Bugun is spoken in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. India. This language belongs to the kho-bwa cluster of languages. Bugun has a low population count 1434 as per the Census Report of India 2011. Census India places Bugun under the ‘other’ mother tongue category. Ethnologue labels Bugun as a ‘definitely’ endangered language. The Bugun language like most of the languages of Arunachal Pradesh is an oral language. Folk lore, cultural, agricultural, and religious practices and rituals have been passed from one generation to the other, orally. With the advent of modern education and shift to Arunachalli Hindi, a lingua franca of the state; it has adversely impacted on the language as well as the age old traditional, religious, and cultural practices. Change in the topography has made the community to adapt to new agricultural practices in lieu of their traditional ones. Buguns practised animism; in recent years, most of the natives have converted to the Mahayana Sect of Buddhism, and recently, some of the natives have converted to Christianity, but they still have festivals and rituals venerating nature. The paper provides an account of the Bugun community and language. Status and ethnography of the Bugun community is discussed briefly. The language sketch is on the phonemic inventory, tone, and the syllabic structure, followed by an account of morphological strategies used in the language for word formation and analysis of the grammatical or inflectional markers, and lastly, an account of Bugun phrases and clause. The primary data were collected in Sinchung, Wanghoo, and Kaspi villages from 2009 to 2014 during my field trips. The language shows Tibeto-Burman features; it is homophonous, syncretic, and has split ergativity. Till date, no work has been published on the grammar of Bugun.

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Bugun: An Endangered Language and Community of Arunachal Pradesh, India

  • Madhumita Barbora

摘要

Bugun is spoken in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. India. This language belongs to the kho-bwa cluster of languages. Bugun has a low population count 1434 as per the Census Report of India 2011. Census India places Bugun under the ‘other’ mother tongue category. Ethnologue labels Bugun as a ‘definitely’ endangered language. The Bugun language like most of the languages of Arunachal Pradesh is an oral language. Folk lore, cultural, agricultural, and religious practices and rituals have been passed from one generation to the other, orally. With the advent of modern education and shift to Arunachalli Hindi, a lingua franca of the state; it has adversely impacted on the language as well as the age old traditional, religious, and cultural practices. Change in the topography has made the community to adapt to new agricultural practices in lieu of their traditional ones. Buguns practised animism; in recent years, most of the natives have converted to the Mahayana Sect of Buddhism, and recently, some of the natives have converted to Christianity, but they still have festivals and rituals venerating nature. The paper provides an account of the Bugun community and language. Status and ethnography of the Bugun community is discussed briefly. The language sketch is on the phonemic inventory, tone, and the syllabic structure, followed by an account of morphological strategies used in the language for word formation and analysis of the grammatical or inflectional markers, and lastly, an account of Bugun phrases and clause. The primary data were collected in Sinchung, Wanghoo, and Kaspi villages from 2009 to 2014 during my field trips. The language shows Tibeto-Burman features; it is homophonous, syncretic, and has split ergativity. Till date, no work has been published on the grammar of Bugun.