Anju Saxena

The Linguistic Landscape of the Indian Himalayas Anju Saxena

This monograph is a contribution to the documentation of the linguistic situation of the Kinnaur district in Himachal Pradesh (Indian Himalayas) which has been so far almost undescribed. Sino-Tibetan (Kinnauri and Navakat) and Indo-Aryan (Kinnauri Pahari) languages, which are traditionally spoken in this region, are described as independent linguistic entities and as parts of a multifaceted linguistic ecology, part of which also other linguistic varieties spoken in the wider Himalayan region where Kinnaur is situated are considered.

The author endeavors to disentangle genealogical and areal characteristics of the languages of Kinnaur using a combination of traditional linguistic description and a quantitative computational procedure inspired by lexicostatistics, taking also morphosyntax into account.