Pnar language
| Pnar | |
|---|---|
| Jaiñtia | |
| Ka Ktien Pnar | |
| Pronunciation | /kɑ kt̪eːn pnɑr/ |
| Native to | India, Bangladesh |
| Ethnicity | Pnar people |
Native speakers | 395,124 (2011 census)[1] |
Austroasiatic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pbv |
| Glottolog | pnar1238 |
 Map of the Pnar Language | |
Pnar (Ka Ktien Pnar), also known as Jaiñtia[2] is an Austroasiatic language spoken in India and Bangladesh.
Geographic distribution
[edit]As a Khasic language, Pnar belongs to a complex dialect continuum which includes mixed varieties whose exact relations remain a matter of debate among linguists. A language map of Meghalaya designed by Anna Daladier shows two major Pnar-speaking areas separated by a thin strip of Khasi and War-speaking areas. Together, the two Pnar areas encompass most of the East Jaintia Hills, West Jaintia Hills and West Khasi Hills districts.[3]
A more recent map designed by Hiram Ring for a Khasic languages handbook by Paul Sidwell relies on a different classification. There, only the former two districts are labeled as Pnar, whereas the varieties spoken in the West Jainitia Hills belong to Maharam, a related but distinct language. Both maps also show small pockets of Pnar speakers in the neighboring state of Assam, In the former map, they are limited to the area directly adjacent to Meghalaya, whereas the latter map also shows a group of Pnar-speaking villages around Haflong.[4]
Phonology
[edit]Pnar has 30 phonemes: 7 vowels and 23 consonants. Other sounds listed below are phonetic realizations.[5] The sounds in brackets are phonetic realizations and the sounds in slashes are phonemes.
Vowels
[edit]| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | /i/ | [ɨ] | /u/ |
| Near-close | [ɪ] | [ʊ] | |
| Close-mid | /e/ | /o/ | |
| Mid | [ə] | ||
| Open-mid | /ɛ/ | [ʌ] | /ɔ/ |
| Open | /ɑ/ |
There is also one diphthong: /ia/.
Consonants
[edit]| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | /m/ | /n/ | /ɲ/ | /ŋ/ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | /p/ | /t̪/ | /t/ | /tʃ/ | /k/ | /ʔ/ |
| voiced | /b/ | /d̪/ | /d/ | /dʒ/ | |||
| voiceless aspirated | /pʰ/ | /t̪ʰ/ | [tʃʰ] | /kʰ/ | |||
| voiced aspirated | [bʱ] | [d̪ʱ] | [dʒʱ] | ||||
| Fricative | /s/ | /h/ | |||||
| Trill | /r/ | ||||||
| Approximant | central | /w/ | /j/ | ||||
| Lateral | /l/ | ||||||
Syllable structure
[edit]Syllables in Pnar can consist of a single nucleic vowel. Maximally, they can include a complex onset of two consonants, a diphthong nucleus, and a coda consonant. A second type of syllable contains a syllabic nasal/trill/lateral immediately following the onset consonant. This syllabic consonant behaves as the rhyme. (Ring, 2012: 141–2)
References
[edit]- ^ "Statement 1: Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues - 2011". www.censusindia.gov.in. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
- ^ Sidwell, Paul (2005). The Katuic languages: classification, reconstruction and comparative lexicon. LINCOM studies in Asian linguistics, 58. Muenchen: Lincom Europa. ISBN 3-89586-802-7.
- ^ Nagaraja, K. S.; Sidwell, Paul; Greenhill, Simon (2013). "A lexicostatistical study of the Khasian languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and Wae". Mon-Khmer Studies. pp. 1‒11.
- ^ Sidwell, Paul. "Khasian Languages Project".
- ^ Ring, Hiram (2012). "A phonetic description and phonemic analysis of Jowai-Pnar". Mon-Khmer Studies. 40: 133–175.
- Choudhary, Narayam Kumar (2004). Word Order in Pnar (PDF) (Masters thesis). Jawaharlal Nehru University. p. 87. Retrieved 2009-08-14.
- Ring, Hiram (2015). A Grammar of Pnar (PhD thesis). Nanyang Technological University.
External links
[edit]- http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)
- http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-D187-C@view Pnar in RWAAI Digital Archive
- Pnar DoReCo corpus compiled by Hiram Ring. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.