Kinnauri language

Kinnauri
Kanawaringskad
Region	Himachal Pradesh
Native speakers	(80,000 cited 1998–2001)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) Tibeto-Kanauri West Himalayish Kanauri Kinnauri
Dialects	Sunam
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: kfk – Kinnauri nes – Kinnauri, Bhoti cik – Kinnauri, Chitkuli ssk – Sunam jna – Jangshung (Thebor) scu – Shumcho tpq – Tukpa kjo – Kinnauri, Pahari ??? – Kinnauri, Lohari
ELP	Kinnauri

The district Kinnaur is linguistic giant where nine languages are spoken by less than hundred thousand people. The list of langauges in Kinnaur can be viewed from Kinnaur. Kinnauri is one of the nine languages, also known as Kanauri, Kanor, Koonawur, or Kunawar. It is a Tibeto-Burman langauge spoken on the Kinnaur district of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The classification of the language is as follows: Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Western Tibeto-Burman, Bodish, West Himalayish, Kinauri.

Sounds

This description is of the Pangi dialect of Kinnauri.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiced	b	d	ɖ		ɡ
	voiceless	p	t	ʈ		k
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	ʈʰ		kʰ
Affricate	voiced		dz		dʒ
	voiceless		ts		tʃ
	aspirated		tsʰ		tʃʰ
Fricative			s		ʃ		h
Trill			r
Approximant			l		j	w

Note on palatals: /dʒ/, /tʃ/, /tʃʰ/, and /ʃ/ are post-alveolar. /ɲ/ is alveolo-palatal.

Vowels

Kinnauri has five pairs of long/short vowels:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Syllables

/h/, aspirated obstruents (i.e. /pʰ/, /tʰ/, /ʈʰ/, /kʰ/, /t͡sʰ/, /t͡ʃʰ/), and glides (i.e. /w/, /j/) do not occur in syllable codas.

All consonants may occur in onsets and word-medially.

Kinnauri has the following types of syllables:

• (C)V(C)(C)(C)
• CCV(C)
• CCCVC

Grammar

Kinnauri is SOV, V-Auxiliary, Postpositional, and has head-final noun phrases. It shows case marking with an ergative alignment in the past tense, nominative-accusative elsewhere. The ergative case is identical to the instrumental. There is no distinction between accusative and dative, and a genitive is partially syncretic with the accusative/dative. An ablative case is also recognized, normally attached outside the genitive but with different allomorphs for animate and inanimate referents. There is also a locative case, normally used only with inanimate nouns.

Bibliography

• Nagano, Yasuhiko; & LaPolla, Randy J. (Eds.). (2001). New research on Zhangzhung and related Himalayan languages. Bon studies 3, Senri ethnological reports 19. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
• Takahashi, Yoshiharu. (2001). A descriptive study of Kinnauri (Pangi dialect): A preliminary report. In Y. Nagano & R. J. LaPolla (Eds.), New research on Zhangzhung and related Himalayan languages. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.