Basum (autonym: ''brag gsum'' 'three cliffs'; Basong 巴松话; Bake) is a divergent Bodish language spoken by about 2,500 people in Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China. Basum is spoken by 13.5% of the population of Gongbo'gyamda County.

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

lists Basum as unclassified within Bodish. Wang (2020) is a grammatical and morphosyntactic description of Basum.

Background

The Basum language is locally known as Bäke (བག་སྐད་), which is derived from ''brag-gsum skad'', meaning ‘the language of the Three Rocks’. There are about 3,000 speakers in Zhoka and Tshongo townships, Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, on the shores of the Basum Lake. Qu, et al. (1989) also reported that Basum is spoken in Cuogao Township 错高乡 and Xueka Township 雪卡乡 of Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China.

Classification

Qu, et al. (1989) notes that Basum is mutually unintelligible with and quite different from Gongbu Tibetan (; 11,600 speakers), which is a Central Tibetan language variety closely related to

Nyingchi Nyingchi (), also known as Linzhi ( zh, s=林芝, p=Linzhi) or Nyingtri, is a prefecture-level city in the southeast of the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. The administrative seat of Nyingchi is Bayi District. Nyingchi is the location of Buch ...

Tibetan (). Basum is also unintelligible with Niangpu 娘蒲话 (also called Muqu 牧区话), which is a

Khams Tibetan Khams Tibetan () is the Tibetic languages, Tibetic language used by the majority of the people in Kham. Khams is one of the three branches of the traditional classification of Tibetic languages (the other two being Amdo Tibetan and Ü-Tsang). In ...

language variety spoken by 4,310 people in Jiaxing 加兴 and Niangpu 娘蒲 townships of Gongbo'gyamda County. Qu, et al. (1989:61) notices some lexical similarities between Basum and Cuona Menba (Tawang Monpa), an East Bodish language. Suzuki & Nyima (2016)Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Tashi Nyima. 2016.
’Bo skad, a newly recognised non-Tibetic variety spoken in mDzo sgang, TAR: a brief introduction to its sociolinguistic situation, sounds, and vocabulary
'. Fourth Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China (STLS-2016). University of Washington, Seattle, September 8–10, 2016. consider Basum to be a non- Tibetic language. Tournadre (2014)Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. classifies Basum (Bake) as an unclassified Bodish language that does not belong to the Tibetic branch. Tournadre (2014: 112) notes that Basum has the negator ''a''-, as opposed to the negator ''ma''- or ''myi''- in

Tibetic languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descending from Old Tibetan.Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the ...

. Also, unlike Tibetic languages, Basum does not palatalize Proto-Bodish *ti- and *si-. A computational phylogenetic of various languages of Tibet by Jiang (2022) shows that Basum is divergent, and although it shows some similarities with the Medog dialect of

due to contact, as well as with East Bodish ("Menba" or "Monpa") languages. Tournadre & Suzuki (2023) suggest that Basum may be related to Dakpa (Tawang Monpa), an East Bodish language, since both languages share many lexical features as well as grammatical morphemes.

Lexicon

Tournadre & Suzuki (2023) lists the following Basum words that have no Tibetic cognates. Qu, et al. (1989: 50–51) list the following Basum words with no cognates in neighboring

. Other divergent Basum words are (Suzuki & Nyima 2016): Several hundred Basum lexical items are also documented in Qu & Jing (2017), a comparative survey of Central Tibetan lects.Qu, Aitang 瞿霭堂; Jing, Song 劲松. 2017. ''Zangyu Weizang fangyan yanjiu'' 藏语卫藏方言研究. Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue chubanshe 中国藏学出版社. .

References

{{Languages of China Languages of Tibet Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages Nyingchi