Slide presentation for SEALS31 Gramaticalization in Nicobarese.
Slide presentation for ICAAL9 Classification of the Nicobarese languages.
Sidwell, Paul. 2020. Nicobarese Comparative Grammar. In Mathias Jenny, Paul Sidwell, Mark Alves (eds.). Austroasiatic Syntax in Areal and Diachronic Perspective. Leiden/Boston: Brill. pp. 82-104.
Anvita Abbi & R. Vysakh (2020) Aspects of word formation processes in Luro
V.R. Rajasingh. (2019) Nicobarese-Hindi-English Dictionary (Pū-Sanënyö-Luröö-Mūöt-Lamôngsĕ-Tökahāṅilāhngö-Hindi-English)
Sidwell, Paul 2018. Proto-Nicobarese phonology and lexicon
This page showcases ongoing work on the history and typology of the Nicobarese languages. The work follows on from my Australian Research Council funded "Austroasiatic Lexicon Project" (funding ended in 2016) and relates directly to research being done in the context of the ICAAL Projects initiative. I would also like to thank the Max-Planck-Institut für Menschheitsgeschichte, Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, and the Zurich Center for Linguistics for support with travel and research that helped to make this project possible.
The goal of the project is to reconstruct proto-Nicobarese (phonology, lexicon, morphosyntax, grammar). My first attempt at historical phonology and lexicon can be downloaded here. My 2020 reconstruction of Nicobarese grammar is listed at the top of this page.
Nicobarese studies are challenging, especially for scholars outside of India and thus reliant on secondary and indirect sources. It is not practicable to do fieldwork in the Nicobars, so we are dependent on historical sources as well as more recent descriptive linguistic linguistics.
Please let me know if you would like to see anything else on this site, have materials to contribute, or wish to be involved. email: <[email protected]>.
Below are links to draft papers, conference presentations, and other resources. More resources will be added soon, including glossed texts, PDFs of legacy publications, and images. Also, see links in the bibliography below.
Car sentence examples extracted from Brain (1970) Nicobarese Grammar (Car Dialect). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Fortuna, Igor. 2012. Brevi osservazioni tipologico-lessicali (ed etnolinguistiche) sul car-nicobarese. Atti del Sodalizio Glottologico Milanese, Vol. VII, n.s. 251-262
Nancowry sentences extracted from Radhakrishnan (1970) and Rajasingh (2016).
Power point presentation "Proto-Nicobarese Phonology, Morphology, Syntax: work in progress" Paul Sidwell, International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics 7, Kiel, Sept 29-Oct 1, 2017.
Workshop Handout for: Perspectives on word order, September 27, 2017, University of Zurich.
Draft grammar sketch of Car Nicobar, Paul Sidwell (at 11 Aug. 2017)
Reconstruction of Proto-Nicobarese phonology and lexicon (published 2018)
Spreadsheet compilation of Nicobarese basic vocabulary for phylogenetic analyses
Zide & Dwarikesh ms., n.d. Preliminary Nicobarese Reconstruction.
Zide & Stampe m.s. (1963) Proto-Munda-Nicobarese.
Colonial Era (1870s – 1920s)
Man, Edward Horace. 1889. A Dictionary of the Central Nicobarese Language.
Man, Edward Horace. 1932. The Nicobar Islands and their People. Guildford, Billing and Sons ltd.
De. Röepstroff, Frederik. 1875. Vocabulary of Dialects Spoken in the Nicobar and Andaman Isles. (2nd edition) Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Press.
De. Röepstroff, Frederik. 1884. Dictionary of the Nancowry Dialect of the Nicobarese Language, in Two Parts: Nicobarese—English, and English—Nicobarese. Ed. by Mrs. De Röepstrofff. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Press.
Temple, R.C. 1902. A Grammar of the Nicobarese Language. Chapter IV, Part II, The Census Report on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Port Blair: Superintendent's Press. (not sighted, any advice on availability much appreciated)
Whitehead, George. 1925. Dictionary of the Car-Nicobarese language. Rangoon, American Baptist Mission Press.
Man, Edward Horace, 1877, trans.: The Lord's prayer, (Calcutta, Thacker, Spink and Co.; [etc., etc.], 1877), by Richard Carnac Temple (page images at HathiTrust)
Man, Edward Horace, 1897: Notes on the Nicobarese ) (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
Man, Edward Horace, 1883: On the aboriginal inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. (London, For the Anthropological institute of Great Britain and Ireland by Trübner & co.), also by Richard Carnac Temple and Alexander John Ellis (page images at HathiTrust)
Man, Edward Horace, 1846-1929: On the Andaman Islands and their inhabitants : (read on May 13, 1884). ([London, 1885]) (page images at HathiTrust)
Modern Linguistic and other works (1960s to present)
Blench, Roger, and Paul Sidwell. 2011. Is Shom Pen a Distinct Branch of Austroasiatic? In Sophana Srichampa, Paul Sidwell & Kenneth Gregerson (eds.) Austroasiatic Studies: papers from the ICAAL4: Mon-Khmer Studies Journal Special Issue No. 3. Dallas, SIL International; Canberra, Pacific Linguistics; Salaya, Mahidol University. pp. 90–101
Braine, Jean Critchfield. 1976. Numeration in Car Nicobarese. Linguistics 174: 21–30.
Braine, Jean Critchfield. 1970. Nicobarese Grammar (Car Dialect). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Braine, Jean Critchfield. 1963. Ms. Car Nicobarese Vocabulary (87 pages typescript).
Chattopadhyay, Subhash Chandra and Asok Kumar Mukhopadhyay. 2003. The language of the Shompen of Great Nicobar: a preliminary appraisal. Kolkata, Anthropological Survey of India.
Das, A.R. 1977. A Study of the Nicobarese Language. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Press.
Elangaiyan, Rathinasabapathy et. al., 1995. Shompen–Hindi Bilingual Primer Śompen Bhāratī 1. Port Blair and Mysore.
Meerwarth, A. M. 1919 (prepublished 1980). The Andamanese Nicobarese and Hill tribes of Assam. Gauhati: Spectrum Publications.
Nandan, Anshu Prash. 1993. The Nicobarese of Great Nicobar. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House.
Radhakrishnan, R. 1970. A preliminary descriptive analysis of Nancowry. PhD. dissertation. Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago.
Radhakrishnan, R. 1981. The Nancowry word: phonology, affixual morphology and roots of a Nicobarese language. Current inquiry into language and linguistics, 37, Edmonton, Alberta, Linguistic Research nc.
Rajasingh V R 2010. “Personal Pronouns in Muöt”. In Nagaraja K S and Kashyap Mankodi (eds.) Austroasiatic Linguistics. Mysore, India: Central Institute of Indian Languages.
Rajasingh V R 2011. “Demonstratives in Muöt”. In Sophana Srichampa, Paul Sidwell and Ken Gregerson (eds.) Austroasiatic Studies: papers from ICAAL4. Mon‒Khmer Studies Journal Special Issue No. 3. Dallas, SIL International; Salaya, Mahidol University; Canberra, Pacific Linguistics. pp. 89‒99.
Rajasingh V R 2013. Negators in Muöt. Mon‒Khmer Studies, Vol.41:46‒59.
Rajasingh V R 2014. Interrogation in Muöt. Mon‒Khmer Studies, Vol.43.1:103‒123.
Rajasingh V R 2016. Mūöt (Nicobarese). Mon‒Khmer Studies 45.14-52
Sidwell, Paul. 2014. Car Nicobarese. In Mathias Jenny & Paul Sidwell (eds.) The handbook of Austroasiatic languages. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 1229-1265.
Kayser M, Brauer S, Weiss G, Schiefenhovel W, Underhill P, Shen P, Oefner P, Tommaseo-Ponzetta M, Stoneking M. 2003. Reduced Y-chromosome, but not mitochondrial DNA, diversity in human populations from West New Guinea. Am J Hum Genet 2003, 72:281-302.
Thangaraj, Kumarasamy, Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Toomas Kivisild, Alla G. Reddy, Vijay Kumar Singh, Avinash A. Rasalkar, Lalji Singh. 2005. Reconstructing the Origin of Andaman Islanders. Science 308(5724):996. DOI:10.1126/science.1109987.
Trivedi, Rajni, T. Sitalaximi, Jheelam Banerjee Anamika Singh, P.K. Sircar, V.K. Kashyap. 2006. Molecular insights into the origins of the Shompen, a declining population of the Nicobar archipelago. Journal of Human Genetics 51:217–226. DOI 10.1007/s10038-005-0349-2