REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Ethnographic Records/Studies

The Nagas are anthropologically the best known ethnic

groups of the Indian sub-continent. A number of books and

innumerable articles are published in learned journals and these

dealt with many specific aspects of the Naga culture. Hence, a

few selected books are taken here for the purpose of review.

J H Hutton (1921) in his The Angami Nagas made an

interesting account of the culture and custom of the Nagas. He

also tried to explain the derivation of the word "Naga" from

"Nagna" meaning 'mountaineer", 'mountainous' or 'Inaccessible

place'. Later on he reluctantly recanted this opinion in favour of

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"Nagas" as "Magna" or "Naked". He also discussed the head­

hunting, the morung etc. in the book which gave us a clear Idea

about the Nagas and their ways of living. The other book by

Hutton (1921) The Sema Nagas is an authentic account of the

social and cultural life of the Sema Naga tribe. He included

everything in these two books about the Nagas - from their birth

to their death, all the customs, all the taboos. Hutton's

knowledge of the Nagas was so good that he was considered to

be the "chief authority on the Naga tribes".

J P Mills (1922) made a detailed account of the life of the

Lotha Naga tribe in The Lotha Nagas and in The Rengma Nagas

(1937), he studied the origin, domestic life, laws and customs,

religion and folk tales of the Rengma Nagas in detail. He was so

exhausted after finishing this book that he declared in the

preface of this monumental work that "it seems certain, humanly

speaking that it is the last tribal monograph I shall ever write".

Naga Path by Ursula Graham Bower (1950) is a book full

of interesting information on the life of the Nagas. She wrote this

book when she visited India as a twenty-three year old girl-and

described the life and culture of the Nagas as she saw it. Being

a young girl and an amateur writer, her book lacks the touch of

an expert and the anthropological knowledge and information

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one naturally expects in such a book. So, this book is suited for

leisure reading only.

India's North East Frontier in the Nineteenth Century

(1959) edited with an introduction by Elwin Verrier is like a house

full of gold as far as valuable information on the tribes of North

East, especially, the Nagas, are concerned. Different articles

written by well-known scholars like A Mackenzie, W Robinson, E

T Dalton etc. gave a detailed and vivid account of the life of the

Naga tribals.

Nagaland by Elwin Verrier (1961) is extensive and

authentic study of the Nagas in general. This is the book which

is most often quoted in any present work on the Nagas and

Nagaland. Any book on Nagas remain incomplete without a

reference from this valuable book. Verrier put forward his own

theory about the origin of the word "Naga" in this book. He says

that though the derivation of the word "Naga" is obscure, the

most likely derivation is that it has come from the word "Nok"

meaning people. In this book, Verrier discusses the different

Naga tribes and their history, their life style, culture, the creation

of Nagaland etc. and the impact of modernisation on the life of

the Nagas.

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All the above mentioned treatises were written by the

Britishers. The first ever book written by an Indian on Nagaland

is On the Slippery Slope in Nagaland by D R Mankekar (1967).

The narrative of the book is set against the back drop of the

recent, and earlier, history of the Naga problem. So, this book is

written from the point of view of a political observer rather than

the anthropological one.

Among the Indians, the most extensive and authentic study

of the Nagas was made by M Horam in Naga Polity (1975), and

Social and Cultural Life of Nagas (1977). Another book is

Nagaland by N Chakraborty (1979). The earlier mentioned

works by the foreigners are no doubt authentic and interesting

because the writers lived among the tribes while writing and

thoroughly studied the Nagas in their own environment yet the

indigenous touch was missing in those works. It is because of

the foreign writers' understandable but immense difficulty of

perceiving what lies below the surface of the Naga way of life.

Above all, those writers did not understand the various

languages spoken by the Naga tribes. Without understanding

the language, it is almost impossible to have a proper grasp of

the culture and life style of the concerned group.

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Being a Naga himself, Horam has this advantage and he

presented an account of the Nagas in the above mentioned two

books. He discussed the background of the Nagas to establish

their historical Identity by tracing the history from the Ahom

era onwards. Horam extensively discussed the historical

background, the derivation of the word "Naga", the origin of the

Nagas, their common characteristics, the family, the clan, village

organisation, village administration, taboos etc. In short, Naga

Polity is a complete description of the Nagas along with their

society. The other book Social and Cultural Life of Nagas is a

descriptive tale of the Tangkhul Nagas. In this book the author

gave a detailed description of the Tangkhul Nagas, their

festivals, songs, dances, social organisation, head-hunting,

social change etc.

Recently, S Mitra Channa (1992) edited book Nagaland - A

Contemporary Ettinography has come out and it has different

articles dealing with the 'Khel gate' and social structure of the

Nagas, the religious ethos of the Angami Nagas and so on.

Apparently, the articles look good but it lacks depth as well as

the knowledge of the Nagas one must have before writing

anything on them. The information given in the book looks

bookish and the writers must have followed the arm-chair

technique.

The most recent account of the ethnographic study of the

Nagas was presented by N K Das and C L Imechen (1994) in

Nagaland. They gave a detailed description of all the Naga

tribes living in Nagaland along with their socio-cultural life and

changes that is taking place in Nagaland.

2.2 Overview of Grammatical Studies On Nagamese (Up To 1993)

The first reference of Nagamese is found in Mutton's who is

considered to be the chief authority on the Naga tribes, The

Angami Nagas. He collected most of the necessary information

for this book through the medium of Nagamese only. It is Hutton

who for the first time designated Nagamese (for him Naga

Assamese) as the "pigeon" Assamese which forms the lingua

franca of the Naga Hills. He said that the Naga Assamese is a

"bastard tongue" and it varies a good deal in Nagaland. Though

he mentioned in the same page that a lot of "Naga words are in

common use" in Nagamese which he did not cite, we could not

get any such Naga words in Nagamese whHe we conducted the

field work in different parts of Nagaland. It means the Naga

words, which were found by Hutton, if at all, must have been

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retexified by the words from the other dominant languages.

Hutton was full of praise for Nagamese for its role as the sole

medium of communication. To quote him,

Naga-Assamese, though a somewhat clumsy vehicle of conversation, is very easy to pick up and with a little application can be spoken perfectly - provided the learner has no previous knowledge of real Assamese. It is, moreover, an excellent vehicle for the expression of Naga turns of speech and thought, and therefore, infinitely better as a medium for conversing to Nagas than Hindustani, or even English, would be, being capable, as it is, of representing almost the precise shade of meaning required.

Hutton also noted that "the first and second personal

inflexions of the verbs are usually disregarded in favour of the

third person and the plural number is largely ignored in

Nagamese". About the Nagamese phonology, he said that /s/

and /c/ are given the English quality as a rule in Nagamese and

these are retained as it is in Nagamese whereas the same two

sounds are pronounced as /h/ and Is/ respectively in Assamese.

The linguistic characteristics of Nagamese that emerges

from the available grammatical descriptions, though very few,

points to a very rigid SOV syntax, almost Assamese like

morphology with simplifications here and there and a simple

phonology having Assamese bases. Varying In scope, nature

and methodology, M V Sreedhar's Naga Pidgin A

Sociolinguistic Study of Inter-lingual Communication Pattern in

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Nagaland (1974) and Standardized Grammar of Naga Pidgin

(1985), B K Boruah's Nagamiz Kothalaga Niyom - A Primary

Grammar on Nagamese (1985) and Nagamese : The Language

of Nagaland (1993) give Interesting insights Into the structure

and nature of Nagamese. The review and evaluation of these

books provides a strong rationale for the scope and orientation of

this present work in Nagamese.

M V Sreedhar's (1974) Naga Pidgin : A Sociolinguistic

Study of Inter-lingual Communication Pattern in Nagaland is the

first ever linguistic study of Nagamese. Sreedhar for the first

time studied and recorded the Nagamese language, though

Hutton (1921) tried to describe it very briefly. This book, being

the earliest attempt towards a descriptive analysis of the

language, makes some valid generalisations about the language.

Sreedhar could not compare Nagamese with Assamese, the

source language, as the description of Assamese was not

available to him which he himself acknowledges in the book.

Sreedhar, above all, faced a major hurdle in collecting the data

on Nagamese because of, the ambivalent attitude of the Nagas

with reference to Nagamese, especially the educated ones who

even refuse to admit the knowledge and existence of this mode

of communication system in Nagaland. In spite of all these

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deficiencies, the book has provided the standard reference work

and it has become the path finder on Nagamese.

Naga Pigdin : A Sociolinguistic Study of Ineriingual

Communication Pattern in Nagaland is divided into four parts.

Part I discusses the general information of Nagaland, sub-

grouping of the Naga languages and the development of Naga

pidgin. Sreedhar said in the introduction chapter by quoting

Whinnom that "a pidgin once formed may play a part in the

formation of other pidgins. This has happened in the case of

Naga pidgin also". While Whinnom is very much correct In

saying that a pidgin may give rise to another pidgin for which

Whinnom has evidence, one wonders why Sreedhar says that

Naga pidgin plays a part in the formation of other pidgins. No

Information Is available of the role played by Nagamese In the

formation of other pidgin In India and elsewhere.

Sreedhar also says that "the Kacharls In Nagaland, have

lost their original language, an Assamese dialect, and use only

Naga pidgin" which Is not the case as we have found out In our

field work. They still speak their mother tongue - .the Kachari

language.

In the fourth chapter, he discusses the various language

contact situations where Nagamese is used. The first situation is

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Naga-non-Naga where he says that some Marwaries knew Naga

pidgin even before they moved into Nagaland which seems to us

highly improbable, because Nagamese is used only in Nagaland,

not even in Assam. The third situation is non-Nagas-Nagas and

here Sreedhar said that the uneducated non-Nagas use the

Naga pidgin for communication with other non-Nagas in

Nagaland but it is not true. They usually use Hindi as we found

out even though they can not speak it fluently and grammatically.

Part 2 of the book deals with the phonemes of the Naga

pidgin. Sreedhar identifies 6 vowels and 26 consonants. He

also says that different Naga communities have different set of

consonants as far as Naga pidgin is concerned. On the basis of

the features of the consonantal system of Naga pidgin like

presence/absence of voicing with the stops, opposition between

the flap and the lateral, three way opposition in the place of

articulation with the fricatives, he sub-grouped the Naga pidgin

speakers into three -

(1) The southern group consisting of the speakers of

Angami, Kachari, Zeme, Liangmei, Rongmei, Rengma,

Sema, Khezha, Chokri and Mao.

(2) The northern group consisting of the speakers of

Konyak, Sangtam, Phom, Chang and Khizmngam.

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(3) The central group consisting of the speakers of Lotha,

Ao and Yimchunger.

The Northern Naga pidgin has a total of 18 consonants as

opposed to the Southern group's 26 whereas the Central Naga

pidgin has 19 consonants, says Sreedhar. He also notes that

out of the 26 consonants of the Naga pidgin, only nine, viz., four

voiceless unaspirated stops, three nasals, and the two

approximants are stable with the Naga pidgin of ail the

communities.

Part 3 of the book is comprised of the basic grammar of the

Naga pidgin. In his analysis of nominals which he sub-divided

into nouns and pronouns, Sreedhar recognises two numbers for

the nouns - singular and plural and found no grammatical

gender. He also notes that Naga pidgin pronouns are capable of

showing opposition in person, capable of taking case suffixes

and showing opposition in gender. In personal pronouns, he

seems to have missed /tui/ and /toi/ meaning 'you'.

He further notes that the plural marker /biJak/ has an

allomorph /kha:n/, and /bilak/ occurs with the noun and /kha.n/

occurs with the pronouns. But our data show that /kha;n/ occurs

with all the nouns and pronouns and /bila:k/ Is very rarely used in

Nagamese.

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According to Sreedhar, there are 6 cases and 5 case

markers In Naga pidgin. They are mentioned below :

Nominative 9

Accusative IVJ

Dative /ke/

Locative /te/

Instrumental /di/

Genitive /r/

Sreedhar sub-classified the post-positions of Naga-pidgin

into two sub-classes without giving any name for the sub­

classes. He mentions the following post-positions - /pora:/ from

/lagot/ with, /la:ga:/ of, /a:gote/ in front of /uparti/ above, /nice/

below, /bhitorte/ inside, /da:yna:te/ left side, /picote/ behind.

Part 4 of this book is comprised of appendices discussing

the correspondence of the consonantal phonemes of the

Southern, the Northern and the Central Naga pidgin in the

Phonology section.

Sreedhar's second book on Nagamese is Standardised

Grammar of Naga Pidgin (1985). It is more descriptive and

elaborate in nature than the previous one. This book is divided

into three chapters and the appendix. The first chapter Is

introduction where he tried to trace the development of

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Nagamese from historical perspective. He also discusses the

overall characteristics of pidgin as well as the socio-political

background of pidgin in general. According to Sreedhar, the

socio-political background of Nagamese is very interesting. He

said that absolutely no evidence is available about the origin of

Nagamese. He identifies two main sources for the spread of

Nagamese in every nook and corner of Nagaland. These two

are General Road Engineering Force (GREF) and the Marwaries.

He tried to compare Nagamese with Assamese very briefly but

he failed there miserably as his most of the Assamese data

were almost wrong. For example, he said that /ma:nuhor/ means

men in Assamese but in reality it is /ma:nuhbila:ky men.

Similarly, /bou/ mother, it should be /ma;/ mother, not /duta:

ma:nuh/ but /dujan ma:nuh/ two men etc.

He further said that Naga pidgin can play a very important

role in the education at the primary level because every child is

exposed to the Naga pidgin from the early childhood and

academically Naga pidgin can be treated as the alternate mother

tongue of the Nagas. He said that the failure of the Naga

children in the examination is because of the use of a completely

alien language English from class IV onwards. "They fail to

grasp the elementary concepts in different subjects, year after

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year" in English. Keeping in view this kind of problem, Sreedhar

advocates the use of Nagamese at the school level to achieve a

higher literacy rate in Nagaland. But at the same time, he also

acknowledges the "unwarranted ambivalent attitude of the

educated Nagas towards the Naga pidgin".

Naga pidgin has a lot of variation and "this grammar of the

standardized Naga pidgin is the result of fusion of various

features found in different varieties of the Naga pidgin", says

Sreedhar.

The second chapter on Phonology has three major

sections - phonemes, phonotactics and syllabic pattern.

Sreedhar establishes 28 phonemes including 6 vowels and

22 consonants this time. The missing consonants that could not

find its place this time in this book but mentioned in the earlier

book are the four voiced aspirated stops /bh/, /dh/, /jh/ and /gh/.

The syllabic structure of the Nagamese monosyllabic

words could be sub-grouped into six classes, says Sreedhar. He

gave the examples :

vc /a:j/ today

cv /bo/ wife of a brother

cvc /ta:n/ hard

ccvc /tris/ thirty

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ccvcc /kla:rk/ clerk

cvcc /benj/ bench

Sreedhar points out that V can not occure alone in Naga pidgin.

In phonotactics, he discusses the different possible

consonant clusters. He said,

...the largest number of consonants that occur in a sequence is three, that too only in the inter-vocal position and only two vowels can occur in a sequence. Only one sequence of vowel occurs in word final position.

The third chapter of the book deals with grammar. In his

analysis of nouns, Sreedhar recognises two numbers - singular

and plural and no grammatical gender but at the same time he

says that "an extremely limited number of nouns show opposition

in gender", for instance,

/ma:ma:/ uncle /ma:mi/ aunt

/murga:/ cock /murgi/ hen

/chokra:/ boy /chokri/ girl etc.

Apart from this, a vast majority of the nouns including the

kinship terms in Naga pidgin do not take any gender marker.

Examples mentioned by him are :

/pua:li/ daughter

/sua:li/ girl

/koka.y/ elder brother

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/didi/ elder sister

/bo/ elder brother's wife

/ma:kela:/ girl's dhoti etc.

He further states that some nouns do not show any overt

number markers, but It takes case markers as in the following :

/la:thi/ stick/s

/la:thite/ in the stick/s

/nodi/ river/s

/nodite/ in the river/s

Sreedhar sub-classifies the Naga pidgin pronouns into

personal pronoun, Reflexive pronoun, Relative pronoun,

Interrogative pronoun. Demonstrative pronoun. Definite and

indefinite pronoun and Partitive pronoun on the basis of the

presence or absence of certain categories.

According to Sreedhar, numerical or the number system of

Naga pidgin is on the base of ten. "It has also an alternate form

having a base twenty". He said that ail the numerals, primary or

secondary can be converted into an ordinal numeral by suffixing

the ordinal, marker /la:/ or /tyor/ to the concerned numeral.

Sreedhar, this time, finds seven case relations, one more

than .the eartier mentioned book. The extra one identified by

Sreedhar is Sociative and the marker is /lagot/. He further states

32

that the "instrumental and locative case do not occur with nouns

human being class".

The post-positions in Naga pidgin occur after a noun or a

pronoun, Sreedhar said.

In the analysis of the verb in Naga pidgin, Sreedhar

remarks that the verbs can be sub-classified into two-locative

and non-locative and on the syntagmatic axis two types of verbs

can be found - auxiliary and principal verb. He further said that

some of the auxiliary verbs may be preposed to another auxiliary

verb, but a principal verb would never be postposed to an

auxiliary verb.

In the discussion on tense, he says that the Naga pidgin

verbs show a two way opposition on the paradigmatic axis, viz.,

simple past and simple non-past. Sreedhar said,

The non-past form usually indicates the future tense, but it is also used to indicate the present tense. The tenses of a verb in Naga pidgin do not show any agreement/concord in number/person with the number/person of the noun/pronoun functioning as the subject.

He establishes three tense morphemes with the help of

examples. They are :

Simple past - /se, sile/

Simple future - /bo/

Simple present - /sse/

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According to Sreedhar, two aspects are available in

Nagamese. They are progressive and habitual and the

progressive aspect combines freely with the tenses. The modals

in Naga pidgin show a seven-way opposition. They are

imperative, obligatory, indicative, potential, permissive,

conditional and infinitive.

Sreedhar describes the formation of adjectives in Naga

pidgin by saying that functional adjectives are derived from a

noun/pronoun/numeral whereas the adjectives proper are divided

into two, viz., quantifiers and qualifiers. The comparison is

expressed by putting the noun or pronoun to the compared in the

nominative and the noun or pronoun with which it is compared in

the accusative case. For example,

/moy citra:k usa: kori ba:l ia:ge/

I like Chitra more than Usha.

The mechanism involved in getting the superlative degree is to prepose the indefinite pronoun /sob/ "all" to the comparative particle and the two together in their turn are preposed to the quality compared. When the noun/pronoun which is compared to some other noun/pronoun, forms part of the predicate, it is in the accusative", says Sreedhar.

He cites the example :

/citra: kla:ste sob kori donia: sua:li/

Chitra is the most beautiful girl in the class.

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In his treatment of adverbs in Nagamese, Sreedhar says

that "in addition to the invariable adjectives, nouns/pronouns

followed by case suffixes/postpositions could also occur in the

slots of the adverbs". He divides the adverbs into three classes,

viz., adverbs of manner, of time and of location and direction.

Sreedhar divides the particles of Naga pidgin into two.

They are conjunctives and miscellaneous. Under the heading of

conjunctives, he includes those particles that connect words,

phrases, clauses and sentences. He gives a list of these

particles - /nahole/ if not, /kintu/ but, /jima:n...hima:n/ as much

as, /eru/ and, /jodi/ if etc. Under miscellaneous he mentions the

emphatic particle /hi/, the definite particle /tu/, the inclusive

particle /bi/.

Sreedhar said that a simple sentence in Naga pidgin would

have the word order of Subject, Object, Verb, i.e., SOV.

Nagamese has three negative particles. These are /nay/, /no/

and /n9/ and all the three negative particles have mutually

exclusive environments. He sets up the negative particle /na/ as

the negative morpheme and considers the other two as the

positional variants of /na/.

According to Sreedhar, two techniques are used for

transforming a statement into an interrogative in the Naga pidgin.

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These are - (i) by postposing to the statement concerned, the particles /no+ki/ standing respectively for negative and Interrogative particles for tagged type of questions anticipating a yes/no answer, and (ii) by placing the interrogative pronoun in the approximate slot of the statement concerned for obtaining information on any specific issue/point.

In the Appendix 1, he reprinted the article, "Standardization

of Naga pidgin" published in the 'Journal of Creole Studies'

(1977). In this article, he talks briefly about the vowels,

consonants and under grammar, number, case, gender, tenses

etc. and ends the article by trying to justify the objectives of

standardization of Naga pidgin. To quote him,

one of the objectives of standardizing the Naga pidgin is to exploit it for obtaining the optimal benefit of the language to the Nagas, particularly in the area of education.... A major objective of this exercise is to see how best the Naga pidgin could be exploited for improving the educational standards in Nagaland.

Appendix 2 is again a repetition of what he has said earlier

about the Nagamese phonology, grammar etc. It is very difficult

to understand why did he repeat it again. His main objective of

having Appendix 2 must have been to find out the similarities

•that exist among the different varieties of Nagamese spoken all

over Nagaland.

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The Appendix 3 contains texts of Nagamese. It includes

folk tales like /sirkoiay thaka: ba:l/ immortal love, /mejik pathor/

magic stone etc. Sreedhar said about the folktales,

...a large number of folk songs and folk tales of the Nagas pertain to the warfare, heroic deeds of their warriors etc. Apart from this, every Naga is concerned with two other issues in his life. One concerns his love affair, and the other,

hardship and sufferings of children

B K Boruah's Nagamiz Kothalaga Niyom : A Primary

Grammar on Nagamese (1985) is written in Nagamese and

basically it is a traditional grammar book. It seems from the

contents of the book, that this grammar is based on Sreedhar's

(1974). Boruah finds six vowels, seven diphthongs and twenty

three consonants.

He divides the Nagamese sentences into three types - (i)

simple, (ii) complex and (iii) compound, and says that Nagamese

uses more simple sentences than any other types.

Boruah divided nouns into several classes from the

traditional point of view. These are animate, inanimate nouns,

nouns indicating names, nouns for time, kinship nouns etc.

These are not at all linguistic classification of nouns.

Boruah finds two numbers in Nagamese - singular and

plural and four plural markers which is quite surprising. These

markers are /bur/, /bula:k/, /kha:n/ and /luk/.

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According to Boruah, Nagamese has seven cases and

twelve case markers. He gives a list of It along with the

examples.

(i) Nominative 0 , lei, Ihel

(11) Accusative /ke/

(iii) Dative /loi/, l\el

(iv) Genitive /r/, /la:ga:/

(v) Locative /te/

(vi) Instrumental /zoriyote/, /pora:/

(vii) Ablative /t-pora:/, /r-pora:/

Boruah finds passive sentences in Nagamese and he said

that the passive sentences are seldom used In Nagamese. He

gives the examples.

(i) /itu bikri kora: hobo/

This will be sold,

(ii) /za:nowa:rtu ma:ra: hoise/

The animal was killed,

(iii) /ta:ka:tu a:ma:r luwa: hoise/

The money was taken by me.

He says that Nagamese uses three definitives and these

are /kha:n/, /ta:/ and /tu/. But it seems to us that Boruah is

wrong here when he includes /kha:n/ under definitives. /Kha:n/

38

is a plural marker In Nagamese, not a definitive. It is never used

as a definitive as our data indicates.

B K Boruah's Nagamese : the Language of Nagaland

(1993) Is the last book so far about Nagamese. The book is

divided Into three parts. In the first part he discusses the origin

of the Nagas, the Naga languages, Naga-Ahom relations and

historical background of Nagamese at length. In the second part

he analyses the Nagamese phonology, in the third part the

morphology of Nagamese. Finally in the appendices, he

provides glossary and text specimens, word list, onomatopoeic

and echo words, terms of relationship and specimens of

Nagamese language.

About the term "Nagamese", Boruah said in the

introduction that "the term Nagamese is a blended or

contaminated formation of Naga-Assamese. The word is newly

coined by the people of All India Radio Station, Kohima". He

further states that

during my fieldwork in Nagaland it has been informed that the word "Nagamese" was coined by three persons, viz., (i) Lt. Mr Akum Imlong, former Minister of Information and Publicity and Tuensang Affairs, (ii) Mr M G Baidya, former and first Station Director, All India Radio, Kohima and (iii) the informant himself, i.e., Mr Asim Roy, present Producer, Farm and Home, All India Radio, Kohima.

39

In the same chapter he said that Nagamese is enriched

with "tadbhava" words whereas semi ""tatsama" words are very

small in number and "tatsama words are rarely used in

Nagamese". Interestingly he said that "the native words, i.e.,

words of Indian languages other than Assamese came through

the Assamese language" and it is very difficult to believe him

here.

He further said that some words from the Naga languages

are incorporated in Nagamese. To quote him, "...these words

are incorporated from the sources of their own languages and

dialects. Such words are /cimta:/ gongs, /celemzi/ a big basket,

/philla:/ thigh etc." But Mr Boruah is very much wrong as far as

the word /cimta:/ is concerned. This is not at all a native Naga

word. This word Is Assamese and to be precise, belongs to the

Kamrupi dialect of Assamese and it is extensively used by the

speakers of the Kamrupi dialect of Assamese.

In Part 2, Chapter 1, Boruah establishes six vowel

phonemes which can occur in all the positions, twenty three

consonantal phonemes and eight diphthongs. According to him,

Nagamese shows clusters of tv/o and three consonants. Two

consonant clusters are very frequent while three consonant

clusters are rare in Nagamese.

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Chapter 2 discuses the vowels and their treatment. In this

chapter, the author tries to show the use of different vowels in

the Identical Nagamese and Assamese words and make some

generalisation about it. He lists several words from both the

languages like the following.

Nagamese Gloss Assamese

/kopa:l/

/mota:/

forehead

male

/kapail/

/mata;/

/hoha:i/

/itu/

/mazte/

help

this

on the table

/xaha:i/

/eito/

/mezate/

He discusses the phonetic changes in chapter 3 under

several headings like aphaeresis, prothesis, anaptyxis etc. by

citing some examples from Nagamese and the sources of these

words. He states that the root /kha:/ "to eat" gives /kha:ise/ in

Nagamese and because of the working of analogy, /za:/ "to go"

gives rise to /za.ise/ whereas in Assamese it is /goise/. It may

be because of simplification also as we know that pidgins are

known to make the structure as simple as possible. Boruah

further states that the Assamese sibilant Ixl shows two types of

changes in /h/ and /s/ but did not give any rule for it.

41

According to Boruah, the nouns of Nagamese are inflected

for gender, number and case. The distinction of gender In

Nagamese Is Implied by the use of two qualifying terms - /mota:/

'male' and /ma:lkl/ 'female'. He also said that there are many

words of common gender in Nagamese. Boruah stated that "the

gender of Nagamese can be distinguished in three ways :

(i) by prefixing words indicating male and female.

These words are used as adjectives to the

qualifying noun;

(il) using different terms for male and female;

(Hi) by adding suffixes / - I / , /-ni/ or /-oni/."

Boruah said that Nagamese has to numbers - singular and

plural. "The duel meaning is conveyed by the use of the numeral

term denoting 'two'". He recognises four plural suffixes and

these are /bur/, /bula:k/, /kha:n/ and /luk/. The seven case

identified by him are Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental,

Dative, Ablative, Genitive and Locative.

Boruah describes three types of enclitic definitives such as

/kha.n/, /ta:/ and /tu/ and said that /kha.n/ is used after nouns,

pronouns, and adjectives, /ta:/ is used after numerals and

pronominal adjectives while /tu/ is used after noun substantives

and pronouns In a definitive sense in Nagamese. To express the

42

indefinite sense, Nagamese uses /dui ekta:/ two or so, /kunu/

someone or no one, /kiba:/ something.

According to Boruah, Nagamese has seven types of

pronouns, viz., personal, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite,

reflexive, relative and correlative pronouns.

In the discussion on adjectives, he said that the sense of

comparative is expressed by the use of post-positions /koi/ or

/kori/ which follows the noun or pronoun of comparison. For

example,

/itu kita:b hitu koi/ kori da:r|or/

This book is bigger than that

The sense of superlative is expressed by prefixing words

/sobse/, /ekdom/, /ekeba;re/, /khub/, /bohut/, /besi/ etc.

He also provides a list of adverb of time, place and

manner.

Boruah lists all types of numerals like cardinals, ordinals,

multiplicatives, fractionals etc.

In his description of verbs In Nagamese, Boruah classifies

them into transitive and intransitive, discussing the verb base

which are broadly classified into four types like causative base,

reciprocal base, Iterative base and compound base. He

recognises three tenses - present, past and future in Nagamese.

43

According to Boruah,

the formation of the present participle in Nagamese is not similar with that of Assamese. In Assamese language the present participle is /-ote/.... To denote the sense Nagamese language has got two forms - (i) the participle /-te/ with the word /tha:ka:/ is added after the principal verb. For example, /kha:i tha:ka:te/ 'while eating' (ii) the word for 'time or moment' i.e., /homoyte/ 'at the time' is used after the verb followed by the word /tha:ka:/. For example, /kha:i tha:ka: homoyte/ 'while eating'.

Boruah recognises two past participles in Nagamese, viz.,

/ -a: / and /-wa:/. He also said that the same /-a: / is used in

Assamese as well in the role of past participle.

For Boruah, Nagamese expresses the passive sense with

the help of the conjugated verb root /ho/ 'to be' which Is placed

after the verb base as in the following.

/zua: hoisile, hoise/ had been gone

/bikri kora: hobo/ will be sold

But he said that the "passive form is not in much use in

Nagamese".

Boruah classifies the Nagamese conjunctions into four

types - cumulative, alternative, adversative and subordinate, and

gives a list of some conjunctions.

Boruah said that the negative marker in Nagamese is /no/

and it is prefixed to a fully inflected verbal form. Apart from this

44

/no/, Nagamese also uses /na:i/ which shows two forms in its

use -

(i) /na:i/ - /ta:r ta.te na.i/ He is not there,

(ii) /na:i a:se/ /ta.r ta:te na:i a:se/ He is not there.

Boruah lists some of the emphatic forms along with

examples which are used in Nagamese.

Boruah said that the normal order of words in a sentence in

Nagamese is of the following pattern -

(i) demonstrative + possessive + adjective + noun

(ii) demonstrative + possessive + adverb +

adjective + noun

and said that these sentence structures are same as in

Assamese.

In the appendix, he provides a list of common Nagamese

words giving English and Assamese meaning, lists some of the

onomatopoeic and echo words without offering any explanation

of its constructions. At the end of the book, he also cites four

specimens passages of Nagamese language.

2.3 Lexical Records

There are very few attempts towards providing the lexicon

of Nagamese. M V Sreedhar (1974, 1985) made the first ever

attempt and tried to note down the Nagamese lexicons. He

45

listed nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs in his worlds.

His studies indicate a high incidence of Assamese words in

Nagamese. Sreedhar did not make any analysis of the

Nagamese lexicon.

B K Boruah's (1985, 1993) works provide a skeletal lexicon

of Nagamese. Boruah's work shows a much higher percentage

of original Assamese words which leads one to doubt whether

these are real Nagamese words or not. Boruah provides a list of

nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions,

numerals, some village names etc.

There is no Nagamese dictionary, it seems. Though

Sreedhar (1974) mentions that there Is one Nagamese dictionary

viz., Nagamese into Anglo-Hindi-Ao written by one D Baruah

(1968) of Mokokchung, we could not get hold of a copy of this

dictionary hence we can not comment on it.

2.4 Text Collections/Folk Literature in Written Form

Nagamese is a pidgin and above all it is a spoken

language used for day to day oral communication only. Apart

from this, the Nagas, themselves, are having ambivalent attitude

towards this language. They consider it to be a bastard tongue

and the educated Nagas altogether refuse to acknowledge its

existence as well as its knowledge in front of the outsiders.

46

Even though it carries the maximum functional load among all

the languages used in Nagaland, Nagamese does not have much

textual materials because of the negative attitude of its own

speakers. Whatever written materials are available in Nagamese,

these are, surprisingly, written not by the Nagas but mostly by

the non-Nagas, especially by the Assamese. The credit for this

goes to the Assam Sahitya Sabha, the premier literary

organisation of the whole N E region, for holding a seminar on

Nagamese in 1984.

The available textual material in Nagamese reflects, both

in terms of thematic content and linguistic structure, the general

socio-cultural life of the Nagas. As mentioned by Sreedhar

(1985)

...till very recently, a major concern of the Nagas was the struggle for existence. This arose primarily out of the inter-tribal and at times even inter-clan feuds. Therefore, a large number of folk songs and folk tales of the Nagas pertain to the war-fare, heroic deeds of their warriors etc. Apart from this, every Naga is concerned with two other issues in his life. One concerns his love affair, particularly of the pre-marital relationship and the other, hardship and sufferings of children living with a stepmother or stepfather, including the orphans living with the fostered parents. In every Naga tribe one could find a number of folksongs and folk tales on these two themes.

Navamalati Chakraborty's (1979) Nagaland which is written

originally in English but translated into Nagamese by Bolin

47

Borgohain and Omeo Kumar Das gives a representative corpus

of the traditional folk lore, in this book we get songs of different

Naga tribes. For example, it includes an AngamI love song, a

Konyak love song, one Rengma lullaby etc.

Sreedhar (1985) collected some folktales from different

Naga communities and these folk tales were translated into

Nagamese by the informants themselves.

Boruah (1993) collected one story which was translated

into Nagamese by Dharani Baruah from original English and the

remaining songs were reprinted from N Chakraborty's (1979)

Nagaland.

Some modern songs and a few prayers are also available

in Nagamese in the form of audio cassettes and those are

available in all the audio shops in Nagaland.

Like folklore and folk tales, the vernacular literature in

Nagamese is extremely scanty. The first book written in

Nagamese is N Chakraborty's (1979) Nagaland. It is followed by

B K Boruah's (1985) Nagamiz Kothalaga Niyom. Of course, this

is a grammar book.. We have included this book here because it

is written in Nagamese.

Apart from these two books, few dramas like 'Heora

Chukra', 'Kabuliwala' are found in Nagamese. These dramas

48

were broadcasted by the All India Radio Station, Kohima and are

well preserved by AIR. Roman script is used for the purpose of

writing these literature.

2.5 Scope and Orientation of the Study

The review and evaluation of the available literature on

Nagamese provides an adequate rationale for a further, more

detailed study of Nagamese and the borrowings in Nagamese

lexical inventory. The earlier studies on Nagamese did not take

into account the simplification of Assamese features found in

Nagamese, the relexification feature, i.e., the borrowings from

other languages, and hence, it failed to comment on the motive

behind this extensive borrowing of lexicon. As a result, it also

failed to study the pidginised structure of Nagamese. An attempt

has been made here to explain the general characteristics of

pidgin and its application in Nagamese, the reasons of extensive

borrowing in Nagamese and its effect. We also tried to analyse

up to what extent Nagamese has simplified the Assamese

features and the true nature of Nagamese as a pidgin by

examining the prevalent theories of origin of pidgin and find out

whether Nagames.e is moving towards a full-fledged language.

49

2.6 Methodology

The present descriptive study is limited to the version of

Nagamese spoken in and around the Kohima district of

Nagaland. The data for this descriptive analysis of Nagamese

was collected in the course of several trips to different places of

Kohima district between 1998 to 2002 and the informants

belonged to different Naga tribes. The method of approach to

the acquisition of the data was direct all the time. The spoken

communication, comprising of narratives, folk tales and stories,

songs, and natural conversations was taped for repetition and

close study. Since Nagamese has no written literature baring

the above mentioned few, the data for this work was entirely

taken from the speech of the Nagas living in Nagaland. This

included words, phrases, sentences, live conversations, tales

etc. It was taped for phonological research and for a close

examination at a later time. We also compared the data,

wherever possible, with Chakraborty's (1979) work.

The sources of linguistic information for this study were a

number of informants, as we mentioned above, of different age

groups, professions and occupations as well as sexes. Some of

the informants were multilinguals - having knowledge of English,

Hindi, Nagamese and the mother tongue whereas the others

50

were purely bilinguals -knowing only two languages - Nagamese

and the mother tongue. The informants who were mainly

associated with this work are listed below :

1. Mr Timothy Kaping (30 yrs), Dimapur, Businessman

2. Ms Temjenmenia Ao (25 yrs), Dimapur, Student

3. Ms Tiajungia Ao (18 yrs), Dimapur, Student

4. Mr Azid Zelem (19 yrs), Dimapur, Student

5. Mr Donray A Shishak (40 yrs), Dimapur, Engineer

6. Mrs Homi Shishak (35 yrs), Dimapur, Housewife

7. Mr N V Aya (35 yrs), Dimapur, Constable

8. Mr Bikehiel (30 yrs), Dimapur, Shopkeeper

9. Ms Shanngam (38 yrs), Kohima, Teacher

10. Ms Margaret (25 yrs), Kohima, Student

11. Ms Helen Hokishe (33 yrs), Kohima, Govt, employee

12. Mr Alemchiba (50 yrs), Kohima, Govt, employee

13. Mr K Akangneren (55 yrs), Kohima, Govt, employee

Apart from the above mentioned informants, a number of

students of the Department of History, Department of Education

and the Department of English, Nagaiand University, Kohima and

people from different walks of life from the state of Nagaiand

acted as our informants and provided valuable data on

Nagamese.