The present paper is an attempt to analyze and discuss some important concepts relating to the conditional conjunctions in Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in Assam. This study explores the form, function and distribution of conditional conjunctions which are used to describe a condition. Conditional conjunctions enable non-finite forms to express conditionality and temporal circumstances. The study focuses on one important way of introducing the structure of condition in Assamese by suffixation to the verb root. The verb of the dependent clause of a conditional sentence carries the inflectional morpheme as a non-finite form, which is not fully inflected for tense and person. The non-finite forms which are used to indicate the function of conditional marker will be discussed. While discussing the function of conditional conjunction as part of sentence structure, the subject-verb agreement of the dependent clause and the temporal expression of the inflectional form will be examined. Most of the examples in this paper are taken from the author’s own native speakers introspection, but some of the examples were first observed in The CIIL-Lancaster Assamese Corpus.

This paper seeks to analyse and describe the nature of morphophonemic variation in the nominal morphology of Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Assam. Previous discussions of morphophonemic variation in the language have focused on the phonological aspects of such variation (Goswami and Tamuli, 2003: 410-13). However, the present study seeks to examine the nature and range of phonological variations within morphemes triggered by nominal morphological processes such as (a) deictic inflections for relational nouns, (b) case inflections for nouns and pronouns and (c) nominal word-formation via derivation and compounding.

Identifying the phonological and morphological factors behind the morphophonemic variation in nominal morphology will serve to uncover the patterned nature of the underlying regularities of a major area of Assamese grammar. Moreover, in seeking to align the morphophonemic variations with specific nominal morphological processes rather than treating them in intrinsic phonological terms, this study proposes to highlight the interdependent functioning of the levels of analysis. Such functioning is evident in instances of phonological variations within morphemes that serve to mark different grammatical functions in the language. In addition to such descriptive considerations, the range of variations and their associated morphological processes can also shed light on specific aspects of diachronic change when they are cross-linguistically compared with cognate languages.