Cape Town Gujarati and its relation to Gujarati dialectology: A study of retroflex boosting

Rajend Mesthrie; Vinu Chavda

doi:10.1515/jsall-2020-2022

Article

Cape Town Gujarati and its relation to Gujarati dialectology: A study of retroflex boosting

Rajend Mesthrie and Vinu Chavda

Published/Copyright: January 11, 2021

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information

From the journal Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics Volume 7 Issue 1

Abstract

This paper has two purposes. Firstly, it provides a bird’s eye view of the characteristics of a variety of Gujarati in diaspora, viz. that spoken in Cape Town, South Africa for almost 150 years. Secondly it focusses on one notable feature, viz. the prominence of retroflexes over dentals, and connects this with other dialects of Gujarati in India and with Western Indo-Aryan. We analyse the speech of 32 speakers born or brought up in South Africa, and resident in Cape Town. We show that Cape Town Gujarati retains the dialect variation of late nineteenth century Gujarati as identified by Grierson, Sir George A. 1908. Linguistic survey of India. Vol IX, part II: Indo-Aryan family, Central Group – Rajasthani and Gujarati. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. In particular, it resembles the Surti dialect, in keeping with the fact that the area around Surat district provided the bulk of migrants to Cape Town in the nineteenth and twentieth century. We then focus in detail on a prominent, but little-studied, phenomenon of Gujarati dialects: the variable occurrence of retroflex stops where Standard Gujarati has dentals [t̪ t̪^h d̪ d̪^h]. We demonstrate the considerable amount of such “retroflex boosting” in the Cape Town variety. We provide a detailed and replicable methodology from variationist sociolinguistics for studying this boosting that we believe illuminates the study of its occurrence in modern dialects in Gujarat.

Keywords: Cape Town Gujarati; dentals; Gujarati dialectology; Indian diaspora; retroflexes; Surti dialect

Corresponding author: Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa, E-mail: rajend.mesthrie@uct.ac.za

Funding for this research was secured from a SARCHI (South African Research Chair) Grant No. 64805 (R. Mesthrie: Migration, Language and Social Change) and an NIHSS (National Institute of the Humanities in South Africa) Grant No. 201514. We also thank the University of Cape Town Faculty of Humanities research committee for financial support. The map of Gujarat was expertly drawn by Thomas Slingsby of the UCT Libraries GIS Lab. Thanks are due to all the interviewees who gave graciously of their time, to Mr. Kanu Sukha for assistance during fieldwork, and Dr. Usha Desai for her input into Gujarati research in South Africa.

References

Beames, John. 1970 [1871]. A comparative grammar of the modern Aryan languages of India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal (Reprint of original three volumes).Search in Google Scholar

Bhana, Surendra & Joy Brain. 1990. Setting down roots: Indian immigrants in South Africa, 1860-1911. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Cardona, George & Babu Suthar. 2003. Gujarati. In George Cardona & Dinesh Jain (eds.), The Indo-Aryan languages, 659–697. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203214961-20Search in Google Scholar

Chambers, Jack K. 2009. Sociolinguistic theory, 3rd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Desai, Usha. 1997. Investigation of factors influencing maintenance and shift of the Gujarati language in South Africa. PhD dissertation, University of Durban-Westville.Search in Google Scholar

Grierson, Sir George A. 1908. Linguistic survey of India. Vol IX, part 2: Indo-Aryan family, Central Group Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing.Search in Google Scholar

Kochetov, Alexei & Paul Arsenault. 2016. The retroflex/dental phoneme frequency in South Asian languages – preliminary observations. Paper presented at International Workshop on Typological Profiles of South Asian languages, Uppsala University.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1966. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Search in Google Scholar

Masica, Colin P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan languages (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Mesthrie, Rajend (ms). A chain shift in Indo-Aryan with special reference to Gujarati dialects (article under review).Search in Google Scholar

Sampat, Madhu. 1973. Comparative study of three Gujarati dialects (Surti, Charotari, and Kathiyawadi). PhD dissertation, Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Poona.Search in Google Scholar

Southworth, Franklin. 2005. Linguistic archaeology of South Asia. London: Routledge Curzon.10.4324/9780203412916_chapter_10Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2021-01-11

Published in Print: 2020-03-26

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jsall-2020-2022

Keywords for this article

Cape Town Gujarati; dentals; Gujarati dialectology; Indian diaspora; retroflexes; Surti dialect