Indosphere

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Greater India.

Indosphere is a term coined by the linguist

areal linguistics in contrast with Sinosphere
.

Influence

Main article: Sprachbund

The

areal influences from Chinese on the one hand and Indo-Aryan languages on the other.[1] Matisoff proposed two large and overlapping areas combining cultural and linguistic features – the "Sinosphere" and the "Indosphere", influenced by China and India respectively.[2][3][4][5] A buffer zone between them as a third group was proposed by Kristine A. Hildebrandt, followed by B. Bickel and J. Nichols.[6] The Indosphere is dominated by Indic languages.[7]

Historic Indosphere cultural influence zone of Greater India for transmission of religion, music, arts, and cuisine[8]

Some languages and cultures firmly belong to one or the other. For example, the

Kham languages are characterized by hybrid prosodic properties akin to related Indospheric languages towards the west and also Sinospheric languages towards the east.[9] Some languages of the Kiranti group in the Indosphere rank among the morphologically most complex languages of Asia.[10]

Indian cultural, intellectual, and political influence – especially that of

Chams were influenced later and indirectly.[12]

See also: Sanskritisation

Structure

Main article: Morphological typology

Languages in the "Sinosphere" (

polysyllabic structures, extensive case and verb morphology, and detailed markings of interpropositional relationships.[2][3] Manange (like other Tamangic languages) is an interesting case to examine in this regard, as geographically it fits squarely in the "Indospheric" Himalayas, but typologically it shares more features with the "Sinospheric" languages.[2] Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the Sinosphere tend to be more isolating, while those spoken in the Indosphere tend to be more morphologically complex.[13]

Many languages in the western side of the Sino-Tibetan family, which includes the Tibeto-Burman languages, show significant typological resemblances with other languages of South Asia, which puts them in the group of Indosphere. They often have heavier syllables than found in the east, while tone systems, though attested, are not as frequent.[14] Indospheric languages are often toneless and/or highly suffixal.[15] Often there is considerable inflectional morphology, from fully developed case marking systems to extensive pronominal morphology found on the verb. These languages generally mark a number of types of inter-casual relationships and have distinct construction involving verbal auxiliaries.[14] Languages of the Indosphere typically display retroflex stop consonants, postsentential relative clauses and the extended grammaticalization of the verb say.[7] In Indospheric languages, such as the Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India and Nepal, for example, the development of relative pronouns and correlative structures as well as of retroflex initial consonants is often found.[5]

See also: List of writing systems

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-520-09843-9
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-19-920346-6
  3. ^
    JSTOR 415281
  4. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-167B-C
  5. ^ a b RJ LaPolla, The Sino-Tibetan Languages, La Trobe University
  6. ISBN 978-3-11-019592-7
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-3-11-017841-8. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 2017-05-17. Retrieved 2015-11-16.
  8. OCLC 57054139
    .
  9. ISBN 3-11-019592-5
  10. ISBN 0-684-80617-7
  11. ISBN 0-19-925591-1
  12. ISBN 90-272-2985-6
  13. ISBN 0-19-920783-6
  14. ^
    ISBN 3-11-019303-5
  15. ISBN 1-902937-06-6

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Indosphere.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indosphere&oldid=1207719813"