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Khasian Languages
The Khasic or Khasian languages are a family of Austroasiatic languages native to the Shillong Plateau and spoken by the Khasi, Pnar and other related ethnic groups. Most of them reside in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya where Khasi speakers form a plurality of the population. Smaller Khasic-speaking pockets are found in Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Sylhet Division of Bangladesh. Languages Sidwell (2018: 27–31) classifies the Khasian languages as follows. *Proto-Khasian **War (Amwi, Mnar) **Proto–Pnar-Khasi-Lyngngam *** Lyngngam (former Garo-speakers) *** **** Pnar (Jaintia) **** Khasi **** Maharam (Maram) Varieties called ''Bhoi'' are dialects of both Pnar and Khasi. External relationships Paul Sidwell (2011) suggests that Khasian is closely related to Palaungic, forming a Khasi–Palaungic branch. The following eight Khasian- Palaungic isoglosses have been identified by Sidwell (2018: 32). Lexical innovations Sidwell (2018: 23) lists the following ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pnar Language
Pnar (), also known as Jaiñtia is an Austroasiatic language spoken in India and Bangladesh. Geographic distribution As a Khasic language, Pnar belongs to a complex dialect continuum which includes mixed varieties whose exact relations remain a matter of debate among linguists. A language map of Meghalaya designed by Anna Daladier shows two major Pnar-speaking areas separated by a thin strip of Khasi and War-speaking areas. Together, the two Pnar areas encompass most of the East Jaintia Hills, West Jaintia Hills and West Khasi Hills districts. A more recent map designed by Hiram Ring for a Khasic languages handbook by Paul Sidwell relies on a different classification. There, only the former two districts are labeled as Pnar, whereas the varieties spoken in the West Khasi Hills belong to Maharam, a related but distinct language. Both maps also show small pockets of Pnar speakers in the neighboring state of Assam Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nepali Language
Nepali (; , ), or ''Gorkhali'' is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language native to the Himalayas region of South Asia. It is the official and most widely spoken Languages of Nepal, language of Nepal, where it also serves as a ''lingua franca''. Nepali has Languages with official status in India, official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration of West Bengal. It is spoken by about a quarter of Bhutan's population. Nepali also has a significant number of speakers in the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand. In Myanmar it is spoken by the Burmese Gurkhas. The Nepali diaspora in the Middle East, Brunei, Australia and worldwide also use the language. Nepali is spoken by approximately 19 million native speakers and another 14 million as a second language. Nepali is commonly classified within the Eastern Pahari group of the Northern Indo-Aryan languages, Northern zo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Language
War (also known as Waar or War-Jaintia) is an Austroasiatic language in the Khasic branch spoken by about 16,000 people in Bangladesh and 51,000 people in India. It is not to be confused with Khasi War, a Khasi dialect spoken by the closely related War-Khyriam. See also * Languages of India Languages of India belong to several list of language families, language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indian people, Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both fami ... References Khasian languages Languages of Bangladesh Languages of India Languages of Meghalaya {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Austroasiatic Language
Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austroasiatic languages. Proto-Mon–Khmer (i.e., all Austroasiatic branches except for Munda) has been reconstructed in Harry L. Shorto's ''Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary'', while a new Proto-Austroasiatic reconstruction is currently being undertaken by Paul Sidwell. Scholars generally date the ancestral language to with a homeland in southern China or the Mekong River valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area around . 500 Proto-Austroasiatic etyma were published by Paul Sidwell in 2024. Phonology Earlier work sought to reconstruct the ancestor of the Mon–Khmer languages, viewed as a primary branch of the Austroasiatic language family alongside the Munda languages. This bifurcate model has been abandoned in favour of a flatter classification since around 2000.Sidwell, Paul (2009)The Austroasiatic Central Riverine Hypothesis Keynote address, SEALS, XI ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chain Shift
In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds. The sounds involved in a chain shift can be ordered into a "chain" in such a way that after the change is complete, each phoneme ends up sounding like what the phoneme before it in the chain sounded like ''before'' the change. The changes making up a chain shift, interpreted as rules of phonology, are in what is termed '' counterfeeding order''. A well-known example is the Great Vowel Shift, which was a chain shift that affected all of the long vowels in Middle English. The changes to the front vowels may be summarized as follows: : → → → A drag chain or pull chain is a chain shift in which the phoneme at the "leading" edge of the chain changes first. In the example above, the chain shift would be a pull chain if changed to first, opening ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (''phonological change''), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this is the distinction, respectively, between free and bound morphemes. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, inside a word with multiple morphemes, the main morpheme that gives the word its basic meaning is called a root (such as ''cat'' inside the word ''cats''), which can be bound or free. Meanwhile, additional bound morphemes, called affixes, may be added before or after the root, like the ''-s'' in ''cats'', which indicates plurality but is always bound to a root noun and is not regarded as a word on its own. However, in some languages, including English and Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lexical Innovation
In linguistics, specifically the sub-field of lexical semantics, the concept of lexical innovation includes the use of neologism or new meanings (so-called semantic augmentation) in order to introduce new terms into a language's lexicon. Most commonly, this is found in technical disciplines where new concepts require names, which often takes the form of jargon. For example, in the subjects of sociology or philosophy, there is an increased technicalization in terminology in the English language for different concepts over time. Many novel terms or meanings in a language are created as a result of translation from a source language, in which certain concepts were first introduced (e.g. from Plato's Ancient Greek into Latin or from Kant's German into English). Lexical innovation via neologism A straightforward method of introducing new terms in a language is to create a neologism, i.e. a completely new lexical item in the lexicon. For example, in the philosopher Heidegger's nati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amwi Language
War (also known as Waar or War-Jaintia) is an Austroasiatic language in the Khasic branch spoken by about 16,000 people in Bangladesh and 51,000 people in India. It is not to be confused with Khasi War, a Khasi dialect spoken by the closely related War-Khyriam. See also * Languages of India Languages of India belong to several list of language families, language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indian people, Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both fami ... References Khasian languages Languages of Bangladesh Languages of India Languages of Meghalaya {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaungic Languages
The Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages are a group of nearly 30 Austroasiatic languages, with scholars disagreeing on exactly which languages to include in the classification. They are spoken in scattered pockets across an inland region of Southeast Asia, centered on the borders between Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China. Phonological developments Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austroasiatic consonants, with the distinction often shifting to the following vowel. In the Wa branch, this is generally realized as breathy voice vowel phonation; in Palaung–Riang, as a two-way register tone system. The Angkuic languages have contour tone — the U language, for example, has four tones, ''high, low, rising, falling,'' — but these developed from vowel length and the nature of final consonants, not from the voicing of initial consonants. Homeland Paul Sidwell (2015) suggests that the Palaungic Urheimat (homeland) was in what ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Sidwell
Paul James Sidwell is an Australian linguist based in Canberra, Australia, who has held research and lecturing positions at the Australian National University. Sidwell, who is also an expert and consultant in forensic linguistics, is most notable for his work on the historical linguistics of the Austroasiatic language family, and has published reconstructions of the Austroasiatic, Bahnaric, Katuic, Palaungic, Khasic, and Nicobaric proto-languages. Sidwell is currently the president of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) and also regularly organises the International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics (ICAAL). Career In 2001, Sidwell was appointed as a collaborating scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. From 2001 to 2004, he was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian National University, remaining there from 2005 to 2007 as a visiting research fellow, funded by the Max Planck ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maharam Language
Maram, or Maharam, is an Austroasiatic language of Meghalaya Meghalaya (; "the abode of clouds") is a states and union territories of India, state in northeast India. Its capital is Shillong. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the Assam: the United Khasi Hills an ..., India. It is closely related to Khasi, and is sometimes considered a dialect of that language, though it appears to be more divergent than Khasi is from Pnar.Sidwell, Paul. 2018. ''The Khasian Languages: Classification, Reconstruction, and Comparative Lexicon''. Languages of the World 58. Munich: Lincom Europa. References Khasian languages Languages of India Languages of Meghalaya {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
