Gurung language
Gurung | |
---|---|
गुरुङ, ཏམུ་ཀི | |
Tamu Kyi, Manangi, Mustangi and Seke | |
Native to | Nepal, India, Bhutan |
Ethnicity | Gurung people |
Native speakers | 325,622 (2011 census)[1] |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
Khema (Devanagari) and Tibetan | |
Official status | |
Official language in | ![]() |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | gvr |
Glottolog | guru1261 |
ELP |
Gurung language differs from place to place. Gurung of Nepal not only speak Tamu Kyi but also speaks Manangi, Mustangi and Seke. The total number of all Gurung speakers in Nepal was 227,918 (1991 census). Nepal's official language Nepali, is an Indo-European language, whereas Gurung is a Sino-Tibetan language. Gurung is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, Bhutan, and by diaspora communities in other countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
Geographical distribution[edit]
Gurung is spoken in the following districts of Nepal (Ethnologue):
- Gandaki Province: Kaski District, Syangja District, Lamjung District, Tanahu District, Gorkha District, Manang District and Mustang
- Dhawalagiri Zone: Parbat district
- Sikkim: South Sikkim, West Sikkim, East Sikkim
Classification[edit]
At higher levels, Gurung is a member of the Tibeto-Burman (or Trans-Himalayan) family. Based on lexical cognates established by Robert Shafer and updated by George van Driem, Shafer constructed the Bodish sub-grouping into three sub-divisions: Western, Central and Southern (a.k.a. “old Bodish”, including Tibetan), and Eastern (containing “archaic” languages like Mönpa) and mainstream languages.[3][4] Noonan referred to this sub-grouping within Bodish as Manange/Nyeshangte and Nar-Phu and Gurungic (containing Gurung, Thakali and Chantyal).[5] [6] He noted that Chantyal is structurally deviant due to more extensive contact-induced language change from Nepali. Sten Konow classified Himalayan T-B languages into pronominalized and non-prominalized, where Gurung is located.[7] This classification is similar to Voeglin & Voeglin (1965), but within a "Gyarung-Mishmi" sub-family within Sino-Tibetan.[8] Shafer classified Gurung within the Bodic division, sub-grouping that into Bodish and West Central Himalayish. Within the Bodish "Section", he located "Bodish" languages (including the Tibetan varieties) and also the "Gurung Branch", including Gurung, Tamang (Murmi), and Thakali (Thaksya).
Grammar[edit]
Some miscellaneous grammatical features of the Gurung languages are:
- SOV
- Postpositions
- Genitives
- Adjectives relatives before noun heads
- numerals after noun heads
- Rising intonation in bipolar questions
- 1 prefix on negative verbs
- Maximum number of suffixes 3
- case of noun phrase shown by preposition
- No subject or object referencing in verbs
- split ergative system according to tense
- Causatives
- Benefactives
- CV, CCV, CCCV
Phonetically, Gurung languages are tonal.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Official Summary of Census (2011), Central Bureau of Statistics, Nepal Archived 2012-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "50th Report of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India" (PDF). 16 July 2014. p. 109. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 January 2018. Retrieved 6 November 2016.
- ^ Shafer, Robert (1955). "Classification of the Sino-Tibetan Languages". Word. 11: 94–111.
- ^ van Driem, George (1994). Kitamura, Hajime (ed.). East Bodish and Proto-Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax. Current Issues in Sino-Tibetan Linguistics. Osaka: The Organizing Committee of the 26th International Conference on SinoTibetan Languages and Linguistics. pp. 608–617. OCLC 36419031.
- ^ David (Ed.), Bradley; Randy (Ed.), Lapolla; Boyd (Ed.), Michailovsky; Graham (Ed.), Thurgood (2015). CRCL, CRCL, Pacific Linguistics And/Or The Author(S). "Language variation: Papers on variation and change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in honour of James A. Matisoff" (PDF). PL-555: 22M, xii + 333 pages. doi:10.15144/PL-555.
- ^ Motion, direction and location in languages : in honor of Zygmunt Frajzyngier. Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Erin Shay, Uwe Seibert. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2003. ISBN 978-90-272-7521-9. OCLC 769188822.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Grierson, George (1909). Linguistic survey of India Vol. III, Part 1. Delhi: Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
- ^ Voeglin, C.F.; Voeglin, F.M. (1965). "Languages of the World: Sino-Tibetan Fascicle Four". Anthropological Linguistics. 7: 1–55.
Bibliography[edit]
- J. Burton-Page. (1955). Two studies in Gurungkura: I. tone; II. Rhotacization and retroflexion. Bulletin of the Society of Oriental and African Studies 111–19.
- Viktor S.Doherty. (1974). "The Organizing Principles of Gurung Kinship." Kailash. 2.4: 273–301.
- Warren W. Glover. (1970). Gurung tone and higher levels. Occasional Papers of the Wolfenden society on Tibeto-Burman Linguistics III, Tone systems of Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, Pt. I, ed. by Austin Hale and Kenneth L. Pike, 52–73. Studies in tone and phonological segments. Urbana: University of Illinois.
- Warren W. Glover. (1974). Sememic and Grammatical Structures in Gurung (Nepal). Publication No. 49. Norman, OK: SIL Publications.
- Warren W. Glover and Jessie Glover. (1972). A Guide to Gurung Tone. Kathmandu: Tribhuvan University and Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- Warren W. Glover and John K. Landon. (1980). "Gurung Dialects." In Papers in Southeast Asian Languages No. 7, edited by R.L. Trail et al., 9-77. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Kristine A. Hildebrandt, D.N. Dhakal, Oliver Bond, Matt Vallejo and Andrea Fyffe. (2015). “A sociolinguistic survey of the languages of Manang, Nepal: Co-existence and endangerment.” NFDIN Journal, 14.6: 104–122.
- Pettigrew, Judith. (1999). "Parallel Landscapes: Ritual and Political Values of a Shamanic Soul Journey" in Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices, edited by Balthasar Bickel and Martin Gaenszle, 247–271. Zürich: Völkerkundsmuseum
- Nishi 西, Yoshio 義郎 (1993c). "グルン語" [Gurung (=LSI), Gūrung; Gurungkura]. In 亀井 Kamei, 孝 Takashi; 河野 Kōno, 六郎 Rokurō; 千野 Chino, 栄一 Eichi (eds.). 三省堂言語学大辞典 The Sanseido Encyclopaedia of Linguistics (in Japanese). Vol. 5. Tokyo: 三省堂 Sanseido Press. pp. 135b–143b.
External links[edit]
- Manang Language Project of Kristine A. Hildebrandt
- Manange, Western Gurung at Language Archive at the University of Virginia's Tibetan and Himalayan Library
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Gurung language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator |