Volume 4, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Typological profiles of language families of South Asia

Retroflexion in South Asia has been the subject of at least two previous typological studies: Ramanujan and Masica (1969. Toward a phonological typology of the Indian linguistic area. In T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics, volume 5: Linguistics in South Asia , 543–577. Paris: Mouton) and Tikkanen (1999. Archaeological-linguistic correlations in the formation of retroflex typologies and correlating areal features in South Asia. In Roger Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and language IV: Language change and cultural transformation , 138–148. London & New York: Routledge). Despite their many virtues, these studies are limited by the size of their data samples, their dependence on qualitative data without quantitative analysis, and their use of hand-drawn maps. This paper presents the results of an entirely new survey of retroflexion in South Asia – one that incorporates a larger language sample, quantitative analysis, and computer-generated maps. The study focuses on the genetic and geographic distribution of various retroflex subsystems, including retroflex obstruents, nasals, liquids, approximants and vowels. While it is possible to establish broad statistical correlations between specific types of contrast and individual language families (or sub-families), the study finds that the distribution of most retroflex systems is more geographic in nature than genetic. Thus, while retroflexion is characteristic of South Asia as a whole, each type of retroflex system tends to cut across genetic lines, marking out its own space within the broader linguistic area.

Great Andamanese constitutes alongside Ongan one of the two indigenous language families of the Andaman Islands. The phonological typology of the Great Andamanese languages includes a number of features of areal interest, including retroflex consonants (characteristic of South Asia) and lack of phonemic fricatives (reconstructed for Proto-Dravidian). Its morphosyntactic typology has some unremarkable features from a global typological perspective, such as verb-final clause order combined with postpositions and possessor-before-possessed but with postnominal attributive adjectives, alongside highly unusual features such as: somatic prefixes; several series of personal pronouns whose choice depends not only on grammatical relation/semantic role but also, for instance, on clause type; negation of a verbal clause by expressing it as the non-finite subject of a negative copular clause; and root ellipsis.

Verbal Person Marking is a neglected feature of Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages. TH systems are of great typological interest, showing both canonical versions and unusual variations of both hierarchical and accusative alignment. The predominant and ancestral pattern is hierarchical, but we also see innovative accusative patterns. Canonical hierarchical and accusative systems do occur, but a majority of VPM systems of both alignments show variations on the basic patterns. Hierarchical systems sometimes develop means to index both participants in a transitive configuration rather than only the higher. Accusative systems frequently develop secondary O indexation for SAP arguments, and sometimes move further in the direction of hierarchical patterning. Thus Trans-Himalayan offers a wealth of examples of VPM systems, which deserve greater attention from the field of typology.

The study is a typological profile of 31 Indo-Aryan (IA) languages in the Hindukush-Karakoram-Western Himalayan region (covering NE Afghanistan, N Pakistan, and parts of Kashmir). Native speakers were recruited to provide comparative data. This data, supplemented by reputable descriptions or field notes, was evaluated against a number of WALS- or WALS-like features, enabling a fine-tuned characterization of each language, taking different linguistic domains into account (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon). The emerging patterns were compared with global distributions as well as with characteristic IA features and well-known areal patterns. Some features, mainly syntactic, turned out to be shared with IA in general, whereas others do have scattered reflexes in IA outside of the region but are especially prevalent in the region: large consonant inventories, tripartite pronominal case alignment, a high frequency of left-branching constructions, and multi-degree deictic systems. Yet other features display a high degree of diversity, often bundling subareally. Finally, there was a significant clustering of features that are not characterizing IA in general: tripartite affricate differentiation, retroflexion across several subsets, aspiration contrasts involving voiceless consonants only, tonal contrasts and 20-based numerals. This clustering forms a “hard core” at the centre of the region, gradually fading out toward its peripheries.