LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:4 April 2025
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Negation Marking in Khelma

K. Amrita Singha, Ph.D.

Abstract

The present paper “Negation marking in Khelma” discusses about the language spoken by Khelma people mainly settled in South Assam, particularly Hailakandi and Karimganj ditricts of Assam. Khelma also known as Sakachep is one of the old Kuki tribes of Northeastern India. According to native speakers, there are approx. 8000 Khelma speakers. There is no authentic report about the population of Khelma as the cencus report shows no data regarding the total population of the community. According to the policy of government of India, the number of speakers for those whose mother tongues are spoken by lesser than 10,000 persons is not published.

The present paper attempts to describe the various negation marking system in Khelma such as declarative, existential, possessive, locative, negative indefinite, negative strengthening, negative future tense, imperative negation, hortative negation, negation in interrogative clause, negative conditional and negative probability. The negative construction mentioned above will be further discussed in detailed in this paper.

Keywords: Khelma, Kuki-Chin, Tibeto-Burman, Negation.

I. Introduction

Khelma or Sakachep is among one of the old tribes of Kuki in Northeast India. They are originally known as Sakachep in other parts of Northeast India i.e., Barak Valley, Karbi Anglong of Assam, also in the neighbouring states like Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, etc. The language is popularly known as "Khelma" only in Dima-Hasao district of Assam, as it is to be believed that they were named by a Dimasa king. Khelma/Sakachep is the name of the language and the people. The current paper is mainly based on the Khelma speaking people residing in Barak Valley, particularly Hailakandi and Karimganj districts of Assam. It is also one of the unexplored and under documented language like many other tribal languages of Northeast India. The reason why Khelma or other Kuki-Chin languages is not included in UNESCO’s list of endangered languages is that, these languages are hardly known to the outside world. Khelma people lack their own written literature and script, and are yet to be presented for academic exploration in the codified form. They use Roman script to write their language with notable changes.

Phonologically, one of the typical features of Kuki-Chin languages i.e., the presence of initial velar nasal ? is present in the language. It has strong agreement system. Gender distinction is not grammatically marked in the language. Khelma has decimal type numeral system and it has dominant SOV word order. In Khelma, an inclusive-exclusive distinction is found in the preverbal system. The present paper attempts to explore the linguistic structure showing the negation marking system of Khelma of Barak Valley

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

K. Amrita Singha, Ph.D.
Assam University Silchar, 788011
kamritasingha02@gmail.com
kamritasingha@rediffmail.com
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