Part I Phonology
2.16.2 Intonation
Puma polar questions involve the same words, morphemes, and word order as the corresponding declarative sentence, but employ a distinct intonation pattern as the sole indication of their polar questions status (see Section 3.18.1). Polar questions have a rising intonation at the end of the utterance while declarative statements have a falling intonation at the end the utterance. Other examples of languages that use only intonation to distinguish polar questions from statements are colloquial Italian and Lesotho, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa (cf. Dryer 2013). In Puma there is no linguistic means other than intonation to indicate a polar question. Dryer (2013) notes that many languages which employ different strategies for forming polar questions such as use of a question particle, interrogative verbal morphology, both question particles and interrogative verb morphology, different word order, and the absence of morphemes used in declarative sentences, also employ a distinct intonation for polar questions. Here are two Puma examples:
(8) (a) khim-di-tni mʌ-puks-a jammai↓
house-UP.LOC-ALL 3PL.S/A-go-PST all
‘All went home.’ (convers_01.017.b)
(b) khim-di-tni mʌ-puks-a jammai↑
house-UP.LOC-ALL 3PL.S/A-go-PST all
‘All went home?’
The example in (8a) is a declarative sentence as it is characterised with a falling intonation and (8b) is a polar question which has a rising intonation. Note that the word order of both examples is the same and no other strategy is employed except distinct intonation.
Content questions in Puma have the content question words in situ and are characterised by a falling intonation contour at the end of the utterance (see Section 3.13.3).
97 2.17 The phonology of loans from Nepali
Unlike Kiranti languages such as Bantawa (Rai 1985; Doornenbal 2009), Camling (Rai 2003) and Wambule (Opgenort 2004), Puma distinguishes the central vowel /ʌ/ from the back vowel /a/. When speakers write Puma in Devanāgarī script, they use the symbol for short /a/ to represent /ʌ/, and the symbol for long /ā/ to represent /a/.
The Nepali spoken by mother tongue Tibeto-Burman speakers such as Tamāng, Gurung, Sherpā, Newar and Thāngmi (Turin 2004: 101) shows considerable differences, reflecting the speaker’s first language. In comparison, the Nepali spoken by Puma is similar to the Nepali of mother tongue speakers because Puma phonology does not differ greatly from Nepali phonology. The inventory of consonant phonemes is almost identical, as is the inventory of vowel phonemes, apart from central /a/ vs back /ʌ/ and the lack of a vowel length distinction. The most obvious differences in the Nepali of Tibeto-Burman mother tongue speakers are failure to distinguish vowel length (e.g., /a/ vs /ā/) and failure to distinguish alveolar and retroflex consonants (/t/ vs /ʈ/).
For example, Tamāng speakers do not differentiate Nepali marnu ‘to die’ and mārnu ‘to kill’ and Newar speakers do not differentiate Nepali tāto ‘hot’ and ṭāṭo ‘scar’. Nepali mother tongue speakers sometimes imitate Tibeto-Burman speakers’ ‘pronunciation’ of Nepali by mimicking their lack of these contrasts (cf. Turin 2004:101).
Like Kiranti languages such as Bantawa (Doornenbal 2009: 48), Puma has been heavily influenced by Nepali. Nepali words are borrowed in two ways: direct loans (both phonetic form and semantic content) and nativised loans. The actual process of borrowing is complex and involves several strategies. Some phonological changes that take place in borrowings from Nepali are, as follows:
(a) Vowel modification
Nepali long vowels (except for /ā/) correspond to short vowels in Puma loans. Long /ā/
becomes /a/ while short /a/ becomes /ʌ/:
(9) bistarʌi < bistārai ‘slowly’
pʌhila < pahilā ‘first’
bijori < bijorī ‘odd’
ʈhikkʌ < ṭhīkka ‘right’
beuli < beulī ‘bride’
(b) Addition of -a
Nepali monosyllables ending in a consonant have /a/ added when they are borrowed
into Puma:
(10) kama < kām ‘work’
sukha <sukh ‘happiness’
risa < ris ‘anger’
caha <cāh ‘need’
khola < khol ‘open’
Compare this with Nepali polysyllabic loans where addition of /a/ does not occur.
(11) bela < belā ‘time’
phʌlana < phalanā ‘so and so’
bhaka < bhākā ‘promise’
pura < purā ‘all’
gʌhʌna < gahanā ‘jewellery’
(c) Rare and irregular strategy
There are few loanwords where -it is added.
(12) sibit < simī ‘bean’
masit < mās ‘black lentil’
2.18 Loanwords in Puma
In multilingual communities it is believed that borrowing from other (source) languages strengthens the usage of recipient languages. Cross-linguistically loanwords are common across languages. The contact of different languages makes the history of language contact in Nepal complex. The Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Nepal have borrowed numerous Nepali words, where Puma is also no exception. Loanwords in Puma come primarily from three sources: Nepali, neighbouring languages such as Bantawa, and other languages such as Maithili, English and Hindi. The influence of English is limited but there does seem to have been the loan of handful of English words into the Puma lexicon, perhaps travelling via Nepali. It is observed that there are no sections of the Puma lexicon, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, idiophones, and even grammatical categories like connectives, particles, fillers, exclamations and vocatives, which are untouched by Nepali. The description of loanwords in Puma is discussed, following data of Rai et al. (2009).
In Puma nouns are the most borrowed type of word class where most loanword nouns are from Nepali. A number of loaned nouns come from English not because English is the global language of communication but because many Pumas serve the
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British and Indian armies, where they learn those English words, such as kʌmandʌr
‘commander’, kyansil ‘cancel’, paket ‘pocket’, pʌlʈʌn ‘platoon’ and ʌɖʌr ‘order’. There is a comparatively smaller amount of loaned verbs where majority of verbs are from Nepali. These loaned verbs conjugate following Puma complex pronominalisation. This is typologically not very surprising, given that many languages borrow comparatively fewer verbs than other lexical classes (Hildebrandt 2009: 454). Those verbs that are borrowed have been nativised by adding -a at the end of a word, such as sukh-a-lima
‘be happy’, bigr-a-lima ‘ruin’ and ris-a-ketma ‘be angry’ (see Section 2.17). A number of loaned adjectives are also found in Puma. Puma actually has three distinct classes of adjectives: a small (closed) class of underived adjectives, a larger (open) class of derived adjectives from verbs (see Section 2.20), and borrowed adjectives. Similarly, a number of adverbs, such as balla ‘just’, bharkhar ‘recently’ and jhanḍai
‘approximately’ are also borrowed from Nepali. The other borrowed words comprise pronouns, such as aru ‘other’, phalanā ‘so and so’, pratek ‘each’, emphatics, such as mʌi, nʌi, cai, idiophones like phuttʌ, parra, swātta, connectives, such as bhane, abo, and ani, particles, such as nī, ta, la, and exclamations, such as āhā, oho, and āttho.
According to Rai et al. (2008), the database for Puma contains a total of 5,624 completed entries, including a large number of borrowed words mainly from Nepali, English, Maithili, and Hindi, but Nepali loans make up the majority of borrowing in the Puma database. Of the total 5,624 lexicon, 794 words from different semantic classes are loaned, with over 90% of identified loanwords of Nepali origin. It should be noticed that most borrowed words have Puma equivalents, but borrowed words are used more frequently. To date the database for Puma comprises a total of 7,100 lexicons. There are a number of loanwords, which are borrowed from the neighbouring language Bantawa.
We assume that there are definitely more loanwords in Puma from this whole database.
As can be analysed and seen also from the dictionary (Rai et al. 2009), there is a high degree of borrowing from Nepali. Approximately 15% of the lexicon is loaned from Nepali, which is about 88% of loanwords from Nepali. Note that as already said in Section 2.17, in Puma many but not all borrowed words are nativised. Table 35 shows a number of loanwords into Puma.
Table 35: Loanwords by semantic class
Word classes Source languages
TOTAL
Lexical words
Nepali English Maithili Bantawa Hindi
Nouns 411 57 12 480
Adjectives 73 5 78
Adverbs 58 1 1 1 61
Verbs 58 1 10 1 70
Pronouns 17 5 22
Numerals 34 34
Grammatical categories
Particles 7 7
Connectives 15 15
Idiophones 8 8
Exclamations 5 5
Emphatics 7 7
Miscellaneous 23 23
TOTAL 716 64 12 16 2 810
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