Chungli Ao language

During the American Baptist Mission to Naga Hills, E. W. Clark first came in contact with the Molungkimong village that paved the way for a common Ao language. Chungli Ao is spoken in Molungkimong and Molungyimsen and other villages throughout Ao territory by roughly 50% of the Ao-speaking population. The speech of Molungkimong is the prestige dialect due to Baptist missionaries' influence. Most Ao can speak Chungli even if they are from Mongsen-speaking regions. Chungli is taught in schools. ==Phonology==

Chungli Ao phonology has been described in Gowda (1972, 1975), Temsunungsang (2009, 2014, 2021) and Bruhn (2010). Bruhn's description is based on a native speaker of Mongsen Ao who learned Chungli Ao after the age of 9, ==Grammar==

Published grammars of Chungli Ao include Clark (1893) and Gowda (1975). Some notes on verb morphology are also corroborated by Bruhn (2009). Verb morphology Chungli Ao verbs are agglutinative, but lack person and number marking. Tense–aspect–mood distinctions are marked by various verbal suffixes. Bruhn provides the following verb template: Tense, aspect and mood marking Chungli Ao verbs are marked for three tenses, namely the present, past, and future. Certain combinations of tense and aspect are also marked. The past tense is unmarked, or rather it is expressed by the absence of any endings on the bare verb stem. Thus, bare verb stems like aru "to come" and jaja "to walk" actually mean "came" and "walked", respectively. The perfect is marked with the suffix -ogo . Clark and Gowda specify that this is a past perfect while Bruhn labels this as a present perfect. The simple present tense is marked with the suffix -er. Clark and Gowda do not agree on the allomorphy of this suffix when applied to verbs ending in vowels. Clark states that the suffixal vowel generally disappears if the preceding stem ends in a vowel, while Gowda only has the suffix vowel disappear after . After , Gowda states that a glide separates the vowels of the stem and suffix. The present progressive (or immediate present in Bruhn's description) is marked by either (spelled -dage in Clark's grammar) or -dar . The choice between the two endings, which are perfectly equivalent, varies by village. A pair of forms suffixed with -a and are called "present participles" in Clark's grammar and mark "durative aspect" in Gowda's grammar. The -a form is used in non-negative sentences while the form is used in negative sentences. The future tense is marked with -tsü . An alternative near-future marker -di also exists. This ending -tsü also marks what Clark and Gowda call an infinitive which is instead labelled by Bruhn as irrealis. The imperative mood is marked with the suffix -ang. The vowel in this suffix is lost if the preceding stem ends in or . Negative prefixes To negate a verb, the verb is prefixed with ma- outside of the imperative. According to Gowda, ma- surfaces as me- before consonants. In the imperative, te- is used instead for negation. The vowel in the negative prefixes is lost when the following verb stem begins in a. Noun morphology 2) The following table shows the case marking present in Chungli Ao. == Numbers ==