Basum (autonym: brag gsum 'three cliffs'; Basong 巴松话; Bake) is a divergent Bodish language spoken by about 2,500 people in Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China. Basum is spoken by 13.5% of the population of Gongbo'gyamda County. Glottolog lists Basum as unclassified within Bodish.
Wang (2020) is a grammatical and morphosyntactic description of Basum.Wang, Sanchuan. 2020. Phonologie et morphosyntaxe du Baké. Doctoral dissertation, Université de Paris 3.
Background The Basum language is locally known as Bäke (བག་སྐད་), which is derived from brag-gsum skad, meaning ‘the language of the Three Rocks’. There are about 3,000 speakers in Zhoka and Tshongo townships, Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, on the shores of the Basum Lake. Qu, et al. (1989) also reported that Basum is spoken in Cuogao Township 错高乡 and Xueka Township 雪卡乡 of Gongbo'gyamda County 工布江达县, Nyingtri Prefecture, Tibet, China.
Classification
Qu, et al. (1989) notes that Basum is mutually unintelligible with and quite different from Gongbu Tibetan (; 11,600 speakers), which is a Central Tibetan language variety closely related to Nyingchi Tibetan (). Basum is also unintelligible with Niangpu 娘蒲话 (also called Muqu 牧区话), which is a Khams Tibetan language variety spoken by 4,310 people in Jiaxing 加兴 and Niangpu 娘蒲 townships of Gongbo'gyamda County. Qu, et al. (1989:61) notices some lexical similarities between Basum and Cuona Menba (Tawang Monpa), an East Bodish language.
Suzuki & Nyima (2016)Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Tashi Nyima. 2016. ’Bo skad, a newly recognised non-Tibetic variety spoken in mDzo sgang, TAR: a brief introduction to its sociolinguistic situation, sounds, and vocabulary . Fourth Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China (STLS-2016). University of Washington, Seattle, September 8–10, 2016. consider Basum to be a non-Tibetic language.
Tournadre (2014)Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. classifies Basum (Bake) as an unclassified Bodish language that does not belong to the Tibetic branch. Tournadre (2014: 112) notes that Basum has the negator a-, as opposed to the negator ma- or myi- in Tibetic languages. Also, unlike Tibetic languages, Basum does not palatalize Proto-Bodish *ti- and *si-.
A computational phylogenetic of various languages of Tibet by Jiang (2022) shows that Basum is divergent, and although it shows some similarities with the Medog dialect of Khams Tibetan due to contact, as well as with East Bodish ("Menba" or "Monpa") languages.
Tournadre & Suzuki (2023) suggest that Basum may be related to Dakpa (Tawang Monpa), an East Bodish language, since both languages share many lexical features as well as grammatical morphemes.
Lexicon Tournadre & Suzuki (2023) lists the following Basum words that have no Tibetic cognates.
Gloss Basum Classical Tibetan seven ˉniː bdun four ˉpər bzhi meat ˉʔə ȵiː sha blood ˉkɵʔ khrag leg ´kiː rkang red ´nde nde dmar stone ´tɐ luŋ rdo I ´ɦi nga you ˉdo khyed, khyod he ˉpho kho negation ˉʔɐ ma
Qu, et al. (1989: 50–51) list the following Basum words with no cognates in neighboring Tibetic languages. Chinese gloss English gloss Basum 脚 foot, leg ci¹⁴ 酥油 yak butter ja⁵⁵ 盐 salt npo⁵³ 一 one tɯʔ⁵³ 七 seven ȵi⁵⁵ 走 to walk nõ⁵³ 看 to look ɕẽ⁵³ 睡 to sleep cã¹⁴ 坐 to sit ȵɯ̃⁵⁵ 我 I (1.SG) hi⁵³ 你 you (2.SG) nto¹² 他 he (3.SG) po⁵³ 那 that ũ⁵³ 多 many pi⁵⁵ 红 red nte¹¹nte⁵³ 吝啬 stingy phe⁵⁵mu⁵³ 一点儿 a little, a bit ɐ⁵⁵mi⁵⁵ 立即 soon, quickly a¹¹lu⁵³ 全部 all nta¹¹le¹⁵ 根本 basically ɐ¹¹nɐʔ⁵³ 一定 definitely, must sɯ̃¹¹pa⁵³
Other divergent Basum words are (Suzuki & Nyima 2016): Gloss Basum one four five seven you (sg) blood meat iron pig
Several hundred Basum lexical items are also documented in Qu & Jing (2017), a comparative survey of Central Tibetan lects.Qu, Aitang 瞿霭堂; Jing, Song 劲松. 2017. Zangyu Weizang fangyan yanjiu 藏语卫藏方言研究. Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue chubanshe 中国藏学出版社. .
References