Dumi is the language spoken in the vicinity of the Tap and Rava rivers and their confluence in the Khotang region (Eastern region) of Nepal. It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family, the Tibetan-Burmese subfamily, the branch of ciranti (= East Himalayan branch).
| Doomie | |
|---|---|
| Country | Nepal |
| Regions | Khotang |
| Total number of speakers | 2.500 (2009) |
| Status | |
| Classification | |
| Category | Languages of Eurasia |
Sino-Tibetan family
| |
| Language Codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | - |
| ISO 639-2 | - |
| ISO 639-3 | dus |
| WALS | |
| Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
| Ethnologue | |
| ELCat | |
| IETF | |
| Glottolog | |
Dumi language has several dialects:
- dialect of the confluence of rivers;
- dialect of Sasarka and Kharmi, south of the Tap River;
- the dialect of the population of the Baksil mountain range between the Tap and Rava rivers, excluding the part of the southern slope immediately upstream from the confluence of the rivers, and excluding the area surrounding the main catchment of the Rava River;
- Makpa dialect northwest of Rava near the confluence of rivers.
Content
Sociolinguistic Information
Dumi is the language of the ethnic group of paradise, which is characterized by multilingualism. Representatives of Paradise speak such Kiranti languages as Dumi, Sangpang, Chamling, Bantava, Kulung, Yakha, Puma, etc.
Dumi is included in the Atlas of Endangered Languages (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), almost completely supplanted by the Nepali language. Already at the time of the publication of the Dumi Grammar (George van Driem, 1993), twenty - thirty-year-old representatives of paradise were not native speakers of this language, forty-fifty-year-olds spoke the language using truncated phonology, sixty-seventy-year-olds were fluent in the language and used it for communication.
The nature of the boundary between morphemes
Agglutination
mi: n-mɨl-kəy
man-p-com
With people.
Type of Role Encoding in Prediction
Ergative type
1. Agens in the transitive verb - ergative
Khi: bi-ʔa aŋ a-ka: ts-ə
Dog-erg i'm ms-biting-1s
The dog bit me.
2. The patient with the transitive verb is absolute (the absolute has a zero exponent).
Ɨm-a iŋki khələ ŋə ham-ho: -ta
he- erg we (pi) all emph ms-wake-1p-i
He woke us all up.
3. Agent with intransitive verb - absolute.
Hammɨl khələ ŋə ham-ho: -ta
They are all EMPH 3pS-coming-NPT-23S
They will all come.
4. Patient with Intransitive Verb - Absolute
Kaʔo: -bi kaŋkɨ haŋ-a
river-loc water dry-23s
The water in the river has dried.
Labeling Type in the Name Group
Dependent
Abo-po ki: m-bi a-mo:
anyone-gen house-loc ms- stay
In whose house did you stay?
The language also has possessive prefixes that can be combined with the indicators of the genitive:
<o: ->, <a->, <ɨ>;
And possessiveness is expressed by joining the corresponding noun of the dual or plural pronoun.
intsi-, antsɨ-, iŋki-, aŋkɨ-, antsi-, ani-, ɨmnɨ-.
1. Aŋa o: -ram siru. - I took a bath.
2. Intsiʔa intsi-ram siri. - We (di) took a bath.
3. Antsɨʔa antsɨ-ram sirɨ. - We (de) took a bath.
4. Iŋkiʔa iŋki-ram sirki. - We (pi) took a bath.
5. Aŋkɨʔa aŋkɨ-ram sirka. - We (pe) took a bath.
6. Ana a-ram asirɨ. - You (s) took a bath.
7. Antsiʔa antsi-ram asiri. - You (d) took a bath.
8. Aniʔa ani-ram asirini. - You (p) took a bath.
9. Ɨma ɨ-ram sirɨ. - He took a bath.
10. Ɨmnɨʔa ɨmnɨ-ram sirsi. - They (d) took a bath.
11. Hammɨlʔa ham-ram sirini. - They (p) took a bath.
Prediction Labeling Type
Double
Mom gorum-ʔa ɨm lukt-ɨ
That bull-erg he gored- 3sP / PT
Degree of freedom of expression of grammatical meanings
Synthetic language
Basic Word Order
SOV
Ɨm-kəy antsɨ dɨm-ɨ
he-com we (de) meet-e
We met with him.
Phonetics and Phonology
Vowels
There are 5 long (/ i :, u :, e :, o :, a: /), 8 short phonemes (/ i, ɨ, u, e, o, œ, ə, a /) and 5 diphthongs (5 / e: y, əy, oy, o: ə, ai /).
Consonants
27 consonants, including retroflex, approximants, laryngeal bow.
Consonants are contrasted in deafness / voiced, aspiration.
Features
1. The transitive verb is consistent with both the agent and the patient.
2. Ergative and instrumental cases are syncretic.
Lu-ʔa thok-nɨ
stone-inst build-INF
Build from stone.
3. Distinguish singular, dual and plural.
4. In the first person singular and plural, inclusive and exclusive pronouns are distinguished.
4. The alternation of verb stems.
Only vowels, only consonants, or both can alternate.
oŋ-nɨ - enter
uŋ-tə - I enter
oŋ-kita - we (pe) enter
uŋ-a - he entered
kop-nɨ - thatch
kuph-ɨ - we (de) covered it with straw
kopt-u - I covered it with thatch
Literature
- van Driem, George. 1988. 'The verbal morphology of Dumi Rai simplicia', Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 11 (1): 134-207.
- van Driem, George. 1989. 'Reflexes of the Tibeto-Burman * <-t> directive suffix in Dumi Rai', pp. 157–167 in David Bradley, Eugénie Henderson and Martine Mazaudon, eds., Prosodic Analysis and Asian Linguistics: To Honor RK Sprigg. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- van Driem, George. 1993. A Grammar of Dumi. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.