Language name and location: Koyee, Kosi province, Nepal [Refer to Ethnologue]

言名称和分布地区耶语 (Koyi, 科伊语), 尼泊尔东部戈斯省  

 

1. uk

21.  sɔkuk

2. sɔk

22. 

3. rek

23. 

4. tum

24.   

5. ŋa

25.   

6. mu

26.    

7. suk

27.   

8. um

28.  

9. nu

29.  

10. uksɔ

30.  reksɔ, 31. rekuk

11. ukuk

40. 

12. uksɔk

50. 

13. ukrek 

60. 

14.

70.  

15. 

80. 

16.  

90. 

17. 

100. tiksɔ / uksɔsɔ

18.  

200.

19. 

1000.

20. sɔksɔ / sɔpusɔ

2000.

 

Linguist providing data and dateː Dr. Aimée Lahaussois Bartosik, LACITO-CRNS, Paris, France, September 1, 2007 (data from 2004).

供资料的语言学家: Dr. Aimée Lahaussois Bartosik, 2007 年 9 月 1 日.

 

Other comments: Koyi or Koi is most similar to Dumi and Khaling, like most Kiranti languages, Koyi is toneless Tibeto-Burman language. An anthropologist called Nicholas Allen did work on Thulung in the early 70's, and he too recorded an almost complete loss of the numeral system. As for tones, Allen had found traces of tone in Thulung (it took him years to notice it, and it wasn't consistently applied by all speakers--also, he found that the great majority of the words in the language did not have tone), but I found that any tones there may have been were lost by the time I got there. Tone loss through contact is a documented pattern, and as Nepali has no tone, I think that younger speakers must have decided over time that any differences they heard in the few words older speakers made tone distinctions for were irrelevant... Anyway, I feel confident in saying no tone in current-day Thulung. As for Koyi, there are no earlier records, so who knows, but I didn't see evidence of tone when I was there. I’ve only given you the numerals I elicited, but the patterns seem pretty clear and productive: numerals above 10 simply list the different components making them up, and sɔ appears to be 0. 100 had two variants, as listed (both elicited).  20 also has variants: one, sɔksɔ, I elicited, whereas the other, sɔpusɔ, came up in a story when someone was telling me his age (sɔpu is in fact 2-classifier: oko=1-CL, sɔpu=2-CL, rekwɔ=3-CL, and beyond that the generic classifier is -wɔ; something funny going on with the 20 variant, which begs the question of what that supposedly 0 -sɔ actually is—perhaps some kind of nominal meaning “10 unit”, which would explain the use of the classifier form?)

   Interesting if you consider the difference between Thulung and Koyi—both communities of about the same sizes, yet Koyi has a productive (and used) numeral system, whereas Thulung has borrowed almost the entire system from Nepali.

Initial consonants:

k        kʰ       g       gʰ      ŋ

ʦ       ʦʰ      ʣ      ʣʰ

t        tʰ       d        dʰ      n

p        pʰ      b        bʰ      m

 

s        h        r        l        

Vowelsː

i e a ɔ o u


 

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