Documentation of Rengmitca (Tibeto-Burman)

伦米特语是一种高度濒危的藏缅语言，目前孟加拉国东南部马塔穆胡里河支流沿线只有不到50人说这种语言。对这门语言的研究是至关重要的，因为它的核心词汇显示了藏缅语的一些保守特征：Rengmitca不仅保留了藏缅语母语词尾的辅音，而且还保留了大多数现代语言已经失去的前缀元素。因此，Rengmitca可以作为一个独立的来源来验证关于母语的假设。通过接触语言与第二语言MRU的关系，所有说伦米特卡语的人都将其作为主要语言，这也是特别有理论意义的。这个项目将在该语言消失之前收集尽可能多的数据。项目成员将从其他发言者那里收集代表不同体裁的文本语料库。使用收集的文本材料和其他调查方法，将汇编基本的仁密特项目词典。该项目将试图为该语言提供详细的音系学和草图语法。该项目将在达特茅斯学院和太平洋濒危文化数字资源区域档案馆归档该语言的文件材料。

Rengmitca is a highly endangered Tibeto-Burman language currently spoken by fewer than fifty individuals along a tributary of the Matamuhuri river in Southeastern Bangladesh. Study of the language is crucial because its core vocabulary exhibits a number of conservative features for a Tibeto-Burman language: Rengmitca retains not only consonants that the Tibeto-Burman parent language had at the ends of its words, but also prefixal elements which most modern languages have lost. Rengmitca may thus act as an independent source for verifying hypotheses about the parent language. The relationship through contact of the language to a second language, Mru, which all Rengmitca speakers have as their primary language, is also of particular theoretical interest. This project will collect as much data as possible for the language before it disappears. Project members will gather a corpus of texts representing different genres from the remaining speakers. Using collected text material and other investigative methods, a lexicon of essential Rengmitca items will be assembled. The project will attempt to provide a detailed phonology and sketch grammar for the language. The project will archive documentary materials for the language at Dartmouth College and with The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures.