A Grammar of Manipuri

Title: A Grammar of Manipuri (also: Manipuri Grammar, Kn — a Kannada version exists) Author: D. N. S. Bhat & M. S. Ningomba Language: English (and a Kannada version) Publisher: Lincom Europa / Deccan College Website: dnshankarabhat.net/manipuri-grammar (archived 2018) Kannada version: dnshankarabhat.net/manipuri-grammar-kn (archived 2015) Status: Not yet collected

Description

D. N. S. Bhat co-authored a full descriptive grammar of Manipuri (also called Meitei), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Manipur, Northeast India. This reflects Bhat’s extensive fieldwork period at Manipur University.

The existence of a Kannada version (manipuri-grammar-kn) is notable — it suggests Bhat wrote a Kannada-language description of Manipuri grammar, perhaps for Indian linguists who read Kannada.

Significance

  • Part of Bhat’s broader typological project: documenting grammatically diverse languages to understand universal vs. language-specific patterns
  • Manipuri is structurally very different from Dravidian languages — Tibeto-Burman, with SOV word order, complex verb morphology, classifier system
  • Referenced in Sound Change (→ 22) for Tibeto-Burman sound change examples

Collection Status

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