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Article published In: Ethnolinguistic contact across the Indo-Myanmar-Southwestern China mountains
Edited by Alexander R. Coupe, Randy J. LaPolla and Hideo Sawada
[Asian Languages and Linguistics 4:2] 2023
► pp. 291–330

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Phonological, lexical and grammatical borrowings and replications in Hyow, a language of the Bangladesh-Burma border area

ORCiD logo with link | SOAS University of London
Published online: 25 April 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/alal.00016.zak
Abstract
This paper presents a discussion of contact-induced borrowings and replications in Hyow, a Southeastern South Central (SC) Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Hyow shows two layers of contact-induced changes: an earlier layer under the influence of Burmese, and a more recent layer under the influence of Bangla. The Hyow desiderative -sháng closely resembles the suffix shɔn ‘want to’ in the Burmese variety of Rakhine State, suggesting that Hyow speakers previously lived in Rakhine State. In its current location, Hyow speakers are in contact with Bangla, and the presence of Indo-Aryan type relative-correlative clauses in Hyow – not found in any of the SC languages in Burma – reveals the effect of this recent contact with Bangla. Apart from demonstrating the respective antiquity of Hyow contact with Burmese and Bangla, the two examples of the borrowing of the desiderative suffix -sháng and relative-correlative clauses also show borrowing and replication as two distinct types of contact-induced change (. (2005). Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . (2006). The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This paper gives the first account of phonological, lexical and grammatical borrowings and replications to understand how language contact has shaped Hyow.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Overview of Hyow
    • 2.1Phonological
    • 2.2Morphological
    • 2.3Syntactic
  • 3.Language contact in the CHT
  • 4.Borrowings and replications in Hyow
    • 4.1Borrowings in Hyow
      • 4.1.1Phonological borrowings
      • 4.1.2Lexical borrowings
        • 4.1.2.1Nouns
          • 4.1.2.1.1General items
          • 4.1.2.1.2Fruits and vegetables
          • 4.1.2.1.3Religious words
          • 4.1.2.1.4Months and days
          • 4.1.2.1.5Kinship words
        • 4.1.2.2Verbs
        • 4.1.2.3Other lexical categories
          • 4.1.2.3.1ɔ́lɔ́ ‘again, more’
          • 4.1.2.3.2lúp ‘like’
          • 4.1.2.3.3bɔ́út ‘many’ and tháshá ‘very’
          • 4.1.2.3.4dwádúy ‘quickly’
          • 4.1.2.3.5útú ‘together’
      • 4.1.3Grammatical borrowings
        • 4.1.3.1Genitive case clitic
        • 4.1.3.2Locative noun
        • 4.1.3.3Superlative degree of comparison
        • 4.1.3.4Experiential aspect marker
        • 4.1.3.5Desiderative suffix -shâng
        • 4.1.3.6Capabilative suffix -hnʉ̂ng
        • 4.1.3.7Obligative modality suffix -láʔ
        • 4.1.3.8Nominalizer and dependent clause markers
          • 4.1.3.8.1khô ‘time’ and khín ‘season’
          • 4.1.3.8.2gúné ‘because’
        • 4.1.3.9Utterance modifier
    • 4.2Replications in Hyow
      • 4.2.1Collocations
      • 4.2.2Conjunct verb constructions
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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