The linguistic position of Tani (Mirish) in Tibeto-Burman: a lexical assessment

Abstract

The obscure Tani (Mirish, Mishingish) languages of southern Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh have only recently begun to receive the attention they deserve (Chhangte 1990, 1992; Sun 1993, 1994). The aim of this paper, which is part of an ongoing project to study the phonological and lexical diachrony of these languages, is to contribute toward clarifying the linguistic position of Tani languages in the Tibeto-Burman family from the vantage-point of reconstructed Proto-Tani (hereafter PT).1 Section 1 surveys and contrasts exisiting views on the affiliations of Tani in Tibeto-Burman. Section 2 inspects in detail a number of Tibeto-Burman languages which have been nominated in the literature as possible close relatives of Tani. After screening out a few unlikely contestants, a pilot lexical study is conducted in section 3 to weigh the degrees of lexical affinity between Tani and the remaining candidates as compared with three control languages, Written Tibetan, Written Burmese, and Garo. The implications of the output of this study on the phylogenetic position of Tani are then discussed. In the concluding section, we consider the nature of the relationship between Tani and Digarish (consisting of two known languages: Taraon and Idu), the language group which turns out to be most akin to Tani in basic vocabulary.