The Galo language is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Tani group, spoken by the Galo people. Its precise position within Tani is not yet certain, primarily because of its central location in the Tani area and the strong effects of intra-Tani contacts on the development of Tani languages. It is an endangered language according to the general definitions, but prospects for its survival are better than many similarly-placed languages in the world.
| Galo | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Arunachal Pradesh, India |
Native speakers | 29,000 (2011 census)[1] |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | adl |
| Glottolog | galo1242 |
| ELP | Galo |
Dialects
editThe major Galo dialects are Pugo, spoken around the district capital Aalo; Lare, spoken to the south of Aalo; and a dialect that can be called Kargu kardi, pertaining to the dialect spoken in the northwest near the Tagin area. There may be additional Galo dialects further north, which remains largely unresearched. There are numerous subdialects that often correspond to regional or clan groupings. Neighbouring languages include Assamese, Nepali, Bodo, Mising, Minyong, Hills Miri, Tagin, Nishi, Bori, Pailibo, Ramo and Bokar.
Post (2007:46) lists a provisional classification of Galo dialects.
- Galòo
- Karkòo?
- Gensìi?
- Taíi(podia)
- (branch)
- Zɨrdóo
- (branch)
- Larèe, Puugóo
Grammar
editLike most central and eastern Tani languages, Galo is largely synthetic and agglutinating. Two primary lexical tones are present – High and Low – which may reflect two Proto-Tani syllable tones; in modern Galo, the surface TBU (Tone-Bearing Unit) is the usually polysyllabic phonological word. A robust finite/non-finite asymmetry underlies Galo grammar, and clause chaining and nominalization are both rampant. No synchronic verb-serialization appears to exist, although what seems to have been proto-verb-serialization has developed into a very large and productive system of derivational suffixes to bound verbal roots.
Major (non-derived) lexical classes are noun, adjective and verb. Other grammatical features include postpositions, relator nouns, classifiers, an extremely large system of aspectual suffixes, and a rich set of constituent-final particles coding functions related to epistemological status (such as evidentiality), discourse/pragmatic status, modality, and other related functions. Case-marking is basically accusative; ergativity has not been found.
Morphology
editGalo is a synthetic language with more complex predicates than nouns. Nouns have few prefixes, while predicates can have many suffixes and particles. Roots in Galo are often bound and require affixation or compounding.
Galo has a few monosyllabic lexemes, which may be reduced from earlier complex forms or genuine exceptions. Suffixes are word-level dependents that can license a grammatical word, while clitics are phrase-level dependents that cannot. Most noun phrase operators are clitics, while most predicate operators are suffixes.[3]
Education
editGalo language is taught as third language in schools of areas dominated by Galo community.[4]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Galo at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Mark W. Post. 2013. 'The defoliation of the Tani Stammbaum: A positive-minded exercise in contact linguistics.' Paper presented at the 19th Himalayan Languages Symposium, Australian National University, Sep. 9-10.
- ^ Post, Mark (2009-08-06), "The Semantics of Clause Linking in Galo", The Semantics of Clause Linking A Cross-Linguistic Typology, Oxford University PressOxford, pp. 74–95, ISBN 978-0-19-956722-5, retrieved 2024-10-24
- ^ "Arunachal to Preserve 'Dying' Local Dialects - North East Today". Archived from the original on 2018-08-25. Retrieved 2017-03-13.
Further reading
edit- Post, Mark W. (2007). A Grammar of Galo. PhD Dissertation. Melbourne, La Trobe University Research Centre for Linguistic Typology.
- Post, Mark W. (2009-10-22). "The phonology and grammar of Galo "words": A case study in benign disunity". Studies in Language.