The present article is focussed on the main studies on Tangkhul language in the 19th and early 20th to mid 20th century by the non-native researchers. Main linguistic research on Tangkhul language by the native began with Ahum (1997). A vast number of Tangkhul language varieties are not yet researched or documented; out of 221 villages (2011 census) in Ukhrul district, only 5 village varieties (namely; Hunphun, Sorbung, Kachai, Huishu and Chingjaroi) had a substantial amount of research work conducted up to date. Ukhrul has a very unique linguistic landscape; almost every village has its own language variety ranging from phonological variation to vocabulary difference. The following are some of the main studies on Tangkhul language by the native and non-native researcher apart from Brown (1837) and Grierson (1903-28):
Pettigrew, William (1918)
Bhat, D.N Shankar (1969)
Arokianathan, S (1980)
Ahum, Victor (1997)
Mortensen, David (2003)
Mortensen, David et al (2011)
Leisan, Apinao Reisangmi (2017)
Brown, Nathan (1837)
Majority of the Tangkhuls are not familiar with the name Dr. Nathan Brown who was the first linguist to report on Tangkhul language vocabulary collected by Capt. George Gordon, the then British Political Agent in Manipur. Gordon collected the lexical items from five regions namely Champhung, Southern Tangkhul, Standard Tangkhul, Northern Tangkhul and Central Tangkhul and was published in 1837 in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal[i]. Except the first three varieties, the remaining two varieties are not specifically mentioned. Mentioning the specific village/variety would have been more insightful due to the existence of a vast range of linguistic variation from village to village even within the same administrative region, say, Southern Tangkhul region (now Phungyar constituency).
The word list of Standard Tangkhul is extracted from the The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) website which “is a long-term linguistics research project at the University of California at Berkeley. It is directed by Professor James A. MATISOFF of Berkeley’s Linguistics Department” (STEDT Homepage). This is an impressive attempt to preserve word lists spoken by our ancestors. The recorded word lists show linguistic variation from the modern speakers[ii]. An update on random twenty-two of the sixty-one words documented by Brown and available at STEDT is provided in the following Table.
Grierson, G.A. (1903-28)
Grierson estimated the population of Tangkhul to be 25,000. He relied heavily on the works of Rev. William Pettigrew, the then missionary to Ukhrul who later published the first Tangkhul primer in 1898 and Tangkhul Naga Grammar and Dictionary in 1918. He opted out Brown’s word list because his “vocabularies are so short, and the words common to them and the list of words here given are so few, that it is not worth while publishing them” ( Grierson. p. 463).
His main work is concentrated on morphology however, the graphemes used in the specimens of William Pettigrew give me a good knowledge of Pettigrew’s sound inventory of Tangkhul in which many of these words are different from the pronunciation in today’s Tangkhul. In the specimen 1 (Pettigrew, 1898), Pettigrew mentioned how the following graphemes are to be pronounced as shown below:
- (a) as the ‘u’ in ‘but’
- (ā) as the ‘a’ in ‘father’
- (a̠) as the ‘u’ in ‘fur’
- (i) as the ‘i’ in ‘pin’
- (o) as the ‘ow’ in ‘low’
- (u) as the ‘oo’ in ‘fool’.
Now, let us consider some words from this specimen which differ from today’s pronunciation. I ignore here my difference of opinion on some morphological forms in Pettigrew’s writing since my focus is on phonology. However short it may be, Pettigrew made the first attempt in the Tangkhul phonology, and the Roman alphabet was introduced for the first time by him which is still in use today. He is fondly remembered as the most prominent figure in bringing education to the Tangkhuls in particular and Manipur tribals in general. The selected original words from the specimen of Grierson (1903) are shown in the left column and the author’s pronunciation is given in the right column in the following table.
Bhat, D.N Shankar (1969)
By far the most accurate transcription of Tangkhul Naga vocabulary among the linguists’ work on Tangkhul is found in DNS Bhat’s work prior to Ahum Victor (1997) who is himself a Tangkhul. However, l/r alternation is found abundantly in this work starting from the title of the book itself. The reason is not surprising because his informant is a Hunphun variety speaker from which the standard Tangkhul is derived; Hunphun speakers alternate the phonemes /l/ and /ɹ/ freely in conversation but in the careful elicitation of words, younger speakers tend to be more careful in pronunciation. Bhat is the first linguist to work scientifically on the phonology of Tangkhul in his introductory part, and one of the few linguists whose transcription of Tangkhul diphthongs matches the researcher’s pronunciation. However, his “the fricative h has f as an alternant before the vowel ɯ” differs from the native speakers’ pronunciation. The pronunciation [ʃoŋhɯ] ‘road’ is unacceptable. The present researcher would pronounce the word as [ʃoŋfɨ̞̌].
It is because of the above mentioned researchers on Tangkhul speech varieties that today the present study owes a huge debt to the work of the above-mentioned researchers. As has been noticed, the above authors have differences among themselves in some areas thereby making an invaluable contribution to the description of the language. The present researcher is one of the first Hunphun speakers to work on Tangkhul language; my own judgement based on my intuitions as a speaker of the Hunphun variety is supported by an acoustic analysis wherever necessary. I find two Tangkhul phonemes in contradiction with the phonemic inventories of the past researchers. These are the high central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ and voiceless palatal affricate /c/ or /tʃ/.
Cross-linguistically, the high-mid unrounded back vowel /ɤ/ of Chinese[iii] (in the speaker’s elicitation) and South-African English vowel [ɨ̞] (in the SAE audio phonetic chart) resemble the Tangkhul vowel sound in question. So, the question arises, which sound really is the sound for Tangkhul because the most attributed phoneme /ɨ/ does not bear phonetic resemblance to the vowel sound of Tangkhul. To answer this question, we will need both auditory impression and acoustic finding. Based on the researcher’s auditory impression, the phones that closely matches the Tangkhul grapheme (a̠) are high-mid unrounded central vowel [ɘ], near-high central unrounded vowel [ɨ̞] and high back unrounded vowel [ɯ]. Phones [ɨ̞], [ɘ] and [ɨ]; [ɨ] and [ɯ]; [ɤ] and [ɘ], and [ɯ] and [ɤ] obey pattern congruity with each other. The first researcher to give the acoustic result of Tangkhul sounds is Leisan (2017). She places the phone in question in between high central and the mid-high central vowels; she however labels it as high central unrounded vowel [ɨ]. Her acoustic result and the present researcher’s acoustic result turn out to be the same. The only difference is the IPA symbol used and the corresponding description or label. Since the acoustic results from both the researchers match with the auditory impression of the native speaker, it is beyond doubt that the ‘near-high central unrounded vowel [ɨ̞]’ is the correct symbol and description. We can produce this sound by raising [ɘ] or lowering [ɨ] therefore, either the symbols [ɘ̝] with raising diacritic or [ɨ̞] with lowering diacritic can be used.
Notes:
[i] See Mortensen et al (2011:66)
[ii] It is difficult to explain the reason for the existence of these variations until a thorough comparison is made at synchronic and diachronic level. The difference of sounds could either be the result from the part of informant-interviewer or could it be that the language has evolved. Capt. Gordon who collected the lexical items on behalf of Brown was a non-linguist therefore, it is presumable to say that he might have faced difficulty to perceive and transcribe some sounds of the language.
[iii] The Chinese audio and transcription available in this youtube e-learning video matches the researcher’s pronunciation. The virtual Linguistic Campus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHL1gglwVZ4&t=338s
The writer is an Assistant Professor English Department St. Joseph College, Ukhrul
