LONG RANGER 33 (part 1)

Newsletter of the Association for the Study

of Language in Prehistory.

(formerly Mother Tongue Newsletter)

Issue 33. (Part 1) September 2001.

The Assocation for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP) is a nonprofit organization, incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its purpose is to encourage and support the study of language in prehistory in all fields and by all means, including research on the early evolution of human language, supporting conferences, setting up a data bank, and publishing a newsletter (Long Ranger) and a journal (Mother Tongue) to report these activities.

Membership: Annual dues for ASLIP membership, including subscriptions to Long Ranger newsletter and Mother Tongue journal, are U.S. $25 in all countries, except those with currency problems (e.g., Russia). Please send membership fees to:

Peter Norquest tel: 520-903-0648

ASLIP Treasurer e-mail: Norquesp@U.ARIZONA.edu

1632 Santa Rita Avenue

Tucson, AZ 85719

U.S.A.

* * * * * * *

Long Ranger Editor

(for this section):

Michael Witzel

ASLIP President

Dept. of Sanskrit & Indian Studies

Harvard University

2 Divinity Ave.

Cambridge MA 02138

ph.617-496 290

witzel@fas.harvard.edu

Readers: Please inform us of news items that might be of interest.

ASLIP Website:<http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/aslip.html>

Note: As of now LR will first be published electronically, in several parts per issue, as to allow rapid communication. A combined issue will be sent by regular mail to those members who do not have email. (In the future we may have to charge for this). Members are requested to notify Peter Norquest of their email address, and to indicate whether they allow publication of their email address on the website.

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Long Ranger Newsletter No. 33 (LR 33-1) Fall 2001

CONTENTS

ASLIP ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. Obituaries

2. Annual meeting 2000

3. Annual meeting 20001

REPORTS

4. Notes on the Moscow Conference on Long-Range Comparison

5. The Moscow Conference: An interview with Fabrice Cavoto

6. ASLIP Conference on Central and South Asia at Harvard

PAPER

7. Kusunda lives!

INTERNET

8. Lurker's Log (of the MT mailing list)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

9. SFI Bulletin : Language Evolution

10. NSF grant for endangered language preservation

INDEX

11. Chronological subject index LR, Fall 1996 - Fall 1998

Obituaries

During the past few months we have lost

Cyrus Gordon

Joseph Greenberg

Scotty MacNeish

Roger Wescott

They were remembered during the yearly meeting. Several obituaries have already appeared in MT VI (which is on its way to all members)

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2

ASLIP Annual Meeting 2001

MINUTES

April 21, 2001

African Studies Center

Boston University

Boston, MA

CURRENT BUSINESS

Elections:

11 members of the Board of Directors were elected:

Anne W. Beaman, Allan R. Bomhard, Ronald Christensen, Gyula D™csy, Murray Denofsky, Harold C. Fleming, Frederick Gamst, Kenneth Hale, Mary Ellen Lepionka, Phillip Lieberman, Jan Vansina

The following officers were elected for the next year:

President: Michael Witzel

Vice-President: John D. Bengtson

Secretary-Treasurer: Peter Norquest

Secretary-Treasurer's Report:

M.Witzel relayed the Secretary-Treasurer's report, sent by Peter Norquest by e-mail as he could not attend the meting this year.

On the basis of votes mailed in, Merritt Ruhlen and Ofer Bar-Yosef were the top two vote-getters for the Council of Fellows, and will replace the deceased members (Igor Diakonoff and Karl Heinrich Menges). Vyacheslav Ivanov was third in the voting.

Vice-President's Report:

John Bengtson reported on the progress of our journal Mother Tongue. The 2000-2001 issue, Mother Tongue VI, was in preparation, and includes: articles in Memoriam of Roger Wescott, Cyrus Gordon, and Joseph Greenberg; articles discussing 'Paleolinguistics: The State of the Art and Science' (in memory of Roger Wescott); a discussion of Austric with L.V. Hayes and others; and book reviews. (This issue of Mother Tongue has since been completed and has been distributed to members)

President's Report:

Our recently deceased members

Cyrus Gordon

Joseph Greenberg

Scotty MacNeish

Roger Wescott

were remembered. Obituaries are to appear in MT.

A number of recent developments and prospects were reported.

* Printing of the Brochure, was delayed for financial reasons; it will be printed now and distributed to some institutions and libraries. Members are requested to ask for copies to do some advertising of their own.

* As for the Newsletter, John Bengtson is to include a report of the Moscow Conference, Announcements of meetings are to include NAACA and regional meetings of the LOS. M. Witzel briefly reported on a special Burushaski session at the Montreal ICANAS conference last August that brought together a dozen of specialists, including H. Berger, E. Tiffou.

* ASLIP Web site

The Long Ranger web site is up to date for the past seven issues. Earlier past issues will follow. The online Newsletter can remain open to the public for free. For continuity, it is better to publish it in smaller installments on the web, to be augmented between issues; they can then include for instance, to include members' new news.

* The Mother Tongue e-mail list : In LR 33, a summary of past discussions will be published; it has been prepared by Mary Ellen Lepionka. Randy Foot will summarize the syntax discussion later on.

(Additional note: The list is not functioning as of now (as the host company does not sustain it any longer, such as has also happened with Bill Gates' Listbot! It will be re-installed, with all old materials, as a Yahoo list.) A Linguist search engine will be added later on.

* Data Bases

The new ASCII-like encoding system, 'Unicode', allows phonetic transcriptions of most languages and, at the same time, the standard representation of written languages in their original characters. It is now included in the new Macintosh Operation System (OS X), and it has been available for the PC for some time. Hopefully, people will make use of it to replace our unwieldy ASCII-limited (7 bit character) transcriptions on the web and in email.

The Whitehouse and Bomhard fonts are to be added for the creation of a database that everyone can use and can connect to by hyperlink.

P. Whitehouse has offered to make his database collection available (see LR 33). LV Hayes' Austric data can be scanned in as pdf files, which then remain under his control.

The Starling database for Altaic, Dravidian, etc., can already be accessed easily via S. Starostin's website (http://starling.rinet.ru/). The same applies to the one for Indo-European run by S. Lubotsky at Leiden (http://iiasnt.leidenuniv.nl/ied/index2.html) they can eventually be hot-linked to our emerging database (P. Whitehouse); we can also add a database on (already existing) relevant texts and links to such texts.

Highly "intelligent", multi-purpose search engines should be included, such SIM developed by the Australia RMIT's SIM; unfortunately it is very expensive. John Gardner and M. Witzel have set up a prototype for such work, using mapping procedures, at a private computer company. More news will be reported as we progress.

It was suggested by members that we will create a list of language families on web site and add relevant links, lists of prominent experts, etc.

* Fund raising

On fund raising, the M. Witzel reported on 'footholds' on the East and West Coasts. It is hoped that these may lead to funding for ASLIP and related activities. He outlined a program for attracting funds for the creation of an institute that would establish and manage a universally accessible global database of facts relating to long-range comparisons.

DECISIONS

It was resolved at the 2001 Annual Meeting of ASLIP to publish the brochure developed last year, work on developing a mailing list and recruiting new members, deliver the Long Ranger Newsletter by email and on the website, and attend to the distribution of reprints of past issues of Mother Tongue long requested by certain new members.

NEW BUSINESS

Hal Fleming reported on his visit to Joe Greenberg in California just prior to his death. A conference, in his memory, and a memorial volume, inspired by his work, are planned at Stanford (M. Ruhlen) for next year.

Hals' African conference, originally planned as a back-to-back conference with the Harvard Central & South Asian Workshop in May, had to be postponed; however, there are prospects for next Spring next year.

Or, it may be substituted for by one of the AAPA to be held in Buffalo, NY next April: this is a symposium headed by S.O.Y. Keita, which will cover the same elements that were to be included in the Gloucester conference.

It was suggested by members to have an ASLIP conference attached to other conferences, such as those of the Society for the Origin of Language, or the meetings of societies such as that of those of Linguistics, Archaeology, Anthropology, etc.

Members are encouraged to inform the Secretary about their participation in such conferences so that we can organize a get together or a para-session devoted to ASLIP matters.

Hal also reported a new discovery on Shabo, a hunter-gatherer society living within a society of hunter-gatherers with a little agriculture (SW Ethiopia). Their language does not seem to be related to any other one; sometimes it was thought to be a very old branch of Nilo-Saharan (or even of S. Cushitic), but with old borrowings from Omotic (or cognates?), Cushitic, Surma, and others. The East African 'Bushmen' (Hadza and Sandawe) and the unclassified Kado also are geographcially close. In other words, Shabo is situated at the crossroads of several major language families, and close to the suspected original home of Homo Sapiens before the migration out of Africa. Unfortunately, some genetic researchers recently walked right by the Shabo, as they were not allowed into their precise area.

Murray Denofsky reported briefly on his paper, 'Iconicity and Language: Phonetic Symbolism of the Occlusivity Symbol,' publication forthcoming. This paper is in search of universals supporting the concept of pan-language (e.g., open sounds = open staces; occlusivity = nasals and stops), particular sound symbols for contact, density, and other qualities.

Michael Witzel announced a 'Fourth Pillar' of long range linguistic comparison, mythology (linguistics, archaeology and anthropology, and population genetics being the other three pillars). According to him (see now MT VI), a comparison of whole mythologies reveals global patterns that closely relate to global distributions of languages. One pattern, termed Laurasian, spans, e.g., Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Japan, Polynesia, the Americas, and includes a chronological structure of myth from creation to destruction with tales of origins, the flood, killing the dragon, and 4 or 5 generations of deities and heroes, and a final destruction of the world.

A second pattern, including, e.g., Australian, sub-Saharan African, Papuan, and Andaman mythologies, does not include most of these elements but has its own commonalties. The two chief explanations for resemblances among myths--diffusion and psychic archetypes--in most cases cannot satisfactorily explain the distribution of these two patterns, but linguistic affinities very likely can. He proposes that, using the major (often 'official') myth systems as well as some folktales, the local patterns can be predicted on the basis of the model.

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3

ASLIP ANNUAL MEETING

April 15, 2000

Boston University

African Studies Center

CURRENT BUSINESS

The outgoing President, John D. Bengtson, was warmly thanked for his successful four years of dedicated service. He offered to stay on as Vice-President and editor of MT, and members agreed.

Elected Officers of ASLIP: Michael Witzel, President; John D. Bengtson and Roger W. Wescott, Vice-Presidents; Peter Norquest, Secretary-Treasurer.

Elected Members of the Board:

O. Bar-Yosef, A. Beaman, A. Bomhard, R. Christensen, G. Decsy, H. Fleming, F. Gamst, M. E. Lepionka, Ph. Lieberman, J. Vansina.

Nominations for Council of Fellows:

As Igor Diakonoff and Karl-Heinrich Menges have passed away since our last meeting, new elections to the Council are necessary. Michael Witzel will solicit nominations from the membership, and elections to vacancies in the Council of Fellows will be done by mail/email at a later time.

DECISIONS

Resolved: ASLIP will begin a monograph series with papers by members, per Fred Gamst's suggestion. These brief voluntary papers will be copied and stapled as special supplements to the journal. They will be listed in the journal, in the newsletters, and on the web site with an abstract and an order form, where they can be ordered and mailed as single copies for a fee (to be determined). The Secretary-Treasurer will manage the copying, mailing, and record keeping.

Resolved: ASLIP will seek funding to establish an Institute to collect databases relating to historical linguistics and language origins. These databases will be made comparable or usable comparably, prepared electronically, and made available to scholars worldwide. Paul Whitehouse will play a central role in this project.

Initial requests for funding for conferences will be a step in the quest to establish an Institute. For example, small workshops and seminars (perhaps organized by macrofamilies) could be held to identify, discuss, and solicit the data that will be housed at the institute. Funds could cover travel for invited principals.

The point was raised that ASLIP's Institute could be specifically and explicitly linked to equivalent database projects in archaeology and genetics, including the human genome project.

DATA BASES

To begin with, Paul Whitehouse is willing to type up and collect word lists for the projected database. We should also link up with the extensive etymological databases of Sergei Starostin at: http://starling.rinet.ru/ We will offer to publish word lists that authors have been holding privately (for example, L.V. Hayes' Austric lists, see his announcement in http://204.156.22.2/cgi-bin/demogate/mothertongue/lwgate/MOTHERTONGUE/).

THE NEWSLETTER

Name of Newsletter: We discussed and decided to keep Roger Wescott's suggestion of The Long Ranger for the newsletter to distinguish it from Mother Tongue for the journal.

Distribution of Newsletter: The Long Ranger will be made available for free on the ASLIP web site, with the options of receiving it in a pdf or a text format. It will also be available in hard copy for a fee ($10 was suggested).

Content of Newsletter: The Long Ranger will be geared more toward members, including news and announcements of members' activities; events of interest to members; and anecdotes, jokes, or cartoons submitted by members. The News portion of The Long Ranger will contain brief summaries of news from Science, Nature, Scientific American, and other mass media. Members are encouraged to provide copy for this feature, which should be sent to Michael Witzel.

THE JOURNAL

Status of Journal: Mother Tongue V is coming out in July under the aegis of Vice-President John D. Bengtson who has agreed to continue as editor.

Distribution of Journal:

We will look into the possibilities of letting a publisher take over the publication and distribution of Mother Tongue. Institutional membership will be targeted (Individual membership remains $25). The journal now has 225-250 subscribers, including 12 institutions.

CONFERENCE

Hal Fleming will organize an Africanist conference at Gloucester in May 2001.[NB: This did not go through this year] M. Witzel proposed to link, in item if not in location, this with the Central/South Asian Round Table that has been held twice now at Harvard. From these workshops, a more general ASLIP conference may emerge in the future.

PROMOTION

Advertising and Promotion: ASLIP will have a brochure as developed earlier in ASLIP's history in conjunction by M. E. Lepionka with Allen Bombard.

INTERNET PRESENCE

ASLIP now has two internet presences. Its web site is at: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/aslip.html

with links to the old issues of the Mother Tongue Newsletter (now Long Ranger), and our journal, Mother Tongue. The Newsletters will be put on the web retroactively, issue by issue, as the opportunity arises (so far, issues 25-27, 30, 32 are available). The journal will only be represented by Summaries and Indexes (by Mary Ellen Lepionka).

The other web initiative is the Mother Tongue mail list and discussion forum, at:

http://204.156.22.2/cgi-bin/demogate/mothertongue/lwgate/MOTHERTONGUE/

where past discussions can be viewed. Request to join the list should be sent to the web master John Robert Gardner, who hosts the list for us at his Indological web site (vedavid.org), at: atman@vedavid.org or directly via:

http://204.156.22.2/cgi-bin/demogate/mothertongue/lwgate/MOTHERTONGUE/subscribe.html

[**Note: This will be shifted to Yahoo groups in September]

Our thanks go to Randy Foote who has taken the initiative, in February, to invite people interested in the origin of language to join. Mary Ellen Lepionka has proposed to summarize some of the discussion for the next issue of Long Ranger.

4

Notes on the Moscow Conference on Long-Range Comparison

Peter A. Michalove

It was a great pleasure to attend the recent conference on "Problems in the Study of Long-Range Linguistic Comparison at the Turn of the Third Millennium" at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, May 29 through June 2, 2000. Led by Sergei Starostin, the conference was extremely well organized, with much of the logistical preparation made very effectively by George (Gosha) Starostin.

For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of the trip was the opportunity to see Moscow again for the first time since 1988. I had been there several times in Soviet days, and I was constantly struck by how much had changed since then, and by what had not changed. But that's a separate story.

The conference itself covered a number of topics. The first day involved papers on Indo-European. I felt that it was significant to devote an entire day to this best-established of language families at a conference on long-range comparison; the presentations made clear that work on established families is in principle no different from work on long-range work. Both endeavors share the same principles, goals, and problems.

The second day was devoted to Nostratic, and included papers on lexical, morphological, and phonological comparisons, as well as more theoretical considerations. After that the agenda became somewhat muddled as the schedule became more flexible to accommodate speakers who came late or left early, or were unable to come at all.

There was a very interesting session on Altaic, and Sergei gave an introduction to the Altaic etymological dictionary he is currently preparing in collaboration with Anya Dybo and Oleg Mudrak. The current state of the dictionary is available on the web at "http://starling.rinet.ru/intrtext.htm", along with other etymological databases in progress.

Another new etymological dictionary presented at the conference was the Semitic dictionary being prepared by Yuri Militarev and L. E. Kogan. Afroasiatic linguistics was also discussed in several papers at a session on comparative linguistics and ancient near eastern history, held in memory of the late Igor Diakonov. There was also a session on Sino-Tibetan and Caucasian linguistics, which I missed because it was held at the same time as the ancient near east session. In all, the conference covered a wide range of topics, and the organizers will publish a book of the conference proceedings around the end of this year.

But of course the high point of the conference was the opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones. I was especially glad to meet Fabrice Cavoto in person; we have been corresponding by email for some time now. In addition it was good to see Sergei Starostin and Aharon Dolgopolsky, whom I had met before.

Martine Robbeets, who was studying in Moscow for a month, had the task of orienting the foreign visitors, a job she fulfilled admirably. I especially enjoyed talking with her *___r, and with Egidio Marsico.

Among those whom I had known only from their published works, it was a pleasure to finally meet Václav Blazhek, Vladimir Dybo (who was just elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences) and his daughter Anya, Thomas Gamkrelidze (whose Georgian charm and wit were very much in evidence), Eugene Helimsky, Alexander Lubotsky, Edkhiam Tenishev, and several others.

One of the students at the conference gave some of the foreign visitors a tour of Moscow for an afternoon. Good linguists that we were, we spent as much time excavating the local bookshops as we did seeing the sights of Moscow. We all came home loaded down with more books, and amazed at the contradictions that fill the streets of modern Moscow.

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5

The International Conference "Problems in the Study of Long-Range Linguistic Comparison at the Turn of the Third Millennium", Moscow, 29 May - 2 June 2000

J.Bengtson

An interview with Fabrice Cavoto

LR (Long Ranger): How were the conference arrangements and organization?

Cavoto: The organization in itself was actually very good, from the preparations before the conference (help with visas, etc.) until the last minute of it. The program of the conference was changed a few times, typically because of last minute defections. A few times, there were two simultaneous sessions: Altaic or Afro-Asiatic related. Much attention has also been brought to the presentation of Starostin's and his team's online database, which is really impressive. A few activities had been prepared for us international guests, mostly a tour of the city. A reception was held the last evening.

LR: What impression do you have of the organizers (ASLIP Council Fellow Sergei A. Starostin, and his son George S. Starostin)?

Cavoto: Generally, Sergei Starostin deserves special attention, because of his efforts to build a bridge between Moscow and the rest of the world. I remember a few discussions with some of the others about that. Also, speaking of databases, he insisted several times on the fact that such tools should be available to everyone, and for free, through the internet. Unfortunately, a database with Nostratic material won't be available until [Aharon] Dolgopolsky has published his Nostratic dictionary. He [Dolgopolsky] repeated that the book is in its last phase of preparation, but I understand from others that this is what he has been repeating the last 10 years.

LR: How was communication between Russian and non-Russian scholars?

Cavoto: One point of disappointment for us non-Russian guests was that presentations which had been announced in English actually were held in Russian, which is why we didn't attend to all of them. We understood later on that some of the young participants, especially students, actually couldn't speak enough English to have made their presentation in English.

I myself had a few conversations with Oleg Mudrak, whose views about the relationship of Yukaghir are most interesting, I think. Generally, there is some space between Western and Russian scholars, especially when it comes to knowledge of each other's work. Therefore, Sergei Starostin's efforts to establish better communication between East and West seem very important to me, in general.

LR: What discussion was there, if any, of Joseph H. Greenberg's recent book, Indo-European and its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family?.

Cavoto: I asked around about Greenberg's book while I was there. I don't think that it was discussed, at least when I was there. I had no clear answer from Russians however, which can be interpreted in different ways. Both my presentation and Peter Michalove's presentations referred to it a few times, especially to Greenberg's observation that the first person singular perfect marker *-H¯e in Indo-European could correspond to what is seen as *-k in other languages. This is an important point and opens lots of possibilities for further comparisons of IE with other Nostratic and Eurasiatic languages. I hear that a discussion on IE *H's [laryngeals] and their correspondences in other languages has also been opened by B. Vine recently. Except for Sergei Starostin's presentation about a new row of correspondences for stops [in Nostratic] and George Starostin's paper on Dravidian initial *y-, most presentations on long range comparisons were based on lexical parallels, which might be the reason Greenberg's book wasn't being referred to.

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6

ASLIP Conference on Central and South Asia

Michael Witzel

From May 12-14 this year we held the Third Harvard Round table on Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia. It was co-sponsored by ASLIP and the Infinity Foundation (http://www.infinityfoundation.com). This year's Round Table was attended by 25 invited speakers/discussants from India, Europe and America, and a considerable number of additional participants, from Daghestan to Rochester, NY., including Hal Fleming and Daniel McCall, Mary Ellen Lepionka, and the ASLIP members listed below by order of appearance (Zide, Anderson, Patnaik, Witzel, Bengtson, Meadow, Farmer, Miller).

Aims.

In his summary of genetic studies, L. Cavalli-Sforza writes: "... the need for a multidisciplinary approach, ... from historical demography to archaeology, palaeoanthropology and linguistics, and perhaps ethnography, together with population and molecular genetics" (1994: 372). This is precisely what we have been doing over the past three years at our Round Table.

These days, philologists, linguists and geneticists find themselves between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, the 'indigenist' one in archaeology where "... the English speaking archaeological world, ... adopted an essentially unanimous rejection of "migrationism" (Cavalli-Sforza 1995: 138-139), and on the other hand, the present Indian revisionist movement which rejects any immigration (Aryan, Dravidian, etc.) into the subcontinent. Interestingly, revisionists hardly speak about the "African Eve".

We have discussed these issues at great length, and from various angles, without a preset agenda or a preconceived outcome: what does language tell us, how does it fit the present evidence of archaeology, of multivariate anthropological analysis, and of principal component and non-recombinant Y-chromosome genetic studies?

As in past years, the meeting was held in the form of a frank open-ended and detailed discussion of specialists and some interested lay persons. We had a detailed update on the present state of affairs.

Program.

This year's meeting (for updates and reports see our permanent site: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/RoundTableSchedule.html) concentrated, to a large degree, on linguistics, especially that of the neglected Munda group of languages. We had a virtual mini-conference of leading specialists in the field who had the chance to meet for the first time after many years:

N. ZIDE: Introduction

D. STAMPE: The current state of Munda and Austroasiatic studies, with special reference to lexicography

G. ANDERSON: Recent Advances in the Reconstruction of Proto-Munda and Proto-Austroasiatic Morphology

P. DONEGAN: Typology and drift in Munda.
A. GRIFFITHS: A report on fieldwork in Koraput District, Orissa: the Senior Gadba tribe and the Gutob language

M. PATNAIK: A synchronic analysis of linguistic divergence in South Asia: A case study of the verb 'say'

[An outcome of our informal discussions is that there is some hope now for a comparative. etymological dictionary of Munda]

However, we did not neglect other language families: Dravidian was represented twice:

S. STEEVER: Historical Dravidian linguistics: the need of internal reconstruction to balance the results of the comparative method.

S. PALANIAPPAN: Culture change in Tamil Nadu in the early centuries CE.;

and Tibeto-Burmese figured at least with Manipuri:

S. RAY : The many forms of Meitei Mayek: orthographic debates in Meitei language.

Another highlight of this year's meeting was a state of the art overview of genetics, especially that of non-recombinant Y-chromosome genetic studies, which was presented by a former Cavalli-Sforza student (now teaching at Sassari, Sardinia):

P. FRANCALACCI : The peopling of Eurasia: the contribution of Y-chromosome analysis.

As usual, we continued our discussions about the links between archaeology, texts, and language. This year, we explored, from various angles, the northwest of and areas further northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological complex, and their mutual relationships from the Indus civilization onwards. (Note that F. Hiebert's Anau seal, if indeed local, would be the first written evidence of the BMAC language, at c. 2300 BCE).

H.-P. FRANCFORT: Perspectives on the origins and religious aspects of the Oxus Civilization (BMAC)

G. THOMPSON: The relationship between Vedic and Avestan: the provenance of Soma, amshu, and its relation to the BMAC?

B. LAWERGREN: On Bactria-Margiana and later Iranian trumpets

F. HIEBERT: The recently discovered Bronze Age inscription (2300 BC) from Anau, Central Asia.

M. WITZEL: Central Asian substrate languages

J. BENGTSON: Genetic and cultural links between Burushaski and the Caucasian languages and Basque

Prominently present, as every year, were the Indus civilization and related theoretical issues,

R. MEADOW: Current excavations at Harappa

R. MUGHAL: Cemeteries of Late Harappan period at Harappa

B. WELLS: The geographical distribution of Indus signs

S. FARMER: Three problems in Indology approached from comparative perspectives: textual layering, the dates of the Vedas, and the Harappan 'writing' question.

K. YOUNG: Searching for Clues to Indian Prehistory Around and Across the Arabian Sea: Are Nubia, Punt (on the eastern coast of the Red Sea), Indus Valley, and Tamilnadu Linked and If So, How?

D.P. AGRAWAL: The Central Himalayas in the archaeology of the Northern Plains, and the myth of Vedic Aryans

Some more theoretical issues were dealt with by :

G. POSSEHL: Franz Boas on Race, Language and Culture

H. MILLER: A look at method and theory: the example of Biblical Archaeology

And, last but not least, we had a refreshing view of one of our classical texts of state craft:

B. BROOKS: The Arthashastra Core as a Maurya Document

We plan to continue the Round Table during this academic year. Some finical support has already been secured. Results, handouts and full papers relating to the Round Table will be published, this Fall, at its website: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/RoundTable2001Papers.html

and also via the ASLIP website.

***

7

KUSUNDA LIVES!

The isolate language Kusunda in Central Nepal has been declared dead for quite some time, for example by SIL. In fact, it lives, albeit feebly. The Nepali linguist B.K. Rana has been on their trail and has discovered a few surviving mother tongue speakers in various districts of Central and Western Nepal. Below some extracts from his report in the local journal Jana Jati. The writer is a socio-linguist by discipline who is concentrating his studies on Tibeto-Burman languages. He believes that the Nepali language has evolved sharing with Magar language of the Karnali area as well as other Tibeto-Burman languages in the Southern Himalayan Belt.

A Short Note on Kusunda Language

B. K. Rana

In Nepal, about 91 languages [are spoken] belonging to different families for example: 73 of Tibeto-Burman, 16 of Indo-Aryan, 1 Dravidian and 1 of Austro-Asiatic are spoken today ...

Ethnologue survey of languages in Nepal has painstakingly dug out more numbers of languages than they actually are there, offering independent nomenclature to them to increase unreal number of languages in the country. For example: it mentions - Byangsi, Chaudangsi and Darmiya as three different languages spoken in Darchula District, of far west Nepal but they are dialects of Shauka language which I had an opportunity to study last year. Likewise, the survey report presents Tarali Kham known as Kaike, Kham Gamale, Kham Maikoti, Kham Nishi, Kham Sheshi and Kham Takale as different languages of the area which should also have been introduced as Magar language of Karnali area. The Magar language of that area is publicized as Kham Magar Kura but in fact, Kham does not mean any language category. It refers to an administrative unit set by then Yumila (Jumla) kingdom to rule over the indigenous Magar peoples of that area. Now, the practice of offering a nomenclature as Kham and Kaike for Magar languages of Karnali area requires linguistic redefinition and new recognition as well.

Kusunda language is one of the endangered languages in Nepal. At the moment, there are only three speakers of this language [now at least 7, --MW]. It is widely believed that this language is already dead. But, it is not true. ... Prof. Sueyoshi Toba, one of the Kusunda authorities, who first analyzed the language scientifically, in association with Johan Reinhard, now believes that Kusunda is not a dead language and further states that "we do not call a language "dead" or "extinct" as long as there is anyone alive who knows even a little of the language in question" (Toba 2000).

Kusunda language has been already declared extinct following the death of Raja Mama's mother, the presumed last speaker; who died of diarrhea few years ago in Damauli of Tanahu District, West Nepal. Although, there are very limited noun phrases and a remarkable loss of major word classes including verbs and their patterns, yet Kusunda is not a dead language because there are at least three Kusunda speakers "physically alive" in different parts of the country, which I have mentioned above.

Kusunda is one of the unique languages found in the southern Himalayan region, primarily in Nepal, which was recorded and published, for the first time, by Brian Houghton Hodgson. The Hodgson word list of 1857 (Hodgson 1992 reprint) contains only 223 words and fifteen sentences collected through supposedly available trained-hands of those days. It is understandable that Nepali was lingua-franca at that point of time also. The Rana Regime (1846-1950) had barred Hodgson from visiting Kusunda areas in rural Nepal. It is believed that he could not have any opportunity to listen to Kusunda utterances by himself. Researchers in Linguistic Survey of India Team carried over his works. But, "one is to argue that Hodgson (from whose article the Linguistic Survey of India drew its Kusunda vocabulary) was a well-meaning Victorian amateur whose data are worthless, whereas those of Reinhard and Toba are the reliable findings of modern professionals. The other view is that Hodgson worked with a living language whose internal variation we can only guess and recorded it faithfully by the standards of his age, whereas Reinhard and Toba worked with the aging and isolated survivors of a vanished language community whose imperfectly remembered idiolects may or may not have been representative of a language whose internal variation we can now only guess at. There is some truth in both views, but my own leaning is towards the latter. Certainly the limitations of our Kusunda data are such that we are in no position to pick and choose." (Whitehouse 1997).

Following Hodgson's return to his country, Kusundas and their language remained ignored for a long time until Narahari Nath Yogi tried to write something on them in 1955. And in 1970, an Anthropologist, Johan Reinhard from Austria arrived here and took interest in them. He recorded some sample sentences and hundreds of Kusunda words, brought them to Katmandu for analysis, until when the language was hardly spoken by few Kusundas of central hills of Nepal. Prof. Sueyoshi Toba, a linguist from Japan worked together with Reinhard, analyzed the record in a standard linguistic framework. Both of these scholars' contribution to Kusunda community is immensely great for their reports are the only authentic source of information on Kusundas, their language, their plight and other sorts of things related to them. (Reinhard & Toba 1970).

Below is a functional explanation of Kusunda cognates and their comparison with other Tibeto-Burman languages found in Nepal:

a) Kusundas have "tang" [ta+ng] for water, Shaukas and Chepang have [ti] and Magars say it [di]. In "tang" we have voiceless alveolar "t" of Shauka and Chepang "ti". And, Shauka and Chepang "ti" is voiceless representation of Magar "di". [Note: ng = œ]

b) For fish Kusundas say "ngsa" = [ng+sa], Magars of Karnali area say "nga+sya" , Chepangs say it "nya or nga", Baram say it "nanga" and Magars of Gandaki area say it [di+sya]. The Kusunda segment "ng" of "ta+ng" i.e. "water" stands here to denote "water related object" and "sa" for meat > "meat from water = fish". These segments: [ng+sa], [nga+sya] and [di+sya] have same meaning and morphologically, the formation of these words are distinctly similar.

c) Blood is "yu+ei" in Kusunda, whereas, it is "chyu+huei" in "Balkura" (Baram language) and "wei" in Chepang language. These three words are phonetically similar in these three languages.

d) "Aagai" is a dog in Kusunda, whereas in Baram language it is "aakyo" and here voiced velar "g" is present in Kusunda "aagai" and voiceless "k" in Balkura.

e) Generally speaking Kusunda phonology is that it has initial "ng" distribution in at least two words, so far found, for example: fish = [ng+sa] and wife = [ng+yang+di]. The initial "ng" segments in these words suggest their root from Tibeto-Burman language. One of the major characteristics of Tibeto-Burman languages is that they have initial "ng" segment in their cognates.

f) In Kusunda words like "ngsa", "ngyangdi", "dimtang", "lahang", "mangmi", "kapang" , "gelang", "pinjang" ,"ghinga" , natang" , "chining" "chan" "iping jing" "ing" etc. we can find [ng] in initial, middle and final distribution. These all words have Tibeto-Burman characteristics.

g) Tamangs say "moje" for banana and "kakhare" for a crab. Kusundas say them "mucha" and kakchi" respectively.

h) Bhotes say "manjya" for millet and "du" for a snake and Kusundas have "mangmi" and "tu" for them respectively.

i) As concerns numerals in Kusunda, there is "ghinga" for count number "2" and in Baram it is "ni" and "ngi" in Thaksya [Thakalis (Bhotes?) who lived around Thak Satsaya Khola] (Gierson 1909). The nasal [ng] in these words is very similar to Magar "nish" for numeral 2. Similarly, Chepang say "ploin-zho" for "4" - Kusunda say it "pinjang" and in Baram it is "bi" - here too, we can find bilabials [p] and [b] present in these three words.

j) Chepangs say "micha" for a goat and in Kusunda and Baram languages it is "mijha" and "michha" respectively. And, a road is "un" in Kusunda and "ungma" in Baram language.

i) Let us again see these Kusunda pronominalized sentences and phrases below:

I eat rice = "ci kaadi taamaanan" [it should have been "chaamaanan". Raja Mama says "gaamaanam"];

You eat rice = " nu kaadi naamaanan"

He eats rice = " git kaadi gaamaanan"

My stomach = "cie cimat";

Your stomach = "nie nimat";

His stomach = "gidie gimat" (Bandhu 1999).

ii) The Magars of Karnali area say "ge+pang" for "their own language" and "rangpang" for Khas Kura (= Nepali language). Kusundas also say "gi+pan" for their language. The Magar language of Karnali area is one of the Tibeto-Burman languages which also has pronominalized sentences and phrases as outlined below:

I eat rice = "nga [nga] yai/kang jyonga"

You eat rice = "nang [nang] yai/kang jyona"

He eats rice = "wola yai/kang jyowa"

My stomach = "nga phu"

Your stomach = "na phu"

His stomach = "wa phu"

References:

Bandhu, C. M. (1999): Keynote Address to the Fifth Himalayan Language Symposium Kathmandu Sept. 13-15, 1999.

Fleming, Harold (1996): Nihali and Kusunda, Mother Tongue II. Journal of the Association for the study of Languages in Prehistory.

Grierson, G. A. ed. (1909): Linguistic Survey of India: New Delhi, India.

Grimes, Barbara ed. (1996): Ethnologue: languages of the World/SIL.

Hodgson, Brian H. (1848): On the Chepang and Kusunda Tribes of Nepal. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

Krauss, Michael (1992 ): The World"s Language in Crisis, Language.

Rana, B. K. (2000): An Ethnographic Study on the Shaukas of Byas Valley, Janajati Vol. 2 No.1, Journal of Nationalities of Nepal 2057, Kathmandu.

---, (2000): Eklo Jivan Jiudaichhan Kusunda Raja (The Lone Kusunda Lives a Lonely Life.) Samadristi Weekly, Vol. 3 Nos. 11. 12 and 13 - February 15, 22 and 29 - 2000 Kathmandu, Nepal

---, (2000): The Lone Kusunda: Struggles for Survival, Report Submitted to National Committee for Development of Nationalities Kathmandu, Nepal.

---, (2000): On Genetic Preservation of Kusundas and Reintroducing Their Language. (Paper presented in a workshop on preserving endangered languages, Kathmandu, May 19 -21, 2000).

---, (2000): Writing on a Dead Language,The Kathmandu Post, April 16, 2000.

---, (2001): Kusunda Bhasa: Thapa Adhyan (Kusunda Language: an Additive Study) Samadristi Weekly Vol. 4, Nos. 3,4 and 5 -January. 7, 14 and 21 - 2001, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Reinhard, J. & Toba, S. (1970): A Preliminary Linguistic Analysis and Vocabulary of the Kusunda Language, University of Vienna and Summer Institute of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Toba, Sueyoshi (2000): Kusunda Wordlists Viewed Diachronically, Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu.

Whitehouse, Paul (1997): The External Relationships of the Nihali and Kusunda Languages. Mother Tongue III: Journal of the Associastion for the study of Languages in Prehistory .

Yogi, Narahari Nath (1955): Itihas Prakashan Sandhipatra Sangraha, Ratna Pustak Bhandar, Kathmandu Nepal.

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Lurker's Log : The MT email List

Mary Ellen Lepionka

February 2000