Sora language

"Savara language" redirects here. For other uses, see Savara language (Dravidian).

Sora
Savara
Template:Huge ସଉରା , సఉరా
'Sora' in Sorang Sompeng
Pronunciation	srb(Sora)
Region	India
Ethnicity	Sora
Native speakers	409,549, 61% of ethnic population (2011 census)
Language family	Austroasiatic Munda South Sora-Gorum Sora-Juray Sora
Dialects	Lanjia Imani Kansid Kampu Tenkala Sarda
Writing system	Sora Sompeng (Native) Odia Latin Telugu
Language codes
ISO 639-3	srb
Glottolog	sora1254
Sora is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Sora (srb or seb) is a south Munda language belonging to the Austroasiatic family, spoken by the Sora people, an ethnic group of eastern India, mainly in the states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Sora contains very little formal literature but has an abundance of folk tales and traditions. Most of the knowledge passed down from generation to generation is transmitted orally. Like many languages in eastern India, Sora is listed as 'vulnerable to extinction' by UNESCO. Sora speakers are concentrated in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The language is endangered according to the International Mother Language Institute (IMLI).

Distribution

Speakers are concentrated mainly in Ganjam District, Gajapati District (including the central Gumma Hills region (Gumma Block), and Rayagada District, and are also found in adjacent areas such as Koraput and Phulbani districts; other communities exist in northern Andhra Pradesh (Vizianagaram District, Parvatipuram Manyam District and Srikakulam District).

History

The Sora language has faced a wavelike pattern of usage—that is, the number of people who speak Sora climbed steadily for decades before crashing down. In fact, the number of people who spoke Sora went from 157 thousand in 1901 to 166 thousand in 1911. In 1921, this number marginally rose to 168 thousand and kept climbing. In 1931, speaker numbers jumped to 194 thousand but in 1951, a period of exponential growth occurred, with speaker numbers jumping to 256 thousand. in 1961, numbers topped at 265 thousand speakers before crashing down in 1971 when speaker numbers dropped back down to 221 thousand.

Culture

Play Video

Local File

Indian Idital artist Namad Dalbehera speaking about the Idital painting in Sora language

Sora is spoken by the Sora people, who are a part of the Adivasi, or tribal people, in India, making Sora an Adivasi language. Sora is found in close proximity to Odia and Telugu speaking peoples so that many Sora people are bilingual. Sora had little literature except for a few songs and folk tales which are usually transmitted orally.

Dialects

Ota & Patel (2021) identify several Sora dialects, including Lanjia-Sora, Imani, Kansid, Kampu, Tenkala, Sarda, and Juray-Sora. Zide (1982) characterizes Juray as a divergent variety of Sora, while later studies (e.g. Gomango & Anderson 2017) emphasize both sociolinguistic and structural differences between Juray and Sora. Recent study by Ota & Patel (2021) has brought focus on the geographic distribution and interrelations of Sora dialects, as well as the status of Juray as an separate language.

Phonology

On a similar note, our understanding of Sora phonology is limited at best but there are some generalizations that can be made. Most syllables are of the Consonant, Vowel, Consonant form and morphemes usually contain one to three syllables. There are 18 identifiable consonants and they fall into most of the established origins of sound. Five consonants originate from the palate while only one consonant originates from the glottis. Although vowels may be pronounced differently, there exist only six vowels in Sora. There are no diacritics and aspiration varies depending on the speaker. It is likely that the influence of English, Odia, and Telugu has also affected vowel pronunciation over the course of Sora's use. Pronunciations also change in prevocalic (occurring before a vowel) and non prevocalic environments.

Consonants

Sora consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t		tʃ	k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d		dʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless		s
	voiced		z
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Lateral			l
Rhotic			r	ɽ
Approximant		(w)			j

Vowels

Except schwa, all Sora vowels have long counterparts. They may be stressed or unstressed. According to Ramamurti (1986), vowels can be short, half-long, or long. Vowel length may denote expressive formations for certain stems, eg. sura ('big') and suːra ('really big'), but these require further studies.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Near-close			ʊ
Mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Horo & Sarmah (2015) reported /a, e, i, u, o, ə/ for the Sora Assam dialect's vowel inventory.

Morphophonology

Sora consonants and vowels can undergo a process of sound alternation at prosodic level based on stress-shifts and morphosyntactic conditioned during which the consonants and vowels assimilate to match with the sound of preceding or following stem, or the final nasal with the initial obstruent of the following word. By doing this, some suffixes will merge with its verb phonotactically and a word can have several allomorphs depending on morphological properties of morpheme initials and codas produced during a casual or rapid speech.

Grammar

Overview

Sora is polysynthetic and noun-incorporating. A single Sora word can convey the meaning of a whole sentence. However, while researchers consider Sora sentence-words to be single individual words, native Sora speakers perceive them as phrases and break them into sequences of iambic words with a rising contour.

For example: Template:Interlinear The grammatically correct form in Sora however requires a subject: Template:Interlinear

A full sentence in Sora: Template:Interlinear

Sora uses grammatical devices, including subject and object agreement, word order, and noun compounding to show case. It is seen as a predominantly nominative-accusative language and once again differs from most other languages with its lack of a passive structure. However, just because Sora lacks a passive case does not mean other established forms of grammatical case are also missing. Rather, Sora has some complex grammatical cases (In Nominal morphology).

In addition, Sora, like many other Munda languages, uses relator nouns to link nouns with the other parts of the sentence in order to provide a more specific meaning, called compounding. These monosyllabic nouns that enhance meaning are called Semantic relator nouns and are used widely in Sora. Sora also has a combining form for every noun in addition to the full form of the noun. The combining form allows the noun to be attached to a verb root to create a more semantically complex word, similar to compounding in other languages. Sora contains prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to form its affixation but only uses its suffixes to change the possession of nouns. The combining form is the form seen when the noun is being used with a verb or another full formed noun. The full form is the form seen when the noun is standing alone or functioning not in tandem with other parts of speech. Some templates of Sora combinations between nouns and verbs are as follows:

Verb + Combined Form

Verb + Combined Form + Combined Form

Full Form + Combined Form

Full Form + Combined Form + Combined Form

An example of a Full Form noun shortened into the Combined Form is as follows: mənra, the Full Form of man, transform into the combined form word --mər . The two—indicate that a Noun (Full or Combined) or Verb has to precede the Combined Form noun; that is the Combined Form Noun can not stand on its own. Although by no means conclusive, a few general guidelines about the Combined Form is that it depends on where the combination with the verb or other noun is to take place. If the combined form is to an infix, then its resulting form will be different from if it were to be combined as a prefix. Some examples of Full Form Nouns and their Combined Forms are as follows:

Full Form Combined Form English Translation

ədɘ'ŋ --dɘ'ŋ honeycomb

ərɘ'ŋ --rɘ'ŋ sour

bɘ'nra'j --bɘn flour

ba'ra' --bal gun barrel

kəṛíŋ—diŋ drum

Nominal morphology

Number

Plural in nouns and verbs is marked by enclitic/suffix -ji positions just right behind noun-suffix -ən. Animate nouns generally can attach (not obligatorily) the plural suffix, but inanimate nouns may often not.

The plural suffix is not attached after countable numerals and finite numbers but it may trigger plural-verb agreement. Numerals can form compounds with nouns; in those cases, they are nominalized and become plural marking by themselves.

Pronouns

	singular	plural
1st person	nen	anlen
2nd person	amən	ambeŋ
3rd person	anɪn	anɪnji

Third person pronouns can be used as definite markers in noun phrases. A reflexive pronoun can be formed with the reflexive enclitic =dəm. For example, anɪnji + =dəm → anɪnji=dəm 'themselves'.

Demonstratives

Demonstratives in Sora listed by Starosta (1967).

	Proximal	Distal
'this/that'	kəni/kun	-ənt/kun
'like this/that'	ɛʔne	ɛʔte
'like this way/that way'	ɛʔnegɔj	ɛʔtegɔj
‘this/that little’	dəkiyne	dəkiyte
‘this/that big’	dəkəʔne	dəkəʔte
‘here/there’	teʔne	teʔte
‘around here’	arɛʔne	-
‘at that time’	-	səlɛʔte

Cases

Case marking in Sora is generally murky. There is no role marker to show syntactic alignments between subjects and objects, i.e. nominative-accusative nor ergative-absolutive. A number of grammatical constructions that may or may not be expressed morphologically into an animate primary object argument of the verb, eg. the oblique-dative marker -dɔ[ʔɔ]ŋ- can manifest in standalone morpheme as adɔŋ.

• Absolutive?–Nominal -n
• Dative–Oblique -dɔ[ʔɔ]ŋ-
• Adessive maŋ-
• Possessive a- and -a
• Allative -ban
• Locative–Inessive–Illative -leŋ-ən and -leŋ

Gender & Class

Grammatical gender or class is not deeply encoded in Sora morphosyntax. To signal something masculine/feminine, Sora speakers utilize indigenous compound endings =mar (male, person) and =boj (female) while also use, albeit rarely, gender suffixes borrowed from Indo-Aryan like -a and -i.

Adjectives

Whether adjectives constitute an independent lexical category in Sora is still a understudied subject. Many adjectival elements are found in compounds with the nominal elements that they modify. Eg. sənna-dud-ən "small-frog-NSFX". Other adjectives precede the nominal constituents of the phrase. They also may be used in predicative sentence with the copula (past) or without it (nonpast). It appears that many adjectival lexemes in Sora cannot function as external modifiers in certain constructions, possibly because speakers perceive them as indistinguishable from nouns (e.g. "green" meaning "green one"). As a result, such uses may sound awkward to native speakers and are often rejected as ungrammatical.

Tester: Gregory Anderson. Participant: Oranchu Gomango, 50, native Sora speaker.

Adverbs

Adverbs are uninflected. Some Sora adverbs are: tiki 'after', tikki 'afterwards', mailen 'together', dɔ 'so', əntəpsɛlɛ 'therefore', biɲdɔ 'but', bɔibɔi 'very', annəŋ 'during', nam 'now', aŋaːn aŋaːn 'sometimes', moyed 'previous', moyed moyəd 'recently', etc.

Verbal morphology

Sora verbal morphology makes use of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes per grammatical categories. In typical Munda synthetic structure, the verb phrase in Sora is head-final subject-object-verb SOV. However, Sora has developed an elaborate and productive noun incorporation system which appears to have originated from an earlier offshoot of proto-Munda. Its noun incorporation clearly distinguishes free form and incorporated forms of lexical nouns. In polysynthetic morphosyntax, Sora verb phrases display a strict head-first SVO order like those typically seen in non-Munda Austroasiatic languages. The most intriguing aspect of Sora syntactic noun incorporation is transitive subject incorporation, describes that the language allows transitive verb to incorporate (absorb) its transitive subject/agent with the verb stems remaining transitive and object indexing stays active even after being incorporated.

Verb serialization and clause-chaining can be realized by forming compound of verb1-verb2-nonpast. It also works with pairs of incorporated nouns.

Person indexation

Agreement markers in Sora

Argument	Subject	Object
Template:Gcl	Σ-ay	Σ-iɲ
Template:Gcl		Σ-aj
Template:Gcl	a/aʔ-Σ	Σ-lɛn
Template:Gcl.Template:Gcl	Σ-be/biy
Template:Gcl.Template:Gcl	ə-Σ-aj
Template:Gcl	Σ-Ø/e(y)/am	Σ-əm
Template:Gcl>Template:Gcl		Σ-am
Template:Gcl	ə-Σ-ɛ	Σ-bɛn
Template:Gcl	Σ-e(y)	Σ-e
Template:Gcl	Σ-ji	Σ-ji

Object indexing is not obligatory in Sora. In some cases, the object may be omitted or suppressed.

Possessor of an incorporated direct object is marked by pronominal object markers, therefore Sora incorporation is not entirely a valency-reducing process like in many languages.

Orientation/Directionality

In Sora, there are two types of deixis marking in verb: itive (translocative, away from the argument/speaker) suffixes -a/-ə/-e/-Ø and venitive (cislocative, motion towards the argument/speaker) suffixes -ai/-ay. The cislocative markers sometimes also denote first person subject indexes.

Syntax

In Sora, the basic clausal constituent order is SOV.

Vocabulary

Compared to other Munda languages such as Kharia whose vocabulary is reported as having 40 percent of words borrowed from Indo-Aryan, Sora has very few, if not negligible, number of foreign loan words. Sora also has zero foreign phonemes. (Donegan & Stampe, 2004) Sora borrows words from surrounding languages like Telugu and Oriya. An example of a word borrowed from Oriya is kɘ'ra'ñja' which is a tree name. From Telugu mu'nu', which means black gram, is borrowed. Ramamurti (1931) identified three Sora words that apparently were borrowed from Prakrit during ancient time: siŋger (green ginger, cf. Pali singi vera and Sanskrit sr͎inga veram), kaːrella (bitter melon, cf. Sanskrit kāravella), and keda (fragrant screwpine, cf. Sanskrit keta-ki). Moreover, within the Munda family itself most words appear to be mutually intelligible owing to minor differences in pronunciations and phonology. Kharia and Korku, two other Munda languages, share mutually intelligible words with Sora. For example, the number 11 in Kharia is ghol moŋ, in Korku it is gel ḑo miya, and in Sora it is gelmuy. Each 11 in each language looks and sounds remarkably similar to the other 11's. This phenomenon is not just contained in numbers but rather a great deal of vocabulary is mutually intelligible among the Munda languages. Within the Austroasiatic language family more knowledge about Sora vocabulary can be found. The Mon-Khmer language family which encompasses the languages primarily spoken in Southeast Asia has lexical cognates with the Munda family. That means that some words found in Sora are of direct proto-Austroasiatic origin and share similarities with other derived Austroasiatic language families. Words that relate to the body, family, home, field, as well as pronouns, demonstratives, and numerals are the ones with the most cognates.

Numerals

The Sora numeral system uses a base 12, which only a few other languages in the world do. Ekari, for example, uses a base 60 system. For example, 39 in Sora arithmetic would be thought of as (1 * 20) + 12 + 7. Here are the first 12 numerals in the Sora language :

English: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve

Sora: aboy bago yagi unji monloy tudru gulji t^hamji tinji gelji gelmuy migel

Similar to how English uses the suffix from the numeral ten after twelve (such as thirteen, fourteen, etc.), Sora also uses a suffix assignment to numerals after 12 and before 20. Thirteen in Sora is expressed as migelboy (12+1), fourteen as migelbagu (12+2), etc. Between numerals 20 and 99, Sora adds the suffix kuri to the first constituent of the numeral. For example, 31 is expressed as bokuri gelmuy and 90 as unjikuri gelji.

The Sora number system was featured in a puzzle by Lera Boroditsky, found in the More Resources section associated with her "TED talk".

Writing systems

The Sora language is written using multiple systems. The Sora Sompeng script was developed in 1936 by Mangei Gomango as a native writing system created for the Sora language.

Sora is also written in the Latin script, in the Odia alphabet in Odisha, and in the Telugu script in Andhra Pradesh.

Sample texts

Text 1: Article 1 of UN Human Rights Declaration

The following text is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in Sora:

Sora Sompeng Script

𑃦𑃨𑃙𑃑𑃣𑃙𑃢𑃐𑃢 𑃒𑃢𑃙𑃐𑃤𑃖𑃢𑃙𑃥𑃐𑃣𑃙𑃠𑃤 𑃖𑃢𑃚𑃢𑃖𑃢𑃚𑃢𑃜𑃒𑃣𑃙 𑃘𑃦𑃘𑃘𑃣𑃙𑃙𑃢𑃦 𑃣𑃑𑃑𑃣𑃘𑃢 𑃑𑃣𑃑𑃑𑃣 𑃦𑃨𑃑𑃑𑃢𑃤 𑃕𑃙𑃢𑃦𑃨𑃝𑃟𑃢𑃔𑃨𑃢𑃙𑃑𑃣𑃙𑃢 𑃖𑃢𑃙𑃐𑃤𑃖𑃢𑃙𑃥𑃐𑃣𑃙𑃠𑃤. 𑃦𑃨𑃙𑃑𑃣𑃙𑃠𑃤𑃑𑃣 𑃒𑃥𑃔𑃨𑃔𑃨𑃠𑃤 𑃣𑃑𑃑𑃣𑃘𑃢 𑃒𑃤𑃒𑃣𑃟 𑃦𑃨𑃝𑃤𑃔𑃨𑃢 𑃖𑃣𑃙𑃙𑃣. 𑃦𑃨𑃙𑃑𑃣𑃙𑃢𑃐𑃢 𑃦𑃨𑃙𑃑𑃣𑃙𑃠𑃤 𑃣𑃟𑃥𑃢𑃙 𑃒𑃤𑃒𑃤 𑃣𑃑𑃑𑃣𑃘𑃢 𑃖𑃙𑃑 𑃖𑃙𑃑 𑃖𑃣𑃙𑃙𑃣.

Odia Script

ଅନ୍ତେନ୍ଆସା ବାନ୍ସିମାନୁସେନ୍ଜି ମାୱାମାୱାୟବେନ୍ ଲୋଲ୍ଲେନ୍ନାଓ ଏତ୍ତେଲା ତେତ୍ତେ ଅତ୍ତାଇ ଗନାଅରକାଦାନ୍ତେନ୍ଆ ମାନ୍ସିମାନୁସେନ୍ଜି। ଅନ୍ତେନ୍ଜିତେ ବୁଦ୍ଧି ଏତ୍ତେଲା ବିବେକ ଅରିଦା ମେନ୍ନେ। ଅନ୍ତେନ୍ଆସା ଅନ୍ତେନ୍ଜି ଏକୁଆନ୍ ବଇବଇ ଏତ୍ତେଲା ମନ୍ତ ମନ୍ତ ମେନ୍ନେ।

Romanisation

Antenāsa bānsimānusengi māwāmāwāyaben lollennāo ettelā tett e attāi ganārakādāntenā mānsimānusengi. Antenjit e buddhi ettelā viveka aridā men ne. Antenāsa antenji ekuān baibai ettelā mant mant men ne.

English

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Text 2: Psalm 23, Sora Bible

The following text is from Psalm 23 of the KJV-derived Sora Bible.

Media coverage

Sora was one of the subjects of Ironbound Films' 2008 American documentary film The Linguists, in which two linguists attempted to document several moribund languages.

Further reading

• Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Sora". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
• Ramamurti, R. S. (1931). A Manual of the Sora (Savara) Language. Delhi: Mittal Publication.
• Veṅkaṭarāmamūrti, G. (1986). Sora–English dictionary. Delhi: Mittal Publication.
• Anderson, Gregory D.S (ed). 2008. The Munda languages. Routledge Language Family Series 3.New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32890-X.

Further reading

• Nayak, Abhilas (1995). A morpho syntactic study of the saora language spoken in the Koraput district of Orissa (PhD). Sambalpur University. hdl:10603/187215.

External links

• Austroasiatic Languages: Munda and Mon–Khmer