Mruic or Mru–Hkongso is a small group of
Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...
consisting of two languages,
Mru and
Anu-Hkongso. Their relationship within Sino-Tibetan is unclear.
Peterson & Wright (2009)
[Peterson, David A. and Jonathan Wright. 2009. ''Mru-Hkongso: a new Tibeto-Burman grouping''. Paper presented at The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL 42), Chiang Mai.] proposed the name ''Mru–Hkongso''.
DeLancey (2021) also uses the name ''Mru–Hkongso''.
Classification
Matisoff (2015)
[Matisoff, James A. 2015]
''The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus''
Berkeley: University of California.
PDF
classifies Mru as part of the
Northeast India
Northeast India, officially the North Eastern Region (NER), is the easternmost region of India representing both a geographic and political Administrative divisions of India, administrative division of the country. It comprises eight States and ...
n
areal group, a
linkage that includes
Tani,
Deng (Digaro), "
Kuki-Chin–Naga",
Meithei,
Mikir, and
Sal.
On the other hand,
Bradley (1997) classifies Mru as part of
Lolo-Burmese, based on Löffler's (1966) observations that Mru shares many phonological and lexical resemblances with Lolo-Burmese.
The ''Mru-Hkongso'' group was first proposed by Peterson & Wright (2009),
who do not consider it to be a subgroup of
Lolo-Burmese.
Peterson (2017:205)
[Peterson, David. 2017. "On Kuki-Chin subgrouping." In Picus Sizhi Ding and Jamin Pelkey, eds. ''Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia: New horizons for Tibeto-Burman studies in honor of David Bradley'', 189-209. Leiden: Brill.] notes that Mru and Hkongso do not have any features characteristic of
Kuki-Chin languages
The Kuki-Chin languages (also called Kukish or South-Central Tibeto-Burman languages) are a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Most notable Kuki-Chin-speaking ...
that have been identified by VanBik (2009), including lack of the
sound change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s > ''tʰ'', lack of Kuki-Chin-type verb stem alternation, and lack of the singular first person pronoun (1.) *''kaj'' which is present in most Kuki-Chin languages.
Peterson (2009)
[Peterson, David A. 2009]
"Where does Mru fit into Tibeto-Burman?"
Paper presented at ''The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics'' (ICSTLL 42), November 2009, Payap University
Payap University (; ), established in 1974, is a private and non-profit institution founded by the Foundation of the Church of Christ in Thailand. Payap University is a liberal arts and pre-professional school offering a doctoral degree in peac ...
, Chiangmai
Chiang Mai, sometimes written as Chiengmai or Chiangmai, is the largest city in northern Thailand, the capital of Chiang Mai province and the second largest city in Thailand. It is north of Bangkok in a mountainous region called the Thai hi ...
, Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
. considers Mru-Hkongso to be a separate Tibeto-Burman branch, and notes the following similarities between Mru-Hkongso and
Bodo–Garo languages.
*
Bodo–Garo *=''kho'' 'accusative';
Mru =''k(öj)'' 'accusative' (
Hkongso locative =''ko'')
*
Bodo–Garo *=''ba'' ‘also’; Mru-Hkongso =''pö'' ‘also’
*
Bodo–Garo *–''ram'' 'locative nominalizer';
Mru –''ram'' 'locative nominalizer'
*
Bodo–Garo *=''gVn'' 'future marker';
Mru –''köm'' ~ ''kön'' 'irrealis marker' (
Hkongso ''ham'')
*
Bodo–Garo *–''(k)ha'' 'past marker';
Mru –''khaj'' ~ -''hö'' 'past marker' (
Hkongso ''kö'' ?)
*
Bodo–Garo *–''dV'' 'imperative marker';
Mru –''diö'' 'imperative marker' (
Hkongso ''de'')
Peterson (2009)
considers the similarities with Bodo–Garo to be due to the possible early split of Mruic from a Tibeto-Burman branch that included Bodo–Garo (see also
Central Tibeto-Burman languages
Central Tibeto-Burman or Central Trans-Himalayan is a proposed branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family proposed by Scott DeLancey (2015) on the basis of shared morphological evidence.
DeLancey (2018)DeLancey, Scott (2018). ''Internal and ext ...
and
Sal languages
The Sal languages, also known as the Brahmaputran languages, are a branch of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in northeast India, as well as parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), and China.
Alternative names
''Ethnologue'' calls the group "Jingpho ...
).
Grammar
Both
Mru and
Hkongso display SVO (
subject-verb-object) order instead of the SOV word order typical of most Tibeto-Burman languages.
[Ebersole, Harold. 1996. ''The Mru Language: A preliminary grammatical sketch''. Ms.][Jonathan Michael Wright. 2009. ]
Hkongso Grammar Sketch
'. MA thesis, Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics. Bai,
Sinitic, and
Karenic are the only other Sino-Tibetan language branches with primarily verb-medial (SVO) word order.
References
Further reading
*Language and Social Development Organization. (2019). ''A Chin dialect survey'' (Part 1 of 2)
ata set (The 2008-03 Anu-Hkongso Chin survey contains data on both Anu-Hkongso and the Anok, Dawpreng, and Sungma dialects of Mru.)
External links
Proto-Mru-Khongso reconstructions(Sino-Tibetan Branches Project)
{{Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan languages