Anish Koshy
Phone: +91-40-27689643
Address: Department of Linguistics & Phonetics
The English & Foreign Languages University (CIEFL)
Hyderabad - 500007, INDIA
Address: Department of Linguistics & Phonetics
The English & Foreign Languages University (CIEFL)
Hyderabad - 500007, INDIA
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The Mynnar language is known as Mynnar to the people who speak it and to outsiders it is known as Jirang. The people call themselves the Mynnar people and they live in the Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya. There are around 8000 – 9000 speakers of the language. There is a mention of the language in Gurdon (1990:200-202) where the author takes up a comparative study of the numeral systems and some lexical items in different Mon-Khmer languages (of Meghalaya and outside). Gurdon’s observations on the various Mon-Khmer languages of India deserve a mention here. He notes: “It is interesting to note that the Amwi and Lakadong dialects of Khasi, which are spoken by the people who dwell on the southern slopes of the Jaintia Hills, seem more closely to correspond with the Mon-Khmer forms than even with Khasi. The Mynnar or Jirang dialect of Khasi, spoken on the extreme north of the hills, also appears to possess some words which are very similar indeed to some of the Mon-Khmer forms…The Mynnar dialect appears to be akin to the Synteng, Lakadong, and Amwi forms of speech.” (203-204)
Most people grow up speaking only this language until they start school because standard Khasi is the language that is used for pedagogical, religious and administrative purposes. The majority of today’s generation is bilingual at least with standard Khasi as the second language. The only document about the language is found in P.R.T. Gurdon’s ‘The Khasis’. There is no mention of the language in the Ethnologue (2009).
Standard Khasi is the language spoken by people who live in and around Sohra, also known as Cherrapunji. It is also spoken in Shillong, the capital city of the state. It is the only variety from amongst all the other varieties of Mon-Khmer in Meghalaya, that has a written grammar and that is used for pedagogical and administrative purposes. For this purpose the speakers of the other languages are forced to learn this language. The data used in the study is a primary resource and not taken from any secondary sources.
Morpho-syntax of Mynnar and Khasi:
The sentence structure of the language is SVO but there are possible indications that at the deep structure level it is VSO.
The language is dominantly polysynthetic and it is mainly agglutinative like Khasi and it is mostly a prefixing language like Khasi but it also has circumfixation - negation ‘ba-ra’. Khasi does not have this phenomenon. The language has reduplication and it is used very productively in the language. The language does not seem to have fusion unlike Khasi. Both the languages do not seem to have suppletion.
Like Khasi, the head is marked for its gender-number: all dependents carry a reflex of this marking on the head and genitive is marked on the possessor, and not on the head of the NP.
The subject verb agreement is pre verbal in Khasi and post verbal in Mynnar and the subject agreement is suffixed unlike Khasi.
The numeral classifiers in Khasi are human: non-human system - ut :: tlli. In Mynnar it is human: non-human system. For both the languages there is no classifier when counting days.
There are no inherently possessed nouns in Mynnar. The inherently possessive nouns in Khasi are father; mother. NGC is different in the case of one’s own and those of others. For the case of other people’s parents, the words kpa and kmie are used for father and mother respectively.
Apart from these features we will also take up other morpho-syntactic features pertaining to the nominal and verbal domains in these two languages for the presentation.
The Mynnar language is known as Mynnar to the people who speak it and to outsiders it is known as Jirang. The people call themselves the Mynnar people and they live in the Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya. There are around 8000 – 9000 speakers of the language. There is a mention of the language in Gurdon (1990:200-202) where the author takes up a comparative study of the numeral systems and some lexical items in different Mon-Khmer languages (of Meghalaya and outside). Gurdon’s observations on the various Mon-Khmer languages of India deserve a mention here. He notes: “It is interesting to note that the Amwi and Lakadong dialects of Khasi, which are spoken by the people who dwell on the southern slopes of the Jaintia Hills, seem more closely to correspond with the Mon-Khmer forms than even with Khasi. The Mynnar or Jirang dialect of Khasi, spoken on the extreme north of the hills, also appears to possess some words which are very similar indeed to some of the Mon-Khmer forms…The Mynnar dialect appears to be akin to the Synteng, Lakadong, and Amwi forms of speech.” (203-204)
Most people grow up speaking only this language until they start school because standard Khasi is the language that is used for pedagogical, religious and administrative purposes. The majority of today’s generation is bilingual at least with standard Khasi as the second language. The only document about the language is found in P.R.T. Gurdon’s ‘The Khasis’. There is no mention of the language in the Ethnologue (2009).
Standard Khasi is the language spoken by people who live in and around Sohra, also known as Cherrapunji. It is also spoken in Shillong, the capital city of the state. It is the only variety from amongst all the other varieties of Mon-Khmer in Meghalaya, that has a written grammar and that is used for pedagogical and administrative purposes. For this purpose the speakers of the other languages are forced to learn this language. The data used in the study is a primary resource and not taken from any secondary sources.
Morpho-syntax of Mynnar and Khasi:
The sentence structure of the language is SVO but there are possible indications that at the deep structure level it is VSO.
The language is dominantly polysynthetic and it is mainly agglutinative like Khasi and it is mostly a prefixing language like Khasi but it also has circumfixation - negation ‘ba-ra’. Khasi does not have this phenomenon. The language has reduplication and it is used very productively in the language. The language does not seem to have fusion unlike Khasi. Both the languages do not seem to have suppletion.
Like Khasi, the head is marked for its gender-number: all dependents carry a reflex of this marking on the head and genitive is marked on the possessor, and not on the head of the NP.
The subject verb agreement is pre verbal in Khasi and post verbal in Mynnar and the subject agreement is suffixed unlike Khasi.
The numeral classifiers in Khasi are human: non-human system - ut :: tlli. In Mynnar it is human: non-human system. For both the languages there is no classifier when counting days.
There are no inherently possessed nouns in Mynnar. The inherently possessive nouns in Khasi are father; mother. NGC is different in the case of one’s own and those of others. For the case of other people’s parents, the words kpa and kmie are used for father and mother respectively.
Apart from these features we will also take up other morpho-syntactic features pertaining to the nominal and verbal domains in these two languages for the presentation.