Bantawa is one of the pronominalised languages of the Tibeto-Himlayan branch, belonging to the Tibeto-Burman sub-family. It is widely spoken in eastern Nepal, mostly in the Bhojpur, Dhankutta, Panchttar, Illam, Jhapa, Morang and Sunsari districts of Mechi, Koshi and Sagarmatha zones. It is also spoken in some parts of Darjeeling, in the district of West Bengal (India), Sikkim and Bhutan.
Reduplication is one of the most productive morphological processes in Bantawa. This process has two major functions: grammatical and semantic. The grammatical function of reduplication is to indicate the various grammatical categories such as number, gender, tense and mode etc. This function is not common in most languages. The semantic function of reduplication is to show intensity, continuity, certainty, distribution, repeated action and specification of the meaning which is expressed in the basic unit before reduplication. This is the most common function which is found in most of the languages. Bantawa has both of these functions of reduplication.
