Bugun

About

Bugun, also known as Khowa, is an oral, Sino-Tibetan (Trans-Himalayan) language spoken in West Kameng district of the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. The 2011 Census Report of India indicates that 1434 individuals are speakers of Bugun. The Bugun community is primarily engaged in agriculture and other allied occupations. While Bugun continues to be their mother tongue, the emergence of Arunachali Hindi – a lingua franca – has affected not only the linguistic practices, but also the cultural traditions of the community (Barbora, 2025). Bugun, along with five other languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, which include Khispi, Duhumbi, Sartang, Sherdukpen, and Puroik, are grouped as Kho-bwa or Kamengic languages, as proposed by George van Driem. Although there is a high geographic proximity of Bugun with many other Kho-bwa languages, the lexical similarity and mutual intelligibility between these languages are rather low. Bugun and Puroik varieties are slightly closer to each other than to other Western Kho-bwa varieties (Lieberherr & Bodt, 2017). The phonological system of Bugun displays notable similarities with the phonologies of other languages in its geographic vicinity. It is likely to have an eight-vowel phonemic inventory, comprising front vowels (/i/, /e/), a central vowel (/a/, /ɨ/, /ə/), and back vowels (/u/, /o/, /ɔ/) (Singha & Krishna, 2024). These can be nasalised but may not be contrastive. The language substantially features consonant clusters and nasalised vowels, with a limited tonal system, likely distinguishing only between level and rising tones. While semi-vowels are employed as syllable codas, vowel-initiated morphemes are uncommon. (Blench, 2018). Additionally, Bugun exhibits a high degree of derivational, as well as inflectional morphological productivity (Dondrup, 1990). Bugun possesses a unique feature of nasal pre-glottalisation, wherein pulmonic airflow is interrupted by a closure of the glottis, thereby creating a…