Manipuri Grammar

D.N.S Bhat & M.S. Ningomba Central Institute of Indian Languages

Manipuri (called Meiteilon in the language itself) is a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the Kuki-Chin subgroup. The language is spoken primarily in the valley region of the State of Manipur, Índia (ca. 700,000 speakers, ca. 300,000 speakers in Burma, ca. 100,000 speakers in Assam, ca. 50,000 in Bangladesh and 30,000 in Tripura). The grammar of Manipuri shows a number of interesting typological characteristics: There are only two major lexical categories, namely nouns and verbs, with adjectives and adverbs merging rather unrecognizably with verbs. Inflectional markers also split into two distinct categories, namely nominal and verbal inflections with exclusive membership. The volume contains 14 chapters: Introduction, Phonology, Word-formation, Sentence structure, Nominal category, Use of case suffixes, Verbal category, Directional and deictic verb distinctions, Valency patterns, Tense, aspect and mood, Modyfying constructions, Complementation, Illocutionary distinctions.

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