Linguistic Description and Comprehensive Documentation of Mewahang, an undescribed Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal

 

Language	Eastern Mewahang (ISO639-3:emg), Western Mewahang (ISO639-3:raf)
Depositor	Narayan Sharma
Affiliation	Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon
Location	Nepal
Collection ID	0499
Grant ID	IPF0253; FN-291469-23
Funding Body	ELDP; NEH-NSF
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/f5307c2e-7b7a-4858-8044-b15e7f82123c

 

Summary of the collection

Mewahang, a language spoken in the eastern part of Nepal, features two primary dialects: the Balali (Western) dialect in Bala and the Yaphule (Eastern) dialect in Yaphu, both located in the Sankhuwasabha district. This collection examines the morphosyntax of both dialects through documentation of a rich and culturally significant oral tradition, unique cultural heritage, traditional recipes, and shamanistic rituals, all of which are rapidly disappearing.

Primary data collection was led by Narayan Sharma, a linguist and Principal Investigator, with the support of Namita Mewahang, Jiten Mewahang, Anjana Mewahang (project transcribers), and other contributing community members.

The collection includes an annotated audiovisual corpus from approximately 220 speakers across a range of genders, localities, educational backgrounds, and ages. It also captures unique live ritual performances of rituals such as GHARCHINTA, KHAMANAG, SILI NACH, and a traditional wedding.

The accompanying image depicts SILI NACH (step dance), spontaneously performed by the Mangtewa community in Mangtewa village.

 

Group represented

This collection focuses on speakers of the Mewahang language from the Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal, specifically the Balali and Yaphule dialects. These dialects are considered the standard forms of Western and Eastern Mewahang, respectively. In Western Mewahang, the dialect predominates in Bala village but shows a decreasing retention rate—50% in Chirkhuwa village and 5% in Yamdang.

In Eastern Mewahang, the Yaphule dialect is primarily spoken in Yaphu village, with retention rates dropping to 50% in Mangtewa village and 1% in Tamku village. The Mewahang language is nearly extinct in Yamdang and Tamku and risks disappearing in these areas without targeted language preservation efforts.

 

Language information

Mewahang is an oral Tibeto-Burman language of the Kiranti subgroup (Upper-Arun) spoken by approximately 900 people in the Sankhuwasabha district of eastern Nepal.

The Mewahang language has two primary dialects: Western Mewahang, or the Balali dialect, spoken in Bala village, and Eastern Mewahang, or the Yaphule dialect, spoken in Yaphu village. The Mewahang people are increasingly shifting Nepali, the regional lingua franca, which is contributing to the endangerment of their native language. In Yaphu, some households still maintain the Mewahang language, though most children no longer speak it in their homes.

Geographically, Mewahang-spoken areas are surrounded by the neighbouring Kiranti languages: Kulung to the west (Tolsma, 2006), Lohorung to the east (van Driem, 2001), Yamphu to the north (Rutgers, 1998), and Sampang to the south (Hanßon, 1991).

Linguistically, Mewahang verbs, like those in other Kiranti languages, feature a complex agreement system where verbs align with both Agent (A) and Patient (P) arguments. Unlike Central Kiranti languages, which typically require dative marking for animate P and Goal (G) arguments, Mewahang uses an absolutive case for all Patient (P), Theme (T), and Goal (G) arguments. Unique among Kiranti languages, Mewahang utilizes a single morpheme for negation, employing a suffix for non-past tense and a prefix for past tense. This contrasts with many Kiranti languages, which often feature double or triple negation markings (Sharma 2014).

 

Special characteristics

This collection includes data from Bala and Yaphu villages, as well as from Chirkhuwa, Yamdang, Mangtewa, Tamku, Chhoyeng, Khandbari, and Kathmandu. The dialect spoken in Bala closely resembles that of Chirkhuwa and Yamdang, while the dialect in Yaphu closely aligns with those in Mangtewa, Chhoyeng, and Tamku.

 

Collection contents

This collection consists of approximately 100 hours of audio-video recordings, along with 25 hours of transcribed and translated digital corpus. The recorded data is classified into various genres as follows:

• Narrative (myth, story, folktale, etc.): 23 hours
• Conversation and dialogue: 4.5 hours
• Rituals (e.g., real and mock marriage, gharchinta, khamang, nuwangi, origin rituals): 29 hours
• Descriptions (daily accounts, life history, family history, autobiography): 38 hours
• Singing: 3.5 hours
• Poetry: 0.15 hours
• Recipes: 2 hours

Additionally, the collection includes:

• Wedding Recording: 4 hours of wedding recordings in Nepali (the groom’s ethnic language is Mewahang, and the bride’s is Yakkha)
• Verb Paradigms: Over 150 comprehensive verb paradigms
• Elicited Sentences: More than 300 elicited sentences covering various morphosyntactic constructions

 

Collection history

The data for this collection was compiled during Narayan Sharma’s postdoctoral research as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Mewahang language documentation project. Mewahang is predominantly spoken in the Sankhuwasabha district, the eastern part of Nepal. The initial dataset, focusing on the Balali dialect, was collected in April 2018 from Bala, Chirkhuwa, and Yamdang in Silichong Rural Municipality-2.

The second data set was collected in May and June 2018 from Yaphu-speaking areas, including Khandbari, Yaphu, Mangtewa, Tamku, and other locations within Silichong Rural Municipality.

The third and fourth sets of data were gathered in August and September 2018, covering Khandbari and Kathmandu.

During fieldwork, Narayan Sharma, the Principal Investigator, was typically accompanied by research assistant Miss Namita Mewahang. However, she was absent during the second recording session at the Yaphu site due to hospitalisation. In her absence, Mr. Jiten Mewahang, another research assistant, and several enthusiastic volunteers participated in the Yaphu site recording sessions.

While the Principal Investigator was at the University of Oregon, USA, research assistants made key recordings and continued to transcribe and translate the data.

The final set of data was gathered from June to August 2023 through Federal Research Grants awarded to Narayan Sharma under the Documenting Endangered Languages Fellowships, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA. This phase focused on gathering data from Mewahang speakers residing in Kathmandu, which was conducted successfully in collaboration with several local Mewahang individuals. The recordings encompassed both the Yaphule and Balali dialects.

 

References

Driem, George van. 2001. Languages of the Himalayas, Vol. II. Leiden; New York; Köln: Brill.

Hanßon, Gerd. 1991. The Rai of Eastern Nepal: Ethnic and Linguistic Grouping. Findings of the Linguistic Survey of Nepal. Kathmandu: Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies.

Rutgers, Roland. 1998. Yamphu: grammar, texts and lexicon. Vol. 2. Leiden: Research School CNWS.

Sharma, Narayan P. 2014. Morphosyntax of Puma, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. PhD dissertation, SOAS, London.

Tolsma, Gerard J. 2006. A Grammar of Kulung. Leiden: Brill.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Sharma, Narayan P. 2019. Linguistic Description and Comprehensive Documentation of Mewahang, an undescribed Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0010-893A-2. Accessed on [insert date here].

Sharma, Narayan P. 2023. Creating a Comprehensive Trilingual Dictionary and Annotating a Digital Corpus of Mewahang, an Endangered Trans-Himalayan Language. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0010-893A-2. Accessed on [insert date here].