Bodo–Garo languages

Last updated
Bodo-Garo
Geographic
distribution
Northeast India, Bangladesh
Linguistic classification Sino-Tibetan
Subdivisions
Glottolog bodo1279

The Bodo-Garo languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages, spoken primarily in Northeast India and parts of Bangladesh.

Contents

The Bodo-Garo languages form four groups: Bodo, Garo, Koch and Deori. Garo-Bodo languages were historically very widespread throughout the Brahmaputra Valley and in what are now the northern parts of Bangladesh, [2] and it is speculated that the proto-Bodo-Garo language was the lingua franca of the Brahmaputra valley before it was replaced by Assamese language, to which it has made major contributions.

Branches

Map of the Languages and Dialects of the Bara or Bodo Group of the Tibeto-Burman Family (Burling names).png
The Boro-Garo languages, as reported in the Language Survey of India 1903. The annotations are from Burling (2012) p22.

The Boro-Garo languages were identified in the Grierson's Language Survey of India, and the names of the languages and their modern equivalents are given below in the table.

Name in LSIModern names
Bodo Boro
Lalung Tiwa
Dimasa Dimasa
Garo Garo
Koch Koch
Rabha Rabha
Tripuri Kokborok
Chutiya Deori
Moran Moran (since disappeared)

Sub groups

The Garo-Boro languages have been further divided into four subgroups by Burling.

Old Hajong may have been a Garo-Boro language.

Barman is a recently discovered Garo-Boro language. [3]

Boro is an associate official language of the state of Assam. Kokborok (Tripuri) is one of the official languages of the state of Tripura. Garo is an associate official language of Meghalaya. Megam has been strongly influenced by Khasic languages, while Deori-Chutia by the Idu Mishmi language.

Languages of the family feature verb-final word order. There is some flexibility in the order of the arguments, but a nominative–accusative distinction is marked with post-nominal clitics. The languages also prefix classifiers to numerals modifying nouns. tense, aspect and mood are indicated using verbal suffixes. [4]

Origins

The linkage of the Garo-Boro languages with Konyak and Jingphaw languages suggest that proto-Garo-Boro entered Assam from somewhere to the northeast. [5] It has been proposed that the proto-Garo-Boro language was a lingua franca of different linguistic communities, not all of who were native speakers, [6] and that it began as a creolized lingua franca. [7] This would account for the highly reduced morphology of Garo–Boro, with what morphology is present mostly being regular, loosely bound, and with transparent etymology, typical signs of recent origin. [8]

Classification

Joseph & Burling (2006)

The Boro-Garo language Family Tree (Burling, 2012). Deuri, earlier erroneously called "Chutia", is the first split and is farthest from the other languages in this group. The original Boro-Garo language of the Chutia people, who currently speak Assamese, is unknown. Moran, a language belonging to the Boro group, was last recorded in the early 20th century and is no longer attested. The Rabha group is also called the Koch group. Thus, there are four sub-groups within this classification of the Boro-Garo languages: Deori, Boro, Garo and Rabha/Koch. Family-Tree-Boro-Garo.png
The Boro-Garo language Family Tree (Burling, 2012). Deuri, earlier erroneously called "Chutia", is the first split and is farthest from the other languages in this group. The original Boro-Garo language of the Chutia people, who currently speak Assamese, is unknown. Moran, a language belonging to the Boro group, was last recorded in the early 20th century and is no longer attested. The Rabha group is also called the Koch group . Thus, there are four sub-groups within this classification of the Boro-Garo languages: Deori, Boro, Garo and Rabha/Koch.

Joseph & Burling (2006:1-2) classify the Boro–Garo languages into four major groups. Wood (2008:6) also follows this classification.

Jacquesson (2006)

Jacquesson (2017:112) [2] classifies the Boro-Garo languages as follows, and recognizes three major branches (Western, Central, and Eastern). The Koch languages and Garo are grouped together as Western Boro-Garo.

Jacquesson (2017) [2] believes that the Boro–Garo languages had arrived in their present location from the southeast, and notes similarities shared with Zeme languages and Kuki-Chin languages.

Reconstruction

Proto-Boro–Garo has been reconstructed by Joseph and Burling (2006) and by Wood (2008).

See also

Notes

  1. Also known as Boro-Konyak-Jingpho or Brahmaputran.
  2. 1 2 3 Jacquesson, François and van Breugel, Seino (2017). "The linguistic reconstruction of the past: The case of the Boro-Garo languages." In Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 40, 90-122. doi : 10.1075/ltba.40.1.04van [Note: English translation of the French original: Jacquesson, François (2006). ‘La reconstruction linguistique du passé: Le cas des language Boro-Garo’. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 101(1): 273–303.]
  3. A brief linguistic sketch of the Barman Thar (Language). Tezpur University.
  4. Wood 2008, p. 7.
  5. ( DeLancey 2012 :13)
  6. "Briefly, I propose, following a suggestion by Burling (2007), that the Proto-Boro-Garo first as a lingua franca used for communication across the various linguistic communicates of the region and its striking simplicity and transparency reflect a period when it was widely spoken by communities for whom it was not a native language." ( DeLancey 2012 :3)
  7. ( DeLancey 2012 :5)
  8. DeLancey, Scott (2010). "Towards a History of Verb Agreement in Tibeto-Burman" (PDF). Himalayan Linguistics. 9 (1): 1–39 [28]. ISSN   1544-7502 . Retrieved 2022-06-21.

Related Research Articles

A.tong is one of the Garo dialect Sino-Tibetan language which is also related to Koch, Rabha, Bodo other than Garo language. It is spoken in the South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya state in Northeast India, southern Kamrup district in Assam, and adjacent areas in Bangladesh. The correct spelling "A.tong" is based on the way the speakers themselves pronounce the name of their language. There is no glottal stop in the name and it is not a tonal language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boro language (India)</span> Tibeto-Burman language spoken in India

Boro, also rendered Bodo, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken primarily by the Boro people of India, Nepal and Bangladesh. It is an official language of the Indian state of Assam, predominantly spoken in the Bodoland Territorial Region. It is also one of the twenty-two languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. Since 1975 the language has been written using the Devanagari script. It was formerly written using Latin and Eastern-Nagari scripts. Some scholars have suggested that the language used to have its own now lost script known as Deodhai.

Garo, also referred to by its endonym A•chikku, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in the Northeast Indian states of Meghalaya, Assam, and Tripura. It is also spoken in certain areas of the neighbouring Bangladesh. According to the 2001 census, there are about 889,000 Garo speakers in India alone; another 130,000 are found in Bangladesh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bodo–Kachari people</span> Group of ethnic peoples in Northeast India

Bodo–Kacharis is a name used by anthropologist and linguists to define a collection of ethnic groups living predominantly in the Northeast Indian states of Assam, Tripura, and Meghalaya. These peoples are speakers of either Bodo–Garo languages or Assamese. Some Tibeto-Burman speakers who live closely in and around the Brahmaputra valley, such as the Mising people and Karbi people, are not considered Bodo–Kachari. Many of these peoples have formed early states in the late Medieval era of Indian history and came under varying degrees of Sanskritisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">People of Assam</span> People of Assam

The People of Assam inhabit a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious society. They speak languages that belong to four main language groups: Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan, Tai-Kadai, and Austroasiatic. The large number of ethnic and linguistic groups, the population composition, and the peopling process in the state has led to it being called an "India in miniature".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kachari language</span> Tibeto-Burman language of Assam, India

Kachari is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Boro-Garo subgroup, spoken in Assam, India. With fewer than 60,000 speakers recorded in 1997, and the Asam 2001 Census reporting a literacy rate of 81% the Kachari language is currently ranked as threatened. Kachari is closely related to surrounding languages, including Tiwa, Rābhā, Hajong, Kochi and Mechi.

The Sal languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeast India, parts of Bangladesh, and Burma.

The Koch languages are a small group of Boro-Garo languages a sub-branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Northeast India. Burling (2012) calls this the "Rabha group". They are:

The Boroic languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeastern India. They are:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tibeto-Burman languages</span> Group of the Sino-Tibetan language family

The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deori language</span> Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northeastern India

Deori is a Tibeto-Burman language in the Sino-Tibetan language family spoken by the Deori people of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Among the four territorial groups only the Dibongiya have retained the language. The others—Patorgoyan, Tengaponiya, and Borgoyan—have shifted to Assamese. It is spoken in Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh, and in Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Tinsukia, and Jorhat districts of Assam.

Proto-Tibeto-Burman is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibeto-Burman languages, that is, the Sino-Tibetan languages, except for Chinese. An initial reconstruction was produced by Paul K. Benedict and since refined by James Matisoff. Several other researchers argue that the Tibeto-Burman languages sans Chinese do not constitute a monophyletic group within Sino-Tibetan, and therefore that Proto-Tibeto-Burman was the same language as Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Moran (Morān) is an extinct Boro-Garo language which was spoken in Assam in Northeast India and related to Dimasa language. The census returned 78 speakers in 1901, 24 in 1911 and none in 1931, and the only source of this language exists in a 1904 article by P R Gurdon. The speakers of this language have shifted to the Assamese language. The name "Moran" reportedly means 'forest dweller'.

According to the 2001 census, Scheduled Tribes made up 12.4 percent of Assam's population. The Assam Tribune reported in 2009 that the tribal communities of Assam now account for 15.64 percent of the total population.

Mruic or Mru–Hkongso is a small group of Sino-Tibetan languages consisting of two languages, Mru and Anu-Hkongso. Their relationship within Sino-Tibetan is unclear.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chutia people</span> Ethnic group from Assam, India

The Chutia people are an ethnic group that are native to Assam and historically associated with the Chutia kingdom. However, after the kingdom was absorbed into the Ahom kingdom in 1523–24, the Chutia population was widely displaced and dispersed in other parts of Upper Assam as well as Central Assam. They constitute one of the core groups that form the Assamese people.

The Sino-Tibetan and Tai people of Assam are the different groups of people who migrated from East Asia and Southeast Asia into the Brahmaputra Valley during the ancient and medieval period. Today, they represent a major portion of the population of Assam and have made a strong impact on the social, cultural and political aspects of the state.

Central Tibeto-Burman or Central Trans-Himalayan is a proposed branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family proposed by Scott DeLancey (2015) on the basis of shared morphological evidence.

Barman Thar, where “thar” means language, is a highly endangered language. It is a Tibeto-Burman language that belongs to the Boro–Garo sub-group. The population of the Barman Kachari community is 24,237, according to a 2017 census. However, only a small part of this population speaks the language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barmans in Cachar</span>

The Dimasa Kachari plains tribe of Cachar are known as Barman, forming one of the indigenous tribes of undivided Cachar. The Dimasas, inhabiting in the Cachar district are officially recognized as one of the Scheduled Tribes under the plains category in Assam in the name called “Barmans in Cachar”.

References

Further reading