Documentation and Grammatical Description of Changki Ao, a Language of Nagaland
| Language | Changki Ao |
| Depositor | Viktor Slamnig |
| Affiliation | University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Location | India |
| Collection ID | 0383 |
| Grant ID | SG1149 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Forthcoming |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/7fc79760-935b-4f40-b0e9-0235b9233986 |
Summary of the collection
The collection will be comprised of an audiovisual corpus, consisting of naturalistic language data, stories and narratives. The number of consultants will be determined in the field. The fieldwork will commence in December 2025.
Group represented
The group represented in this collection are speakers of the Changki dialect of the Ao language, the other major dialects being Chungli and Mongsen. The speakers are members of the Ao tribe of Nagaland. The Ao trace their historical origins to the sacred stones of Chungliyimti village (lit. big village of the Chungli). The earliest historical records mentioning the Ao date back to the late 19th century, when British presence was established in the area. The Ao are predominantly Baptist and have a rich and diverse cultural tradition, with subsistence farming traditionally being the primary occupation of the Ao villagers.
Language information
Changki Ao is the least documented dialect of Ao, a tibeto-burman language spoken in Nagaland, northwestern India. Changki has around 5000-10000 speakers and is spoken west of Mokokchung town, on the Changkikong range. The majority of speakers reside in the eponymous village, Changki. The position of Changki in the central-naga branch (Bruhn 2014) of the tibeto-burman language family is unclear, although it is possible that it is related to the Mongsen dialect of Ao (Coupe 2007).
References
Bruhn, Daniel Wayne (2014). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Central-Naga. Phd Thesis. Berkeley: University of California.
Coupe, A. R. (2007). A Grammar of Mongsen Ao. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Acknowledgement and citation
I am grateful to Nagaland University, Kohima Campus, for their ongoing support in my research. Further thanks will be mentioned when the first phase of fieldwork ends.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Slamnig, Viktor. Year. Documentation and Grammatical Description of Changki Ao, a Language of Nagaland. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/93199f8b-7fec-4646-8afa-8e2a685bf18b. Accessed on [insert date here].
