultimately lead to the extinction of Liangmai speech variety in Nagaland, which could lead to an irreversible loss for the study of Liangmai dialects. The present work discusses about factors responsible for language endangerment with a specific focus on Liangmai community in Nagaland. It examined the nature of endangerment and how it has happened at the linguistic levels. The study examines the use of language in different domains. The aspects like code mixing and code switching and attitudes towards the language are analyzed in the paper.

This book presents a preliminary sketch of Liangmai grammar. A brief outline on Liangmai phonetic and phonology, morphology and syntax in the light of scientific linguistic approach is provided. The main focus of the book is on the classifier system in Liangmai. A descriptive analysis of different types of classifiers found in Liangmai, its functions and semantic categories are highlighted. The book also discusses phrase structure in Liangmai with special reference to classifier construction.
This book throw open the potentiality of linguistic research in Liangmai in particular and the languages of the Northeast India in general. The book could serve as a source material for other linguists and researchers to pursue their studies further.

Folk song plays a very significant role in the socio-cultural life of Liangmai people. It is a medium to express pleasure and pain, sorrow and joy, spiritual and moral values, and traditional and cultural knowledge. It is a rich form of cultural heritage that contributes towards maintaining the history of the people and plays vital role in connecting generations, establishing cultural identity and helps transmit cultural values, beliefs, knowledge, etc. The notable significant of these folk songs is that people do not learn it through established institution, but by participation. They are narrated from memory and transmitted verbally from one generation to another. Liangmai has very rich repository of folk songs and these songs are referred to as pou-peh lui, meaning ‘grandfather-grandmother song’. Different genre of Liangmai folk songs may be conveniently classified as songs of love and yearning, work songs, recreational and merrymaking songs, village guarding songs, rhymes, children songs and lullabies. The Liangmai community, however, is undergoing a stage of transition due to the influence of modernization thus causing a neglect to the ethos of traditional culture and the oral tradition. Many facets of their culture, like singing of folk songs, are no longer practice by the current generation. Folk songs have been replaced by Christian hymns in most domains in present Liangmai society. As such many Liangmai youths do not realize the importance of their folk songs. However, if the vibrancy of these songs is taught to these young people there are high chances of reviving the once popular folk singing tradition. This paper is an attempt to unearth the beautiful world of folk songs in Liangmai culture and document it. The study explores different genres of Liangmai folk songs and the role it played in building society, acquiring and transmitting knowledge and wisdom. The paper aims to bring back the ‘echo from the mountains’ in the present modern society.

The purpose of this paper is to present the extent of nominalization and its functions in Liangmai. The study includes lexical or derivational nominalization and structures involving the nominalization of clauses. This paper briefly describes the morpho-syntax of nominalization and the constructions in which nominalized forms occur in Liangmai. The nominalizers in this language include the suffixes -bo, -bam, and -mai and the prefixes kə- and pə-. Lexical nominalization includes derivation of abstract nouns from stative root verbs, agentive nominals from both nouns and verbs, adjectivals from stative intransitive verbs and gerunds. The nominalizing suffix -bo is the most common and is highly productive. All verbal roots can be nominalized by the suffix -bo, and the resulting forms can be interpreted as abstract nouns, gerunds, attributive adjectives, relative clause, among others. In Liangmai, the suffix -bo functions variously as a nominalizer, relativizer or complementizer. Liangmai exhibits externally headed relative clauses in which the head nouns appear to the right of relative clauses.

Keywords: Liangmai, Nominalization, Relativization, Complementation, Derivational, Clausal, Tibeto-Burman

ISO 639-3 codes:njn

This paper is an attempt to highlight the significance of youth dormitory system of the Liangmai Naga of Manipur. This traditional institution played a vital role in imparting value education and maintaining the social fabric among the pre-literate Liangmai community. In the past, it serves as the cultural center, where young boys and girls are molded to become responsible adult members of the community. However, this highly developed institution of the Liangmai Naga has now disintegrated. Change in religious belief and the advent of modern education has been attributed for the decline of khangchiu. The paper reflexively analyzes the origin and decline of this traditional institution as well as the roles and functions it played in the traditional Liangmai society. The main objective of the paper is to document the systematic operation of the youth dormitory system so as to bring better understanding of this traditional institution to the younger generations.