Affixes and Word Formation of Poula

Abstract

Poula is spoken in  Senapati district of Manipur and Phek district of Nagaland and also in some other adjoining areas. The land areas extend about 1200sq.km and are observed in four areas viz.Chilivai, Lepaona, Paomata and Razeba Circles. It is the language of the Poumai Naga tribe.

 The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed description of the word  formation of Poula, a Tibeto-Burman subgroup, spoken mainly in Manipur. There are two word formation processes in Poula i.e. (i) affixation and (ii) compounding. The former  process is used sparingly and latter is used extensively and it is more productive. In this language, the pronominal prefixes/ Ó™-/,/ni-/ and  /pu-/are found. The paper discussed  the three   types of compounding based on semantic criteria namely the endocentric compound, exocentric compound and co-ordinate compounds .Formation of words through coining and  loaning are also discussed in this paper. Endocentric compounds consist of right-headed and left-headed compounds. In the right-headed compound constituents as N+N and an  element  can be related with each other by an adjective in the underlying structure. Exocentric compounds are generally made up of a noun or a noun and a verbal root. Both the noun and the      verbal root cannot be regarded as a head or the attribute in this compound. In the case of co-ordinate compound both the element function jointly as heads which are generally of two different nouns joined together through the associative suffix –ye as in phi-ye-ba ‘hand and leg'. Words are also formed through coining as in douki 'school' consisting of dou ‘teach' and ki ‘house' , luki ‘ vehicle' consisting of lu ‘rolling' and ki ‘house' .Loaned words in this language are loaned from English , Hindi and its neighbouring villages of Manipur. Eg. balti ‘bucket',tibili ‘table' etc.