Conventions
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.12.4 Chintang and Puma Documentation Project (CPDP)
The Chintang and Puma Documentation Project (2004-2008) was carried out jointly to provide a rich linguistic and ethnographic documentation of these two endangered Kiranti languages of eastern Nepal, by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Leipzig (Germany) and the Central Department of Linguistics at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. This project was sponsored by the special program for the Documentation of Endangered Language (DoBeS) of the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany, which was also a part of the Linguistic Survey of Nepal (LinSuN). Prof.
Balthasar Bickel, now University of Zürich, served as the principal investigator (PI).
The core objective of the project was to record language practices in context, following the methodology of the ethnography of speaking, and to provide transcripts of the audio-visual materials with rich linguistic and ethnographic annotations.
The project team included linguists (Prof. Balthasar Bickel, Prof. Novel Kishore Rāī, Vishnu Singh Rāī) as well as anthropologists (Prof. Martin Gaenszle until 2006, Dr. Mark Turin from around 2006, and Dr. Judith Pettigrew from around 2007) and
67
psycholinguists specialised in child language (Prof. Elena Lieven, Dr. Sabine Stoll). The project employed seven research assistants (RA), with M.A degrees from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu: Nārāyaṇ Sharmā (the author of this dissertation), Arjun Rāi and Shree Kumār Rāi for the Puma language, and Gomā Banjāḍe, Netra Paudyāl, Icchā Rāī, Manoj Rāī and Toyā Bhaṭṭa for the Chintang language. Native speakers of Puma (Kamalā Rāī, Gaṇesh Rāī and Kalpanā Rāī) and Chintang (Rikhī Māyā Rāī, Jānakī Rāī, Lāsh Kumarī Rāī, Anitā Rāī, Durgā Rāī) were also involved in this project.
The author worked on the Puma language. His main responsibilities were linguistic analysis, verb paradigms, glossing, and creation of a Puma grammar and dictionary (cf. Rai et al. 2009). During the five years of the project, a total of 325 sessions were recorded, including natural conversations, autobiographies, folk stories, descriptive accounts, myths, legends, songs, and rituals. More than 200 comprehensive sets of verbal paradigms were collected and analysed, including about 6800 lexical entries in the dictionary and sent to Nijmegen for the digital archive. An investigation into the use of a prefix kha- to mark generic-patient (anti-passive) forms was published (Bickel et al. 2007). The major contributions during the project comprise Sharma et al.
(2005), Stutz (2005), Bickel et al. (2007), Schackow (2008), Rai et al. (2009), and Jänen (2009).
The CPDP corpus provides an excellent resource for my research on morphosyntax of Puma. This corpus is supplemented by large quantities of new data which includes twelve hours of audiovisual recordings, almost 7,100 lexical items, 125 sessions, many elicited examples and comprehensive paradigms of experience verbs to bridge gaps in the existing corpus. The details of work that was performed and contributions made by different members of the project during the CPDP are listed at the end of bibliography under the ‘Puma mini bibliography’ (see also Section 1.2.1).
1.13 Fieldwork remarks
All the language consultants, who I met during my second fieldtrip to the Puma core area, have very positive attitudes towards the documentation of their language. In fact, they were happy being recorded as Puma language consultants. Most of the language consultants prefer video recording rather than audio recording. They are usually happier when they have a chance to see their own video.
During CPDP some of the Puma shamans were requested for mocking performance
and/or recitation to record a sample of rituals. Unfortunately two of the shamans became seriously ill later. It was thought they should not have performed mocking acts that must be done in the proper month and proper time. We do not know whether it was just a coincidental or really the consequence of mocking performance, as it was believed that the ancestors got angry and the performers were cursed. We came to know that one shaman denied providing ritual information about weddings even to her daughter. In Mauwāboṭe and Diplung VDC, some Puma people have been Christianised.
1.14 Socio-linguistic observations
Interestingly, immigrant Rai people usually adopt the local Puma language as their mother tongue (CPDP 2004). However during my SOAS fieldtrip on Puma, the author and Shree Kumar Rai, Puma native speaker, noticed that two close neighbours, a Puma speaker and a Bantawa speaker, of Buyāṭār village of Pauwāserā VDC were in conversation. It was really interesting that they spoke in their own mother tongue without using any contact language or lingua franca, neither Nepali nor Bantawa. Their understanding is because of both knowing each other’s languages. Similarly, other immigrant Rais such as Kulung and Thulung speak Puma in the daily life and their own mother tongue at home with their family. They do not speak Bantawa, no Camling either, whereas Bantawa and Camling do speak their language at home and in conversation with Puma. Bantawa and Camling both understand Puma well; so Puma speakers use Puma while the Bantawa speak in Bantawa when turn taking in conversations.
The other striking thing we noticed is, in Bansilā, Pauwāserā VDC, children speak Puma instead of their mother tongue Bantawa or Camling. Perhaps it is primarily due to heavy influence from Puma speaking friends and their own father as well. This kind of asymmetrical use of language has been found for Australian languages (Peter Austin, p.c.). The language situation we found in Dã̄dāgāũ of Mauwāboṭe VDC was the reverse, compared to Pauwāserā. Two Puma adults were in conversation speaking in Nepali whereas both of them knew Puma very well. In daily conversation in the village, the use of the genitive marker -bo is in decline, and the shorter form of the connective, for example maki ‘why’, is in use instead of nʌmmaki or nʌmmakinan. Ritual performance in ward number 6 and 9 of Cisāpānī VDC is also interesting. In ward number 6, Bantawa perform rituals in the Puma language, though they claim that they are using their own
69
Bantawa language. In contrast, in ward number 9, Puma perform rituals is Bantawa, but they also claim that they are using the Puma language.
In Siddīpur VDC of Udayapur district, we found that Puma adult speakers use their mother tongue to talk with Bantawa adult speakers; however, they use the Bantawa language to talk with Bantawa children. Likewise, in Āhāle, Pauwāserā VDC, parents use Puma with their elder daughter who can understand Puma but cannot speak it fluently. In return, she uses Nepali with her parents. On the other hand, parents use Nepali with their younger daughter who has no knowledge of Puma.
1.15 Motivation for the study
The Puma language is very rich in its nominal and verbal morphology, and shows complex morphology in agreement. This doctoral dissertation focuses on elucidating morpho-syntactic phenomena in Puma, and explores morpho-syntactic structures in- depth in the context of both descriptive and typological concerns.