Dumi Verb Morphology
Date
2008
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Central Department of Linguistics
Abstract
Dumi language, a Tibeto-Burman Group under the Sino-Tibetan Family is a
pronominalized Kiranti language. It is one of the endangered languages of eastern
Nepal, currently spoken by approximately two thousand and five hundred people.
This thesis entitled 'Dumi Verb Morphology' attempts to describe and analyze the
verbal system of Dumi language. From the different scholarly made linguistics reports
show that the Dumi people are gradually losing their native language. So, it seems an
urgent need to preserve and promote the language from the linguistics and literary
point of view.
This study has mainly three parts. The first part consists of the acknowledgement,
abstract, content and list of abbreviations, figures, symbols and tables. The second
part is the main body of the research which has been organized in the four chapters.
The first chapter deals about the general background of Dumi people and language.
The second chapter presents the outline of the Dumi phonology. The third chapter
analyzes the Dumi Verb morphology. The fourth chapter draws the summary and
conclusions of the whole work.
In this language, the verb morphology of Dumi shows different inflectional and
derivational processes. There is only existential 'be verb' in Dumi, which contrasts its
form in past and non-past.
In Dumi Prefixing 'ma-' negativizes the verbs. When identificational 'be verb' is
negativized, the negative prefix 'ma-' is independently or lexically used as much as
identificational 'be verb' does not exist in Dumi. The process of causativization is both
morphological and lexical. The morphological causative suffix is productive. Every
main verb can be made causative by adding suffix '-mu'. Dumi verbs can be said to
possess an active, a passive and the passive is only apparent, which is being affected
by adding different personal suffixes denoting the subject or the object. Adding a
suffix 's' or 'si' and conjugating as usual form in the middle. In this study, different
aspects of the verb morphology of Dumi language have been discussed
Finally, the third part consists of three appendices. In sub-sections of appendix A: A
,
A
2
and A
3
, I have presented the verb paradigms of intransitive, transitive and reflexive
verbs respectively. In appendix B, it is presented the three texts which have been
interlinearized using the toolbox, computer software. Ultimately, there is Profile of
the language consultants in the appendix C.
Description
Keywords
Dumi language, Verb morphology