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| Koro | |
|---|---|
| Koro-Aka | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Arunachal Pradesh,India |
| Ethnicity | Koro-Aka |
Native speakers | 1,500 (2011)[1] |
Sino-Tibetan (possibly) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | jkr |
| Glottolog | koro1316 |
| ELP | Koro (India) |
Koro is a language spoken inArunachal Pradesh, India. It is typically classified as aSino-Tibetan language, and has some resemblances toTani farther to the east.[2] It has been argued that Koro is actually part of the GreaterSiangic family, independent from but influenced by the Sino-Tibetan family.[3] Koro is spoken by about 1,500 people in the Koro-Aka tribe[1] who are found inEast Kameng District,Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India.[4] Few speakers are under 20 years old.[5] The majority of Koro speakers live in bilingual households in which one or more members speakAko or another indigenous language rather than Koro.[6] The Koro-Aka tribe lives among the Aka (Hruso) tribe. However, the Koro-Aka people speak a very distantly related language from the remaining Aka tribe who speak Hruso-Aka.[7] Researchers hypothesize Koro may have originated from a group of people enslaved and brought to the area.[8]
Recognition in the academic literature of Koro as a distinct language goes back at least to the 1962 publication of Raghuvir Sinha's bookThe Akas[9] and lexical data was first published in 1992 by Dalvindar Singh Grewal with his doctoral thesis titledAka, Miji and their kindred in Arunachal Pradesh : an enquiry into determinants of their identity.[10] The 2009 edition of theEthnologue (Lewis 2009), which based its findings on a language survey conducted in 2005, is therefore not the earliest recognition of its distinct status, as is commonly assumed.[11] It notes that Koro has only 9 percent lexical similarity with Hruso Aka, and that it is "highly dissimilar to neighboring languages".[12][1]
In October 2010, theNational Geographic Daily News published an article corroborating the findings of theEthnologue based on research conducted in 2008 by a linguistic team ofDavid Harrison,Gregory Anderson, and Ganesh Murmu while documenting twoHruso languages (Aka andMiji) as part ofNational Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project.[5] It was reported to them as a dialect of Aka, but turned out to be highly divergent.
Mark Post andRoger Blench (2011)[13] propose that Koro is related toMilang in a branch, or perhaps independent family, they callSiangic.
Below are the consonants of Koro.
| Biliabial | Labial-dental | Alveolar | Palato-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pb | td | kg | ʔ | |||
| Fricative | fv | sz | ʃ | h hʲ | |||
| Affricate | t͡ʃd͡ʒ | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Flapped | ɾ | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximants | w | j |
Phonemes to the left of a cell arevoiceless while phonemes to the right arevoiced with the exception of theglottalfricatives which are both voiceless.
The information from the chart above was collected from the most recent research done on the consonants of Koro. However, there are a few discrepancies of information between recent research and past research.
In Geissler's work (2013), the articulation of /ʋ/ exists and can sound similar to /v/ or /w/ depending on the speaker. There is a possibility that the articulation of /ʔ/ is not a phoneme in Koro. While a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another, data suggests that /ʔ/ is instead used for other unidentified roles. For example, it can be used to separate vowels, such as [ma.leʔe.tɨŋ] which means ‘fast boy.’ In other examples, /ʔ/ disappears from phrases. The word ‘that’ in Koro is [baʔ], but strangely, the glottal stop disappears in the word [ba ŋɨn] which means ‘that house’.[15]
In Anderson's work (2010), there exists anaspirated ph or /ɸ/. It is possible that Anderson's data may have been influenced by the differences in speech between natives or the Hindi language used by his informants. In addition, his research does not include words that have no vowels in between consonants, but Blench argues that there are words with no vowels, resulting from the influence of theHruso language spoken nearby. For example, the word ‘woman’ is ‘msn’ in Koro.[16]
There is acomplementary distribution between thealveolar trill /r/ and thealveolar flap /ɾ/. The trill /r/ is heard in the beginning or end of a word while the flap /ɾ/ is heard in the middle of the word.[14]
Below are the vowels of Koro.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-Mid | e | ə | |
| Open-Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Koro has two confirmed types of vowels: oral andnasalized. There are very fewdiphthongs, such as -aj and -ej.[18] The existence of long vowels is uncertain; while Blench (2018) proposes that long vowels exist,[17] Anderson (2010) argues that only the long vowel a: might exist.[19]
Koro words can have one or multiple syllables in them. The commonly seen syllable is CV, but there are plenty of other syllable structures in Koro such as CVC, CCV, and CCVC.[19]
There are usually three parts to a syllable: the onset, the nucleus, and the coda. The nucleus is usually a vowel, and the onset and the coda are consonants that come before or after the nucleus, respectively. Onsetless syllables, which are syllables that begin with a vowel, exist in Koro, but they do not have a coda. For a coda to exist, the syllable must have an onset. The observed rule is that onsets can have a maximum of two consonants while codas can have only one. In addition, nasal vowels and codas do not occur simultaneously together.[20]
Koro nouns can be formed with suffixes. For example, there are many common animal names that have the suffix ‘-le’ in the last syllable of each word.[21]
lele
pig
lele
pig
'pig'
ekile
dog
ekile
dog
'dog'
tʃole
chicken
tʃole
chicken
'chicken'
However, this is not always the case because in some words, the suffix ‘-le’ may not be present for an animal name or is present for another name that is not animal related.
The suffix -me is a plural marker for pronouns and, depending on the Koro speaker, for living things.[21]
nu
you
nu
you
‘you’
ba
s/he
ba
s/he
‘s/he’
The suffix ‘-gɨ’ is used to show possession, usually around a pronoun. This element may not be Koro's alone but a cognate of otherTibeto-Burman languages as well.[23]
ne-gɨ
older-my
oɸo
sister
ne-gɨ oɸo
older-my sister
‘my older sister’
nu-gɨ
older-your
oɸo
sister
nu-gɨ oɸo
older-your sister
‘your older sister’
ne-gɨ
older-my
ama
brother
ne-gɨ ama
older-my brother
‘my older brother’
nu-gɨ
older-your
ama
brother
nu-gɨ ama
older-your brother
‘your older brother’
Pronouns in Koro have three types of persons: first, second, and third. These pronouns can either be singular or plural.[24]
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | ne | eme |
| 2nd | nu | nu-me |
| 3rd | ba | ba-me |
The suffix -ro is an imperative marker, which conveys a command or request to another person.[25]
The suffix -le is a negativeimperative (prohibitive) marker, which conveys a command or request to not do an action to another person.[25]
The suffix -ŋa is a negativeindicative marker, which negates a statement or question.[26]
The basic word order of Koro is subject-object-verb.[26]
mɨsɨn
woman
kako
book
pɨrɨ-doĩje
read-PROG
mɨsɨn kako pɨrɨ-doĩje
woman book read-PROG
‘the woman is reading abook’
The structure of noun phrases usually follows demonstrative-noun-adjective-numerals.Demonstrative elements are determiners used to indicate a person or thing, such as the words: this, that, and those. Numerals do not need anumeral classifiers to help describe the quantity of a noun.[27]
lele
pig
N
ma
black
ADJ
kala
three
NUM
ti lele ma kala
DEM pig black three
DEM N ADJ NUM
‘these three black pigs’
Inditransitive sentences in which there are two objects, the order usually follows subject-object1-object2-verb. Object 1 is the indirect object that is receiving the action while object 2 is the direct object being acted upon.[27]
ne
I
li
lele
pig
rã-gɨ
give:TAM.I
ne li muru-li-m lele rã-gɨ
I DET man-DEF-OBJ pig give:TAM.I
‘I gave the pig to the man
Question words come after the subject or object.[28]
nu
you
SUBJ
[h]igina
what
Q.OBJ
nu [h]igina gide-nde
you what see-INT
SUBJ Q.OBJ VERB
‘what did you see?’
asuna
who
Q.SUBJ
nu-mɨ lele-de asuna rã-de
you-OBJ pig-DEF who give-INT
OBJ1 OBJ2 Q.SUBJ VERB
‘who gave you the pig?’
{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)Sino-Tibetan branches | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WesternHimalayas (Himachal, Uttarakhand,Nepal,Sikkim) |
|  | |||
| EasternHimalayas (Tibet,Bhutan,Arunachal) | |||||
| Myanmar and Indo- Burmese border |
| ||||
| East andSoutheast Asia |
| ||||
| Dubious (possible isolates,Arunachal) |
| ||||
| Proposed groupings | |||||
| Proto-languages | |||||
Italics indicates single languages that are also considered to be separate branches. | |||||
