LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:5 May 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2015
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

Word Order in Kokborok

Biman Debbarma, Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

This paper attempts to discuss the word order in Kokborok, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Bodo-Garo subgroup (Benedict 1972), which is spoken by 7, 61, 964 persons according to 2001 census of North-East India and Bangladesh. This paper discusses the various processes that are relevant for word order in Kokborok. This paper also discusses about Greenberg’s linguistic universals which are relevant to the Kokborok language and including determiners, numerals, suffixes, time and place adverbial, direct-indirect object etc.

Key words: Kokborok, word order, grammatical categories

Introduction

The present paper entitled “word order in Kokborok” shows the basic word order as subject object verb (SOV). Kokborok is a language spoken in all the parts of Tripura and some numbers can be found in Assam, Mizoram and the neighbouring country of Bangladesh. According to G.A. Grieson’s The Linguistics Survey of India (1903 vol. 3 part II page-17), Kokborok belongs to Bodo-Naga subgroup of Tibeto-Burman group of Sino-Tibetan language family with a population of 7, 61,964 (according to 2001 census) in North East Tripura, India. It has also close affinities with other languages like Bodo, Dimasa, Garo, Tiwa, Rabha, etc.

All the languages of the world have the basic word order typology. Logically there are six possible orders: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, and OVS (Greenberg 1963). Of these six, SVO, SOV, VSO are the dominant orders and the other three VOS, OSV and OVS are least dominant or are rare. Kokborok agrees with some of the Greenberg’s Universals statement that languages with normal SOV order are postpositional languages. The genitive precedes the governing noun, if a language has postpositions.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Biman Debbarma, Ph.D. Scholar
Department of Linguistics
Assam University Silchar-788001 Assam, India bimandblg@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.