Kinnauri language

Kinnauri
Spoken in Himachal Pradesh
Native speakers 64,000  (2000)
Language family
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3 kfk
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Kinnauri, also known as Kanauri, Kanor, Koonawur, or Kunawar is a Tibeto-Burman language (Sino-Tibetan stock) spoken in the Kinnaur district of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

Contents

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:

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