Blench Roger. A Grammar of Idu, a language of Arunachal Pradesh

Unpublished, 2018. — ix + 175 p.This document is a grammar of Idu, a language spoken around Roing in the Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, NE India. Anthropological and early travel literature is briefly reviewed, together with previous literature and attempts to devise an orthography. Idu is usually classified as ‘Mishmi’, together with Tawra, as an isolate branch of Tibeto-Burman, although this remains unproven. Idu appears to be endangered, with regional languages including Nepali and Hindi causing loss of competence among the younger generation of speakers. Constituent order is SOV, but with a great degree of flexibility, and some constructions include the typologically unusual OSV. There are fragmentary traces of accusative marking. Pronouns are regularly dropped in declarative sentences. Idu is broadly an isolating language, but the verbal system is marked by complex extensional morphology and pronominal indexing. Idu has an elaborate system of registers, including the speech of the īgū, shamans, and hunters as well as mediation, humorous and cursing registers. Idu maintains an elaborate metrology, systems of measurement for time, volume and distance, described in an appendix.