Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Kanashi

Anju Saxena; Lars Borin

book: Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Kanashi

Open Access Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2022

Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Kanashi

Anju Saxena and Lars Borin
Funded by: Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet

Volume 38 in the series Trends in Linguistics. Documentation [TiLDOC]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110703245

Overview
Contents

About this book

Open Access / Now in Paperback

Kanashi, a Sino-Tibetan (ST) language belonging to the West Himalayish (WH) subbranch of this language family, is spoken in one single village (Malana in Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh state, India), which is surrounded by villages where – entirely unrelated – Indo-Aryan (IA) languages are spoken. Until we started working on Kanashi, very little linguistic material was available. Researchers have long speculated about the prehistory of Kanashi: how did it happen that it ended up spoken in one single village, completely cut off from its closest linguistic relatives? Even though suggestions have been made of a close genealogical relation between Kanashi and Kinnauri (another WH language), at present separated by over 200 km of rugged mountainous terrain, their shared linguistic features have not been discussed in the literature.

Based on primary fieldwork, this volume presents some synchronic and diachronic aspects of Kanashi. The synchronic description of Kanashi includes a general introduction on Malana and the Kanashi language community (chapter 1), linguistic descriptions of its sound system (chapter 2), of phonological variation in Kanashi (chapter 4), of its grammar (chapter 3) and of its intriguing numeral systems (chapter 5), as well as basic vocabulary lists (Kanashi-English, English-Kanashi) (chapter 9).

As for the diachronic and genealogical aspects (chapters 6–8), we compare and contrast Kanashi with other ST languages of this region (in particular languages of Kinnaur, notably Kinnauri), thereby uncovering some intriguing linguistic features common to Kanashi and Kinnauri which provide insights into their common history. For instance: a subset of borrowed IA nouns and adjectives in both languages end in -(a)ŋ or -(a)s, elements which do not otherwise appear in Kanashi or Kinnauri, nor in the IA donor languages (chapter 6); and both languages have a valency changing mechanism where the valency increasing marker -jaː alternates with the intransitive marker -e(d) in borrowed IA verbs (again: elements without an obvious provenance in the donor or recipient language) (chapter 7). These features are neither found in IA languages nor in the WH languages geographically closest to Kanashi (Pattani, Bunan, Tinani), but only in Kinnauri, which is spoken further away. Intriguingly, traces of some of these features are also found in some ST languages belonging to different ST subgroups (both WH and non-WH), spoken in Uttarakhand in India and in western Nepal (e.g. Rongpo, Chaudangsi, Raji and Raute). This raises fundamental questions regarding genealogical classification, language contact and prehistory of the WH group of languages and of this part of the Indian Himalayas, which are also discussed in the volume (chapter 8).

Author / Editor information

Anju Saxena, Uppsala University; Lars Borin, University of Gothenburg , both Sweden.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Synchrony: description
1 Introduction: Kanashi, its speakers, its linguistic and extralinguistic context Anju Saxena and Lars Borin Open Access Download PDF	1
2 The sound system of Kanashi Anju Saxena, Anna Sjöberg and Padam Sagar Open Access Download PDF	13
3 A linguistic sketch of Kanashi Anju Saxena, Lars Borin, Bernard Comrie and Padam Sagar Open Access Download PDF	53
Synchrony: variation
4 Linguistic variation: a challenge for describing the phonology of Kanashi Anju Saxena, Anna Sjöberg, Padam Sagar and Lars Borin Open Access Download PDF	131
5 And then there was one: Kanashi numerals from borrowed superdiversity to borrowed uniformity Anju Saxena and Lars Borin Open Access Download PDF	145
Diachrony
6 Clues to Kanashi prehistory 1: loanword adaptation in nouns and adjectives Anju Saxena, Lars Borin and Bernard Comrie Open Access Download PDF	173
7 Clues to Kanashi prehistory 2: loanword adaptation in verbs Anju Saxena, Lars Borin and Bernard Comrie Open Access Download PDF	215
Synthesis
8 Kanashi and West Himalayish: genealogy, language contact, prehistoric migrations Anju Saxena, Lars Borin and Bernard Comrie Open Access Download PDF	237
Kanashi basic vocabulary
9 Kanashi basic vocabulary Anju Saxena, Padam Sagar and Suari Devi Open Access Download PDF	257
Subject and language index Open Access Download PDF	317

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Students and Scholars interested in Sino-Tibetan and West Himalayish, Language Description and Documentation
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 16
- Coloured Illustrations: 11
- Tables: 83
Keywords: Kanashi; West Himalayish; Language Typology and Documentation

eBook

Published: February 21, 2022
ISBN: 9783110703245

Hardcover

Published: March 7, 2022
ISBN: 9783110703153

Paperback

Published: October 24, 2023
ISBN: 9783111355665