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==References==
==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{Reflist}}
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2021. A dictionary of Atong: A Tibeto-Burman language of Northeast India and Bangladesh. Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.</ref>
<ref>Breugel, Seino van. 2020. New perspectives on Atong kinship terms. In: Q. Marak & Sarit K. Chaudhuri (eds.). The cultural heritage of Meghalaya. Oxford, New York: Routledge. 205-250.</ref>
<ref>Breugel, Seino van. 2019. Atong Texts: Glossed, translated and annotated narratives in a Tibeto-Burman language of Meghalaya, Northeast India. Leiden, Boston: Brill.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atongmorot balgaba golpho, 2nd edn. Published online: https://www.academia.edu/487044/Atong_English_Dictionary.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atong-English dictionary, 2nd edn. Published online: https://www.academia.edu/487044/Atong_English_Dictionary.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atong spelling guide. Published online: https://independent.academia.edu/</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2010. No common argument, no extraction, no gap: Attributive clauses in Atong and beyond. Studies in Language 34(3), 493-531.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2009b. Atongmorot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2009b. Atong-English Dictionary, 1st edn. Tura: Tura Book Room.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino. 2009a. A grammar of Atong. PhD dissertation. Research Centre for Linguistic Typology. La Trobe University, Melbourne.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino 2008. Similarities in verbal and nominal morphology in Atong. In: Stephen Morey and Mark post (eds.). North East Indian linguistics, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India. 169-190.</ref>
<ref>van Breugel, Seino van. 2006. The factitive category. An informal presentation held for the Sino-Tibetan Special Interest Group at the Linguistics Department of La Trobe University on 4 July.</ref>


==External links==
==External links==

Revision as of 08:40, 1 July 2021

This article is about the Sino-Tibetan language. For the Niger-Congo language, see Atong language (Grassfields Bantu).
Atong
Native toIndia, Bangladesh
RegionIndia, State of Meghalaya and adjacent areas in Bangladesh
Native speakers
(undated figure of 10,000, 4,600 in India)[1]
Latin, Bengali-Assamese
Language codes
ISO 639-3aot
Glottologaton1241
ELPAtong (India)

Atong is a Sino-Tibetan language related to Koch, Rabha, Bodo and Garo.[2] It is spoken in the South Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills districts of Meghalaya state in Northeast India, southern Kamrup district in Assam, and adjacent areas in Bangladesh. The correct spelling "Atong" is based on the way the speakers themselves pronounce the name of their language. There is no glottal stop in the name and it is not a tonal language.

A reference grammar of the language has been published by Seino van Breugel.[3] An Atong–English dictionary[4] and a book of stories in Atong[5] are published by and available at the Tura Book Room.

Sociolinguistics

There is no current estimate of the number of speakers available; according to the Linguistic Survey of India, it was spoken by approximately 15,000 people in the 1920s. Since the Atong are considered a subdivision of the Garos, they are not counted as a separate ethnic or linguistic community by the Indian government[citation needed].

Almost all Atong speakers are bilingual in Garo to a greater or lesser extent, and Garo is seen as the more prestigious language[citation needed]. Because there is a Bible translation in Garo, but not in Atong, it is the language used in all churches and most Atong speakers are Christians[citation needed]. Garo is also the language of education in schools in the Atong-speaking area, although some schools provide education in English.

Mutual intelligibility with Garo

In India, Atong is considered a dialect of Garo[citation needed] and as such has no official status of its own. The Atong people are members of the Garo Scheduled Tribe, whose official Scheduled tribe language is Garo. Garo has a standardised form of speech used in education, administration, the press and literature[citation needed]. Linguistically speaking, Atong and Standard Garo may be different languages, given that they have different sound systems, vocabulary and grammar. However, due to the fact that most Atongs are bilingual in Standard Garo to various degrees, intelligibility is one-way: Atong speakers understand Standard Garo but speakers of Standard Garo may not understand Atong[citation needed].

Phonology

The phonemes of Atong are given in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in Table 1. That table also presents how the phonemes are written in the Atong alphabet used for everyday writing by people who are not linguists. As we can see in the table, the glottal stop can be written with either a bullet or an apostrophe. The bullet ⟨•⟩ was used by missionaries to write the glottal stop in Garo when the writing system for that language was created in the 1800s. The apostrophe has since been adopted to write the glottal stop as it is available on all computer keyboards. The vowel phoneme /ə/ is written ⟨y⟩ in the orthography, as it is in Khasi and Welsh. It was the Welsh Presbyterians that developed the Khasi writing system and used the letter ⟨y⟩ to write the phoneme /ə/ in Khasi.

The relationship between the phonemes of Atong and the way they are written in the Latin orthography and in the Bengali script
Phoneme Letter Bengali Phoneme Letter Bengali Phoneme Letter Bengali
pʰ ph ভ m m ম i i ই ি
tʰ th থ n n ন e e এ ে
kʰ kh খ ŋ ng ঙ ং a a আ া
p p প r r র o o ও ো
t t ত l l ল u u উ ু
k k ক s s স ə y এঃ েঃ
b b ব t͡ɕ ch চ iː ii ঈ ী
d d দ d͡ʑ j জ eː ee এঽ েঽ
ɡ g গ h h হ oː oo ওঽ োঽ
w w ৱ j i য় aː aa আঽ াঽ
ʔ • or ʼ ʼ

The consonant phoneme /s/ has aspirated and non-aspirated pronunciations [sʰ ~ s]. The aspirated allophone [sʰ], occurs at the beginning of a syllable, while the unaspirated [s] occurs the end of a syllable. Both phonemes are written with the letter ⟨s⟩. Aspirated /s/ also occurs in other Asian languages such as Burmese and Korean.

Glottalization

Glottalization in Atong is a feature that operates on the level of the syllable, and that manifests itself as a glottal stop at the end of the syllable. Glottalization only affects open syllables and syllables ending in a continuant or a vowel. In the following examples, glottalized syllables are indicated by a following bullet. The pronunciation is given between square brackets where the symbol ⟨ʔ⟩ represents the glottal stop and the full stop represents the syllable boundary.

In the examples below, the following abbreviations are used: COS 'change of state', CUST 'customary aspect', INCOM 'incompletive aspect', NEG 'negative',

If the glottalized continuant is followed by a consonant, the glottalized phoneme is not released, i.e. man’ -khu-cha [manʔ.kʰutɕa] (be.able-INCOM-NEG)‘is not yet possible’.

If the glottalized continuant is followed by a vowel, it is released and the release repeats the continuant so that it can be said to act like the onset of the following syllable, e.g. man’ -ok [manʔ.nok] (be.able-COS) ‘was able’.

In a glottalized syllable with final /l/ the glottal stop usually precedes the oral closure of the [l] when followed by another vowel, e.g. mel’ -a [meʔ.la] (be.fat-CUST)‘is fat’. This phenomenon also happens, but less frequently, with syllables ending in /m/, e.g. nom’ -a [noʔ.ma ~ nomʔ.ma] (be.soft-CUST) ‘is soft’.

Vowels

Atong has six vowel qualities occurring in the native vocabulary as well as in loanwords: /i e a ə o u/. In addition, there are four long vowels which are only found in loanwords from English and Indic languages. These are usually pronounced longer than the indigenous vowels: /iː/ [iː ~ i], /eː/ [eː ~ e], /aː/ [aː ~ a] and /oː/ [oː ~ o]. In the orthography, long vowels are represented by double letters. Note that /uː/ and /əː/ are not attested.

Examples of minimal pairs and near minimal pairs are given in the table below.

Minimal and near-minimal pairs of words with and without long vowels
With short vowels English translation With long vowels English translation
tin 'corrugated iron tiin baji 'three o'clock'
pel- 'to copulate' peel dong’ok 'failed'
mat 'wild animal' aat baji 'eight o'clock'
ret 'children's game' reel 'rails, train'
ba’- 'to be born, give birth' baaa 'the sound a cow makes'

The difference between the loan and the indigenous words is a matter of vowel quality. In closed syllables, where Atong vowels would be pronounced lowered and more retracted, the loan vowels will have the same quality as the Atong vowels in open syllables. Not all loan words that have long vowels in the source language have long vowels in Atong, and not all loans that can be pronounced with a long vowel in Atong have a long vowel in the source language.

Syllable structure

The canonical syllable structure of Atong is (C)V(C), where C stands for any consonant and V for any vowel. This structure can be maintained if words like mai 'rice', askui 'star' and chokhoi 'fishing basket' are analysed as containing a vowel and a final glide (see glide (linguistics). The glide, presented by the letter i, is the coda of the syllable rather than an element of the nucleus. In phonemic writing the words would look like this: /maj/, /askuj/, /t͡ɕokʰoj/.

There are two glides in the language: /w/ and /j/. The glide /w/ occurs in both syllable initial and syllable final position, e.g. wak 'pig' and saw 'rotten, fermented' respectively. The glide /j/ occurs only syllable finally, e.g. tyi /təj/ 'water'. Traditional words with the structure CVVC do not exist, e.g. *gaut or *main (where the asterisk [*] indicates the non-existence of these words).

If a diphthong is defined as two vowels that can occur in the nucleus of a syllable, then Atong has no diphthongs. There are words that are written with two adjacent vowel graphemes or letters, e.g. mai 'rice', askui 'star', and chokhoi 'fishing basket'. However, the letter i in these words represents a consonant phoneme, viz. the off glide /j/ (see Table 1). The writing system uses the letter i in this way because the letters j and y are both used to represent other phonemes.

Examples

Atong (Latin/Roman alphabet)[4] English[6] Atong
Nang’ jama / chola bykphyl Your shirt is inside out Na’a angna tangka hyn’chawama? Won't you give me any money?
Ningba ytykyi takwa ga’nima? Will it be good if we do it like this?

Atong has many loanwords from Assamese language, Bengali, Hindi and English. These loanwords can all easily be spelled in Atong orthography using the Latin alphabet (also called the Roman alphabet). Example of loans from English are: redio (from the English word 'radio'), rens (from the English word 'wrench'), skul (from the English word 'school'), miting (from the English word 'meeting'). Other examples of loanwords are chola (from Assamese: চোলা /sʊla/ ‘jacket, tunic, coat’) and jama (from Assamese জামা /jāmā/ ‘coat, shirt, blouse jacket’).

References

  1. ^ Atong at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Jacquesson, François. 2006. La réconstruction du passé: le cas des langues boro-garo. Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris 101(1), 273-303
  3. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2014. A grammar of Atong. Leiden, Boston: Brill. [1]
  4. ^ a b van Breugel, Seino. 2009b. Atong–English dictionary. Tura: Tura Book Room.
  5. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2009c. Atong morot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.
  6. ^ "Transliteration Tool". Ashtanga Yoga. AYI. Retrieved October 2, 2016.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

  1. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2021. A dictionary of Atong: A Tibeto-Burman language of Northeast India and Bangladesh. Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.
  2. ^ Breugel, Seino van. 2020. New perspectives on Atong kinship terms. In: Q. Marak & Sarit K. Chaudhuri (eds.). The cultural heritage of Meghalaya. Oxford, New York: Routledge. 205-250.
  3. ^ Breugel, Seino van. 2019. Atong Texts: Glossed, translated and annotated narratives in a Tibeto-Burman language of Meghalaya, Northeast India. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
  4. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atongmorot balgaba golpho, 2nd edn. Published online: https://www.academia.edu/487044/Atong_English_Dictionary.
  5. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atong-English dictionary, 2nd edn. Published online: https://www.academia.edu/487044/Atong_English_Dictionary.
  6. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2015. Atong spelling guide. Published online: https://independent.academia.edu/
  7. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2010. No common argument, no extraction, no gap: Attributive clauses in Atong and beyond. Studies in Language 34(3), 493-531.
  8. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2009b. Atongmorot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.
  9. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2009b. Atong-English Dictionary, 1st edn. Tura: Tura Book Room.
  10. ^ van Breugel, Seino. 2009a. A grammar of Atong. PhD dissertation. Research Centre for Linguistic Typology. La Trobe University, Melbourne.
  11. ^ van Breugel, Seino 2008. Similarities in verbal and nominal morphology in Atong. In: Stephen Morey and Mark post (eds.). North East Indian linguistics, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India. 169-190.
  12. ^ van Breugel, Seino van. 2006. The factitive category. An informal presentation held for the Sino-Tibetan Special Interest Group at the Linguistics Department of La Trobe University on 4 July.
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