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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Burushaski consists of two dialects spoken respectively in the Hunza and Nagir valleys (the dialect most usually called Burushaski; henceforward Bu.) and the Yasin valley (Wershikwar, henceforward Wk.) in the Northern Areas of Pakistani Kashmir. Although the language is genetically an isolate, it contains a considerable number of loans from the unrelated languages with which it is in contact, chiefly Indo-European (IE) Shina, Khowar and Dumaki, and Tibeto-Burman (TB) Balti. The chief sources for Burushaski have no difficulty in identifying loans from the former, but TB ones have by and large escaped notice or been disregarded. It is only Lorimer who deals with this question at any length, and even he relegates the data to an appendix in his dictionary because, he says (III, pp. vii-viii), of his limited knowledge of Tibetan. Therefore, the bulk of this article will discuss all the identifiable instances of TB loans in Burushaski in one particular area of vocabulary, namely, kin terms, as well as the possibility that the standard TB honorific prefix, a–, often attached to TB kin terms for elder kin, is present at least in Bu., in both loans and native material. Also discussed are a number of more problematic cases, as well as some that can only be understood as instances of common borrowing by both Burushaski and TB from IE. Finally, I list for convenience the undoubted IE loans among Burushaski kin terms, which will demand much less discussion in view of their identification already in Lorimer and Berger. The whole is intended as a preliminary to a further, somewhat longer, article I wish to publish discussing the whole Burushaski kinship terminology from a more semantic and anthropological point of view.
1 ‘Burushaski’ spelt in full refers to both dialects taken together. Unless otherwise stated, the sources used for Burushaski are Lorimer, D. L. R., The Burushaski language, Oslo: Instituttet Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, 3 vols.: I Grammar (1935); II Texts (1935); III, Vocabulary (1938)Google Scholar, for Bu, .; and Berger, H., Das Yasin-Burushaski (Werchikwar), Wiesbaden, 1974, for Wk. Further data on Bu. has been collected recently by Dr. Adam Nayyar, and I am grateful to him and to Professor George Pfeffer for allowing me to use this material. I also wish to thank Dr. N. J. Allen for initially pointing out to me the possible presence of TB loans in the Burushaski material, and for indicating some useful sources.Google Scholar
2 Miller, R.A., ‘Segmental diachronic phonology of a Ladakh(Tibetan) dialect‘, ZDMG, 106, 1956, 345–345.Google Scholar Data for these three languages are taken from Rangan, K., Balti phonetic reader, Mysore, 1985Google Scholar, and idem, , Purki grammar, Mysore, 1979Google Scholar, and Kosthal, S., Ladakhi grammar, Delhi, 1979, 9, 46–46Google Scholar, and idem, , Conversational Ladakhi, Delhi, 1982, 711–711.Google Scholar
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5 Except for Dumaki, sildir, ‘parent of son-or daughter-in-law’ (D.L.R., Lorimer, The Dumaki language, Nijmegen, 1939, 207–207).Google Scholar
6 See on this Lorimer, , The Burushaski language.Google Scholar
7 B., Laufer, ‘The prefix A-in the Indo-Chinese languages’, JRAS, 1915, 757–80.Google Scholar
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9 ibid.
10 Lorimer, I, 122–8.
11 Lorimer, III, 240. This is the spelling in the original, but Lorimer eventually came to see his initial phonological distinction between A and a as a mistake (i, p. xv); elsewhere in this article, therefore, the former has been assimilated to the latter.
12 Prince, Peter, of Greece, and Denmark, , A study of polyandry, The Hague, 1963, 362–362.Google Scholar
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14 cf. some of the glosses in R.L., Turner, A comparative dictionary of the Indo-Aryan languages, London, 1966, 405–405.Google Scholar
15 benedict, 317.
16 Robert, Shafer, Introduction to Sino-Tibetan, Wiesbaden, 1966–74, 159–159.Google Scholar
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19 But only in Gerard, the oldest source; Bailey and Joshi have ate for this specification, which according to Benedict (p. 320) is a separate root connected with te-le ‘grandfather’ (an equivalence that can be justified not merely linguistically, but also by the tendency to equate members of alternating generations mentioned above).
20 Geoffrey, Gorer, Himalayan village: an account of the Lepchas of Sikkim, London, 1938, 464–464.Google Scholar
21 See N.J., Allen, ‘Sherpa kinship terminology in diachronic perspective’, Man, n.s., 11:4, 1976, 574–574.Google Scholar
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25 Bailey, T.G., Linguistic studies from the Himalayas, London, 1915, 84–84.Google Scholar
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27 Turner, 520.
28 See also Turner, ibid.
29 Turner, 153.
30 See also Turner, 405.
31 Both 16 and 17 are ultimately from Ṛigvedic syālá-(Turner, 802).
32 Lorimer, III, 215.
33 ‘Kin classification in the Karakorum’, Man, N.S., 22, 1987.