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Gongduk
Gongdukpa Ang དགོང་འདུས་
Native to	Bhutan
Region	Mongar District
Native speakers	2,000 (2006)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Gongduk
Writing system	Tibetan script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	goe
Glottolog	gong1251
ELP	Gongduk
Gongduk

Gongduk or Gongdu (Tibetan: དགོང་འདུས་, Wylie: Dgong-'dus, it is also known as Gongdubikha) is an endangered Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 1,000 people in a few inaccessible villages located near the Kuri Chhu river in the Gongdue Gewog of Mongar District in eastern Bhutan. The names of the villages are Bala, Dagsa, Damkhar, Pam, Pangthang, and Yangbari (Ethnologue).

History

The people are said to have come from hunters that would move from place to place at times.

The language is notable for only being discovered by linguists in 1991. Currently, George van Driem is working towards the completion of a description of Gongduk based on his work with native speakers in the Gongduk area.

Classification

Gongduk has complex verbal morphology, which Ethnologue considers a retention from Proto-Tibeto-Burman, and is lexically highly divergent. On this basis, it is apparently not part of any major subgroup and will probably have to be assigned to its own branch.

George van Driem (2001:870) proposes that the Greater Bumthang (East Bodish) languages, including Bumthang, Khengkha, and Kurtöp, may have a Gongduk substratum. Gongduk itself may also have a non-Tibeto-Burman substrate.

Gerber (2018) notes that Gongduk has had extensive contact with Black Mountain Mönpa before the arrival of East Bodish languages in Bhutan. Gongduk also has many Tshangla loanwords. The following comparative vocabulary table from Gerber (2020) compares Gongduk, Black Mountain Mönpa, and Bjokapakha, which is a divergent Tshangla variety.

Phonology

• Consonants in parentheses are only found in loanwords.
• The velar stops /kʰ k g/ are in free variation with their uvular counterparts .
• The stops /p t k/ are glottalised and unreleased at the end of syllables.
• /ŋ/ can often be heard as a glottal stop in fast speech or following another nasal.
• /n/ and /ŋ/ are palatalized to before /i/ or /j/.

• /y/ and /ø/ most often appear after palatal consonants and in loanwords.
• /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ may be in free variation with /e o/.
• /ə/ can often be heard as .
• /ɤ/ varies broadly between .

Grammar

Morphology

Gongduk has productive suffixal morphology (van Driem 2014).

<-məˀtⁿ> ‘plural suffix in human nouns’

Examples:

• oloˀŋməˀtⁿ ‘children’ < oloˀk ‘child’ + -məˀtⁿ
• ŋidɤməˀtⁿ ‘people’ < ŋidɤ ‘person’ + -məˀtⁿ
• aroˀŋməˀtⁿ ‘friends’ < aroˀk ‘friend’ + -məˀtⁿ

However, non-human plural nouns do not take on any suffixes, and remain the same:

• kurtə ‘horse, horses’
• kəitɤ ‘bird, birds’
• kiŋ ‘house, houses’

<-e ~ -ðe ~ -θe> ‘ergative and possessive suffix’

Examples:

• bɤʔlɤpə-e ‘the people of Bɤʔlɤ ’
• choŋnən-ðe me ‘the seed of the maize’
• nor-θe taɦ ‘meat of the cow ’
• rek-θe rukɤŋ ‘head bone ’
• aroʔk-te-θe ‘the friend ’
• əp drəkpə-e ‘Ap Drakpa ’
• θok-θe əkəm ‘egg of offering (sacrificial egg)’
• lei-ti-ðe juʔmə ‘after one month’

<-gi> ‘ablative suffix’

Examples:

• ðiŋ goŋduʔ-gi əna ‘We are from Gongduk’
• nikkələŋ-gi ‘by way of the stairs’
• dəkθə-gi ‘from Daksa’
• kidu-gi ‘as a kidu ’
• bɤʔlɤ-gi ‘from Bɤʔlɤ’
• deŋkəle wɤŋ-gi ‘from Dengkalé Dale’
• doʔmoŋ-gi ‘from "Black Roof" village’
• phəjoŋ pəm-gi ‘from Phajong Pam’

<-gu ~ -go ~ -ku ~-ko> ‘dative / locative suffix’

Examples:

• gərəŋ-go ‘to whom’
• ohaŋ duʔ-gu ‘in that village’
• rek-ko ‘to head’
• ðə-go ‘to me’
• jə-go ‘to India’
• gaoŋ-go ‘whereto, where precisely’
• pəkpək-ko ‘at times, sometimes’
• thimphu-gu ‘to Thimphu’

Demonstratives

Gongduk demonstratives precede head nouns.

ohaŋ ‘that (demonstrative)’

Examples:

• ohaŋ ŋidɤ ‘that person’
• ohaŋ koŋ ‘that tree’
• ohaŋ duʔgu ‘in that village’

Personal pronouns

van Driem (2014) compares the Gongduk first person singular personal pronoun ðə 'I, me' to Kathmandu Newar dʑiː ~ dʑĩ- 'I, me' and Tshangla dʑaŋ ~ dʑi- ~ dʑiŋ- 'I, me'. He also compares the Gongduk first person plural personal pronoun ðiŋ 'we, us' to Kathmandu Newar dʑʰai ~ dʑʰĩ- 'we, us'.

Vocabulary

The Gongduk words and phrases below are from van Driem (2014).

Basic vocabulary

• rek ‘head’
• rukɤŋ ‘bone’
• əŋ ‘language, mouth’
• dɤŋli ‘water’
• wɤ ‘rain’
• yər ‘cliff’
• dɤ ‘salt’
• ɤn ‘tooth’
• koŋ ‘tree’
• diŋ ‘wood’
• me ‘seed’
• dola ‘cooked Setaria or rice’
• choŋnən ‘maize’
• ɤwɤ ‘banana’
• taɦ ‘meat’
• wərə ‘highland paddy, ghaiyā’
• khərəŋ ‘cooked Panicum or maize’
• don ‘pig’
• nor ‘cow’
• kurtə ‘horse’
• kəitɤ ‘bird’
• əkəm ‘egg’
• jə ‘day (24-hour period)’
• lei ‘month’
• oloʔk ‘child’
• ŋidɤ ‘person’
• aroʔk ‘friend’
• duʔ ‘village’
• kiŋ ‘house’
• nikkələŋ ‘stairs’
• θok ‘offering’
• goŋduʔ ‘Gongduk’

Numerals

• ti ‘1’
• niktsə ‘2’
• towə ‘3’
• diyə, piyə ‘4’
• ŋəwə ‘5’
• qukpə ‘6’
• ðukpə ‘7’
• yitpə, hetpə ‘8’
• ɢuwə ‘9’
• deyə ‘10’
• deθəti ‘11’
• deθəniktsə ‘12’
• deθətowə ‘13’
• khəe ‘score (20)’
• khəe ŋəwə ‘five score, i.e. one hundred’

Interrogative pronouns

• gərəŋ ‘who’
• gərəe ‘whose’
• θəpo ‘what’
• ko ‘when’
• gaoŋ ‘where, whither’
• qəti ‘how much, how many’
• gainəŋ ‘which, whence’
• qətigu ‘at what time’
• θəu, θəudi ‘why, how come’
• gora, gorapəm ‘how, in which way’
• ohaŋ ‘that (demonstrative)’

References

1. ^ Gongduk at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. "Gongduk". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2017-02-08.
3. "Languages and Ethnic Groups of Bhutan". www.languagesgulper.com. Retrieved 2017-02-08.
4. "Why do languages die?", by Christopher Moseley, in The 5-Minute Linguist, ISBN 978-1-908049-49-0
5. ^ Himalayan Languages Project. "Gongduk". Himalayan Languages Project. Archived from the original on 2012-03-03. Retrieved 2009-11-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
6. ^ Blench, R. & Post, M. W. (2013). Rethinking Sino-Tibetan phylogeny from the perspective of Northeast Indian languages
7. van Driem, George. 2001. Languages of the Himalayas. Leiden: Brill
8. Gerber, Pascal. 2018. Areal features in Gongduk, Bjokapakha and Black Mountain Mönpa phonology Archived 2019-03-24 at the Wayback Machine. Unpublished draft.
9. ^ Gerber, Pascal (2020). "Areal features in Gongduk, Bjokapakha and Black Mountain Mönpa phonology". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 43 (1): 55–86. doi:10.1075/ltba.18015.ger. ISSN 0731-3500. S2CID 225218734.
10. ^ van Driem, George. 2014. Gongduk Nominal Morphology and the phylogenetic position of Gongduk. Paper presented at the 20th Himalayan Languages Symposium, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 16 July 2014.

Bibliography

• Dzongkha Development Authority; Dasho Sangay Dorji; Col. Wangdi Tshering; Namgay Thinley; Gyembo Dorji; Phuntsho Wangdi; Lekyi Tshering; Sangay Phuntsho (2005). དགོང་འདུས་རྫོང་ཁ་ཨིན་སྐད་ཤན་སྦྱར་ཚིག་མཛོད། (Gongduk-Dzongkha-English Dictionary). Thimphu: Dzongkha Development Authority. p. 115. ISBN 99936-663-1-9.
• Gerber, Pascal. 2019. Gongduk agreement morphology in functional and diachronic perspective. Paper presented at the ISBS Inaugural Conference, Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
• van Driem, George L; et al. (Karma Tshering of Gaselô) (1998). Dzongkha. Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region. Leiden: Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies. pp. 32–33. ISBN 90-5789-002-X.
• van Driem, George L (2007). "Endangered languages of Bhutan and Sikkim". In Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.). Language diversity endangered. Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 314–15. ISBN 978-3-11-017050-4.
• van Driem, George. 2014. Gongduk Nominal Morphology and the phylogenetic position of Gongduk. Paper presented at the 20th Himalayan Languages Symposium, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 16 July 2014.

External links

• ELAR archive of Documentation of the flora and fauna of Gongduk

v t e Sino-Tibetan branches
Western Himalayas (Himachal, Uttarakhand, Nepal, Sikkim)	West Himalayish Tamangic Newaric Newar Baram–Thangmi Kiranti Dhimalish Dhimal Toto Lhokpu Lepcha Greater Magaric Magaric Magar Kham Chepangic Chepang Bhujel Raji–Raute Dura–Tandrange
Eastern Himalayas (Tibet, Bhutan, Arunachal)	Bodish Tibetic East Bodish Tshangla Basum Nam? Gongduk ʼOle Tani Chamdo
Myanmar and Indo- Burmese border	Karbi Kuki-Chin Mruic Mru Hkongso Pyu Taman "Naga" Ao Angami–Pochuri Meitei Tangkhulic Zeme Sal Boro–Garo Konyak Jingpho–Luish
East and Southeast Asia	Sinitic Bai Tujia Nungish Karenic Gong Kathu Cai–Long Caijia Longjia Luren Burmo-Qiangic Qiangic Gyalrongic Ersuic Naic Lolo-Burmese Mondzish Burmish Loloish
Dubious (possible isolates) (Arunachal)	Hrusish Hruso Mijiic Kho-Bwa Puroik Miju–Meyor Songlin Greater Siangic Siangic Koro Milang Idu–Taraon
Proposed groupings	Central Tibeto-Burman Kuki-Chin–Naga Macro-Bai Mahakiranti Rung Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri
Proto-languages	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Proto-Tibeto-Burman Proto-Loloish Proto-Karenic Proto-Min Proto-Hakka
Italics indicates single languages that are also considered to be separate branches.

• Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages
• Unclassified Sino-Tibetan languages
• Languages of Bhutan
• Bodic languages
• Languages written in Tibetan script