Karbi texts
Language | Karbi |
Depositor | Linda Konnerth |
Affiliation | SOAS University of London |
Location | India |
Collection ID | 0577 |
Grant ID | 0951749 |
Funding Body | National Science Foundation |
Collection Status | Collection online |
Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/62ed5d8f-93aa-4ea0-be82-3dec514e3c97 |
Summary of the collection
Karbi is the third-largest tribal language of the state of Assam in Northeast India. While most Karbi speakers live in the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts of Assam, a considerable number of Karbi villages are also found in other districts of Assam, as well as in the states of Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. According to the Karbi Lammet Amei (Karbi Literary Association), there are an estimated half a million native speakers of Karbi all in all. In the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts, a variety of Karbi is generally spoken that can be referred to as ‘Hills Karbi’. The texts in this collection are almost entirely in Hills Karbi.
Group represented
The speakers in this collection are almost entirely from within Karbi Anglong but from different places. Text collection took place in close collaboration with the Karbi Lammet Amei (Karbi Literary Association) and in particular Sikari Tisso, who recruited knowledgeable and experienced speakers to contribute to the project.
Language information
Karbi is the third-largest tribal language of the state of Assam in Northeast India. While most Karbi speakers live in the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts of Assam, a considerable number of Karbi villages are also found in other districts of Assam, as well as in the states of Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. According to the Karbi Lammet Amei (Karbi Literary Association), there are an estimated half a million native speakers of Karbi all in all. In the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts, a variety of Karbi is generally spoken that can be referred to as ‘Hills Karbi’. The texts in this collection are almost entirely in Hills Karbi.
Special characteristics
The texts in this collection are fully transcribed, translated, and analyzed, and are available online with open access in the following publication:
Konnerth, Linda, and Chikari Tisso. 2018. “Karbi texts: A fully glossed corpus of different genres.” Himalayan Linguistics 17 (2).
Collection contents
This collection contains a total of 2 hours (approximately 12,500 words) of the following types of texts:
- 9 folk stories
- 2 personal narratives and one other narrative
- 1 stimuli-based narrative (pear story)
- 4 procedural texts
- 1 conversation/interview
Collection history
These data were collected between 2009-2012 as a collaboration between then PhD student Linda Konnerth and the Karbi Lammet Amei (Karbi Literary Association), in particular Sikari Tisso.
Other information
None of the data in this collection may be used as evidence in court.
Acknowledgement and citation
Konnerth, Linda & Chikari Tisso. 2019. Karbi texts: Original recordings of a corpus of different genres. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0013-DB0B-2. Accessed on [insert date here].