Sociolinguistic typology in North East India: A tale of two branches

Scott DeLancey

doi:10.1515/jsall-2014-0004

Article

Sociolinguistic typology in North East India: A tale of two branches

Scott DeLancey
Scott DeLancey is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oregon, where he has taught since 1982. He has published extensively on descriptive and comparative Tibeto-Burman linguistics, as well as on Southeast Asian and western North American languages. He has also contributed work on grammaticalization, case theory, and evidentiality.

Published/Copyright: March 15, 2014

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From the journal Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics Volume 1 Issue 1

Abstract

Long-standing ideas about the “linguistic cycle” hold that languages naturally shift from analytic to synthetic morphological patterns and then from synthetic back to analytic in a long-term cyclic pattern. But the demonstrable history of actual languages shows dramatic differences in their tendencies to shift in either direction, and there are well-known examples of language families which preserve complexity or analyticity over millennia. We see the same thing within Tibeto-Burman, where some branches are highly synthetic and others analytic. Examining the history of a representative language from each of two TB branches in Northeast India, analytic Boro (Boro-Garo) and synthetic Lai (Kuki-Chin), suggests a possible sociolinguistic explanation for these tendencies. Trudgill and others have suggested that the tendency to develop and maintain strongly analytic grammatical patterns is associated with “exoteric” languages spoken by large populations, and regularly used to communicate with outsiders, while the development and maintenance of morphological complexity is characteristic of “esoteric” languages spoken by small communities and used only to communicate with other native speakers. This paper presents Boro-Garo and Kuki-Chin as exemplifying these tendencies.

Keywords: Tibeto-Burman; Boro; Kuki-Chin; linguistic complexity; sociolinguistic typology

About the author

Scott DeLancey

Scott DeLancey is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oregon, where he has taught since 1982. He has published extensively on descriptive and comparative Tibeto-Burman linguistics, as well as on Southeast Asian and western North American languages. He has also contributed work on grammaticalization, case theory, and evidentiality.

Published Online: 2014-3-15

Published in Print: 2014-3-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jsall-2014-0004

Keywords for this article

Tibeto-Burman; Boro; Kuki-Chin; linguistic complexity; sociolinguistic typology