Gallong language
Encyclopedia
The Gallong or Galo language is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Tani
group, spoken by the Galo people. Its precise position within Tani is not yet certain, due primarily to its central location in the Tani area and the strong effects of intra-Tani contacts on the development of Tani languages. It is an endangered language according to the normal definitions, although prospects for its survival are better than most similarly-placed languages in the world. The major Galo dialects are Pugo, spoken around the district capital Aalo
, Lare, spoken to the south of Aaloo, and a dialect provisionally describable as "North-Western", spoken in the North-West near the Tagin area. There may be additional Galo dialects further to the North, which remains largely un-researched. Subdialects are numerous, and often correspond to regional or clan groupings. Neighbouring languages include Assamese
, Nepali
, Bodo
, Mising
, Minyong, Hills Miri, Tagin, Nishi
, Bori, Pailibo, Ramo and Bokar.
Like most central and eastern Tani languages, Galo is largely synthetic
and agglutinating. Two primary lexical tones are present – High and Low – which may reflect two Proto-Tani syllable tones; in modern Galo, the surface TBU (Tone-Bearing Unit) is the usually polysyllabic phonological word. A robust finite
/non-finite asymmetry underlies Galo grammar, and clause chaining and nominalization
are both rampant. No synchronic verb-serialization appears to exist, although what seems to have been proto-verb-serialization has developed into a very large and productive system of derivational suffixes to bound verbal roots. Major (non-derived) lexical classes are noun, adjective and verb. Other grammatical features include postpositions, relator nouns, classifier
s, an extremely large system of aspectual suffixes, and a rich set of constituent-final particles coding functions related to epistemological status (such as evidentiality), discourse/pragmatic status, modality, and other related functions. Case-marking is basically accusative
; ergativity has not been found.
Tani languages
Tani, Miric, Adi–Galo–Mishing–Nishi , or Abor–Miri–Dafla is a compact family of Tibeto-Burman languages situated at the eastern end of the Himalayas, in an area skirted on four sides by Tibet, Assam, Bhutan, and Burma....
group, spoken by the Galo people. Its precise position within Tani is not yet certain, due primarily to its central location in the Tani area and the strong effects of intra-Tani contacts on the development of Tani languages. It is an endangered language according to the normal definitions, although prospects for its survival are better than most similarly-placed languages in the world. The major Galo dialects are Pugo, spoken around the district capital Aalo
Along, Arunachal Pradesh
Along is a census town and headquarters of the West Siang district of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It is located about 150 km from Likabali which is at the border of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Along is a valley and is extremely beautiful as far the scenic grandeur of this place is...
, Lare, spoken to the south of Aaloo, and a dialect provisionally describable as "North-Western", spoken in the North-West near the Tagin area. There may be additional Galo dialects further to the North, which remains largely un-researched. Subdialects are numerous, and often correspond to regional or clan groupings. Neighbouring languages include Assamese
Assamese language
Assamese is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language. It is used mainly in the state of Assam in North-East India. It is also the official language of Assam. It is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states. Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in...
, Nepali
Nepali language
Nepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
, Bodo
Bodo language
Bodo is a language that belongs to the branch of Barish section under Baric division of the Tibeto-Burman languages and spoken by the Bodo people of north-eastern India and Nepal...
, Mising
Mishing language
Mishing is a Tibetan–Burman language spoken by the Mishing people. There are over 500,000 speakers of the language. It is also known as Plains Miri or Takam....
, Minyong, Hills Miri, Tagin, Nishi
Nishi language
Nishi , or East Dafla, is a small Tibetan–Burman language of India. Tagin may be a distinct language, as may Bangni....
, Bori, Pailibo, Ramo and Bokar.
Like most central and eastern Tani languages, Galo is largely synthetic
Synthetic language
In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
and agglutinating. Two primary lexical tones are present – High and Low – which may reflect two Proto-Tani syllable tones; in modern Galo, the surface TBU (Tone-Bearing Unit) is the usually polysyllabic phonological word. A robust finite
Finite verb
A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....
/non-finite asymmetry underlies Galo grammar, and clause chaining and nominalization
Nominalization
In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase, with or without morphological transformation...
are both rampant. No synchronic verb-serialization appears to exist, although what seems to have been proto-verb-serialization has developed into a very large and productive system of derivational suffixes to bound verbal roots. Major (non-derived) lexical classes are noun, adjective and verb. Other grammatical features include postpositions, relator nouns, classifier
Classifier
Classifier may refer to:*Classifier *Classifier *Classifier *Hierarchical classifier*Linear classifier...
s, an extremely large system of aspectual suffixes, and a rich set of constituent-final particles coding functions related to epistemological status (such as evidentiality), discourse/pragmatic status, modality, and other related functions. Case-marking is basically accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
; ergativity has not been found.