PRONOUNS IN SUNWAR

Sunwar (ISO 639-3 suz) belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language of Tibeto-Burman language family of Kiranti branch of Himalayan group. The present paper will concentrate on pronouns in Sunwar. Sunwars are the smallest and lesser known ethnic community of Sikkim. The pronouns are one of the basic features of a language. Pronouns are frequently used in conversations but it is less explored than any other linguistic feature of a language. Sunwar possesses a great wealth of varieties of pronouns which includes personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, relative pronouns, reflexive pronouns, indefinite pronouns. The data has been collected from the state of Sikkim mainly from the east, west and south region and cross checked by the native speakers of the language from different age groups (40 to 70). Apart from the primary data some secondary sources are also used to gather information. The speakers of the Sunwar language have switched to speaking Nepali, which is the official language of Sikkim State, putting the language at the risk of extinction. This paper is a small effort to document the language for the recent and future generation of the language speakers and researchers.