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Specimen of a Khambu Dialect from Dilpa,1 Nepāl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Stuart N. Wolfenden
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Extract

The language specimen here reproduced was brought in to me while in the Darjeeling neighbourhood in 1931, having been taken down in the recently revived Limbu alphabet by an educated Limbu, by name Iman Singha Chemjong, direct from the dictation of the speaker himself. Though pressure of work on other languages of the “pronominalized” group prevented my seeing the actual speaker, who Was off in another part of the hills, there is no difficulty in placing the dialect with its nearest relatives in the Linguistic Survey. It is, without doubt, a form of Rungchhēnbūng, and a near relative of Wāling. To the former the Linguistic Survey was able to devote, through lack of material, only some two pages, to the latter, for the same reason about a page and a half, no specimen being available in either case. I, therefore, give what follows as a small supplement to our knowledge of this little-known form of speech.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , October 1933 , pp. 845 - 856
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1933

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References

page 845 note 2 I am indebted to this same young man for much information of a linguistic nature, both upon his own language and upon others of the Eastern Nepal area. I found him a most careful worker. The present specimen was first taken down in the Limbu script only, then again, independently, in this same script with an interlinear English translation. Then the two versions in the Limbu script were collated, corrected, and checked over again with the original speaker as to the meaning, the whole being then rewritten, checked once more, and finally brought in to me. We then went over it together, clearing up any doubtful points.

page 845 note 3 Vol. iii, pt. i, pp. 360–1.

page 845 note 4 Vol. iii, pt. i, pp. 357–8.

page 845 note 5 The only original material dealing with what the Linguistic Survey terms the “Minor Khambu Dialects”, among which that under discussion belongs, is that published by Hodgson, B. H., first in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xxvi (1857)Google Scholar, then in his Miscellaneous Essays Relating to Indian Subjects, vol. i, pp. 176–215. Rungchhēnbūng is briefly dealt with in both of these. Building upon Hodgson, W. W. Hunter gave vocabularies in his Comparative Dictionary of the Languages of India and High Asia, London, 1868Google Scholar, and in the LSI., vol. iii, pt. i, pp. 340–373, is a brief consideration of these dialects based on the same source. Other than this, no materials seem to be available.

page 846 note 1 N. buāg.

page 846 note 2 N. juwā.

page 847 note 1 N. pāp.

page 847 note 2 N. aru.

page 848 note 1 N. naukar.

page 848 note 2 N. nayā ?

page 848 note 3 N. juttā.

page 848 note 4 N. naukar.

page 850 note 1 ma-nā “man” is thus probably for mī(-nā) in agreement with Thāmi mī, Tibetan mi, etc. There appears, in fact, to be some tendency for a and ī, or ĭ to interchange, for within the dialect here under consideration we have both aṅ-ka and ĭṅ-kā “I”, and in Limbu both aṅ-gā (LSI.) and ĭṅ-gā, the latter being the more usual according to my informants. In this case the vowel, whether a or ĭ is probably a meaningless prefix, the original pronoun having been *ṅā, or some such monosyllable.

page 851 note 1 See the writer's Outlines of Tibeto-Burman Linguistic Morphology, § 60 (p. 69), and § 64 (for Kachin), § 103 (for the Bōdō and Nāgā languages), §§ 185–6 (for Kuki-Chin), and § 216 (for Burmese).

page 853 note 1 ĭṅ-kā is said to be an alternative form.

page 853 note 2 Exclusive form (v. Hodgson, , Miscellaneous Essays, i, p. 184)Google Scholar.

page 853 note 3 Hodgson (loc. cit.) gives Kā-nā-nĭn or k'ā-nā nā. The form here given looks like a dual. This is probably the case, as duals function very frequently in related languages where plurals should properly be employed.

page 853 note 4 Sic ! Properly a dual form. Hodgson (loc. cit.) has no plural for the 3rd person, remarking that the “third pronoun, like nouns, transfers sign of number to adjective or verb”. Cf. LSI., iii, 1, p. 287, where in Limbu “the dual and the plural of the third person have the same form”, both being duals in -čī.

page 583 note 5 In the remarks that follow I shall have occasion at times to draw upon two non-objective verb conjugations obtained from the same source asthe specimen. As their analysis would take more space than at present seems advisable, without in any great degree illuminating the verb types in the specimen, I am holding them over for some future time. Examples adduced here, but not found in the specimen, are consequently to be referred to that source.

page 854 note 1 Evidently from the same old word for “two” as that mentioned above under numerals.

page 856 note 1 See Morphology, §§ 105–6, and p. 25, n. 1.