Car (') is the most widely spoken of the

Nicobarese languages The Nicobarese languages or Nicobaric languages, form an isolated group of about half a dozen closely related Austroasiatic languages, spoken by most of the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands of India. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers ...

spoken in the Nicobar Islands of

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. Although related distantly to Vietnamese and Khmer, it is typologically much more akin to nearby Austronesian languages such as

Nias Nias ( id, Pulau Nias, Nias language: ''Tanö Niha'') (sometimes called Little Sumatra in English) is an island located off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Nias is also the name of the archipelago () of which the island is the centre ...

and Acehnese, with which it forms a

linguistic area A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lan ...

. Car is a VOS language and somewhat

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

. There is a quite complicated verbal suffix system with some

infix An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with '' adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. When marking text for i ...

es, as well as distinct genitive and "interrogative" cases for nouns and pronouns.

Phonology

Consonants

* The alveolar flap can typically be pre-stopped. Before a voiceless consonant, its pre-articulation is voiceless as , and elsewhere it is voiced .

Vowels

* /æ/ only occurs because of the occurrence of English loanwords. * Vowel sounds are also typically short when occurring before an /h/.

Vocabulary

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 nota ...

(2017)Sidwell, Paul. 2017.
Proto-Nicobarese Phonology, Morphology, Syntax: work in progress
. International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics 7, Kiel, Sept 29-Oct 1, 2017. published in ICAAL 2017 conference on Nicobarese languages.

Morphology

Shared morphological alternations: the old AA causative has two allomorphs, prefix ha- with monosyllabic stems, infix -um- in disyllabic stems (note: *p > h onset in unstressed σ). * ɲa - 'to eat' / haɲaː 'to feed' * pɯɲ - 'to cry' / hapɯɲ-ɲɔː 'to make cry' * kucik - 'be palatable' / kumcik 'to taste' * kale - 'brave' / kumle 'bravery'

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Car Language Languages of India Agglutinative languages Nicobarese languages Verb–object–subject languages