Word Formation in Dimasa

Abstract

Dimasa is a Tibeto-Burman language mostly spoken in Dima Hasao and Cachar districts of Assam and Dimapur district of Nagaland. Most Dimasa roots are monosyllabic, but due to the highly agglutinating feature of them, multimorphemic words are employed more frequently than monomorphemic ones. The formation of words in Dimasa involves different word formation processes such as prefixation, suffixation, compounding, reduplication and onomatopoeia. All of these processes are prominent, while compounding is the most productive among them. Dimasa derivational prefixes and suffixes produce or modify a variety of word classes, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.