LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 20:11 November 2020
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Deafness and a Village Sign Language Community in Meghalaya

Dr. Melissa G. Wallang

1. Introduction

There are many deaf communities reported around the world such as the Martha Vineyard (Groce, 1985), the Yacatec Mayan village (Johnson, 1994) and the Desa Kolok (Branson, et.al., 1996) that coexist with the hearing community. Similarly, in Meghalaya, one of the states in the north eastern region of India lay a small village known as Massar village. This paper tries to document the incidence of deafness in one particular family of that village and tries to investigate the language that is in operation amongst them. It tries to investigate two levels of language, that is, at the lexical level and at the grammatical level.

The figures and images are given in Appendix at the end of the paper.

Located deep (fig1.1 ) in the valleys of the East Khasi hills of Meghalaya, Massar neighbours Wahkhen on the east and Pomlum in the west. It has only one hundred and eight households, three lower primary schools and one upper primary government school. The tarmac roads within the village are spotless and well-maintained while the road that led us there was littered with potholes, winding its snaky way down the steep slope and gradually easing into broom farms, ginger plantations and orchards. Once we reach there, there is hardly a sound that resembles the hustle and bustle of a modern village, except for the occasional bus that passes by boorishly and the scruffy dogs announcing our arrival. An unusual but pleasant peace hangs over the village as people gather in the three village churches of different denominations. The language spoken by the Massar community members is a dialectical variant of the Khasi language having a subject-object-verb structural pattern with minimal inflections on the verbs. The village has access to satellite television and enjoys considerable mobile network coverage, however inconsistent transmission it may be.

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

Dr. Melissa G. Wallang
Associate Professor in Linguistics
NERIE-NCERT, Umiam-793103
melissancert@gmail.com
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