The Centre for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University organised a three day workshop on “Grammatical Variation: Tibeto-Burman Agree(ment) System (TiBAS2019)” from 10th – 12th November 2019 at RaapJyor Cauvery Hall, Sikkim University. The workshop was led by Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya, University of Delhi along with Dr. Tara Mani Rai, Tribhuvan University, Nepal.
In the inaugural session, Dr. Samar Sinha, the Coordinator of Centre for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University welcomed all the guests and briefed about the theme of the workshop. In the following the technical session, Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya talked on “The ‘Eastern’ Origin of Diversity in India: Linguistic, Genetic, and Archaeological Evidence.” He focussed on the archaeological evidence for a north-east Neolithic culture indicating that a branch of the Tibeto-Burman split off the earliest from a common ancestor. It was also pointed out that this is by far the earliest intrusion into India of a Neolithic culture.
In his talk on “Agreement Patterns in the Koyee Verb: A Typological Sketch,” Dr. Tara Mani Rai mentioned that Koyee is one of the pre-literate, endangered and least studied languages of Nepal within the Kirati languages. He, further, presented a detailed typological sketch of the Koyee agreement system.
Jyoti Sharma, a research scholar from University of Delhi presented on “Affirmative and Negative Paradigms in Mara.” She explained that the argument indexation in Mara, a Kuki-Chin Mara of Mizoram and western part of Burma, is predominantly preverbal with some exceptions in the affirmative paradigm. She summarised the agreement ordering — OVS and SOV for negative and positive paradigms, respectively.
Pratima Chhetri from the Centre for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University presented her findings on “Accusative/Dative Case in Magar.” Based on the primary data collected during the field survey conducted by the Centre on Magar, she discussed the usage of -lak as a directional marker and its function as accusative/dative case marker in Magar.
On “Phi-feature and Agreement in Kulung,” Reena Rai, a research scholar from the Department of Nepali, Sikkim University presented that Kulung, an endangered language spoken in Sikkim, has three distinct lexical markers for first person with reference to the number. On the basis of the morphological type with reference to the argument indexation in intransitive, she argued that Kulung has primarily two broad distinction in person, and stated that Kulung intransitive verb agrees with its subject in phi-features viz. person, number and clusivity.
Eshani Baishya, a research scholar from University of Delhi and Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya presented a joint paper on “Deriving Polar Questions in Assamese.” They elaborated on the terms ki and ne. The former can either be “a thematic WH (‘what’)” or “a PQ participle” and the latter is a disjunction marker. They discussed on the combination of these two terms to make up: Disjunctive Alternative Questions and Disjunctive Polar Questions.
In another joint paper on “Clitic Placement and Agree in Kuki-Chin and Kiranti languages,” Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya and Jyoti Sharma discussed the argument indexation in the Kuki-Chin and Kiranti languages which show rich indexation systems. They provided a preliminary syntactic analysis of the phenomenon with the typological implications on the index argumentation system.
Nirmal Niroula, a research scholar from the Department of Nepali, Sikkim University presented his research findings on “Agreement and its Variations in Nepali.” He presented the phi-feature and its value in Standard Nepali, Darjeelinge Nepali, North-Eastern Nepali and North-Western Nepali. He mentioned that in North-Eastern Nepali, subject agrees in person, number and honorificity whereas in the North-Western variety, there is a bleaching of person, number and honorific differences.
On “Agreement in Nepali: A study of its features and their values,” Dr. Samar Sinha studied the agreement pattern in the Darjeelinge Nepali, and stated that there is an agreement in feature and feature value in case of “K-class” and disagreement in “Kh-class.” In his talk, he also presented an algorithm for the dialectal variation induced by change in a feature value and feature in a structure as a domino effect.
Dr. Hima presented findings from her on going research on Rokdung, an endangered Kiranti language spoken in Sikkim which is taken up by the Centre. In her talk on “Pronominalisation in Rokdung: Some Preliminary Observations” she discussed the patterns of pronominalisation (an argument indexation system) in Rokdung, and highlighted the differences from the characteristic pattern of Kiranti languages. She argued that the absence of dual number and clusivity distinction in Rokdung shows that Rokdung is a distinct language from other Rai languages especially Bantawa.
The workshop concluded with the summary of the various presentations, findings and their theoretical implications as well as future revisions and directions in the study of the argument indexation system.
