LANGUAGE IN INDIA

EAT Expressions in Manipuri

N. Pramodini, Ph.D.

Abstract

The consumption verb ca- 'eat' in Manipuri is a rich source of metaphorical extensions into a variety of cognate semantic domains. Prototypical ca- 'eat' metaphors encode overcoming/control of a patient or theme by an animate/inanimate agent (and part experiencer) functioning as subject, e.g., əy cey care 'I got beating ( I ate a stick)', epəl tin care 'Insect bit the apple' (Insect ate the apple), 'ma sen yamnə cay 'He takes a lot of bribe (He eats a lot of money)'. manə əygi koksi care 'He harasses me a lot (He eats my head)', əygi unsa ca-thetle' My skin is lacerated (My skin has been eaten)'.

Thus, the metaphorical overcome and undergo outputs are often maximally distinct in meaning, and these correlations are directly inherited from their differing physical/ontological properties. The highly multifaceted nature of 'eat' event gives rise to interesting clausal properties of these predicates. Thus this verb is a source for a large number of figurative uses in Manipuri with meanings associated with such as consumption of non-edible items, torment, alignment, as well as participating in idiomatic expressions which can be quite opaque semantically. This work is important in that it looks at fine details of structure and conceptualization in Manipuri not often covered in the study of grammars.

Introduction

This paper explores the conceptualizations of basic and other activities of eating and the effects they have on Manipuri and how they are coded, and what sorts of metaphorically-based grammaticalizations develop from the forms used to code these activities. This work looks at fine details of structure and conceptualization Manipuri not often covered in standard grammars.

Basic verbs often have multiple usages in a given language. The EAT verb in Manipuri is such a verb. The study done by Pardeshi, et al. (2006) on the verb EAT discusses its several extension with various meanings, including a semantic network diagram that tries to capture the correlations and development pathways. The paper by Pardeshi, et al. focuses on a typological overview of the distribution of the extended usages and semantic range that covers by the verb EAT. The languages discussed in the study are selected from Euro-asia: Persia, Tajik, Turkish, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kashmiri, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Sinhale, Mongolia, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Veitnamese, Khmer and Mandarin.

However, Kiryu (2008) argues that their study does not contain any languages from another linguistic group, the Tibeto-Burman family in Asia which may be the single linguistic group that stretches from the Far East in China to the Middle East in Pakistan. This group covers a wide variety of languages sub-groups that are worth studying from typological point of view. Kiryu (ibid) made an extensive study of the EAT expressions in Kathmandu Newar, which surely is an important welcome addition to enrich pardeshi et al.'s work from a typological perspective. In line with the study already carried out in other languages, the aim of this paper is to study the multiple usages of the verb EAT cab? by examining examples from Manipuri, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Manipuri valley. Before we go to the analysis of the EAT expressions in Manipuri, a brief overview of the analysis of typological distribution of the extended usage and the semantic range that the expression EAT covers is in order.

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