Abstract
This paper revisits the language contact situation in the Indian border town-village of Kupwar originally reported by Gumperz and Wilson (1971. Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border. In D. Hymes (ed.), Pidgnization and creolization of languages, 151–168. Cambridge: CUP). The study presents evidence for morpho-syntactic variation and complexification in the contact varieties of the local languages, Marathi and Kannada. Similar patterns of variation are adduced from contact varieties of Marathi and Kannada from historical data as well as present-day border villages which, like Kupwar, have been traditionally bilingual. The synchronic and historical data point out methodological and theoretical limitations of the original study. The variation and complexity observed in the Kupwar varieties allow for a reconsideration of the notion of intertranslatability or isomorphism in convergence areas. While suggesting a possible geographically defined micro-linguistic area at the Marathi-Kannada frontier, the paper indicates that the recent re-drawing of state boundaries along linguistic lines may have initiated divergence in this convergence area.
Abbreviations
- 1
first person
- 2
second person
- 3
third person
- AUX
auxiliary
- BE
copula verb ‘be’
- DAT
dative
- EMPH
emphasis
- ERG
ergative
- F
feminine
- G&W
Gumperz and Wilson
- GEN
genitive
- HON
honorific
- KuK
Kupwar Kannada
- KuM
Kupwar Marathi
- LOC
locative
- M
masculine
- N
neuter
- NOM
nominative
- OBL
oblique
- PERF
perfect
- POSS
possessive
- PRST
present
- PST
past
- PTCP
participle
- QUOT
quotative
- S
singular
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Article Note
This research was carried out under the Special Assistance Programme of the University Grants Commission of India awarded to the Dept. of Linguistics, Deccan College (Deemed University), Pune (India) for research on “Language Contact in India” (2011–2016).
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Forty years of language contact and change in Kupwar: A critical assessment of the intertranslatability model
- Responsive methodology: Perspectives on data gathering and language documentation in India
- Context! Or how to read thoughts in a foreign language
- Book Reviews
- John J. Lowe: Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit. The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms
- Seino van Breugel: A grammar of Atong
- Thomas Owen-Smith and Nathan W. Hill: Trans-Himalayan linguistics. Historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Forty years of language contact and change in Kupwar: A critical assessment of the intertranslatability model
- Responsive methodology: Perspectives on data gathering and language documentation in India
- Context! Or how to read thoughts in a foreign language
- Book Reviews
- John J. Lowe: Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit. The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms
- Seino van Breugel: A grammar of Atong
- Thomas Owen-Smith and Nathan W. Hill: Trans-Himalayan linguistics. Historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area