Aspects of word formation processes in Luro

Abstract

Abstract Luro, an Austroasiatic language of the Mon-Khmer group is spoken in the Teressa island of the Andaman and Nicobar group of islands in the Bay of Bengal, India. Luro is a critically endangered language spoken by less than 2,000 speakers (Directorate of Census Operations 2011). The morphology of Luro is virtually undescribed in detail so far. The previous works are restricted to deRoepstorff (1875), Cruz (2005), Man (1889) and Rajasingh (2019) which are limited to wordlists and a partial dictionary. This is the first-ever account of word formation process in the language. Word formation processes include among others, compounding and derivation across grammatical categories. Incorporation is used in verb morphology. Although language does not have an extensive case marking system postpositions appear on some nouns optionally. Nouns are marked for duality and plurality but not for gender. Negation is indexed with pronoun morphology and participates in formation of antonyms. Kinship terminology and Number System have also been dealt with to represent diverse word formation processes.1