ABSTRACT
This study highlights the problem of the uneasy cohabitation of language and culture in the context of the existing disconnect between formal and ethnolinguistic studies of language. Innateness and linguistic relativity as two prominent hypotheses, deriving from the two distinct schools of thoughts, generativism and functionalism, respectively, are discussed in this connection. In the context of Northeast, it is shown how both colonial and European grammatical categories are inadequate to understand the languages of the region, and how linguistic and cultural artefacts in a multilingual context can bring about a realisation of the spirit of sameness in spite of differences in the region.
