Kera'a and Igu Documentation

Map of Dibang Valley and Lower Dibang Valley

Kera’a Communities—towns in red and villages in blue

Key information

Language Documentation: Kera'a

Language Name: Kera‘a (also known under the exonyms Idu Mishmi, Idu, Luoba Yidu, Chulikata)

Language Dialects: Midu, Mithu

Language Family: Kera’a-Tawrã, Trans-Himalayan/Tibeto-Burman

ISO 639-3 Code: clk

Glottolog Code: idum1241

Population: 16.000 (Dele, 2018)

Location: Lower Dibang Valley and Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh, India

Vitality rating: EGIDS 6b

Start of Documentation Project: 2016

Head of Project: Prof. Dr. Uta Reinöhl

Project Team: Naomi Peck, and Wifek Bouaziz

Funding: Emmy Noether Gruppe ‘Non-hierarchicality in grammar'

The Project

The main objective of the Kera'a and Igu documentation project is to create open-access corpora of linguistic practices of the Kera'a community with Language Archive Cologne including a range of traditional folktales and practices such as shamanic Igu chants, alongside examples of typical day-to-day language use. This is done with the Kera’a community as a partner involved in the collection, transcription, translation, archiving and dissemination of the materials. In addition, the project is working on linguistic description work, including a sketch grammar of Kera'a (Peck et al. in prep) and of Igu, the shamanic language (Reinöhl et al. in prep).

Kera’a is spoken in Northeast India by approximately 16,000 speakers and as well by a small population in China. It belongs to the Trans-Himalayan language family and has previously in the literature been called Idu Mishmi (Pulu 2002), Idu (Pulu 1978), and Luoba Yidu (Jiang 2005, in reference to the Chinese variety). The otherwise wide-spread term (both in the region and in the linguistic literature), Idu (or Idu Mishmi) is an exonym (see Reinöhl 2022 for details). Traditionally, the autonym Kera’a has been used to refer to their society, tribe, and language. Non-tribals, including official sources such as the Indian Census (2011), have commonly referred to Kera’a as part of the ‘Mishmi’ tribes, together with the Tawrã (Digaru Mishmi) and Kman (Miju Mishmi). Nevertheless, despite claims about their historio-cultural connection, only Kera’a and Tawrã show evidence of belonging to a separate (sub-)branch of Trans-Himalayan, with signs suggesting that they are more closely related to the Tani languages than to Kman (Reinöhl 2022). The Kera’a traditionally live in the Lower Dibang Valley and the Dibang Valley districts of Arunachal Pradesh, the majority of which are part of a disputed area between India and China. Most Kera’a live in one of three towns within the valley (Roing, Hunli, Anini) and in various smaller villages in the area.

Speakers of Kera’a distinguish between two main varieties, the more prestigious Midu variety and the more conservative Mithu variety. Most Mithu speakers also speak Midu and switch between the varieties depending on the context, but some also transition to solely speaking Midu. There is linguistic evidence showing that Kera’a historically has been spoken without any salient intensive language contact with other languages; there are no borrowings from the neighbouring Mishmi languages. With Hindi as the dominant lingua franca, many Kera’a have become bilinguals speaking either Hindi or Assamese (the former lingua franca until about the 1970s)—as well as English and sometimes Nepali.

Adult Kera’a living in urban areas regard their language as having great cultural importance and want their children to speak it—nevertheless, Hindi is becoming more and more common as a household language. More and more Kera’a children grow up with a passive knowledge of their parents' mother tongue, especially after entering the school system where Hindi (and English) dominates. Kera’a has to date not been accurately recognised in the Indian Census and has not been listed as one of the 22 Scheduled Languages in India, whose development the government is responsible to promote (Census 2011).

Previous publications, such as Pulu (1978) and Pulu (2002), have made short lists of words and phrases in Kera’a available. Jiang (2005) has published a linguistic description of Kera’a as spoken in China. Kera’a culture is in general better documented than the language: see for example Elwin (1959), and Blackburn (2005), Chaudhuri (2008), and Dele (2018) on Igu (shamanic) rituals.

Project members have begun to share work describing the language and linguistic practices of the Kera'a in India. Peck (2020) is a basic overview of the situation in which the language is spoken. Elements of the phonetics and the phonology of Kera'a are discussed in Kaland et al. (2021), Reinöhl (2022) and Culhane et al. (2023). Dialectal variation is discussed in Reinöhl (2022) and Culhane et al. (2023). Reinöhl is at the moment looking into the history of Kera’a by documenting dialectal variation and the shamanic language Igu (Reinöhl 2022, Reinöhl et al. in prep., Reinöhl, in prep.).

References

Blackburn, Stuart. 2005. The journey of the soul: notes on funeral rituals and oral texts in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Originally published as: Die Reise der Seele: Bemerkungen zu Bestattungsritualen und oralen Texten in Arunachal Pradesh, Indien. In Jan Assmann, Franz Maciejewski & Axel Michaels (eds.) Der Abschied von den Toten: Trauerrituale im Kulturvergleich. Göttingen: Wallstein. https://www.soas.ac.uk/tribaltransitions/publications/file32490.pdf (accessed 2019-09-04)
Census of India. 2011. Language: India, states and union territories (Table C16). New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General, India.
Chaudhuri, Sarit K. 2008. Plight of the Igus: Notes on shamanism among the Idu Mishmis of Arunachal Pradesh, India. The European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 32, 84-108.
Dele, Razzeko. 2018. Idu Mishmi shamanic funeral ritual Ya: a research publication on shamanic oral chants and rituals related to mortuary behaviour among the Idu Mishmis of Arunachal Pradesh. Delhi: Bookwell.
Elwin, Verrier. 1959. A philosophy for NEFA. Shillong: Gyan Publishing House.
Jiang, Di. 2005. Yidu yu yanjiu [A study of Yidu]. Beijing: The Nationalities Press.
Kaland, Constantijn, Naomi Peck, T. Mark Ellison, Uta Reinöhl. 2021. An initial exploration of the interaction of tone and intonation in Kera'a. Proc. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI), 132-136, doi: 10.21437/TAI.2021-27
Mills, James Philip. 1952. The Mishmis of the Lohit Valley, Assam. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 82(1),1-12.
Peck, Naomi. 2020. Kera'a (Arunachal Pradesh, India) – Language Snapshot. Language Documentation and Description 19, 26-34.
Peck, Naomi, Uta Reinöhl & Wifek Bouaziz. In prep. A pan-dialectal sketch grammar of Kera'a.
Pulu, Jatan. 1978. Idu Phrase-book. Shillong: Directorate of Information and Public Relations, Arunachal Pradesh.
Pulu, Jimi. 2002. A Handbook on Idu Mishmi Language. Itanagar: Government of Arunachal Pradesh Directorate of Research.
Reinöhl, Uta. 2022. Locating Kera’a (Idu Mishmi) in its linguistic neighbourhood. Evidence from dialectology. In Mark Post, Stephen Morey & Toni Huber (eds). Ethno-linguistic prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya, 232–263. Leiden: Brill.
Reinöhl, Uta, Pachu Pulu & Usha Wallner. In prep. A Sketch Grammar of Igu, the Shamanic language of the Kera'a.
Reinöhl, Uta. In prep. Poetic structures and strategies in Igu, the Shamanic language of the Kera'a.

Further publications and conference talks on Kera'a and Igu

Publications (by surname)

Culhane Kirsten, Peck Naomi, Reinöhl Uta. 2024. The mystery of word-initial consonant loss in Kera’a.
Donohue Mark , Peck Naomi. 2024. Bumthang. The Oxford Guide to the Tibeto-Burman Languages.
Kaland, Constantijn, Naomi Peck, T. Mark Ellison, Uta Reinöhl. 2021. An initial exploration of the interaction of tone and intonation in Kera'a. Proc. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI), 132-136, doi: 10.21437/TAI.2021-27
Peck, Naomi. 2020. Kera'a (Arunachal Pradesh, India) – Language Snapshot. Language Documentation and Description 19, 26-34.
Peck Naomi, Hotz Rolf. 2023. Related but divergent: Clausal nominalisation in Kera’a and Tawrã. HLS26.
Reinöhl, Uta. 2022. Locating Kera’a (Idu Mishmi) in its linguistic neighbourhood. Evidence from dialectology. In Mark Post, Stephen Morey & Toni Huber (eds). Ethno-linguistic prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya, 232–263. Leiden: Brill.
Reinöhl, Uta, Kirsten Culhane, Simon Fries, Naomi Peck, Maria Vollmer. In prep. Serial Verbs and ‘Flat’ Nominal Expressions – Pushing the Boundaries of Information Packaging?
Reinöhl, Uta, Pachu Pulu & Usha Wallner. In Prep. A Sketch Grammar of Igu, the Shamanic language of the Kera'a.
Reinöhl, Uta. In prep. Poetic structures and strategies in Igu, the Shamanic language of the Kera'a.

Conference talks (in chronological order)

Naomi Peck & Rolf Hotz. 2023. Related but divergent: Clausal nominalisation in Kera’a and Tawrã. 26th Himalayan Languages Symposium
Uta Reinöhl, Kirsten Culhane, Simon Fries, Naomi Peck, Maria Vollmer. 2023. “One new idea” constraint holds cross-linguistically even in “flat” expressions. 16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference.
Naomi Peck. 2023. Serial verb constructions package information, not events.16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference.
Kirsten Culhane, Naomi Peck, Wifek Bouaziz, Uta Reinöhl. 2023. The loss of word-initial consonants in Kera’a: a challenge for phonological theory. 26th Himalayan Languages Symposium.
Uta Reinöhl, Kirsten Culhane, Naomi Peck, Wifek Bouaziz. 2023. The loss of word-initial consonants in Kera’a: a challenge for phonological theory. 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg.
Uta Reinöhl, Kirsten Culhane, Naomi Peck, Wifek Bouaziz. 2023. The loss of word-initial consonants in Kera’a: a challenge for phonological theory. 12th Conference. North East Indian Linguistics Society.
Reinöhl, Uta. 2022. Schamanismus, Sprache und Heilungsritual im östlichen Himalaya. Vortrag gehalten auf dem Dienstagskolloquium "Seele - Geist - Körper", Universitätsklinikum Freiburg
Reinöhl, Uta, Kirsten Culhane, Simon Fries, Naomi Peck, and Maria Vollmer. 2022. Emmy Noether group paper: One New Idea Constraint and flat multi-word expressions. Talk given at the Emmy Noether Workshop of the “Non-Gram” Group, University Freiburg, 11 April.
Reinöhl, Uta, Kirsten Culhane, Simon Fries, Naomi Peck, and Maria Vollmer. 2021. Serial verbs and 'flat' nominal expressions – Pushing the boundaries of semantic packaging? Oral presentation at CCLS Lecture Series, Universität zu Köln, 05.07.2021.
Reinöhl, Uta, Kirsten Culhane, Simon Fries, Naomi Peck, and Maria Vollmer. 2021. Serial verbs and 'flat' nominal expressions – Pushing the boundaries of semantic packaging? Oral presentation at Vortragsreihe der Freiburger Sprachwissenschaften [Lecture Series of Freiburg Linguistics]: Language and Communication, 10.06.2021. [All authors after the first author ordered alphabetically.]
Peck, Naomi, Kirsten Culhane, and Maria Vollmer. 2021. Comparing cues. A mixed methods study of intonation unit boundaries in three typologically diverse languages. Oral presentation at AG 10a Prosodic boundary phenomena at the 43rd Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society, 23-26 Feb 2021, Freiburg.
Naomi Peck. 2021. Multi-verbal expressions and the "one intonation unit" constraint. 6th Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory.
Naomi Peck. 2021. Piloting a multivariate approach to complex verbal constructions. SEALS XXX.
Peck, Naomi. 2020. The phonetics and phonology of Mindri, a dialect of Kera'a (Idu). Oral presentation at ICSTLL53, University of North Texas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQdzfjKntxc
Naomi Peck. 2020. Observations on Phonological Variation in Kera'a. 11th Conference North East Indian Linguistics Society.
Reinöhl, Uta. 2017. Locating Kera’a (Idu Mishmi) in its linguistic neighbourhood: Evidence from dialectology. International Consortium for Eastern Himalayan Ethnolinguistic Prehistory, La Trobe University, Melbourne (Feb 8-10 2017).