Kulung Language - Language and Grammar

Language and Grammar

Dialects of the Kulung language include Sotang (Sotaring, Sottaring), Mahakulung, Tamachhang, Pidisoi, Chhapkoa, Pelmung, Namlung and Khamb. Van Driem (2001) includes Chukwa, though the Chukwa identify with Saam.

Kulung distinguishes between eight vowels and 11 diphthongs. There are three series of stops: dorso-velar, dental and labial, each serie having an unaspirated voiceless, aspirated voiceless and an unaspirated voiced variant. There are three voiced nasals, four approximants, one vibrant, one fricative and three affricates.

In Kulung, a distinction can be made between the categories nouns, adjectives and personal pronouns. The 13 cases found in Kulung are absolutive, ergative, instrumental, genitive, vocative, and four different locatives (depending on deictic categories like 'up', 'down', etc.), comitative, ablative, elative and mediative. Personal pronouns are distinguished for three persons, three numbers, and in the non-singular first person between inclusive and exclusive. Possessive pronouns appear as prefixes that may appear before the noun. Adjectives form a separate category in Kulung and are formed by the addition of an affix to a verb stem.

The Kulung verb is characterised by a system of complex pronominalisation, in which paradigmatic stem alternation is found. Personal endings consist of morphemes expressing notion like tense, agent, patient, number and exclusivity. Depending on the number of verbal stems and their position in the verbal paradigm, every verb in Kulung belongs to a certain conjugation type. Complete conjugations of verbs belonging to the different conjugation types are presented in the second appendix. Like in other Kiranti languages, compound verbs are found in Kulung. These compound verbs consist of a verb stem and an auxiliary that adds semantic notions to the main verb. Other verbal constructions found in Kulung are a gerund, imperative, supine and an infinitive.