Some preliminary observations about Baṅgāṇī pronominal and nominal declension

Abstract

Baṅgāṇī, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the so-called Baṅgāṇ area, a land enclosed by the Pabar and the Tons rivers (Uttarkāśī district, Uttarākhaṇḍ state), shows in its grammar and lexicon some peculiar features still rather controversial. The debate is still in course, due to the lack of enough documentation available, as the majority of scholars complains about. Moreover Baṅgāṇī, among the Western Pahāṛī languages of New Indo-Ayan, is now esteemed as a critically endangered language by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. The paper presents the preliminary results of a fieldwork research with Baṅgāṇī mother-tongue speakers and the unique elicited text available. In particular a description of Baṅgāṇī pronominal and nominal declension, focusing on the case marking and agreement system of the Subject-like and Object-like arguments of intransitive and transitive clauses (in perfective and non-perfective tenses), is offered. The comparison between the data that I collected enabled me to offer a good amount of Baṅgāṇī sentences exemplifying the function of the different forms, and thus to understand their use in depth, that is to shed light on the peculiarities of Baṅgāṇī case marking system.