Dr. Rahamat Shaikh
University of Hyderabad, India
This paper is an attempt to study case assignment of Koch, one of the undocumented languages of West Bengal, India. Koch is a Sino-Tibeto-Burman language which is spoken by the people of Koch in Northern part of West Bengal. UNESCO has classified Koch (ISO 639-3) as a severely endangered language. As per the 2011 census of India put the number of speakers at 36434. Koch, an indigenous community of northern part of West Bengal, was a major community (population wise) who particularly resided in the districts of Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Dinajpur, the plain areas of Darjeeling district and the Cooch Behar. The paper is an attempt to document case markers of Koch language in the light of descriptive tradition. The present study will try to show the different case marking in Koch. The study is not intended to provide an exhaustive discussion of all theories about case and its assignment. The study is limited within the framework of descriptive approach. This paper also gives a brief introduction of Koch. Data primarily has been collected by observing people and based on researcher’s own encounters with people in different situations. Data has been collected through interviews with the Koch speakers.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Fourth Annual International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2020, Ahwaz.
