Genetic classification, language contact and dialects

On a higher level, Amri Karbi belongs to Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan language family.

Sino-Tibetan has been divided into two main branches: Chinese and Tibeto-Karen (Benedict 1972) and Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-Burman (Matisoff 2003). Some linguists deny division between Chinese and the non-Sinitic languages, following von Klapworth’s (1823) tradition to use term ‘Tibeto-Burman’ for the entire family, and also on the grounds that both Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages share a common ancestor (Shafer 1955, van Driem 1997, DeLancey 2015:61 and others). The term Trans-Himalayan was proposed by van Driem in 2004 and since then the term has been adopted by many contemporary linguists as a neutral and geographical term; likewise, this grammar has adopted the term Trans-Himalayan. However, because this term is still relatively new, especially to the general audience and linguists working outside of this geographical family, the term Trans-Himalayan is used alongside Sino-Tibetan.

There are several proposals as to where to place Amri Karbi and Karbi on the lower level. In Glottolog (Hammarström et al.), Amri Karbi and Karbi are placed under the Kuki-Chin-Naga branch within the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan family as the only two members of Karbic

group. The Kuki-Chin branch consists of 85 languages; the largest group within the branch is the Kuki-Chin group that consists of 53 languages. According to Matisoff’s (1991) internal structure of Tibeto-Burman, Mikir/Karbi is positioned under the geographically defined group Kamarupan (from the old Sanskrit name for Assam). In the latest subgrouping of the Tibeto-Burman languages in Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT), the cover-term “Kamarupan” was abandoned for sociolinguistic reasons and was replaced with

“North East Indian Areal group” (Bruhn et al 2015). Burling (2003) and later Post and Burling (2015) do not associate Karbi varieties and Meithei with any lower-level branches and consider them to be independent branches within the Tibeto-Burman family.

Himalayan are divided into Western and Eastern Tibeto-Burman/Trans-Himalayan languages and recently DeLancey (2015) proposed Central Trans-Tibeto-Burman/Trans-Himalayan branch, that includes some languages of North East India: Jingpho, Northerth Naga and Kuki-Chin languages. Amri Karbi and Karbi do not have enough morphological evidence available, specifically ‘agreement words’, to be included to the branch. However, as Post and Burling (2017) suggest: ‘DeLancey’s argument implies a large language group in our (North East India/Eastern Border) area whose conservative agreement features have been differentially eroded across its branches most likely through the effects of language contact’. So Amri Karbi and Karbi could be equally assumed to be part of the Central Branch that lost the ‘agreement word’ due to language contact.

Despite the fact that Amri Karbi and Karbi lack conservative agreement features, Konnerth (2014:9) noted that Karbi has some links to the Kuki-Chin/South-Central¹languages which Amri Karbi also shares. The connections include the negative equational copula kalek, the cislocative nang= and the speech act participant non-subject marking nang=, the reflexive/reciprocal prefixchi-and the focus marker =si, among other constructions.

Amri Karbi has had several language contacts through its development. Historically Amri Karbi along with Karbi seem to have had contact with Meithei, a state language of Manipur.

Amri Karbi shows more links to Meithei than Karbi. Some of the similarities of Amri Karbi to Meithei, that were also noted for Karbi (Konnerth 2014:192-193) include thenumerals ‘eight’

and ‘nine’ that are subtractions: ‘ten minus two’ and ‘ten minus one’; Meithei female -pisuffix that corresponds to Amri Karbi female -pe/-pi suffix. In addition to that Amri Karbi has

1Kuki-Chin was proposed by Konnerth (2018) to be renamed for South-Central, due to the term being insensitive towards the speakers of these languages.

vigesimal system in the numerals ‘forty’, ‘sixty’ and ‘eighty’ as Meithei does; however, similarly to the numerals ‘eight’ and ‘nine’, only the pattern was borrowed, and the individual morphemes were not borrowed. The construction of adjectives is also similar to Meithei in a way that most of the nominalized adjectival verbs in Amri Karbi require the possessive prefix a-in order to modify a noun as an adjective; in Meithei, there is an attributive prefix ǝ-. These evidences suggest that Amri Karbi had closer or longer contact with Meithei, than Karbi had.

How this contact happened is unknown. Currently these two groups live a relatively long distance from each other, Meithei living mainly in Manipur and Amri Karbi in Assam and Meghalaya.

It has been mentioned in the Linguistic Survey of India and by other researchers of Karbi that Karbi has been in close contact with the Austroasiatic Khasi languages to the west in Meghalaya (Grierson 1903; Grüßner 1978; Joseph 2009). Amri Karbis who live in Meghalaya, though living in Amri Karbi speaking villages, are still in contact with Khasi languages through intermarriages, education, trade, etc. Similarities between Amri Karbi and the Khasi languages include the pronoun i ‘1PL’, corresponding to the i-‘1PL.EXCL’in Amri Karbi; such lexical items as por‘time’ corresponding to Amri Karbi -por‘time’; theword for ‘clan’ iskur which is also aword for ‘clan’ in Khasi.The singular human classifier -hutis also a borrowing from Khasi.

Nowadays many Amri Karbis are multilinguals. There is a three-language formula in India, where three languages are required to be studied in schools. According to the formula, the first language that a child learns is the mother tongue or the regional language, the second language is Hindi for the non-Hindi speaking children (which is the case for most children in Assam and Meghalaya) and the third language is English. Due to three language formula in India, many Amri Karbis are proficient in Assamese (in Assam state) or Khasi (in Meghalaya state) as a regional language, Hindi and English². Since Assamese is a lingua franca in the area, even in Meghalaya in addition to the regional language Khasi, the Amri Karbis speak Assamese. There is a lot of borrowing of Assamese lexicon nowadays into modern Amri Karbi as well as code switching between Assamese and Amrti Karbi among Amri Karbi speakers. There are some Assamese grammatical constructions that are either used alongside with the Amri Karbi constructions or, in the speech of some speakers, replace the native grammatical constructions.

2In my experience among Amri Karbis, I have not met an Amri Karbi person who was monolingual.

Despite the close proximity of Assamese people to Amri Karbi, this contact is rather recent, probably a little more than 50 years.

Borrowings from English and Hindi are also present in Amri Karbi, however due to similarities between Hindi and Assamese it is not always clear whether a borrowed word came from Hindi or Assamese.

Internally the Amri Karbi divide themselves according to geographical areas, namely Upper Amriand Lower Amri, the former found up in the hills and the latter down in the plains. There is an idea among Amri Karbis that Lower Amri is heavily influenced by Assamese, while Upper Amri has retained most of its own vocabulary and grammar. The data taken from both areas corresponds with this idea, as more loan words and grammatical constructions from Assamese appear in Lower Amri speech. As a result of the intense language contact of Amri Karbis living in the plains with Assamese it is sometimes not clear whether the Assamese elements appearing in the data should be considered as part of the language (i.e. borrowings), code switching or language attrition. In addition, there are some internal variations in vocabulary, prosody, phonology and grammar between these two varieties and sometimes even among villages. The community-internal variation is usually accepted among the community and perceived as richness, beauty and broader possibilities of a language. The modern influence of Assamese is not seen as positive by the majority of the community. It is seen as a threat to the future of the language, but at the same time as an inevitable phenomenon under the current circumstances, especially for those who have closer contact with Assamese. Other reasons for the Assamese influence are said to be the lack of language description and the inferior status of Amri Karbi.

This study will fill the gap of the adequate language description for Amri Karbi.

In Karbi (Konnerth 2014:12) there is some evidence for a Christian sociolect, which was also the variety of Grüßner’s work. In Amri Karbi, Christians also seem to be linguistically special in a way that the Lower Amri Christians are more resistant to Assamese influence, due to interaction with Upper Amri Christians. Through this regular interaction they are able to retain some of the native forms that have been misplaced by non-Christian Lower Amri variety speakers. In addition, regular use of Amri Karbi literature (New Testament and Scripture based literature) and singing Amri Karbi hymns in church also has an effect. It is not impossible that the influence turns the other way around and then in time, we might also find a Christian sociolect in Amri Karbi. Perhaps Christianity have not been long enough in Amri Karbi (since

1980) for the sociolect to emerge as it has in Karbi where Christianity has been present for a longer time, possibly since before 1931, the year when Karbi New Testament was published.

Karbi is a closely related language spoken primarily in Karbi Anglong autonomous district.

Due to the territorial distance (though not large with Ri-Bhoi district) between two language communities there is little daily interaction between Amri Karbi and Karbi speakers. The most common interaction type between Amri Karbi and Karbi that I have observed is through intermarriages or when some Karbi delegates attend Amri Karbi social events and vice versa.

The language of interaction between Amri Karbis and Karbis to my knowledge is usually Assamese, except for the intermarriage situation where the language in the family will be the language of a village the family lives in. The fact that the choice of the language of interaction is Assamese proves that there is not enough mutual understanding between the Amri Karbi and Karbi varieties. However, some of my language consultants said that through prolonged exposure to Karbi, they could learn the language rather quickly and can switch to the Karbi variety whenever a situation requires.

There seems to be some movement to unite Amri Karbi people with the Karbi people, which might imply for Amri Karbis the need to abandon their variety and adopt the Karbi variety instead. This speculation is based on information given by some of my language consultants and also found in some online sources: “The Karbis living in different districts and states of the country should come out to build greater Karbi nationality with one language and one dress”³.

3 https://www.drongoexpress.com/2017/12/29/karbis-of-meghalaya-meeting-with-kfs-team-appeal-to-hold-immediate-discussion-with-meghalaya-counterpart/

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Figure 1.1 Men wearing traditional clothes, Amguri village (Alexandr Philippov)