Phonological, lexical and grammatical borrowings and replications in Hyow, a language of the Bangladesh-Burma border area

Abstract

This paper presents a discussion of contact-induced borrowings and replications in Hyow, a Southeastern South Central (SC) Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Hyow shows two layers of contact-induced changes: an earlier layer under the influence of Burmese, and a more recent layer under the influence of Bangla. The Hyow desiderative -sháng closely resembles the suffix shɔn ‘want to’ in the Burmese variety of Rakhine State, suggesting that Hyow speakers previously lived in Rakhine State. In its current location, Hyow speakers are in contact with Bangla, and the presence of Indo-Aryan type relative-correlative clauses in Hyow – not found in any of the SC languages in Burma – reveals the effect of this recent contact with Bangla. Apart from demonstrating the respective antiquity of Hyow contact with Burmese and Bangla, the two examples of the borrowing of the desiderative suffix -sháng and relative-correlative clauses also show borrowing and replication as two distinct types of contact-induced change (Heine and Kuteva, 2005, 2006). This paper gives the first account of phonological, lexical and grammatical borrowings and replications to understand how language contact has shaped Hyow.