Observations on Phonological Variation in Kera'a

Full abstract: Kera’a (clk, idum1241, ‘Idu’) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by around 12,000 Idu Mishmi living in Lower Dibang Valley and Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh. The language is currently threatened (EGIDS 6b), but will soon become endangered due to the disruption of intergenerational transmission. This talk will outline a preliminary account of the phonology of Kera’a, and discuss first results of intra- and inter-speaker variation by comparing data from recent fieldwork to published literature (Jiang 2005, Reinöhl in press).

The linguistic history of Kera’a is not yet clear. While speakers are commonly multilingual in Kera’a, Hindi and English or Assamese, there is little-to-no knowledge of geographically-adjacent tribal languages such as Tawrã or Kman. The dialectal situation of Kera’a is clearer, with speakers identifying two main dialects, Midu and Mithu. Mithu is more conservative, while Midu is more prestigious and innovative. As a result, Mithu speakers will commonly switch into Midu if they are not sure whether they will be understood by a Midu speaker. The conservative nature of Mithu, however, has allowed Reinöhl (in press) to demonstrate regular sound correspondences between Kera’a and Tawrã. Tawrã is more conservative in contrast to Mithu, as it retains various sets of initial and final consonants. More recently, the rise of multilingualism in the Dibang Valley has led to an ongoing shift of younger speakers from Kera’a to Hindi, and to the disruption of intergenerational transmission of Kera’a.

This linguistic context will inform my analysis of various phenomena found in the segmental phonology in Kera’a. I will propose a reanalysis of a hypothetical ‘original’ 6-vowel system, still found in Tawrã, to a 5-vowel system reminiscent of Hindi. I will also discuss ‘free variation’ in the realisation of the fricatives /s/ and /sh/ and their related affricates /ts~ch/ and /tsh~chh/; the variable realisation of the consonant cluster /kr/; and the presence of a series of prenasalised consonants, which is unexpected from an areal perspective.

References Jiang, Di. 2005. Yidu yu yanjiu [A study of Yidu]. Beijing: The Nationalities Press.

Reinöhl, Uta. In press. “Locating Kera’a (Idu Mishmi) in its linguistic neighbourhood. Evidence from dialectology”, To appear in: Mark Post, Stephen Morey & Toni Huber (eds). Ethnolinguistic prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya. Leiden: Brill.