Lawngtlang Zophei Swadesh list

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary 100-item Swadesh word list for Lawngtlang Zophei. Zophei or Zyphe (ISO 639-3 ZYP) belongs to the Maraic branch of Kuki-Chin within the Tibeto-Burman language family (Eberhard et. al, 2019). Lawngtlang is a Zophei village in the Southeastern corner of the Zophei-speaking area in Thantlang Township, Chin State, Myanmar. Lawngtlang Zophei is considered to be part of the Lower (western) dialects of Zophei. The word list comes from the intuitions of our co-author Zai Sung, a 22-year-old native speaker born in Lawngtlang and currently living in Indianapolis, Indiana.