Burushaski

Burushaski
Spoken in
Total speakers	87,000 (2000)
Language family	language isolate Burushaski
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	–
ISO 639-3	bsk
Linguasphere
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Burusho language, or Burushaski (Urdu: بروشسکی burū́šaskī), is a language isolate (that is, not known to be related to any other language of the world).^[1] It is spoken by some 87,000 (as of 2000) Burusho people in the Hunza, Nagar, Yasin, and Ishkoman Valley-Barjungle and some parts of the Gilgit valleys in the Northern Areas in Pakistan and by about 300 Burusho people in Srinagar, India.^[2][3] Other names for the language are Brugaski, Kanjut (Kunjoot), Verchikwār, Boorishki, Brushas (Brushias), and Miśa:ski.

Today Burushaski contains numerous loanwords from Urdu (including English and Sanskrit words received via Urdu), and from neighbouring Dardic languages such as Khowar and Shina, as well as a few from Turkic languages and from the neighboring Sino-Tibetan language Balti, but the original vocabulary remains largely intact. The Dardic languages also contain large numbers of loanwords from Burushaski.

There are three divergent dialects, named after the main valleys: Hunza, Nagar, and Yasin (also called Werchikwār). The dialect of Yasin is thought to be the least affected by contact with neighboring languages and is generally less similar to the other two than those are to each other; nevertheless all three dialects are mutually intelligible.

Relationships

No connection has been demonstrated between Burushaski and any other language or language family. Several attempts have been made to establish a genealogical relationship between Burushaski and the Caucasic languages,^[4] with the Yeniseian languages in a family called Karasuk,^[5] as a non-Indo-Iranian Indo-European language,^[6][7] or to include Burushaski in the Dené-Caucasian proposal, which includes both Caucasic and Yeniseian.^[8][9] None of these efforts has been accepted by scholarly consensus. In 2008 Yeniseian was convincingly shown to be related to Na-Dene in a Dene-Yeniseian family,^[10] but the evidence does not extend to Burushaski.

Following Berger (1956), the American Heritage dictionaries suggested that the word *abel (apple), the only name for a fruit (tree) reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, may have been borrowed from a language ancestral to Burushaski. (Today "apple" and "apple tree" are /balt/ in Burushaski.) Others, however, reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European word for "apple (tree)" as *mel-, while yet others don't think Proto-Indo-European had a word for "apple" at all and consider the different words of different Indo-European subgroups to be separate loans from different unidentified non-Indo-European languages.

Writing system

Burushaski is a predominantly spoken, rather than written, language. Occasionally the Urdu version of the Arabic alphabet is used, but no fixed orthography exists. Nasir al-Din Nasir Hunzai has written poetry in Burushaski using the Urdu alphabet.

Tibetan sources record a Bru-śa language of the Gilgit valley, which appears to have been Burushaski. The Bru-śa are credited with bringing the Bön religion to the Zhangzhung in Tibet and Central Asia, and their script is alleged to have been the ancestor of the Tibetan alphabet. Thus Burushaski may once have been a significant literary language. However, no Bru-śa manuscripts are known to have survived.^[11]

Linguists working on Burushaski use various makeshift transcriptions based on the Latin alphabet, most commonly that by Berger (see below), in their publications. The Burushaski Research Academy, in cooperation with Karachi University, has recently published the two volumes i.e (Vol 1 - A to C̣) and (Vol-2- D to Gh ) of a Burushaski-Urdu Dictionary using this transcription.

Phonology

Burushaski primarily has five vowels, /i e a o u/. Various contractions result in long vowels; stressed vowels (marked with acute accents in Berger's transcription) tend to be longer and less "open" than unstressed ones ([i e a o u] as opposed to [ɪ ɛ ʌ ɔ ʊ]). Long vowels also occur in loans and in a few onomatopoeic words (Grune 1998). All vowels have nasal counterparts in Hunza (in some expressive words) and in Nager (also in proper names and a few other words).

Berger (1998) finds the following consonants to be phonemic, shown below in his transcription and in the IPA:

Notes:

1. Pronunciation varies: [pʰ] ~ [p͡f] ~ [f].
2. Pronunciation varies: [qʰ] ~ [q͡χ] ~ [χ].
3. The Yasin dialect lacks aspirated affricates and uses the plain ones instead.
4. Sometimes pronounced [ʑ].
5. Sometimes pronounced [ʐ].
6. Berger (1998) regards [w] and [j] as allophones of /u/ and /i/ that occur in front of stressed vowels.
7. This phoneme has various pronunciations, all of which are rare sounds cross-linguistically. Descriptions include: "a voiced retroflex sibilant with simultaneous dorso-palatal narrowing" (apparently [ʐʲ]) (Berger 1998); "a fricative r, pronounced with the tongue in the retroflex ('cerebral') position" (apparently [ɻ̝]/[ʐ̞], a sound which also occurs in Standard Mandarin, written r in Pinyin) (Morgenstierne 1945); and "a curious sound whose phonetic realizations vary from a retroflex, spirantized glide to a retroflex velarized spirant" (Anderson forthcoming). In any case, it does not occur in the Yasin dialect, and in Hunza and Nager it does not occur at the beginning of words.

Grammar

Burushaski is a double-marking language and word order is generally Subject Object Verb.

Nouns in Burushaski are divided into four genders: human masculine, human feminine, countable objects, and uncountable ones (similar to mass nouns). The assignment of a noun to a particular gender is largely predictable. Some words can belong both to the countable and to the uncountable class, producing differences in meaning: for example, when countable, /balt/ means "apple", when uncountable, it means "apple tree". (Grune 1998)

Noun morphology consists of the noun stem, a possessive prefix (mandatory for some nouns, and thus an example of inherent possession), and number and case suffixes. Distinctions in number are singular, plural, indefinite, and grouped. Cases include absolutive, ergative/oblique, genitive, and several locatives; the latter indicate both location and direction and may be compounded.

Burushaski verbs have three basic stems: past tense, present tense, and consecutive. The past stem is the citation form and is also used for imperatives and nominalization; the consecutive stem is similar to a past participle and is used for coordination. Agreement on the verb has both nominative and ergative features: transitive verbs mark both the subject and the object of a clause, while intransitive verbs mark their sole argument as both a subject and an object. Altogether, a verb can take up to four prefixes and six suffixes.

Nouns

Noun classes

In Burushaski, there are four noun classes, similar to declensional classes in Indo-European languages, but unlike Indo-European, the nominal classes in Burushaski are associated with four grammatical "genders":

• m > male human beings, gods and spirits
• f > female human beings and spirits
• x > animals, countable nouns
• y > abstract concepts, fluids, uncountable nouns

Below, the abbreviation "h" will stand for the combination of the m- and f-classes, while "hx" will stand for the combination of the m-, f- and x-classes. Nouns in the x-class typically refer to countable, non-human beings or things, for example animals, fruit, stones, eggs, or coins; conversely, nouns in the y-class are as a rule uncountable abstractions or mass nouns, such as rice, fire, water, snow, wool, etc.

However, these rules are not universal - countable objects in the y-class are sometimes encountered, e.g. ha, 'house'. Related words can subtly change their meanings when used in different classes - for example, bayú, when a member of the x-class, means salt in clumps, but when in the y-class, it means powdered salt. Fruit trees are understood collectively and placed in the y-class, but their individual fruits belong to the x-class. Objects made of particular materials can belong to either the x- or the y- class: stone and wood are in the x-class, but metal and leather in the y-class. The article, adjectives, numerals and other attributes must be in agreement with the noun class of their subject.

Pluralisation

There are two numbers in Burushaski: singular and plural. The singular is unmarked, while the plural is expressed by means of suffix, which vary depending on the class of the noun:

• h-class > possible suffixes: -ting, -aro, -daro, -taro, -tsaro
• h- and x-class > possible suffixes: -o, -išo, -ko, -iko, -juko; -ono, -u; -i, -ai; -ts, -uts, -muts, -umuts; -nts, -ants, -ints, -iants, -ingants, -ents, -onts
• y-class > possible suffixes: -ng, -ang, -ing, -iang; -eng, -ong, -ongo; -ming, -čing, -ičing, -mičing, -ičang (Nagar dialect)

Some nouns admit two or three different prefixes, while others have no distinctive suffix, and occur only in the plural, e.g. bras 'rice', gur 'wheat', bishké, 'fur', (cf. plurale tantum). On the other hand, there are also nouns which have identical forms in the singular and plural, e.g. hagúr 'horse(s)'. Adjectives have a unique plural suffex, whose form depends on the class of the noun they modify, e.g. burúm 'white' gives the x-class plural burum-išo and the y-class plural burúm-ing.

Examples of pluralisation in Burushaski:

• wazíir (m), pl. wazíirting 'vizier, minister'
• hir (m), pl. hirí 'man' (stress shifts)
• gus (f), pl. gushíngants 'woman' (stress shifts)
• dasín (f), pl. dasíwants 'girl', 'unmarried woman'
• huk (x), pl. hukái 'dog'
• tilí (x), pl. tilí 'walnut'
• tilí (y), pl. tiléng 'walnut tree'

Declension

Burushaski is an ergative language. It has five primary cases.

The case suffixes are appended to the plural suffix, e.g. Huséiniukutse, 'the people of Hussein' (ergative plural). The genitive ending is irregular, /mo/, for singular f-class nouns, but /-e/ in all others (identical to the ergative ending). The dative ending, /-ar/, /-r/ is attached to the genitive ending for singular f-class nouns, but to the stem for all others. Examples:

• hir-e 'the man's', gus-mo 'the woman's' (gen.)
• hir-ar 'to the man', gus-mu-r 'to the woman' (dat.)

The genitive is placed before the thing possessed: Hunzue tham, 'the Emir of Hunza.'

The endings of the secondary cases are formed from a secondary case suffix (or infix) and one of the primary endings /-e/, /-ar/ or /-um/. These endings are directional, /-e/ being locative (answering 'where?'), /-ar/ being terminative (answering 'where to?'), and /-um/ being ablative (answering 'where from?'). The infixes, and their basic meanings, are as follows:

1. /-ts-/ „at“
2. /-ul-/ „in“
3. /-aţ-/ „on; with“
4. /-al-/ „near“ (only in the Hunza dialect)

From these, the following secondary or compound cases are formed:

The regular endings /-ul-e/ and /-ul-ar/ are archaic and are now replaced by /-ul-o/ and /-ar-ulo/ respectively.

Pronouns and pronominal prefixes

Nouns indicating parts of the body and kinship terms are accompanied by an obligatory pronominal prefix. Thus, one cannot simply say 'mother' or 'arm' in Burushaski, but only 'my arm', 'your mother', 'his father', etc. For example, the root mi 'mother', is never found in isolation, instead one finds:

• i-mi 'his mother', mu-mi 'their mother' (3f sg.), u-mi 'your mother' (3h pl.), u-mi-tsaro 'their mothers'(3h pl.).

The pronominal, or personal, prefixes agree with the person, number and - in the third person, the class of their noun. A summary of the basic forms is given in the following table:

Personal pronouns in Burushaski distinguish proximal and distal forms, e.g. khin 'he, this one here', but in, 'he, that one there'. In the oblique, there are additional abbreviated forms.

Numerals

The Burushaski number system is vigesimal, i.e. based on the number 20. For example, 20 altar, 40 alto-altar (2 times 20), 60 iski-altar (3 times 20) etc. The base numerals are 1 hin (or han, hik), 2 altán (or altó), 3 iskén (or uskó), 4 wálto, 5 čundó, 6 mishíndo, 7 thaló, 8 altámbo, 9 hunchó, 10 tóorumo (also toorimi and turma) and 100 tha.

Examples of compound numerals:

11 turma-hin, 12 turma-altan, 13 turma-isken, ..., 19 turma-hunti; 20 altar, 30 altar-toorimi, 40 alto-altar, 50 alto-altar-toorimi, 60 iski-altar and so on; 21 altar-hik, 22 altar-alto, 23 altar-iski and so on.

Verbs

Overview

The verbal morphology of Burushaski is extremely complicated and rich in forms. Many sound changes can take place, including assimilation, deletion and accent shift, which are unique for almost every verb. Here, we can only specify certain basic principles.

The Burushaski finite verb falls into the following categories:

For many transitive verbs, in addition to the subject, the (direct) object is also indicated, also by pronomimal prefixes which vary according to person, number and class. All verbs have negative forms, and many intransitive verbs also have derived transitive forms. The infinitive forms - which in Burushaski are the absolutives of the past and present, the perfect participle, and two infinitives - admit all the finite variations except tense and mood. Infinitive forms are made together with auxiliary verbs and periphrastic forms.

The 11 positions of the finite verb

All verb forms can be constructed according to a complex but regular position system. Berger describes a total of 11 possible positions, or slots, although not all of these will be filled in any given verb form. Many positions also have several alternative contents (indicated by A/B/C below). The verb stem is in position 5, preceded by four possible prefix and followed by seven possible suffixes. The following table gives an overview of the positions and their functions

• The positions of Burushaski finite verbs

Formation of tenses and moods

The formation of the tenses and moods involves the use of several positions, or slots, in complicated wase. The preterite, perfect, pluperfect and conative are formed from the 'simple stem,' whereas the present, imperfect, future and conditional are formed from the 'present stem,' which is itself formed from the simple stem by placing -č- in position 7. The optative and imperative are derived directly from the stem. Altogether, the schema is as follows:

The formation of the tenses and moods of the verb her 'to cry', without prefixes:

• Simple stem tenses

• Present stem tenses

• Optatives and Imperative

Indication of the subject and object

The subject and object of the verb are indicated by the use of personal prefixes and suffixes in positions 3, 8 and 10 as follows:

The personal prefixes are identical to the pronominal prefixes of nouns (mandatory with body parts and kinship terms, as above). A simplified overview of the forms of the affixes is given in the following table:

• Personal prefix (Position 3)

• Personal suffixes (Positions 8 and 10)

For example, the construction of the preterite of the transitive verb phus 'to tie', with prefixes and suffixes separated by hyphens, is as follows :

• i-phus-i-m-i > he ties him (filled positions: 3-5-8-9-10)
• mu-phus-i-m-i > he ties her (f)
• u-phus-i-m-i > he ties them (pl. hx)
• mi-phus-i-m-i > he ties us

• i-phus-i-m-an > we/you/they tie him.
• mi-phus-i-m-an > you/they tie us
• i-phus-i-m-a > i tie it
• gu-phus-i-m-a > i tie you

The personal affixes are also used when the noun occupies the role of the subject or the object, e.g. hir i-ír-i-mi 'the man died'. With intransitive verbs, the subject function is indicated by both a prefix and a suffix, as in:

• gu-ir-č-u-m-a „you will die“ (future)
• i-ghurts-i-m-i „he sank“ (preterite)

Personal prefixes do not occur in all verbs and all tenses. Some verbs do not admit personal prefixes, others still do so only under certain circumstances. Personal prefixes used with intransitive verbs often express a volitional function, with prefixed forms indicating an action contrary to the intention of the subject. For example:

• hurúţ-i-m-i 'he sat down' (volitional action without prefix)
• i-ír-i-m-i 'he died' (involuntary action with prefix)
• ghurts-i-mi 'he went willingly underwater', 'he dove' (without prefix)
• i-ghurts-i-m-i 'he went unwillingly underwater', 'he sank' (with prefix)

The d-prefix

A number of verbs - mostly according to their root form - are found with the d-prefix in position 2, which occurs before a consonant according to vowel harmony. The precise semantic function of the d-prefix is unclear. With primary transitive verbs the d-prefix, always without personal prefixes, forms regular intransitives. Examples:

• i-phalt-i-mi „he breaks it open“ (transitive)
• du-phalt-as „to break open, to explode“ (intransitive)

See also

• Partawi Shah

References

Literature

• Anderson, Gregory D. S. 1997. Burushaski Morphology. Pages 1021–1041 in volume 2 of Morphologies of Asia and Africa, ed. by Alan Kaye. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
• Anderson, Gregory D. S. 1999. M. Witzel’s "South Asian Substrate Languages" from a Burushaski Perspective. Mother Tongue (Special Issue, October 1999).
• Anderson, Gregory D. S. forthcoming b. Burushaski. In Language Islands: Isolates and Microfamilies of Eurasia, ed. by D.A. Abondolo. London: Curzon Press.
• Backstrom, Peter C. Burushaski in Backstrom and Radloff (eds.), Languages of northern areas, Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 2. Islamabad, National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Qaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics (1992), 31-54.
• Bashir, Elena. 2000. A Thematic Survey of Burushaski Research. History of Language 6.1: 1–14.
• Berger, Hermann. 1956. Mittelmeerische Kulturpflanzennamen aus dem Burušaski [Names of Mediterranean cultured plants from B.]. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 9: 4-33.
• Berger, Hermann. 1959. Die Burušaski-Lehnwörter in der Zigeunersprache [The B. loanwords in the Gypsy language]. Indo-Iranian Journal 3.1: 17-43.
• Berger, Hermann. 1974. Das Yasin-Burushaski (Werchikwar). Volume 3 of Neuindische Studien, ed. by Hermann Berger, Lothar Lutze and Günther Sontheimer. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
• Berger, Hermann. 1998. Die Burushaski-Sprache von Hunza und Nager [The B. language of H. and N.]. Three volumes: Grammatik [grammar], Texte mit Übersetzungen [texts with translations], Wörterbuch [dictionary]. Altogether Volume 13 of Neuindische Studien (ed. by Hermann Berger, Heidrun Brückner and Lothar Lutze). Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowitz.
• Casule, Ilija. 2010. Burushaski as an Indo-European language. Languages of the World 38. Munich: Lincom.
• Casule, Ilija. 2003. Evidence for the Indo-European laryngeals in Burushaski and its genetic affiliation with Indo-European. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 31:1-2, pp 21-86.
• van Driem, George. 2001. Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region, containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language (2 vols.). Leiden: Brill.
• Greenberg, Joseph H., and Merritt Ruhlen. 1992. Linguistic Origins of Native Americans. Scientific American 267(5): 94–99.
• Grune, Dick. 1998. Burushaski – An Extraordinary Language in the Karakoram Mountains.
• Lorimer, D. L. R. 1935–1938. The Burushaski Language (3 vols.). Oslo: Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning.
• Morgenstierne, Georg. 1945. Notes on Burushaski Phonology. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 13: 61–95.
• Munshi, Sadaf. 2006. Jammu and Kashmir Burushaski: Language, language contact, and change. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, Department of Linguistics.
• van Skyhawk, Hugh. 2003. Burushaski-Texte aus Hispar. Materialien zum Verständnis einer archaischen Bergkultur in Nordpakistan. Beiträge zur Indologie 38. ISBN 3-447-04645-7.
• Starostin, Sergei A. 1996. Comments on the Basque-Dene-Caucasian Comparisons. Mother Tongue 2: 101–109.
• Tiffou, Étienne. 1993. Hunza Proverbs. University of Calgary Press. ISBN 1-895176-29-8
• Tiffou, Étienne. 1999. Parlons Bourouchaski. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 2-7384-7967-7
• Tiffou, Étienne. 2000. Current Research in Burushaski: A Survey. History of Language 6(1): 15–20.
• Tikkanen, Bertil. 1988. On Burushaski and other ancient substrata in northwest South Asia. Studia Orientalia 64: 303–325.
• Varma, Siddheshwar. 1941. Studies in Burushaski Dialectology. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Letters 7: 133–173.
• Witzel, Michael. 1999. Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages. Mother Tongue (Special Issue, October 1999): 1–70.

External links

• SIL Ethnologue entry