South Asian Languages

This book continues the encyclopedic multi-volume series “Languages of the World”, which is being prepared at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences. This volume deals with New Indo-Aryan languages which, along with their now extinct relatives, comprise the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-European language family. These languages are primarily spoken throughout South Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. The volume also includes information about the languages and dialects that separated from the main Indo-
Aryan area, particularly Romani. Apart from the descriptions of the major Indo-Aryan languages, this volume also contains information on many minor languages and dialects of the region, including unwritten and endangered languages. Systematic grammatical descriptions of some of these are published here for the first time. Each essay follows the typologically oriented template maintained throughout the “Languages of the World” series. This template imposes a uniform sociolinguistic and
synchronic structural characterization upon the individual languages and thereby ensures the comparability of the descriptions of the different languages. This volume also contains an article on the writing systems used for these languages and a set of language maps. The volume is intended both as a fundamental linguistic study and as a reference source. It is addressed to a wide audience of linguists of various specializations, historians, cultural anthropologists, teachers and students, and all those interested in Indo-Aryan languages.

When it comes to language, few corners of the globe are as diverse as South Asia. Throughout history, this has been an area of high multilingualism and intense linguistic contact, leading to often extreme processes of change, linguistic conflict and accommodation, as well as the emergence of new languages. However, while diversity may be the order of the day in South Asia, language obsolescence and loss have now become equally conspicuous. As a matter of fact, the most linguistically diverse countries in this region feature prominently in the worlwide charts of linguistic endangerment. In UNESCO’s online (and constantly evolving) Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, for instance, India has more entries than any other country, viz. 197 (in December 2012). Other countries in the region with a significant presence in the Atlas include Nepal (71 languages listed), Pakistan (28), Afghanistan (23) and Bhutan (19); only the Maldives are absent.
In South Asian nations, there is an established tradition of research and reflection on the preservation of linguistic and cultural diversity. Yet, given the enormity of the task, more needs to be done to understand the causes of linguistic endangerment and design solutions. It is the intention of this volume to contribute to the debate by focusing on specifically South Asian problems, processes and constraints, from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. As expected, most of the languages studied are, by most definitions, currently endangered - the type of languages that might feature in UNESCO’s Atlas. However, some authors also discuss languages whose vitality (and even dominance in some domains) seems assured in the near future. Their articles are a reminder that language endangerment is a complex and multi-faceted issue, and call for long-term approaches to language preservation. [...]
(from the "Foreword")

This article examines the relationship between language shift and identity among diaspora Sindhis in India and Southeast Asia. It focuses on questions concerning how members of this community reproduce identity through language shift. The first part of the article describes identity and language shift among diaspora Sindhis in post-partition India. It argues that language shift facilitates the reproduction of core cultural modalities among diaspora Sindhis. The second part describes the history of diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia and analyses language shift. It contends that language shift enables diaspora Sindhis to suspend a connection between mother-tongue proficiency and identity. The article concludes by discussing how the diaspora Sindhi experience retunes the interval that conventionally connects language shift to cultural change.

[ The original PhD dissertation may be read and authenticated from the website of the University of Newcastle, NSW, at http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/804346 ]

This thesis argues that foreign and second language teaching productivity can only reach its proper potential when it is accorded priority, second only to language learner productivity, amongst the many competing productivities which are always asserted by stakeholders in educational institutions.

A theoretical foundation for the research is established by examining the historical concept of productivity, and its more recent manifestation as knowledge worker productivity, especially as applied to teachers.

The empirical basis of the thesis is sourced from a chronological series of twenty biographical case studies in language teaching venues in Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and East Asia. The biographical case study methodology, although rare in applied linguistics, is justified by reference to its wide and growing application in other fields of qualitative research. The case studies are analysed for common patterns of productivity, as well as teaching productivity inhibition or failure.

It was affirmed across all of the case studies without exception that external parties could not control or even reliably predict what individual students might learn, and how well, from instances of instructed language teaching. This was regardless of the power of institutional players, external resources, curriculums or the teacher. Student belief in the immediate value of what was to be learned in a given lesson, and personal confidence in an ability to learn it were the most critical factors.

Teaching productivity was found to turn, ultimately, on the teacher's ability to influence the probability of student learning. The teacher could best influence learning probability by enhancing student motivation. The most effective environments for teaching productivity were seen to be those where the teacher was professionally equipped and politically enabled to exercise judgements which maximized opportunities for student language learning productivity. A negotiated pact concerning both curriculum and method often proved effective, especially with mature students, and at times required some deception of institutional authorities.

Empirically, the encouragement of reciprocal learning relationships between teacher and students was found to be powerfully enabling for language teaching productivity in the case studies.

In many venues a small but effective minority of 'intimate learners' were also able to leverage their language learning productivity by forging more personal relationships with the teacher.

The wider cultural paradigm within each of the countries represented in the case studies sanctioned different paths and limitations for both language learners and teachers, and hence was seen to influence teaching productivity in critical ways. It was found that under certain conditions, notably (but not exclusively) those prevailing in many East Asian educational institutions, that certification of foreign language skills had a higher cultural, employment and monetary value than the actual ability to exercise foreign language skills.

A negative influence on teacher productivity in many of the case studies was an ignorance about language learning and teaching amongst institutional players. The disregard of language teacher professionalism was fed by a belief that being able to speak a language was all that was necessary to teach it, and reinforced by misinterpreting the meaning of test results. Related to this, an imbalance of power relationships between teachers or students with other institutional interests was consistently found to interfere with teaching and learning productivities. Overall, the model of productivity understood in institutions instanced by the case studies tended to reflect a 19th Century economic paradigm of capital, raw materials (students) and labour (dispensable classroom workers) rather than any more sophisticated grasp of knowledge worker productivity.

It was demonstrated in the context of the case studies that productivity, and in particular knowledge worker productivity, is a complex concept whose facets require detailed analysis to arrive at a proper understanding of the role that foreign and second language teachers play in educational institutions.

We humans are in contact irrespective of the different languages we speak across the world. Therefore, languages we speak are constantly in contact, convergence and change. Language contact and convergence is an inter-language phenomenon. India is an ideal example to describe and explain the phenomena of language contact. Contact and Convergence Linguistics (henceforth CCL) studies the contact and convergence among languages.  The basic of CCL is introduced in this class based on primary evidences from Indian languages. Based on this class we can further examine whether the Kasaragod district of Kerala can be considered as a micro linguistic area in India.
Note: CCL is an advanced area of linguistics today. Only the basics of CCL is introduced in this class. A details list of reading materials is given in this handout with some supplementary articles, books and handbooks.

A word-by-word explanation of the translation of the so-called creation hymn of Rigveda. The translation is very different from traditional ones.

As I demonstrate, the hymn has been completely misunderstood by previous translators.

The hymn has nothing to do with the origin or creation of the Universe. It is in fact, simply a prayer to God.

A fresh and original translation from Sanskrit of the dashrajnya hymn (hymn 7.18 of Rig Veda) describing this defining battle between Aryan king Sudas and his Aryan as well as non-Aryan foes. The decisive battle led to the uprooting of many tribes from the Sapta Sindhu area.

Many existing beliefs are shown to be merely due to misunderstandings. Further, it is shown that the existing translations fall well short of the true meaning.
For example, no Matsya tribe was involved in this battle.

Designed to be a brief introduction to the Tibeto-Burman languages of South Asia. Includes basic information and references on most languages as well as comparisons of current classification schemes of van Driem, Matisoff, Bradley, and Thurgood and LaPolla.

Iran has a rich linguistic and cultural heritage. The history of the development of Iranian languages from Old Persian to Avesta, Pahlavi and finally Persian goes back to time immemorial. Over this vast period, Iranian languages contributed a significant influence on South Asian languages. Lexicographic affinities and thematic likeness between the Avesta and the Rig-Veda suggest a prolonged cultural and literary relationship between Iran and the sub-continent. The constant traveling of the port cities in South Asia by the Iranian merchants and Sufis through sea-routes paved the way for development of the Persian language in the land since millennium BC. After the establishment of Muslim rule in Delhi, the Persian language begun to flourish in the region and gradually spread throughout the subcontinent. Urdu language developed mainly based on Persian. Bengal fell to Muslims in 1203 AD, which resulted in the replacement of the court language from Sanskrit to Persian. Muslim courts became a meeting place for both local and Iranian poets and intelligentsias during this period. The practice of Persian, Bengali, as well as Arabic as a religious language, begun to thrive promptly in the land. Many Sufis such as Nur Qutb-e Alam, Shaikh Sharafuddin Abu Tawwama contributed a lot in this process of development: the Bengali language and literature now received the full assistance of the Muslim rulers. The presence of more than 10000 Persian words in Bengali suggests a clear linguistic influence of Persian on the language. The proposed paper will attempt to elucidate the sequential developments of Persian language in the subcontinent and its impact on local vernacular languages.

This dissertation explores the nature and extent of retroflex consonant harmony in South Asia. Using statistics calculated over lexical databases from a broad sample of languages, the study demonstrates that retroflex consonant harmony is an areal trait affecting most languages in the northern half of the South Asian subcontinent, including languages from at least three of the four major families in the region: Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Munda (but not Tibeto-Burman). Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages in the southern half of the subcontinent do not exhibit retroflex consonant harmony. In South Asia, retroflex consonant harmony is manifested primarily as a static co-occurrence restriction on coronal consonants in roots/words. Historical-comparative evidence reveals that this pattern is the result of retroflex assimilation that is non-local, regressive and conditioned by the similarity of interacting segments. These typological properties stand in contrast to those of other retroflex assimilation patterns, which are local, primarily progressive, and not conditioned by similarity. This is argued to support the hypothesis that local feature spreading and long-distance feature agreement constitute two independent mechanisms of assimilation, each with its own set of typological properties, and that retroflex consonant harmony is the product of agreement, not spreading. Building on this hypothesis, the study offers a formal account of retroflex consonant harmony within the Agreement by Correspondence (ABC) model of Rose & Walker (2004) and Hansson (2001; 2010). Two Indo-Aryan languages, Kalasha and Indus Kohistani, figure prominently throughout the dissertation. These languages exhibit similarity effects that have not been clearly observed in other retroflex consonant harmony systems; retroflexion is contrastive in both non-sibilant (i.e., plosive) and sibilant obstruents (i.e., affricates and fricatives), but harmony applies only within each manner class, not between them. At the same time, harmony is not sensitive to laryngeal features. Theoretical implications of these and other similarity effects are discussed.

Telugu ike many other Dravidian languages  has an optional  nominal anaphor and an obligatory monomorphemic verbal anaphor.  In this paper we discuss the nature of the nominal and verbal anaphor, the various functions that the verbal  anaphor performs  in Telugu, long-distance binding and several other issues related to Binding in Telugu. The verbal reflexive and the verbal reciprocal are both homophonous. The nominal reflexive and the nominal reciprocal are both polymorphemic and are optional, while the verbal reflexive and reciprocal are both obligatory, when  subject is the antecedent.

This article highlights commonalities of regional nationalism between the poetry and song of two Hela Havula (The Pure Sinhala Fraternity) members: Rapiyel Tennakoon and Sunil Santha. I reveal how their creative works advocated indigenous empowerment in opposition to Indian cultural hegemony, and against state solicitations for foreign consultation about Sinhala language planning and Sinhalese music development. Tennakoon challenged the negative portrayal of Sri Lankan characters in the Indian epic, the Ramayana, and Santa fashioned a Sri Lankan form of song that could stand autonomous from Indian musical influence. Tennakoon lashed out against the Sinhala-language dictionary office's hire of German professor Wilhelm Geiger as consultant, and Santa quit Radio Ceylon in 1953 when the station appealed to Professor S.N. Ratanjankar, from North India, for advice on designing a national form of Sri Lankan music. Such dissent betrays an effort to define the nation not in relation to the West, but to explicitly position it in relation to India. A study of Tennekoon's and Santa's careers and compositions supplement the many works that focus on how native elite in South Asia fashioned a modern national culture in relation to the West, with an awareness of the regional nationalist, non-elite communities-who also had a stake in defining the nationthat were struggling against inter-South Asian cultural hegemony.

This article presents a sketch of the life and work of Prof. Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (1928-2012) (hence forth BhK) the legendry Dravidianist. He led the Comparative Dravidian Linguistics (henceforth CDL) for around half a century of 1955-2003. No effort have been made so far to document, review and assess the impact of his contributions except a brief profile about him with a list of publication appeared in Indian Linguistics and a few obituaries by his student Umamaheswar Rao (2012), Udaya Narayana Singh (2012)  and else. Therefore, this article is the first attempt towards that; especially in the absence of a comprehensive history of CDL when CDL reaches 200 years of development in 2016 (most sadly without BhK!).

First part of the paper gives a brief biographical sketch of BhK followed by a presentation of his contribution in the second part. Third part discusses how far his major works contributed towards the advancement of CDL from the pre-paradigmatic stage to paradigmatic stage. Finally, a few of the controversies left by him still remain unsettled are listed for the further development of CDL. A chronologically arranged list of his publications appeared in English is given at the end of the paper. The impact  of his contributions in CDL is measured based on citation indexes and other standard impact measures. Based on those measures the paper is reaching towards a point of conclusion that  Telugu Verbal Bases: A comparative and descriptive study by BhK in 1957 later published in 1961 is the substantial contribution with a paradigmatic impact in CDL. Later his magnum opus Dravidian Languages in 2003 is the compilation of his whole studies interacts with the field since 1957. Therefore, these two works by BhK and the years in which both were published, i.e. 1961 and 2003 are considered as internal chronological landmarks in the history of CDL. Based on this article I conclude that BhK represents beginning of the two phases in the development of CDL. Former is the third phase of the development of CDL begins with the establishment of comparative and historical paradigm of CDL in 1961. Later is the compilation of the total results of the development of CDL since 1961 by all the scholars in 2003 in his Dravidian Languages.

Sansiboli is a highly endangered dialect of Rajasthani language of Indo-Aryan family. It is spoken by about sixty thousand speakers mainly in Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, and Delhi states of India. As a language, Sansiboli is not confined to any particular geographical boundary. It has benefitted from various sources, absorbed regional colors, and imbibed influence from neighboring languages and dialects. Thus, it has numerous phonological and morphological borrowings from Punjabi, Hindi, and Gujarati. Sansiboli is not effectively being passed on to the next generation and is on the verge of extinction. Very few people below the age of forty are fully competent in the language, and probably none of them will become active speakers. Many of the Sansis are likely to mix Hindi, Punjabi, or Gujarati elements in their speech depending on their geographical location.

North East India lies at the crossroads of South and Mainland South East Asia. Typologically, the majority of well-­established North East Indian languages (excluding, for example, more recent Tai migrants) are highly agglutinating. But they don’t seem to have always been. In the case of the Tani languages, a compact subgroup of Tibeto-­Burman languages spoken from the central Eastern Himalaya to the Brahmaputra Valley, a highly agglutinating set of modern languages seem to reconstruct to an isolating ancestor with several characteristically Mainland South East Asian features. Modern-­day lexical compounds seem to reconstruct to class term constructions, incorporated nominals seem to reconstruct to generic nominals and external possession constructions, and an expansive predicate word, replete with a vast array of derivational formatives, seems to reconstruct to a fairly ordinary serial verb construction. If such reconstructions are tenable, they would tend to align Tani and other North East Indian languages typologically with Mainland South East Asian languages in early history. The question is, what does this mean? Was there a contact corridor that helped maintain this common typology, which was later disrupted? Was North East India in part populated by migrants from Mainland South East Asia (in early times, and more recently), who brought this typology together with their languages? Or is this simply a historical manifestation of creole typology, with no implied relationship to the languages of Mainland South East Asia?

This paper examines the structure, types, and strategies of reciprocals in Malayalam. Reciprocals in Malayalam are identified and classified into four types. Structure and strategies of each type and the relation of reciprocals with other grammatical categories are examined. Based on the analysis, it is found that reciprocal constructions in Malayalam are constituted by four types of antecedents and two types of exponents. Compounding, reduplication, clausal, and lexical strategies are used to encode reciprocal meaning. Reciprocals in Malayalam are distinct from reflexives. They inflect for cases, reduce the valency of the verb and can function as interrogative reciprocals.

FOR AN UPDATE, SEE MANUSCRIPT ABOUT TO BE POSTED HERE -- 'CONVERSATIONS AND OTHER ILLOCUTIONARY ACT SUCCESSIONS'. The Past Subjunctive form in Bangla shares the morphology of the simple (indicative) Past but differs syntactically. One difference is that it can directly license a modal particle /baa/. The particle /baa/ occurs with other tense-moods only if licensed by an interrogative. The analysis of this particle's distribution in various clause types clarifies many aspects of clause structure. The proposal that each /baa/ needs both Local Focus licensing from an Emph(asizer) bearing constituent which preposes and Mood Salience licensing from an M-Salient item which need not move turns out to provide an adequate account of the distribution of /baa/, assuming that interrogatives and the Past Subjunctive count as bearing M-Salience.

This is one of the studies -- initially published as part of a book -- initiating substantivist analysis at the language/politics interface. This study in particular provides crucial bearing regarding the consequences of the general, and tacit, acceptance of what has been called "the naturalist fallacy" in the domain of language.

The considerations that I provide in this and related studies make it impossible for me either to participate wholeheartedly in the insistently unreformed programme of generative linguistic research, or to quite comprehend the reasons for which some my colleagues feel able to do so, and feel able to avoid questions of research programme reformulation. Generative grammarians who have faced the evidence I provide and who are able to say with a straight face that after facing this evidence they continue to feel that the current unreformed research programme of generative grammar is a scientific programme may please let me know why they think so.

Rev. by: Zuckermann, Ghil'ad. 2004. [Review of Agnieszka Kuczkiewicz-Fraś, Perso-Arabic Hybrids in Hindi: The Socio-Linguistic and Structural Analysis. New Delhi: Manohar, 2003.] Yearbook of South-Asian Languages and Linguistics, Ranjendra Singh (ed.), Mouton de Gruyter, 239-44.

Topographical deixis refers to a variety of spatial-environmental deixis, in which typically distal reference to entities is made in terms of a set of topographically-anchored referential planes: most often, upward, downward , or on the same level. This article reviews the genealogical and geographic distribution of topographical deixis in Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages, reviews the conditions in which topographical deixis in Trans-Himalayan languages may be gained or lost, and concludes that (a) topographical deixis is overwhelmingly found in languages spoken in mon-tane environments, and (b) topographical deixis most likely reconstructs to a deep level within Trans-Himalayan. The language spoken at that level-whose precise phylogenetic status cannot yet be specified-was overwhelmingly likely to have been spoken in a montane environment.

Two primed naming experiments tested the orthographic depth hypothesis in skilled biliterate readers of Hindi and Urdu. These languages are very similar on the spoken level but differ greatly in script; Hindi is a highly transparent script, whereas Urdu is more opaque. It was accordingly hypothesized that formbased priming would be greater for Hindi than Urdu, reflecting greater reliance on a phonological assembly route in the more transparent Hindi script. Proficient Hindi/ Urdu biliterate readers were presented with primes either in Hindi or Urdu script (Exp. 1), or in Roman transcription (Exp. 2), while targets were always in blocks of Hindi or Urdu. Across both experiments, form-based priming was observed only in Hindi. Additionally, target words were named significantly faster and better in Hindi than in Urdu. The results are taken as support for the hypothesis of differential reliance on phonological assembly as a function of script transparency. Further, the greater graphemic complexity of Urdu script relative to Hindi appears to have contributed to slower and less accurate overall single word reading for Urdu than Hindi, despite the fact that Urdu was the first learned script.

Dravidian is the sixth largest language family in the world and second in South Asia. Kurux language, known as Oraon, belongs to the North Dravidian sub-branch of Dravidian. It is spoken in the Indian states Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odissa. Unlike other South Dravidian nonliterary languages, Kurux is in extensive contact with Indo-Aryan languages. However, Kurux got insufficient attention either by descriptive or comparative linguists as its sister languages have been receiving. Consequently, the unique mixture of archaic Dravidian features and the contact-induced innovation in Kurux are not represented in the comparative studies of Dravidian languages. And the contact-induced changes in Kurux did not get attention in the literature on contact and convergence studies in the Indian linguistics area. Masato Kobayashi and Bablu Trikey’s (2017) The Kurux Language: Grammar, Text, and Lexicon is a comprehensive grammar of Kurux which fills the lacuna and sets a standard model for the description of Dravidian languages. The introductory part gives a brief typological overview, status, writing system, earlier studies, genetic relation, and the contact-induced features of Kurux.  The book consists of three major sections, the Grammar (pp. 23-318), Text (pp. 321-572), and a rich annotated Kurux-English dictionary (pp. 573-771).

The majority of the population of Suriname uses elements stemming from at least two languages in everyday, informal interactions. While language contact between the languages of Suriname manifested itself chiefly through lexical borrowing in earlier times, the range of present contact phenomena also includes alternational and insertional code- switching, as well as code-mixing patterns shared across language boundaries. I analyze characteristics of the evolving mixed code that draws on Sranan and Dutch elements by looking at how it manifests itself in Sarnami, Surinamese Javanese and Sranan. I show that socio-economic changes in the past five decades with respect to urbanization, education, migration and mass media have contributed to obscuring ethno-linguistic boundaries, dramatically increased exposure to Dutch and Sranan, and driven the spread of language mixing practices into new domains. I conclude that mixing practices in Suriname are converging in a common communicative space that transcends linguistic boundaries.