Kusunda or Kusanda (endonym Gemehaq gipan
Rediscovery
For decades the Kusunda language was thought to be on the verge of extinction, with little hope of ever knowing it well. The little material that could be gleaned from the memories of former speakers suggested that the language was an isolate, but, without much evidence, it was often classified along with its neighbors as Tibeto-Burman. However in 2004 three Kusundas, Gyani Maya Sen, Prem Bahadur Shahi and Kamala Singh,
were brought to
Kathmandu for help with citizenship papers. There, members of Tribhuvan University discovered that one of them, a native of Sakhi VDC in southern
Rolpa District, was a fluent speaker of the language. Several of her relatives were also discovered to be fluent. In 2005 there were known to be seven or eight fluent speakers of the language, the youngest in her thirties.
However the language is moribund, with no children learning it, since all Kusunda speakers have married outside their ethnicity.
It was presumed that the language became extinct with the death of Rajamama Kusunda on 19 April 2018.
Aaley, the facilitator and Kusunda-language teacher, has written the book Kusunda Tribe and Dictionary.
Classification
David E. Watters published a mid-sized grammatical description of the language, plus vocabulary (Watters 2005), although further works have been published since.
[Donohue & Gautam (2013).] He argued that Kusunda is indeed a language isolate, not just genealogically but also lexically, grammatically and phonologically distinct from its neighbors. This would imply that Kusunda is a remnant of the languages spoken in northern India before the influx of Tibeto-Burman- and Indo-Iranian-speaking peoples; however it is not classified as a
Munda languages nor a Dravidian language. It thus joins
Burushaski,
Nihali language and (potentially) the substrate of the
Vedda language in the list of South Asian languages that do not fall into the main categories of Indo-European, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan, and Austroasiatic.
Before the recent discovery of active Kusunda speakers there had been several attempts to link the language to an established language family. B.K. Rana (2002) maintained that Kusunda was a Tibeto-Burman language as traditionally classified. Merritt Ruhlen argued for a relationship with Juwoi language and other Andamanese languages; and for a larger Indo-Pacific language family, with them and other languages, including Nihali language.
Others have linked Kusunda to Munda languages (see Watters 2005); Yeniseian (Gurov 1989); Burushaski and Caucasian (Reinhard and Toba 1970; this would be a variant of Gurov's proposal if Sino-Caucasian were accepted); and the Nihali language isolate in central India (Fleming 1996, Whitehouse 1997). More recently a relationship between Kusunda, Yeniseian and Burushaski has been proposed.[van Driem, George (2014). 'A Prehistoric Thoroughfare between the Ganges and the Himalayas'. In: Jamir, Tiatoshi/Hazarika, Manjil eds 50 Years after Daojali-Hading: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Northeast India. New Delhi: Research India Press. 60–98.]
Phonology
Vowels
Phonetically, Kusunda has six vowels in two
vowel harmony groups, which are arguably three vowels phonemically: a word will normally have vowels from the upper (pink, italic) or lower (green) set, but not both simultaneously. There are very few words that consistently have either always upper or always lower vowels; most words may be pronounced either way, though those with
require the lower set (as in many languages). There are a few words with no uvular consonants that still bar such dual pronunciations, though these generally only feature the distinction in careful enunciation.
Consonants
Kusunda consonants seem to only contrast the active articulator, not where that articulator makes contact. For example, apical consonants may be
dental consonant, alveolar, retroflex, or palatal: is dental before , alveolar before , retroflex before , and palatal when there is a following uvular, as in ~ ('we').
In addition, many consonants vary between stop consonant and fricatives; for instance, seems to surface as between vowels, while surfaces as in the same environment. Aspiration appears to be recent to the language. Kusunda also lacks the retroflex consonant phonemes that are common to the region, and is unique in the region in having .
does not occur initially, and only occurs at the end of a syllable, unlike in neighboring languages. only occurs between vowels; it may be ||.
Pronouns
Kusunda has several cases, marked on nouns and pronouns, three of which are the
nominative (Kusunda, unlike its neighbors, has no
ergativity),
genitive, and
accusative case.
[Watters (2005).]
Other case suffixes include -ma "together with", -lage "for", -əna "from", -ga, -gə "at, in".
There are also demonstrative pronouns na and ta. Although it is not clear what the difference between them is, it may be animacy.
Subjects may be marked on the verb, though when they are they may either be prefixed or suffixed. An example with am "eat", which is more regular than many verbs, in the present tense ( -ən) is,
| + am "eat"
!
! Singular
! Plural |
|
|
|
Other verbs may have a prefix ts- in the first person, or zero in the third.
Proto-language
Morphology
Proto-Kusunda pre-root nominal prefixes can be categorized into a two=slot system, with the possessor prefix attached before the classificatory prefix, which in turn comes before the root noun (for example, *g-u-hu 'bone' and *g-i-dzi 'name').
The proposed class markers *i-, *a-, *u-, and *ja- are proposed to be triggered by the possessive-marking prefixes *t-, *n-, and *g-. The system is reminiscent of nominal morphology in the Great Andamanese languages.
Lexicon
Below are some Proto-Kusunda lexical reconstructions from Spendley (2024),
based on data of different Kusunda dialects from Hodgson (1857) and Reinhard & Toba (1970).
[Hodgson, Brian H. 1857. "Comparative Vocabulary of the Languages of the Broken Tribes of Nepal". Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 26: 317-371. Kolkata: Asiatic Society of Bengal.][Reinhard, Johan; and Toba, Tim. 1970. A Preliminary Linguistic Analysis and Vocabulary of the Kusunda Language''. Kathmandu: SIL and Tribhuvan University.]
>|
! gloss !! Proto-Kusunda |
| *i-muq; *a-wai |
| *a-ma |
| *u-ju |
| *g-u-hu |
| *ja-ti |
| *i-au |
| *i-niN |
| *ja-hi |
| *i-aN |
| *ja-mti |
| *au |
| *u-putu |
| *g-ja-kug/dzi |
| *a/u-ta |
| *g-i-dzi |
| *i-nau |
| *i-tat |
| *a-mat |
| *u-dziŋ |
| *u-hu |
See also
-
(basic vocabulary)
-
(1127 words)
-
Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda
-
Kamala Sen-Khatri
-
Uday Raj Aaley
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Burushaski
-
Nihali language
-
Substratum in Munda languages
Further reading
-
Rana, B.K. Significance of Kusundas and their language in the Trans-Himalayan Region. Mother Tongue. Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (Boston) IX, 2006, 212–218
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Reinhard, Johan and Sueyoshi Toba. (1970): A preliminary linguistic analysis and vocabulary of the Kusunda language. Summer Institute of Linguistics and Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu.[1]
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External links
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"Nepal's mystery language on the verge of extinction", Bimal Gautum, BBC, 12 May 2012
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Kusunda language does not fall in any family: Study, Himalayan News Service, Lalitpur, October 10, 2004
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Partial bibliography
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Portal to Asian Internet Resources (Project). Bibliography for Seldom Studied and Endangered South Asian Languages. Germany: John Peterson.
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Rana, B.K. A Short note on Kusunda language. Janajati 2/4, 2001.
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Rana, B.K., Linguistic Society of Nepal New Materials on Kusunda Language, Presented to the Fourth Round Table International Conference on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA. May 11–13, 2002
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Rana, B.K., Significance of Kusundas and Their Language in the Trans-Himalayan Region, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, October 21–22, 2006
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Kusunda linguistics (ANU)
