Karbi language


The Karbi language is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Karbi people of Northeastern India. It is also called Hills Karbi to differentiate it from Plains Karbi which is variously treated as a variety of Karbi or its own language.
It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, but its position is unclear. Grierson classified it under Naga languages, Shafer and Bradley classify the Mikir languages as an aberrant Kuki-Chin branch, but Thurgood leaves them unclassified within Sino-Tibetan. Blench and Post classify it as one of the most basal languages of the entire family.

History

Originally, there was no written form of the language, and like most languages of Northeast India, Karbi writing system is based on Roman script, occasionally in Assamese script. The earliest written texts in Karbi were produced by Christian missionaries, in Roman script, especially by the American Baptist Mission and the Catholic Church. The missionaries brought out a newspaper in Karbi titled Birta in the year 1903, Rev. R.E. Neighbor's 'Vocabulary of English and Mikir, with Illustrative Sentences' published in 1878, which can be called the first Karbi dictionary. Sardoka Perrin Kay's 'English–Mikir Dictionary' published in 1904, Sir Charles Lyall and Edward Stack's The Mikirs in 1908, the first ethnographic details on the Karbis and G.D. Walker's 'A Dictionary of the Mikir Language' published in 1925 are some of the earliest known books on the Karbis and the Karbi language and grammar.
The Karbis have a rich oral tradition. The Mosera, a lengthy folk narrative that describes the origin and migration ordeal of the Karbis, is one such example.

Varieties

There is little dialect diversity except for the Dumurali / Kamrup Karbi dialect, which is distinct enough to be considered a separate Karbi language.
Konnerth identifies two main variations of the Karbi language:
Data below are from Konnerth.

Consonants

Initial consonants

  • Palatal /ɟ~j/ constitutes free variation between a stop and a glide production.
  • Also, allophonic alternations typical for the area include /pʰ~ɸ/ and /r~ɾ~ɹ/.

    Final consonants

Vowels

Diphthongs of Karbi

Syllable structure

Karbi syllables may be the open V or the closed VC. Possible onset consonant cluster combinations are as follows:.

Tone and stress

There are three pairs of tones in Karbi: low, mid, and high. Unstressed syllables are often toneless. Clitics are toneless, but some suffixes, such as derivational suffixes, tend to have tone.
  • ròng : 'village'
  • rōng : 'plant'
  • róng : 'to borrow'

    Grammar

Karbi is a highly synthetic, agglutinating language, especially in predicate morphology. Karbi nouns are however typically analytic and isolating. It distinguishes first person inclusive and exclusive pronouns. Possessive a- and plural marker -tum are used to denote plurality in periphrastic level.
+4+3+2/+1core-1-2-3-4-5
procliticNMLZCAUS /RECIP/REFL /AUTOBEN/MAL verb stemDERIVRDPLNEG AspectAM/subordinate, non-declarative speech act-marking

Syntax

Karbi noun phrase structure accepts enumeration constructions, RCs, and PCT modifiers to occur on either side of the head noun. DEMs and POSRs are restricted to the front slots, and the plural marker takes the last slot.
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DemonstrativesNumbersRelative Clauses / PCT modifierHead NounPCT modifier / Relative Clauses / NumberPlural

Role-marking has three classes: unmarked NPs, marked with -phān and lōng. Unmarked NPs refers to NPs that display clear from context what kind of syntactic/semantic role they play in the clause. The S arguments in intransitive clauses are always unmarked, but O & A arguments may not be marked in Karbi differential object marking. OBL participants may remain unmarked as well if their role in the clause is clear from context.
Core arguments marked with -phān are syntactically participants with the O and R roles in clause.
Locative -lōng marks oblique locational expressions in NP relation of any semantic types, human O-like locational arguments, human R-like locational arguments, as well as it may replace relator nouns that indicate specific locational and directional relations such as 'in', 'near', 'at', 'around' and such. In addition, a enclitic =pen is used to mark the instrumental, the comitative, the ablative. Diachronically, -pen is a clause final marker.
Clauses can combine into a chain of clauses by suffixing -si, -ra, -pen. Clausal chaining marks events in temporal sequence, and other clausal chaining constructions can perform other functions.

Geographical distribution

India

Karbi is spoken in the following areas of Northeast India.
An estimate 1500 Karbi live in Bangladesh.