review of literature - information and library...
TRANSCRIPT
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 Ethnographic Records/Studies
The Nagas are anthropologically the best known ethnic
groups of the Indian sub-continent. A number of books and
innumerable articles are published in learned journals and these
dealt with many specific aspects of the Naga culture. Hence, a
few selected books are taken here for the purpose of review.
J H Hutton (1921) in his The Angami Nagas made an
interesting account of the culture and custom of the Nagas. He
also tried to explain the derivation of the word "Naga" from
"Nagna" meaning 'mountaineer", 'mountainous' or 'Inaccessible
place'. Later on he reluctantly recanted this opinion in favour of
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"Nagas" as "Magna" or "Naked". He also discussed the head
hunting, the morung etc. in the book which gave us a clear Idea
about the Nagas and their ways of living. The other book by
Hutton (1921) The Sema Nagas is an authentic account of the
social and cultural life of the Sema Naga tribe. He included
everything in these two books about the Nagas - from their birth
to their death, all the customs, all the taboos. Hutton's
knowledge of the Nagas was so good that he was considered to
be the "chief authority on the Naga tribes".
J P Mills (1922) made a detailed account of the life of the
Lotha Naga tribe in The Lotha Nagas and in The Rengma Nagas
(1937), he studied the origin, domestic life, laws and customs,
religion and folk tales of the Rengma Nagas in detail. He was so
exhausted after finishing this book that he declared in the
preface of this monumental work that "it seems certain, humanly
speaking that it is the last tribal monograph I shall ever write".
Naga Path by Ursula Graham Bower (1950) is a book full
of interesting information on the life of the Nagas. She wrote this
book when she visited India as a twenty-three year old girl-and
described the life and culture of the Nagas as she saw it. Being
a young girl and an amateur writer, her book lacks the touch of
an expert and the anthropological knowledge and information
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one naturally expects in such a book. So, this book is suited for
leisure reading only.
India's North East Frontier in the Nineteenth Century
(1959) edited with an introduction by Elwin Verrier is like a house
full of gold as far as valuable information on the tribes of North
East, especially, the Nagas, are concerned. Different articles
written by well-known scholars like A Mackenzie, W Robinson, E
T Dalton etc. gave a detailed and vivid account of the life of the
Naga tribals.
Nagaland by Elwin Verrier (1961) is extensive and
authentic study of the Nagas in general. This is the book which
is most often quoted in any present work on the Nagas and
Nagaland. Any book on Nagas remain incomplete without a
reference from this valuable book. Verrier put forward his own
theory about the origin of the word "Naga" in this book. He says
that though the derivation of the word "Naga" is obscure, the
most likely derivation is that it has come from the word "Nok"
meaning people. In this book, Verrier discusses the different
Naga tribes and their history, their life style, culture, the creation
of Nagaland etc. and the impact of modernisation on the life of
the Nagas.
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All the above mentioned treatises were written by the
Britishers. The first ever book written by an Indian on Nagaland
is On the Slippery Slope in Nagaland by D R Mankekar (1967).
The narrative of the book is set against the back drop of the
recent, and earlier, history of the Naga problem. So, this book is
written from the point of view of a political observer rather than
the anthropological one.
Among the Indians, the most extensive and authentic study
of the Nagas was made by M Horam in Naga Polity (1975), and
Social and Cultural Life of Nagas (1977). Another book is
Nagaland by N Chakraborty (1979). The earlier mentioned
works by the foreigners are no doubt authentic and interesting
because the writers lived among the tribes while writing and
thoroughly studied the Nagas in their own environment yet the
indigenous touch was missing in those works. It is because of
the foreign writers' understandable but immense difficulty of
perceiving what lies below the surface of the Naga way of life.
Above all, those writers did not understand the various
languages spoken by the Naga tribes. Without understanding
the language, it is almost impossible to have a proper grasp of
the culture and life style of the concerned group.
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Being a Naga himself, Horam has this advantage and he
presented an account of the Nagas in the above mentioned two
books. He discussed the background of the Nagas to establish
their historical Identity by tracing the history from the Ahom
era onwards. Horam extensively discussed the historical
background, the derivation of the word "Naga", the origin of the
Nagas, their common characteristics, the family, the clan, village
organisation, village administration, taboos etc. In short, Naga
Polity is a complete description of the Nagas along with their
society. The other book Social and Cultural Life of Nagas is a
descriptive tale of the Tangkhul Nagas. In this book the author
gave a detailed description of the Tangkhul Nagas, their
festivals, songs, dances, social organisation, head-hunting,
social change etc.
Recently, S Mitra Channa (1992) edited book Nagaland - A
Contemporary Ettinography has come out and it has different
articles dealing with the 'Khel gate' and social structure of the
Nagas, the religious ethos of the Angami Nagas and so on.
Apparently, the articles look good but it lacks depth as well as
the knowledge of the Nagas one must have before writing
anything on them. The information given in the book looks
bookish and the writers must have followed the arm-chair
technique.
The most recent account of the ethnographic study of the
Nagas was presented by N K Das and C L Imechen (1994) in
Nagaland. They gave a detailed description of all the Naga
tribes living in Nagaland along with their socio-cultural life and
changes that is taking place in Nagaland.
2.2 Overview of Grammatical Studies On Nagamese (Up To 1993)
The first reference of Nagamese is found in Mutton's who is
considered to be the chief authority on the Naga tribes, The
Angami Nagas. He collected most of the necessary information
for this book through the medium of Nagamese only. It is Hutton
who for the first time designated Nagamese (for him Naga
Assamese) as the "pigeon" Assamese which forms the lingua
franca of the Naga Hills. He said that the Naga Assamese is a
"bastard tongue" and it varies a good deal in Nagaland. Though
he mentioned in the same page that a lot of "Naga words are in
common use" in Nagamese which he did not cite, we could not
get any such Naga words in Nagamese whHe we conducted the
field work in different parts of Nagaland. It means the Naga
words, which were found by Hutton, if at all, must have been
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retexified by the words from the other dominant languages.
Hutton was full of praise for Nagamese for its role as the sole
medium of communication. To quote him,
Naga-Assamese, though a somewhat clumsy vehicle of conversation, is very easy to pick up and with a little application can be spoken perfectly - provided the learner has no previous knowledge of real Assamese. It is, moreover, an excellent vehicle for the expression of Naga turns of speech and thought, and therefore, infinitely better as a medium for conversing to Nagas than Hindustani, or even English, would be, being capable, as it is, of representing almost the precise shade of meaning required.
Hutton also noted that "the first and second personal
inflexions of the verbs are usually disregarded in favour of the
third person and the plural number is largely ignored in
Nagamese". About the Nagamese phonology, he said that /s/
and /c/ are given the English quality as a rule in Nagamese and
these are retained as it is in Nagamese whereas the same two
sounds are pronounced as /h/ and Is/ respectively in Assamese.
The linguistic characteristics of Nagamese that emerges
from the available grammatical descriptions, though very few,
points to a very rigid SOV syntax, almost Assamese like
morphology with simplifications here and there and a simple
phonology having Assamese bases. Varying In scope, nature
and methodology, M V Sreedhar's Naga Pidgin A
Sociolinguistic Study of Inter-lingual Communication Pattern in
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Nagaland (1974) and Standardized Grammar of Naga Pidgin
(1985), B K Boruah's Nagamiz Kothalaga Niyom - A Primary
Grammar on Nagamese (1985) and Nagamese : The Language
of Nagaland (1993) give Interesting insights Into the structure
and nature of Nagamese. The review and evaluation of these
books provides a strong rationale for the scope and orientation of
this present work in Nagamese.
M V Sreedhar's (1974) Naga Pidgin : A Sociolinguistic
Study of Inter-lingual Communication Pattern in Nagaland is the
first ever linguistic study of Nagamese. Sreedhar for the first
time studied and recorded the Nagamese language, though
Hutton (1921) tried to describe it very briefly. This book, being
the earliest attempt towards a descriptive analysis of the
language, makes some valid generalisations about the language.
Sreedhar could not compare Nagamese with Assamese, the
source language, as the description of Assamese was not
available to him which he himself acknowledges in the book.
Sreedhar, above all, faced a major hurdle in collecting the data
on Nagamese because of, the ambivalent attitude of the Nagas
with reference to Nagamese, especially the educated ones who
even refuse to admit the knowledge and existence of this mode
of communication system in Nagaland. In spite of all these
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deficiencies, the book has provided the standard reference work
and it has become the path finder on Nagamese.
Naga Pigdin : A Sociolinguistic Study of Ineriingual
Communication Pattern in Nagaland is divided into four parts.
Part I discusses the general information of Nagaland, sub-
grouping of the Naga languages and the development of Naga
pidgin. Sreedhar said in the introduction chapter by quoting
Whinnom that "a pidgin once formed may play a part in the
formation of other pidgins. This has happened in the case of
Naga pidgin also". While Whinnom is very much correct In
saying that a pidgin may give rise to another pidgin for which
Whinnom has evidence, one wonders why Sreedhar says that
Naga pidgin plays a part in the formation of other pidgins. No
Information Is available of the role played by Nagamese In the
formation of other pidgin In India and elsewhere.
Sreedhar also says that "the Kacharls In Nagaland, have
lost their original language, an Assamese dialect, and use only
Naga pidgin" which Is not the case as we have found out In our
field work. They still speak their mother tongue - .the Kachari
language.
In the fourth chapter, he discusses the various language
contact situations where Nagamese is used. The first situation is
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Naga-non-Naga where he says that some Marwaries knew Naga
pidgin even before they moved into Nagaland which seems to us
highly improbable, because Nagamese is used only in Nagaland,
not even in Assam. The third situation is non-Nagas-Nagas and
here Sreedhar said that the uneducated non-Nagas use the
Naga pidgin for communication with other non-Nagas in
Nagaland but it is not true. They usually use Hindi as we found
out even though they can not speak it fluently and grammatically.
Part 2 of the book deals with the phonemes of the Naga
pidgin. Sreedhar identifies 6 vowels and 26 consonants. He
also says that different Naga communities have different set of
consonants as far as Naga pidgin is concerned. On the basis of
the features of the consonantal system of Naga pidgin like
presence/absence of voicing with the stops, opposition between
the flap and the lateral, three way opposition in the place of
articulation with the fricatives, he sub-grouped the Naga pidgin
speakers into three -
(1) The southern group consisting of the speakers of
Angami, Kachari, Zeme, Liangmei, Rongmei, Rengma,
Sema, Khezha, Chokri and Mao.
(2) The northern group consisting of the speakers of
Konyak, Sangtam, Phom, Chang and Khizmngam.
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(3) The central group consisting of the speakers of Lotha,
Ao and Yimchunger.
The Northern Naga pidgin has a total of 18 consonants as
opposed to the Southern group's 26 whereas the Central Naga
pidgin has 19 consonants, says Sreedhar. He also notes that
out of the 26 consonants of the Naga pidgin, only nine, viz., four
voiceless unaspirated stops, three nasals, and the two
approximants are stable with the Naga pidgin of ail the
communities.
Part 3 of the book is comprised of the basic grammar of the
Naga pidgin. In his analysis of nominals which he sub-divided
into nouns and pronouns, Sreedhar recognises two numbers for
the nouns - singular and plural and found no grammatical
gender. He also notes that Naga pidgin pronouns are capable of
showing opposition in person, capable of taking case suffixes
and showing opposition in gender. In personal pronouns, he
seems to have missed /tui/ and /toi/ meaning 'you'.
He further notes that the plural marker /biJak/ has an
allomorph /kha:n/, and /bilak/ occurs with the noun and /kha.n/
occurs with the pronouns. But our data show that /kha;n/ occurs
with all the nouns and pronouns and /bila:k/ Is very rarely used in
Nagamese.
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According to Sreedhar, there are 6 cases and 5 case
markers In Naga pidgin. They are mentioned below :
Nominative 9
Accusative IVJ
Dative /ke/
Locative /te/
Instrumental /di/
Genitive /r/
Sreedhar sub-classified the post-positions of Naga-pidgin
into two sub-classes without giving any name for the sub
classes. He mentions the following post-positions - /pora:/ from
/lagot/ with, /la:ga:/ of, /a:gote/ in front of /uparti/ above, /nice/
below, /bhitorte/ inside, /da:yna:te/ left side, /picote/ behind.
Part 4 of this book is comprised of appendices discussing
the correspondence of the consonantal phonemes of the
Southern, the Northern and the Central Naga pidgin in the
Phonology section.
Sreedhar's second book on Nagamese is Standardised
Grammar of Naga Pidgin (1985). It is more descriptive and
elaborate in nature than the previous one. This book is divided
into three chapters and the appendix. The first chapter Is
introduction where he tried to trace the development of
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Nagamese from historical perspective. He also discusses the
overall characteristics of pidgin as well as the socio-political
background of pidgin in general. According to Sreedhar, the
socio-political background of Nagamese is very interesting. He
said that absolutely no evidence is available about the origin of
Nagamese. He identifies two main sources for the spread of
Nagamese in every nook and corner of Nagaland. These two
are General Road Engineering Force (GREF) and the Marwaries.
He tried to compare Nagamese with Assamese very briefly but
he failed there miserably as his most of the Assamese data
were almost wrong. For example, he said that /ma:nuhor/ means
men in Assamese but in reality it is /ma:nuhbila:ky men.
Similarly, /bou/ mother, it should be /ma;/ mother, not /duta:
ma:nuh/ but /dujan ma:nuh/ two men etc.
He further said that Naga pidgin can play a very important
role in the education at the primary level because every child is
exposed to the Naga pidgin from the early childhood and
academically Naga pidgin can be treated as the alternate mother
tongue of the Nagas. He said that the failure of the Naga
children in the examination is because of the use of a completely
alien language English from class IV onwards. "They fail to
grasp the elementary concepts in different subjects, year after
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year" in English. Keeping in view this kind of problem, Sreedhar
advocates the use of Nagamese at the school level to achieve a
higher literacy rate in Nagaland. But at the same time, he also
acknowledges the "unwarranted ambivalent attitude of the
educated Nagas towards the Naga pidgin".
Naga pidgin has a lot of variation and "this grammar of the
standardized Naga pidgin is the result of fusion of various
features found in different varieties of the Naga pidgin", says
Sreedhar.
The second chapter on Phonology has three major
sections - phonemes, phonotactics and syllabic pattern.
Sreedhar establishes 28 phonemes including 6 vowels and
22 consonants this time. The missing consonants that could not
find its place this time in this book but mentioned in the earlier
book are the four voiced aspirated stops /bh/, /dh/, /jh/ and /gh/.
The syllabic structure of the Nagamese monosyllabic
words could be sub-grouped into six classes, says Sreedhar. He
gave the examples :
vc /a:j/ today
cv /bo/ wife of a brother
cvc /ta:n/ hard
ccvc /tris/ thirty
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ccvcc /kla:rk/ clerk
cvcc /benj/ bench
Sreedhar points out that V can not occure alone in Naga pidgin.
In phonotactics, he discusses the different possible
consonant clusters. He said,
...the largest number of consonants that occur in a sequence is three, that too only in the inter-vocal position and only two vowels can occur in a sequence. Only one sequence of vowel occurs in word final position.
The third chapter of the book deals with grammar. In his
analysis of nouns, Sreedhar recognises two numbers - singular
and plural and no grammatical gender but at the same time he
says that "an extremely limited number of nouns show opposition
in gender", for instance,
/ma:ma:/ uncle /ma:mi/ aunt
/murga:/ cock /murgi/ hen
/chokra:/ boy /chokri/ girl etc.
Apart from this, a vast majority of the nouns including the
kinship terms in Naga pidgin do not take any gender marker.
Examples mentioned by him are :
/pua:li/ daughter
/sua:li/ girl
/koka.y/ elder brother
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/didi/ elder sister
/bo/ elder brother's wife
/ma:kela:/ girl's dhoti etc.
He further states that some nouns do not show any overt
number markers, but It takes case markers as in the following :
/la:thi/ stick/s
/la:thite/ in the stick/s
/nodi/ river/s
/nodite/ in the river/s
Sreedhar sub-classifies the Naga pidgin pronouns into
personal pronoun, Reflexive pronoun, Relative pronoun,
Interrogative pronoun. Demonstrative pronoun. Definite and
indefinite pronoun and Partitive pronoun on the basis of the
presence or absence of certain categories.
According to Sreedhar, numerical or the number system of
Naga pidgin is on the base of ten. "It has also an alternate form
having a base twenty". He said that ail the numerals, primary or
secondary can be converted into an ordinal numeral by suffixing
the ordinal, marker /la:/ or /tyor/ to the concerned numeral.
Sreedhar, this time, finds seven case relations, one more
than .the eartier mentioned book. The extra one identified by
Sreedhar is Sociative and the marker is /lagot/. He further states
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that the "instrumental and locative case do not occur with nouns
human being class".
The post-positions in Naga pidgin occur after a noun or a
pronoun, Sreedhar said.
In the analysis of the verb in Naga pidgin, Sreedhar
remarks that the verbs can be sub-classified into two-locative
and non-locative and on the syntagmatic axis two types of verbs
can be found - auxiliary and principal verb. He further said that
some of the auxiliary verbs may be preposed to another auxiliary
verb, but a principal verb would never be postposed to an
auxiliary verb.
In the discussion on tense, he says that the Naga pidgin
verbs show a two way opposition on the paradigmatic axis, viz.,
simple past and simple non-past. Sreedhar said,
The non-past form usually indicates the future tense, but it is also used to indicate the present tense. The tenses of a verb in Naga pidgin do not show any agreement/concord in number/person with the number/person of the noun/pronoun functioning as the subject.
He establishes three tense morphemes with the help of
examples. They are :
Simple past - /se, sile/
Simple future - /bo/
Simple present - /sse/
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According to Sreedhar, two aspects are available in
Nagamese. They are progressive and habitual and the
progressive aspect combines freely with the tenses. The modals
in Naga pidgin show a seven-way opposition. They are
imperative, obligatory, indicative, potential, permissive,
conditional and infinitive.
Sreedhar describes the formation of adjectives in Naga
pidgin by saying that functional adjectives are derived from a
noun/pronoun/numeral whereas the adjectives proper are divided
into two, viz., quantifiers and qualifiers. The comparison is
expressed by putting the noun or pronoun to the compared in the
nominative and the noun or pronoun with which it is compared in
the accusative case. For example,
/moy citra:k usa: kori ba:l ia:ge/
I like Chitra more than Usha.
The mechanism involved in getting the superlative degree is to prepose the indefinite pronoun /sob/ "all" to the comparative particle and the two together in their turn are preposed to the quality compared. When the noun/pronoun which is compared to some other noun/pronoun, forms part of the predicate, it is in the accusative", says Sreedhar.
He cites the example :
/citra: kla:ste sob kori donia: sua:li/
Chitra is the most beautiful girl in the class.
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In his treatment of adverbs in Nagamese, Sreedhar says
that "in addition to the invariable adjectives, nouns/pronouns
followed by case suffixes/postpositions could also occur in the
slots of the adverbs". He divides the adverbs into three classes,
viz., adverbs of manner, of time and of location and direction.
Sreedhar divides the particles of Naga pidgin into two.
They are conjunctives and miscellaneous. Under the heading of
conjunctives, he includes those particles that connect words,
phrases, clauses and sentences. He gives a list of these
particles - /nahole/ if not, /kintu/ but, /jima:n...hima:n/ as much
as, /eru/ and, /jodi/ if etc. Under miscellaneous he mentions the
emphatic particle /hi/, the definite particle /tu/, the inclusive
particle /bi/.
Sreedhar said that a simple sentence in Naga pidgin would
have the word order of Subject, Object, Verb, i.e., SOV.
Nagamese has three negative particles. These are /nay/, /no/
and /n9/ and all the three negative particles have mutually
exclusive environments. He sets up the negative particle /na/ as
the negative morpheme and considers the other two as the
positional variants of /na/.
According to Sreedhar, two techniques are used for
transforming a statement into an interrogative in the Naga pidgin.
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These are - (i) by postposing to the statement concerned, the particles /no+ki/ standing respectively for negative and Interrogative particles for tagged type of questions anticipating a yes/no answer, and (ii) by placing the interrogative pronoun in the approximate slot of the statement concerned for obtaining information on any specific issue/point.
In the Appendix 1, he reprinted the article, "Standardization
of Naga pidgin" published in the 'Journal of Creole Studies'
(1977). In this article, he talks briefly about the vowels,
consonants and under grammar, number, case, gender, tenses
etc. and ends the article by trying to justify the objectives of
standardization of Naga pidgin. To quote him,
one of the objectives of standardizing the Naga pidgin is to exploit it for obtaining the optimal benefit of the language to the Nagas, particularly in the area of education.... A major objective of this exercise is to see how best the Naga pidgin could be exploited for improving the educational standards in Nagaland.
Appendix 2 is again a repetition of what he has said earlier
about the Nagamese phonology, grammar etc. It is very difficult
to understand why did he repeat it again. His main objective of
having Appendix 2 must have been to find out the similarities
•that exist among the different varieties of Nagamese spoken all
over Nagaland.
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The Appendix 3 contains texts of Nagamese. It includes
folk tales like /sirkoiay thaka: ba:l/ immortal love, /mejik pathor/
magic stone etc. Sreedhar said about the folktales,
...a large number of folk songs and folk tales of the Nagas pertain to the warfare, heroic deeds of their warriors etc. Apart from this, every Naga is concerned with two other issues in his life. One concerns his love affair, and the other,
hardship and sufferings of children
B K Boruah's Nagamiz Kothalaga Niyom : A Primary
Grammar on Nagamese (1985) is written in Nagamese and
basically it is a traditional grammar book. It seems from the
contents of the book, that this grammar is based on Sreedhar's
(1974). Boruah finds six vowels, seven diphthongs and twenty
three consonants.
He divides the Nagamese sentences into three types - (i)
simple, (ii) complex and (iii) compound, and says that Nagamese
uses more simple sentences than any other types.
Boruah divided nouns into several classes from the
traditional point of view. These are animate, inanimate nouns,
nouns indicating names, nouns for time, kinship nouns etc.
These are not at all linguistic classification of nouns.
Boruah finds two numbers in Nagamese - singular and
plural and four plural markers which is quite surprising. These
markers are /bur/, /bula:k/, /kha:n/ and /luk/.
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According to Boruah, Nagamese has seven cases and
twelve case markers. He gives a list of It along with the
examples.
(i) Nominative 0 , lei, Ihel
(11) Accusative /ke/
(iii) Dative /loi/, l\el
(iv) Genitive /r/, /la:ga:/
(v) Locative /te/
(vi) Instrumental /zoriyote/, /pora:/
(vii) Ablative /t-pora:/, /r-pora:/
Boruah finds passive sentences in Nagamese and he said
that the passive sentences are seldom used In Nagamese. He
gives the examples.
(i) /itu bikri kora: hobo/
This will be sold,
(ii) /za:nowa:rtu ma:ra: hoise/
The animal was killed,
(iii) /ta:ka:tu a:ma:r luwa: hoise/
The money was taken by me.
He says that Nagamese uses three definitives and these
are /kha:n/, /ta:/ and /tu/. But it seems to us that Boruah is
wrong here when he includes /kha:n/ under definitives. /Kha:n/
38
is a plural marker In Nagamese, not a definitive. It is never used
as a definitive as our data indicates.
B K Boruah's Nagamese : the Language of Nagaland
(1993) Is the last book so far about Nagamese. The book is
divided Into three parts. In the first part he discusses the origin
of the Nagas, the Naga languages, Naga-Ahom relations and
historical background of Nagamese at length. In the second part
he analyses the Nagamese phonology, in the third part the
morphology of Nagamese. Finally in the appendices, he
provides glossary and text specimens, word list, onomatopoeic
and echo words, terms of relationship and specimens of
Nagamese language.
About the term "Nagamese", Boruah said in the
introduction that "the term Nagamese is a blended or
contaminated formation of Naga-Assamese. The word is newly
coined by the people of All India Radio Station, Kohima". He
further states that
during my fieldwork in Nagaland it has been informed that the word "Nagamese" was coined by three persons, viz., (i) Lt. Mr Akum Imlong, former Minister of Information and Publicity and Tuensang Affairs, (ii) Mr M G Baidya, former and first Station Director, All India Radio, Kohima and (iii) the informant himself, i.e., Mr Asim Roy, present Producer, Farm and Home, All India Radio, Kohima.
39
In the same chapter he said that Nagamese is enriched
with "tadbhava" words whereas semi ""tatsama" words are very
small in number and "tatsama words are rarely used in
Nagamese". Interestingly he said that "the native words, i.e.,
words of Indian languages other than Assamese came through
the Assamese language" and it is very difficult to believe him
here.
He further said that some words from the Naga languages
are incorporated in Nagamese. To quote him, "...these words
are incorporated from the sources of their own languages and
dialects. Such words are /cimta:/ gongs, /celemzi/ a big basket,
/philla:/ thigh etc." But Mr Boruah is very much wrong as far as
the word /cimta:/ is concerned. This is not at all a native Naga
word. This word Is Assamese and to be precise, belongs to the
Kamrupi dialect of Assamese and it is extensively used by the
speakers of the Kamrupi dialect of Assamese.
In Part 2, Chapter 1, Boruah establishes six vowel
phonemes which can occur in all the positions, twenty three
consonantal phonemes and eight diphthongs. According to him,
Nagamese shows clusters of tv/o and three consonants. Two
consonant clusters are very frequent while three consonant
clusters are rare in Nagamese.
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Chapter 2 discuses the vowels and their treatment. In this
chapter, the author tries to show the use of different vowels in
the Identical Nagamese and Assamese words and make some
generalisation about it. He lists several words from both the
languages like the following.
Nagamese Gloss Assamese
/kopa:l/
/mota:/
forehead
male
/kapail/
/mata;/
/hoha:i/
/itu/
/mazte/
help
this
on the table
/xaha:i/
/eito/
/mezate/
He discusses the phonetic changes in chapter 3 under
several headings like aphaeresis, prothesis, anaptyxis etc. by
citing some examples from Nagamese and the sources of these
words. He states that the root /kha:/ "to eat" gives /kha:ise/ in
Nagamese and because of the working of analogy, /za:/ "to go"
gives rise to /za.ise/ whereas in Assamese it is /goise/. It may
be because of simplification also as we know that pidgins are
known to make the structure as simple as possible. Boruah
further states that the Assamese sibilant Ixl shows two types of
changes in /h/ and /s/ but did not give any rule for it.
41
According to Boruah, the nouns of Nagamese are inflected
for gender, number and case. The distinction of gender In
Nagamese Is Implied by the use of two qualifying terms - /mota:/
'male' and /ma:lkl/ 'female'. He also said that there are many
words of common gender in Nagamese. Boruah stated that "the
gender of Nagamese can be distinguished in three ways :
(i) by prefixing words indicating male and female.
These words are used as adjectives to the
qualifying noun;
(il) using different terms for male and female;
(Hi) by adding suffixes / - I / , /-ni/ or /-oni/."
Boruah said that Nagamese has to numbers - singular and
plural. "The duel meaning is conveyed by the use of the numeral
term denoting 'two'". He recognises four plural suffixes and
these are /bur/, /bula:k/, /kha:n/ and /luk/. The seven case
identified by him are Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental,
Dative, Ablative, Genitive and Locative.
Boruah describes three types of enclitic definitives such as
/kha.n/, /ta:/ and /tu/ and said that /kha.n/ is used after nouns,
pronouns, and adjectives, /ta:/ is used after numerals and
pronominal adjectives while /tu/ is used after noun substantives
and pronouns In a definitive sense in Nagamese. To express the
42
indefinite sense, Nagamese uses /dui ekta:/ two or so, /kunu/
someone or no one, /kiba:/ something.
According to Boruah, Nagamese has seven types of
pronouns, viz., personal, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite,
reflexive, relative and correlative pronouns.
In the discussion on adjectives, he said that the sense of
comparative is expressed by the use of post-positions /koi/ or
/kori/ which follows the noun or pronoun of comparison. For
example,
/itu kita:b hitu koi/ kori da:r|or/
This book is bigger than that
The sense of superlative is expressed by prefixing words
/sobse/, /ekdom/, /ekeba;re/, /khub/, /bohut/, /besi/ etc.
He also provides a list of adverb of time, place and
manner.
Boruah lists all types of numerals like cardinals, ordinals,
multiplicatives, fractionals etc.
In his description of verbs In Nagamese, Boruah classifies
them into transitive and intransitive, discussing the verb base
which are broadly classified into four types like causative base,
reciprocal base, Iterative base and compound base. He
recognises three tenses - present, past and future in Nagamese.
43
According to Boruah,
the formation of the present participle in Nagamese is not similar with that of Assamese. In Assamese language the present participle is /-ote/.... To denote the sense Nagamese language has got two forms - (i) the participle /-te/ with the word /tha:ka:/ is added after the principal verb. For example, /kha:i tha:ka:te/ 'while eating' (ii) the word for 'time or moment' i.e., /homoyte/ 'at the time' is used after the verb followed by the word /tha:ka:/. For example, /kha:i tha:ka: homoyte/ 'while eating'.
Boruah recognises two past participles in Nagamese, viz.,
/ -a: / and /-wa:/. He also said that the same /-a: / is used in
Assamese as well in the role of past participle.
For Boruah, Nagamese expresses the passive sense with
the help of the conjugated verb root /ho/ 'to be' which Is placed
after the verb base as in the following.
/zua: hoisile, hoise/ had been gone
/bikri kora: hobo/ will be sold
But he said that the "passive form is not in much use in
Nagamese".
Boruah classifies the Nagamese conjunctions into four
types - cumulative, alternative, adversative and subordinate, and
gives a list of some conjunctions.
Boruah said that the negative marker in Nagamese is /no/
and it is prefixed to a fully inflected verbal form. Apart from this
44
/no/, Nagamese also uses /na:i/ which shows two forms in its
use -
(i) /na:i/ - /ta:r ta.te na.i/ He is not there,
(ii) /na:i a:se/ /ta.r ta:te na:i a:se/ He is not there.
Boruah lists some of the emphatic forms along with
examples which are used in Nagamese.
Boruah said that the normal order of words in a sentence in
Nagamese is of the following pattern -
(i) demonstrative + possessive + adjective + noun
(ii) demonstrative + possessive + adverb +
adjective + noun
and said that these sentence structures are same as in
Assamese.
In the appendix, he provides a list of common Nagamese
words giving English and Assamese meaning, lists some of the
onomatopoeic and echo words without offering any explanation
of its constructions. At the end of the book, he also cites four
specimens passages of Nagamese language.
2.3 Lexical Records
There are very few attempts towards providing the lexicon
of Nagamese. M V Sreedhar (1974, 1985) made the first ever
attempt and tried to note down the Nagamese lexicons. He
45
listed nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs in his worlds.
His studies indicate a high incidence of Assamese words in
Nagamese. Sreedhar did not make any analysis of the
Nagamese lexicon.
B K Boruah's (1985, 1993) works provide a skeletal lexicon
of Nagamese. Boruah's work shows a much higher percentage
of original Assamese words which leads one to doubt whether
these are real Nagamese words or not. Boruah provides a list of
nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions,
numerals, some village names etc.
There is no Nagamese dictionary, it seems. Though
Sreedhar (1974) mentions that there Is one Nagamese dictionary
viz., Nagamese into Anglo-Hindi-Ao written by one D Baruah
(1968) of Mokokchung, we could not get hold of a copy of this
dictionary hence we can not comment on it.
2.4 Text Collections/Folk Literature in Written Form
Nagamese is a pidgin and above all it is a spoken
language used for day to day oral communication only. Apart
from this, the Nagas, themselves, are having ambivalent attitude
towards this language. They consider it to be a bastard tongue
and the educated Nagas altogether refuse to acknowledge its
existence as well as its knowledge in front of the outsiders.
46
Even though it carries the maximum functional load among all
the languages used in Nagaland, Nagamese does not have much
textual materials because of the negative attitude of its own
speakers. Whatever written materials are available in Nagamese,
these are, surprisingly, written not by the Nagas but mostly by
the non-Nagas, especially by the Assamese. The credit for this
goes to the Assam Sahitya Sabha, the premier literary
organisation of the whole N E region, for holding a seminar on
Nagamese in 1984.
The available textual material in Nagamese reflects, both
in terms of thematic content and linguistic structure, the general
socio-cultural life of the Nagas. As mentioned by Sreedhar
(1985)
...till very recently, a major concern of the Nagas was the struggle for existence. This arose primarily out of the inter-tribal and at times even inter-clan feuds. Therefore, a large number of folk songs and folk tales of the Nagas pertain to the war-fare, heroic deeds of their warriors etc. Apart from this, every Naga is concerned with two other issues in his life. One concerns his love affair, particularly of the pre-marital relationship and the other, hardship and sufferings of children living with a stepmother or stepfather, including the orphans living with the fostered parents. In every Naga tribe one could find a number of folksongs and folk tales on these two themes.
Navamalati Chakraborty's (1979) Nagaland which is written
originally in English but translated into Nagamese by Bolin
47
Borgohain and Omeo Kumar Das gives a representative corpus
of the traditional folk lore, in this book we get songs of different
Naga tribes. For example, it includes an AngamI love song, a
Konyak love song, one Rengma lullaby etc.
Sreedhar (1985) collected some folktales from different
Naga communities and these folk tales were translated into
Nagamese by the informants themselves.
Boruah (1993) collected one story which was translated
into Nagamese by Dharani Baruah from original English and the
remaining songs were reprinted from N Chakraborty's (1979)
Nagaland.
Some modern songs and a few prayers are also available
in Nagamese in the form of audio cassettes and those are
available in all the audio shops in Nagaland.
Like folklore and folk tales, the vernacular literature in
Nagamese is extremely scanty. The first book written in
Nagamese is N Chakraborty's (1979) Nagaland. It is followed by
B K Boruah's (1985) Nagamiz Kothalaga Niyom. Of course, this
is a grammar book.. We have included this book here because it
is written in Nagamese.
Apart from these two books, few dramas like 'Heora
Chukra', 'Kabuliwala' are found in Nagamese. These dramas
48
were broadcasted by the All India Radio Station, Kohima and are
well preserved by AIR. Roman script is used for the purpose of
writing these literature.
2.5 Scope and Orientation of the Study
The review and evaluation of the available literature on
Nagamese provides an adequate rationale for a further, more
detailed study of Nagamese and the borrowings in Nagamese
lexical inventory. The earlier studies on Nagamese did not take
into account the simplification of Assamese features found in
Nagamese, the relexification feature, i.e., the borrowings from
other languages, and hence, it failed to comment on the motive
behind this extensive borrowing of lexicon. As a result, it also
failed to study the pidginised structure of Nagamese. An attempt
has been made here to explain the general characteristics of
pidgin and its application in Nagamese, the reasons of extensive
borrowing in Nagamese and its effect. We also tried to analyse
up to what extent Nagamese has simplified the Assamese
features and the true nature of Nagamese as a pidgin by
examining the prevalent theories of origin of pidgin and find out
whether Nagames.e is moving towards a full-fledged language.
49
2.6 Methodology
The present descriptive study is limited to the version of
Nagamese spoken in and around the Kohima district of
Nagaland. The data for this descriptive analysis of Nagamese
was collected in the course of several trips to different places of
Kohima district between 1998 to 2002 and the informants
belonged to different Naga tribes. The method of approach to
the acquisition of the data was direct all the time. The spoken
communication, comprising of narratives, folk tales and stories,
songs, and natural conversations was taped for repetition and
close study. Since Nagamese has no written literature baring
the above mentioned few, the data for this work was entirely
taken from the speech of the Nagas living in Nagaland. This
included words, phrases, sentences, live conversations, tales
etc. It was taped for phonological research and for a close
examination at a later time. We also compared the data,
wherever possible, with Chakraborty's (1979) work.
The sources of linguistic information for this study were a
number of informants, as we mentioned above, of different age
groups, professions and occupations as well as sexes. Some of
the informants were multilinguals - having knowledge of English,
Hindi, Nagamese and the mother tongue whereas the others
50
were purely bilinguals -knowing only two languages - Nagamese
and the mother tongue. The informants who were mainly
associated with this work are listed below :
1. Mr Timothy Kaping (30 yrs), Dimapur, Businessman
2. Ms Temjenmenia Ao (25 yrs), Dimapur, Student
3. Ms Tiajungia Ao (18 yrs), Dimapur, Student
4. Mr Azid Zelem (19 yrs), Dimapur, Student
5. Mr Donray A Shishak (40 yrs), Dimapur, Engineer
6. Mrs Homi Shishak (35 yrs), Dimapur, Housewife
7. Mr N V Aya (35 yrs), Dimapur, Constable
8. Mr Bikehiel (30 yrs), Dimapur, Shopkeeper
9. Ms Shanngam (38 yrs), Kohima, Teacher
10. Ms Margaret (25 yrs), Kohima, Student
11. Ms Helen Hokishe (33 yrs), Kohima, Govt, employee
12. Mr Alemchiba (50 yrs), Kohima, Govt, employee
13. Mr K Akangneren (55 yrs), Kohima, Govt, employee
Apart from the above mentioned informants, a number of
students of the Department of History, Department of Education
and the Department of English, Nagaiand University, Kohima and
people from different walks of life from the state of Nagaiand
acted as our informants and provided valuable data on
Nagamese.