Sound Change in Deori: A Descriptive Account

Abstract

This paper deals with the sound changes that have undergone in Deori language from the time of publication of Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, i.e., 1903 to the present time. (That is till the time of collecting data: January 2008 - January 2009.) During this span of hundred and five years, a considerable amount of phonetic and morphological changes have taken place. Deori has shown ample evidences of sound changes in the patterns of complete lexical shift, epenthesis, devoicing, de-aspiration, vowel shift, nasalization, elision, deletion, morpheme addition, degemination, borrowing, and so on. Most remarkably the loan and borrowing words are fast replacing the basic vocabularies of this language.