EAN: 9783111355665

SYNCHRONIC AND DIACHRONIC ASPECTS OF KANASHI ...

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) 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 -ja 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).

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