The Language of the Modhupur Mandi (Garo), Volume 1

APPENDIX C: Glossary of Linguistic Terminology

Accusative. The grammatical case used for direct objects, often for the recipient of the action. The accusative is marked in Garo by -ko .

Adverb. A word that modifies a verb. Garo adverbs are often reduplicated.

Adverbial Affixes. The term used in this book for the meaningful bits that go between a verb base and the principal verb suffix. Adverbial affixes include everything from derivational affixes such as -chak- that can be used with relatively few words ( dak-chak-a 'help'), to inflectional affixes such as -ja- 'negative' or -ing- 'progressive' that can be used with every verb in the language.

Affix. A grammatical bit that is attached at the beginning or end of a word, or less often inserted into the middle. A prefix, suffix, or infix.

Affricate. A speech sound such as ch or j , in either English or Garo, that begins with the air passage blocked off, and that has some friction that can be heard as the air passage opens.

Allophone. A variant of a phoneme that occurs in a certain context. The letter i in Garo is pronounced in two different ways depending on whether a consonant does or does not follow in the same syllable. The i 's in jik 'wife' and mi 'rice' have very different pronunciations and they have different allophones of i .

Aspirated. A slight puff of breath that is a part of some speech sounds. p, t, and k are aspirated in both Garo and English. b, d, and g are not. The Bengali sounds transliterated at ph, th, and kh are aspirated, while those transliterated as p, t, and k, are not.

Assimilation. The change of a speech sound so that it becomes more like a nearby sound. The adjustment of adjacent sounds to one another.

Back. A vowel made with the tongue pulled to the back of the mouth. Garo u and o are back vowels, as is the allophone of i used in closed syllables such as kil 'cotton'.

Base. The main part of a verb, the part to which the affixes (almost always suffixes in Garo) are attached. Re'- is the base of the verb re'-ang-ing-a 'going'.

Bilabial. A speech sound such as p or m that is made by closing the lips.

Bisyllabic. Having two syllables.

Bound Form. A bit of language, such as a suffix, that is always attached to something else. -sim-ang 'coarse body hair' is a bound form in Garo since it is never used alone. Kim-il 'fine body hair' can be used alone, so it is a 'free form'.

Case Markers. Morphemes (suffixes in Garo and in many other languages) that show the "case" of the noun phrase to which it is attached and thus help to show how the noun phrase is related to the verb and to the rest of the sentence. Case markers can be used to make clear whether their noun is the subject or object of a sentence, or what other function it may have.

Category Prefix. The term used in this book for morphemes, generally single syllables, that come first in the word and that show the word's general category of meaning. Do'- in do'-reng 'hawk' and in the names of many other birds is a category prefix.

Causative. A particle or grammatical construction that gives a verb a causative meaning. Garo chip-a 'to close' describes something that doors do. Chip-et-a 'cause to close' describes what someone does who causes something else to close.

Central. A vowel made with the tongue pushed neither to the far front nor to the far back, but held somewhere in between. Garo a and the vowel in English but are central vowels.

Classifier, Numeral Classifier. A morpheme that is used along with a number. Classifiers refer to some feature of the thing being counted. In man-di sak-sa 'one person', mong-ma mang-sa 'one elephant' and nok kan-sa 'one house', sak-, mang- and kan- are classifiers for, respectively, people, animals and miscellaneous artifacts.

Clause. A sentence or a portion of a sentence that includes a verb. Main Clauses are usually capable of standing alone as sentences. A subordinate clause is often understood as having been formed from a sentence, but changed in some way that makes it dependent on the main clause of the sentence.

Clitic. A suffix that is attached to a phrase rather than to a single word. If you can say the king of England's hat then you are using -'s as a clitic since the hat does not belong to England but to the king.

Closed Syllable. A syllable that ends with a consonant.

Cluster. Two or more consonants that occur beside each other in the same word, with no intervening vowel: st, pr etc.

Combining Form. The form of a word or morpheme that can be attached to other words or morphemes. do'- 'bird' is a combining form in Garo since it combines with other bits. Thefree form is do'-o or do , depending on the dialect, and it can stand alone.

Complementary Distribution. The situation in which a significant sound of a language can be pronounced in two ways, but where each pronunciation is found in a different but well defined situation. One pronunciation of the Garo i always occurs in closed syllables, as in jik 'wife' or mik-ron 'eye'. Another pronunciation always occurs in open syllables such as chi 'water' or mi 'rice'. The two forms are "allophones" of the phoneme /i/ and they are said to be in complementary distribution.

Compound. A word that is made up of two parts, at least one of which has clearly identifiable meaning, and can often stand alone as an independent word. Garo ku'-sim-ang 'beard' is a compound made up of ku'- 'mouth' and -sim-ang 'coarse body hair.'

Consonant. A sound, such as p or m , in which the flow of air through the mouth is relatively restricted. Vowels, such as a or o , have a less restricted air flow. A letter that stands for a sound of this sort is also called a consonant.

Contrast. Two speech sounds that are different enough to distinguish different words are said to "contrast". o and a contrast in Garo because they can distinguish such words as bi-pong 'handle' from bi-pang 'trunk, stem'. The two Garo pronunciations of i do not contrast, because no pairs of words are distinguished by nothing except these two sounds.

Correlative. The partner of a relative pronoun in the Garo correlative construction. In a sentence having a form something like Whatever you need, that we will find the "that" stands for a correlative. It points back to the preceding relative ("whatever") and names the same thing.

Dative. The grammatical case that labels the recipient of some action. In Ang-a bi-na to-ra-ko ron'-jok 'I gave him the basket', bi-na 'him' has the dative case, as shown by -na , the dative case marker. This shows that it is the recipient.

Demonstrative. A pronoun such as this or that in English or i-a or u-a in Garo. They point to a particular (definite) thing and usually indicate something about its location.

Dental. A speech sound made with the tongue touching the upper teeth.

Derivational. This describes a suffix that "derives" one word from another, as -chak- derives the word dak-chak-a 'help' from dak-a 'do'.

Digraph. A sequence of two letters that stands for a single speech sound. ch and ng are digraphs in both English and Garo. Th is a digraph in English.

Diphthong. A vowel in which there is movement of the tongue or other speech organs. Garo ai-au is a sequence of two diphthongs, since ai and the au are both made with tongue movement. au also requires the lips to move.

Echoes, Echo Words. A word, that repeats, in whole or in part, the sounds of the preceding word: nas-ta nos-ta 'breakfast'. The echo has little meaning of its own, but it is felt to make the language sound better.

Equational Sentence. A type of sentence that has no verb, but that consists of two noun phrases which are "equated" to each other. Me Tarzan; You Jane consists of two very simple equational sentences.

Final Noun Suffix. The term used in this book for the suffixes that can follow the a case marker, including such suffixes as -ba 'also' and -sa 'only'.

Foregrounding. A way of bringing one item in a phrase or sentence "forward" where it will be the focus of attention. A way of emphasizing something. Shown in Garo by the suffix -in .

Free Form. A word that can be used without being attached to any other words or suffixes. Mong-ma 'elephant' is a free form in Garo because it can be used by itself. Gal- 'throw away' is abound form because it cannot be used without at least one suffix.

Front. A vowel made with the tongue pushed toward the front of the mouth. Garo e is a front vowel. So is Garo i in open syllables such as in chi 'water'.

Frozen. When parts of a word can be seen to have separate origins but have become so closely linked together as to act as a single unit they are said to be "frozen". Breakfast originally meant "to break a fast", but the parts have become firmly frozen into a single word.

Genitive. The case, shown by -ni in Garo, that indicates possession: Ang-ni jong-gip-a 'my younger brother'.

Gloss. The words of one language that identify and translate a word or phrase of another language. In " rang-gol 'monkey'", "monkey" is the gloss.

Glottal Stop. A catch in the throat made by abruptly closing the vocal cords so that air cannot escape. The sound represented by the Garo raka, as in ha'-a 'earth, soil'.

High. A vowel made with the tongue raised high in the mouth. i and u are high vowels.

Homorganic. Two or more sounds that are made with the tongue, lips, and the other speech organs in the same position are said to be "homorganic". p, b, and m are homorganic in both English and in Garo because all of them have the speech organs in the same position.

Homographs. Two words that are spelled the same way even if their pronunciation differs. Rama 'road' and rama 'dry' are homographs in Garo.

Homophones. Two words or morphemes that are pronounced the same way but that have different meanings. -na 'dative' and -na infinitive, arehomophonous suffixes in Garo

Imperative. A grammatical form, shown in Garo by a suffix such as -bo or -kan , that gives a command or instruction: A-song-bo 'sit down'.

Indefinite. A word with an indefinite meaning. English indefinite words include the indefinite article a and words such as something, someone and anything . In Garo, indefinite words are typically formed with a -ba suffix: sa-ni-ba 'someone's', ba-cha-ba 'to somewhere'.

Infinitive. A verb form, shown by the suffix -na in Garo, that allows that verb to be linked with another as in cha'-na nang-a . This corresponds to the English infinitive construction with to : need to eat .

Inflection. An affix that can be freely used with all the words of some part of speech. The English plural suffix and the progressive suffix -ing are inflections, as are Garo -jok 'change of state' and -ing- 'progressive'.

Instrumental. A grammatical case, shown in Garo by the suffix -chi or -cha , that shows that the noun to which it is attached is the instrument by which some action is accomplished.

Interjections. A word that is usually used by itself without joining other words in a grammatical construction. Wow and okay are English interjections. Ai-au 'wow' and da'-nang 'alas' are Garo interjections.

Intervocalic. Occurring between two vowels. g is intervocalic in English biggest .

Intransitive. A verb, such as Garo kat- 'run', that cannot take a direct object.

Juncture. The sound features that are found where two syllables or words are joined.

Lexicalized. Over time, two or more words or morphemes may fuze together into a single word and the original parts can cease to have any independence. The word that is formed in this way is said have been lexicalized, "turned into a word".

Locative. The grammatical case that shows that the word to which it is attached points to the time or place where something occurred: Song-o 'at the village', a-tam-o 'in the evening'.

Low. Characteristic of a vowel made while the tongue is low in the mouth. a is a low vowel.

Main Clause. The central clause of a sentence. The clause that can usually stand alone without the other clauses. Other clauses are subordinated to the main clause.

Medial. A speech sound or sequence of speech sounds that occurs in the middle of a word rather than at the beginning or end.

Mid. A characteristic of a vowel in which the tongue is neither very high nor very low in the mouth. e and o are mid vowels.''

Minimal Pair. Two words that differ in sound in just one way. Buy and pie are an English minimal pair that differ only in their first sounds. Ring'-a 'sing' and ring-a 'drink' are a Garo minimal pair differing only in the raka. Minimal pairs are valuable to linguists because they help to show exactly which sounds are significant in the language.

Morpheme. The smallest bit of language that carries its own meaning. A meaningful piece of a word. Unhappily consists of three morphemes, un-, happy and -ly . Kat-ang-ja-no-a 'will not run away' has four morphemes.Morphemics is the study of the way in which words are constructed from morphemes.

Morphophonemics. The part of a description of a language that is concerned with the way in which the morphemes are pronounced, and the way that morphemes are formed from phonemes.

Nasal. A speech sound in which some air passes out through the nose. m, n, and ng are nasal consonants.

Neutral Tense. The Garo tense shown by the suffix -a has such a generalized meaning that it can be said to lack any of the more specific meanings of the other tense-aspect markers. As such, it can be thought of as a "neutral" tense.

Nominalization. The process by which a verb is put into a form in which it can be used as a noun. In Garo this is generally accomplished by anominalizing suffix such as -gip-a . In kat-ang-gip-a 'the runner, the one who runs away' the verb kat-ang-a 'run away' has been made into a noun by thenominalizing suffix -gip-a .

Nominative. The grammatical case that shows that its noun is the subject of the clause or sentence in which it occurs.

Noun Phrase. An organized group of words, that, in Garo, may include not only a noun, but a demonstrative, numeral, and modifiers. It may be terminated by a case marker that shows how the noun phrase is related to the verb and to the rest of the sentence. A Garo noun phrase may be followed closely by a postposition.

Numeral. As used in this book, a numeral includes both a classifier and a number. Anumber is the part of a numeral without the classifier, including especially the morphemes for 'one, two, three' etc.

Open Syllable. A syllable such as chu 'rice beer' that ends with a vowel and does not have a final consonant.

Orthography. The way in which a language is written.

Parts of Speech. The major classes of words in a language, each of which is defined by the way it is used in grammatical constructions. Parts of speech in both Garo and English often differ in the affixes they are used with. All languages seem to have nouns and verbs but languages also differ in their parts of speech. English does not have classifiers and so it has nothing corresponding to Garo numerals. On the other hand, Garo does not have as distinctive a class of adjectives as English does.

Passive. A sentence pattern in many languages that can be thought of as being formed from an "active" sentence, by selecting a different noun phrase as the subject. The man ate the rice is an active sentence. The rice was eaten by the man , where rice has replaced man as the subject, is the corresponding passive.

Phonemes. The distinctive sounds of a language. Two sounds are called phonemes if they are different enough to keep words distinct. s and ch are distinct phonemes in Garo because they are different enough to distinguish such words as si-a 'die' and chi-a 'sweet'. If recently borrowed words are disregarded, the two different pronunciations of Garo i in such words as mik 'forearm length' and mi 'rice' are not separate phonemes because two words cannot be found that differ only in which kind of i they have.

Phonology. The way in which the sound system of a language is organized. The study of sound systems.

Polysyllabic. Having two or more syllables

Postposed. Moved to the end, after something else. When a pronoun is moved to follow a verb, as ang-a has been moved in Bi-ko nik-ku-ja, ang-a-de 'I haven't seen him yet', it can be said to have been postposed.

Postposition. A word that follows a noun phrase and a case marker (in Garo and in many other languages), and that shows such things as position in space or time, causation, and so forth. English hasprepositions that precede the noun phrase instead of following it but they do the same job as the postpositions of Garo.

Prefix. A morpheme (small bit of language) that can be attached to the beginning of a word.

Principle Verb Suffix. The term used in this book to mean one of the main verbal suffixes, one of which must be used with every verb: -jok 'change of state', -e 'subordinating', gip-a 'nominalizing', and many others

Productive. A grammatical construction that speakers can use freely. Adding a plural in English is productive because speakers can form a plural of a word they have never heard before. English speakers can even form the plural of a nonsense word such as floyt . They know that the plural is floyts . Similarly Garo speakers know that the accusative marker -ko could easily be added to a nonsense word that they had never heard before. On the other hand, while the suffix -sion can be used to turn many English verbs into nouns ( confusion, diffusion, decision etc.) it cannot be freely used with all verbs. *drinksion and *wondersion are impossible. Thus -sion is said to be anonproductive suffix. Similarly, -chak can be added to many Garo verb bases ( ka'-sa-chak-a 'pity', a-gan-chak-a 'answer' etc.), but it cannot be added freely to all verbs, so it, too, is nonproductive.

Prosody. The patterns of rhythm, pitch, and loudness that are characteristic of a language.

Question Words. Words such as whose and what in English, or the corresponding sa-ni and ba-gip-a in Garo, that make a question.

Raka. The Garo name for the glottal stop that is made by abruptly closing the vocal cords.

Reduced. A characteristic of speech sounds that have been weakened, perhaps as a result of rapid speech. Over many decades and even centuries, languages sometimes change by having sounds shortened, softened, and made less distinctive in various ways. These are said to be 'reduced'.

Reduplication. The process by which speech sounds, syllables, or words are repeated in some languages, including Garo, to convey certain meanings.

Reflexive. A word such as myself, yourself in English or an'-tang in Garo that points back to an earlier word. A construction such as I saw myself where the object is the same as the subject.

Relative. In English, a pronoun which introduces a relative clause, such as who in the man who came to dinner . In Garo the work of a relativePage  393is done by a suffix such as -gip-a in mi cha'-na i'-ba-gip-a man-di 'the person who came to eat rice'.

Released. The separation of the speech organs (tongue, lips, etc.) from one another at the end of a speech sound. In English, sounds such as k are generally released at the end of a word such as back . In Garo, in words such as A-chak 'dog', they are more likely not to be released.

Retroflex. Sounds made with the tongue curled back, such as the American r or some consonants in Bengali. Garo l is somewhat more retroflexed than English l .

Rounded. A vowel characterized by rounded lips. The Garo vowels o and u are rounded, as are the English vowels in caught and food .

Stem. The part of a word without any inflections. A-gan-chak- 'answer' is a verb stem formed from the verb base a-gan- 'speak' and the derivational suffix -chak- . Stems can generally take the same inflectional suffixes as bases, so a-gan- and a-gan-chak- can equally well be followed by such suffixes as -ing- 'progressive' and -ja- 'negative'

Stop. A speech sound in which the air flow is completely stopped. p, b, t and d are stops in both English and Garo.

Stress. A feature, often a feature of certain syllables, that sets them apart from the surrounding syllables by being a bit louder, longer, or by having a different pitch.

Subordinate Clause. A clause that does not form an independent sentence but that is a part of a larger sentence.

Subordinating Suffix. In Garo, a suffix that puts a verb into a form that allows it to be subordinated to another verb.

Suffix. A particle such as a case marker or plural marker that can be attached to the end of a word.

Synonym. Two words with the same meaning or approximately the same meaning. Small and little are synonyms in English. Absolute synonyms in which two words have absolutely no difference in meaning are unusual.

Tense-Aspect Suffix. The term used in this book for several important verb suffixes of Garo, such as -jok 'change of state' and -no-a 'future' (Mandi). These can complete the main clause of a sentence and thus complete the sentence itself.

Terminal Suffix. The term used in this book for verb suffixes that come after the principal verb suffix. They include -ma 'question particle', -ming 'past' -kon 'probably' and a few others.

Tone. A characteristic of some languages, though not of either Garo or English, in which each word or syllable has a characteristic pitch and inPage  394which words can be distinguished even if they differ in nothing except their pitch.

Transcription. A method of writing a language. The system by which a language can be represented on paper, generally by representing the sounds of the language.

Transitive. A verb that can or must take a direct object is called 'transitive'. See and its Garo equivalent nik-a are transitive verbs because they can take a direct object, such as you or nang'-ko , as in I see you or Ang-a nang'-ko nik-a

Unrounded. A vowel characterized by lips that are not rounded. in English and Garo, i, e and a are unrounded

Velar. Velum is the name for the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth behind the bony hard palate. A velar sound is one in which the back of the tongue articulates against the velum. k, g, and ng are velar sounds

Voiced. A speech sound characterized by vibration of the vocal cords giving a humming sound. Most vowels, and such consonants as l and m are voiced. Other consonants such as p and t cause an interruption in the voicing (vibration), and these are calledvoiceless .

Vowel. A speech sound such as a, i, or u that is made with the vocal tract relatively widely open so that the breath can freely escape. Consonants differ in having a more restricted passage for the air. A letter that stands for such a speech sound is also called a vowel.

Yes-No Question. A question that can be answered with either a yes or a no .

Zero. A device used by linguists to show the absence of something. In an inventory of initial consonants a "zero" may be included to show that it is possible to have a word with no initial consonant at all. In English, where most words have a distinctive suffix for the plural, a word such as deer where the plural is the same as the singular, may be said to have a "zero" plural marker. Zero is sometimes symbolized by "∅".