Language Contact and the Genetic Position of Milang (Eastern Himalaya)  

Oleh:

Post, Mark W. ; Modi, Yankee

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Anthropological Linguistics (ada di JSTOR) vol. 53 no. 3 (2011), page 215-258.
Fulltext: 41756851.pdf (3.73MB)

Isi artikel

This article discusses the relationship between Milang, a little-known language of the Eastern Himalayan region, and the Tani branch of Tibeto-Burman languages with which it has been provisionally aligned. Re-viewing this alignment, we find little positive evidence in its favor. Bringingnew linguistic and cultural field data to bear on the question, we conclude thatMilang contains much linguistic material that cannot possibly be directly in-herited from the ancestor of all Tani languages proper (i.e., “Proto-Tani”). Wetherefore suggest that material shared with Tani languages proper is eitherreconstructible to an earlier, pre-Proto-Tani stage, or has been subsequentlyacquired through contact with Eastern Tani languages. Material not sharedwith Tani languages proper may reflect an unknown substrate. While ourresulting re-classification of Tani languages is thus in a sense quite minor, ithas some important implications: first, that cultural and linguistic diversityin the Eastern Himalaya was probably much greater than has been assumed,and second, that sociolinguistic and cultural information are critical factorsin the evaluation of linguistic subgrouping proposals and the reconstruction of pre-history.

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