A Linguistic Survey of Bawm

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K13442
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Otsuka Kosei 大阪大学, 大学院人文学研究科(外国学専攻、日本学専攻), 准教授 (90612937)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 記述言語学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Bawm is a minority Chin language belonging to the Central Chin group of the Chin branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages and is spoken in northeastern India as well as western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh.
During the period of this project, the researcher was based in Mizoram, India, and Myanmar, and conducted descriptive linguistic research on several Chin languages, including Bawm, in the field. He is currently working on phonological, lexical and grammatical descriptions based on data collected in the field.
He is also conducting a survey of other Chin languages, such as Tiddim Chin and Asho Chin, which share the same linguistic stock as Bawm. In addition to studying grammatical phenomena such as directional affixes from a contrastive perspective with Bawm, he has presented his findings on noun modification structures and language contact in workshops and papers.

Free Research Field

言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

様々な情報が行き交う現代においてもインドとミャンマーの国境地帯の言語と文化に関する学術的資料や現地の調査報告は少ない状況にある。特に、この地域では50を超える数のチン系の言語が話されているが、その多くの音韻、語彙、文法の詳細が未だ明らかにされていない。本研究を通じ、チン系言語と近隣のチベット・ビルマ語派の諸言語との関係を明らかにしてこの地域の言語学的理解を深め、多言語多文化社会であるインドとミャンマーの現状を具体的に描き出すべく、現地でのフィールドワークを主とした調査と研究を進めている。