| 1. |
ayi |
bue |
‘I have’ |
| 2. |
niyi |
bue |
‘You Have’ |
| 3. |
lenayi |
bue |
‘He has’ |
| 4. |
ayi kolom kali |
bue |
‘I have a pen’ |
| 5.
|
ni larü kali
|
bue |
‘You have a book’ |
|
Sentences 1, 2 and 3 mean respectively
|
| ‘there is mine or mine is there’ |
| ‘there is yours or yours is there’ |
| ‘there is his or his is there’ |
|
ayi, niyi and lenayi [the Punanamai equivalents
being azhü, nizhü and lonazhü] meaning
‘mine’, ‘yours’ and ‘his’. Sentences 4 and 5 are not an
grammatical par as their translations seem to suggest. In
4, ayi [the equivalent of Punanamai azhü
‘mine’] is not the subject, but a possessive determiner
in the subject NP ayi kolom kali "mine one
pen" whereas in 5, ni ‘you’ is the subject
so that the Author’s English translation of sent 5 is correct.
Sentence 4 translates into English as ‘my [lit.name] one
pen is there’. Further, the possessive determiner could
function as a nominal and therefore as a subject :
|
|
4a |
ayi1
kolom-ko-e2 |
‘mine1
[is] [a] pen2 |
[not a pencil]’ |
|
5a |
ni larü
kali-(ko)-e |
‘you [are] a book’ |
|
|
|
8]
|
lena1 taeh2
means ‘he went’ rather than ‘he1 has gone2
[lesson 20, p.16]. ‘he has gone’ is formalized in Mao as
lena / lona1 ta- i-e2. |
1.2.2.
|
Mao is not one of the five recognized state
languages of Manipur. It is nowhere taught as a subject, nowhere does it
function as a medium. By the time this finds the light of day, Mao may have
been introduced to be taught in the schools of the Mao area as a subject.
Mao literature Academy has published primers 1 and 2 in 1978-79 based on the
training imparted by and primers written under the guidance of the Central
Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore in Churachandpur, Manipur.
|
| The internal variation
in the language spoken natively by the Maos is wid-ranging,
mind-blogging. The language varies significantly from village
to village. Even within a village, one could find variation,
within limits set by intelligibility, of course. Take, for
instance, the word for ‘name’. The inhabitants of Upper
Punanamai (capremüi) say ozhü while those inhabiting
Lower Punanamai [likhromüi] and the nether part
[keshafümüi] of Munanamai say ozhü ‘name’.
It is easy to multiply examples. No variety of Mao is globally
accepted by Maos as the standard, although the variety spoken
in Punanmai has the advantage of being the variety into
which the bible was translated. Mr. Lohrü, putatively the
first man to reduce Mao to writing by translating the bible
belonged to Punanamai Village. Villagism has kept the variety
the bible was translated into or, for that matter, any regional
variety of Mao from crystallizing into a generally accepted
standard variety. |
1.3
|
This grammar is based predominantly, if not
exclusively, on the variety spoken in the villages of Punanmai, Pudunamai,
Choynu and Kaibi. It is hoped that this grammar will serve as a codifying
agent.
|
The grammar is basically,
a taxonomic, morphology-oriented rather than a transformational,
syntax-oriented one, although at places, it delves deeper
than a rigidly taxonomic framework would allow. It is therefore
of uneven analytical depth and explanatory power. Part of
the reason for this unevenness is also that it is a global
treatment of the language rather than an in-depth analysis
of an area of grammar. If the grammar is reasonably thorough-going
within the limits set by the framework, it would have amply
served its purpose.
|
| The
grammar is divided into three major parts :
a. The Phoneme, its phonetic realization and its graphic
representation,
b. The word, its internal structure and external function
and
c. the phrase and sentence; into phonology, morphology
and syntax respectively.
Phonology is divided into speech sounds [the phonetic
realization], the phonemes and the writing system [the
graphic representation]. Morphology is divided into the
Noun and the Verb; the Noun is defined to begin with,
and then dealt with under such heads as Morphological
Composition, Contraction, Gender, Number, Pronoun, Case,
Numeral and the Adjective. The verb is defined to begin
with and then dealt with under such heads as Agreement,
valency-Role Markers, Tense, Aspect, Mood, the Interrogative,
the Participle, the Deverbal Noun etc. This is followed
by a section of the Particle and the chapter on Word-Formation
wherein derivation and compounding are discussed in detail.
Root-creation, the third mode of word-formation in language
is not touched on. The chapter on syntax, the weakest
leg of the phonology-morphology-syntax tripod, deals with
the surface constituents and structure of sentences under
such heads as General Remarks, the Subject Phrase, the
Predicate Phrase, the Clause, the Sentence, Sentence Marker,
the Simple Sentence, the Compound Sentence and
|
|
|
