Hmar language


The Hmar language is a Northern Mizo language spoken by the Hmar people of Northeast India. It belongs to the Kuki-Chin branch of this language family. Speakers of Hmar often use Mizo as their second language.
The language has official status in some regions and is used in education to varying degrees. It possesses a rich oral tradition, including traditional sayings and festival songs like the Sikpui Hla.

Classification

The Hmar language is a member of the Tibeto-Burman language family. It is specifically classified under the Zohnahtlak languages group. The Zohnahtlak languages, including Hmar, are spoken in Mizoram, neighboring areas of Northeast India, and also in adjacent countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar. The language is verb-final.
According to VanBik's classification of Kuki-Chin languages, Hmar is placed within the 'Central' branch. This branch also includes languages like Mizo and Lai. For context, Kuki-Chin languages are broadly divided by VanBik into Central, Peripheral, and Maraic branches. Another grouping, often termed 'Northwestern Kuki-Chin' or historically 'Old Kuki', is also recognized and is characterized by lacking some typical features of the core Kuki-Chin group, such as verb stem alternations.
The broader classification of Tibeto-Burman is a subject of ongoing scholarly discussion. Some researchers, like Blench and Post, propose the term Trans-Himalayan for the phylum to better reflect the geographical distribution and diversity of these languages, particularly highlighting the numerous languages in Northeast India that may represent independent branches and challenge traditional binary classifications that privilege Sinitic or well-known literary languages like Tibetan and Burmese. These scholars emphasize the complexity arising from extensive language contact and the need to give equal weight to lesser-documented languages in phylogenetic considerations.
Hmar, like many languages in the region, is considered to be in a developing stage and requires further standardization in several linguistic areas.

Geographical distribution

Regions and speaker numbers

The 2011 Census of India recorded 98,988 speakers of Hmar as a mother tongue. The significant dispersion of Hmar speakers may contribute to slight dialectal distinctions across different regions.

Dialects

In Manipur, Hmar exhibits partial mutual intelligibility with the other Kukish dialects of the area including Thadou, Paite, Aimol, Vaiphei, Simte, Kom and Gangte languages.
The Hmar language, as it is recognized today, was previously known as the Khawsak dialect. This dialect was accepted by the various Hmar groups as a common language for literary and teaching purposes, although other Hmar languages and dialects continue to be widely spoken.

History

The Hmar people were first recognized as a distinct tribal community in the North-Eastern States of India. Prior to official recognition, they were often grouped under the term 'Kuki' or 'Old Kuki,' a label applied by outsiders to various hill tribes in the region. The Government of India officially recognized the Hmar tribe by including it in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists Order, 1956. This allowed different tribes, including the Hmar, to be known by their specific names rather than generic terms.

Early documentation

The Hmar language was first documented in written form in the early 20th century by George Abraham Grierson in his extensive Linguistic Survey of India.

Sinlung: Traditional place of origin

Hmar tradition consistently refers to Sinlung as their ancestral homeland. Numerous songs and folktales recount their time in Sinlung and their subsequent migration. The exact location of Sinlung is a subject of scholarly debate, with several theories proposed:
  • It may be located in present-day Southwest China, possibly in Yunnan Province.
  • The name might be derived from the Qin Dynasty.
  • Etymologically, sin and lung could suggest a cave sealed with a large stone.
  • One theory places Sinlung at Aopatong on the border of Burma and China, named after a chief Silung during the construction of the Great Wall of China.
  • Another possibility is the present-day Sinlung near the Yulung River in Sichuan Province, China.
Reasons for leaving Sinlung are also varied in oral traditions, including the search for fertile land or escape from oppressive rulers. One Hmar song evocatively states:

This suggests a departure involving overcoming obstacles and facing numerous encounters during their migration. It is believed the Hmars were part of larger waves of migration from China southwards, possibly forced out by the Ch'in Dynasty, eventually moving into Southeast Asia and then India.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Tones

Alphabet (''Hmar Hawrawp'') and Orthography

The Hmar alphabets, known as Hmar Hawrawp, has 25 letters: 6 vowels and 19 consonants. It is a modified version of the Roman script with some diacritic marks to help pronounce the dialect.
AAwBChDEFGNgH
IJKLMNOPRS
TȚUVZ-----

Pronunciation

Grammar

The Hmar language exhibits several notable grammatical features, common to many Tibeto-Burman languages, but also with unique characteristics. It is an agglutinative language.

Agreement

Hmar demonstrates a rich agreement system. Agreement markers, often in the form of pronominal clitics, can appear on verbs and adjectives, indicating features like person and number of arguments. Unlike many Indo-Aryan languages where the presence of a lexical case marker often blocks agreement, in Hmar, the presence or absence of a postposition generally does not affect agreement. However, there are instances, particularly in relative clauses and passives, where the ergative case marker and the agreement marker are mutually dependent, meaning either both appear or both are absent.
Predicate adjectives in Hmar also exhibit agreement with the noun they modify, carrying person and number agreement features that are homophonous with those found on verbs. Hmar does not have gender agreement.

Pronominal clitics

Hmar utilizes pronominal clitics that attach to verbs. These clitics can represent subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, and possessors. For example, the object agreement markers for the first person singular is -mi and for the second person singular is -ce. The third-person singular subject agreement marker is typically -a. These clitics are crucial for understanding the relationships between participants in a sentence, especially when overt pronouns are dropped.

Ergativity

Hmar exhibits a split ergativity system based on person. This means that the language uses ergative case marking for some noun phrases and accusative case marking for others. When a subject is marked with the ergative case, it often triggers corresponding agreement on the verb. The interplay between ergative marking and agreement is a significant feature of Hmar syntax.

Adposition incorporation

A distinctive feature of Hmar grammar is adposition incorporation. This is a process where an adposition moves from its position with a noun phrase and incorporates into the verb, often changing its form. This incorporation can have a transitivizing effect on intransitive verbs. When an adposition is incorporated, the verb it attaches to may then take an ergative subject and an object agreement clitic, indicating an increase in the verb's valency. This phenomenon is not commonly found in other language families of the Indian subcontinent.

Long-distance agreement

Hmar also features long-distance agreement, where an argument in an embedded clause can trigger agreement on the predicate of the main or higher clause. This is particularly evident in constructions involving subject-to-subject raising and Exceptional Case Marking. In ECM constructions, the pronominal agreement marker of the embedded subject can appear as a clitic on the matrix verb.

Pronominal strength hierarchy

In sentences with conjoined pronominal subjects, Hmar follows a pronominal strength hierarchy for agreement. The first-person subject is considered "stronger" than second- or third-person subjects, and a second-person subject is "stronger" than a third-person subject. This means that if a first-person pronoun is conjoined with a third-person pronoun, the verb will show first-person plural agreement, even if the first-person pronoun itself is null and only recoverable from the verbal agreement. The hierarchy is typically: 1st person > 2nd person > 3rd person.

Morphology

Hmar morphology is characterized by agglutination, particularly in its verb system. This involves the use of prefixes and suffixes to derive various grammatical forms, including causatives.

Causativization

Hmar employs both morphological and lexical strategies for forming causative verbs.
Morphological causatives
Two primary morphological causative affixes are productively used:
  • The prefix `/sùk-/` is typically used with intransitive verbs and adjectives to form causative verbs. It generally denotes direct causation, where the causer is directly responsible for the event. For example, lìen becomes sùk-lìen. The verbal reflexive marker `/ìn-/` is usually not required with `/sùk-/` unless the construction has a reflexive meaning. However, `/sùk-/` cannot typically be used with intransitive verbs of activity or motion.
  • The suffix `/-tìr/` is a morphologically regular and productive causative marker that can derive causatives from all types of non-causative verbs.\pFname="InfimateCausativization" /> Verbs causativized with `/-tìr/` obligatorily co-occur with the verbal reflexive marker `/ìn-/`, resulting in a circumfix-like structure `/ìn-...-tìr/`. For example, ṭhù becomes ìn-ṭhù-tìr. This form can express both true causation and permissive causation.