Volume 7, Issue 1

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of relator noun constructions in Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the eastern part of India by a majority of people living in the state of Assam. The construction consists of a relator noun that functions as a head, and a genitive case marked noun that functions as a dependent. Semantically, most of the relator nouns encode spatial relation, such as place, path. However, some other relator nouns signal other relations, such as the ‘for’, ‘about’ etc. The occurrence of relator nouns is not an unusual phenomenon in Indo-Aryan languages. It has been analyzed as adpositions in many Indo-Aryan languages. However, I argue that the syntax of Assamese does not allow this analysis. It forms a distinct syntactic category, the behaviour of which is not similar to adpositions. Further, Assamese shares some close affinity regarding the relator noun construction with the neighbouring Tibeto-Burman languages such as Boro and Dimasa, rather than with the Indo-Aryan languages. Thus, this paper further investigates whether the resemblance occurs as a result of language contact or by accident.

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.

In this article, I describe a subset of complex predicates in Thulung (Kiranti, Nepal) which I call “predicate derivations” (after Post, Mark. 2010. Predicate derivations in the Tani languages: root, suffix, both or neither? In Mark Post & Stephen Morey (eds.), North East Indian linguistics , 175–197. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India). I argue that these constructions in Thulung are built on grammaticalized elements that can be synchronically considered to be derivational. I focus on their morphology, placing it within the context of simplex verbs, and highlighting certain features – multiple exponence, allomorphy of the derivational suffixes similar to that of simplex verbs – which suggest strongly a development from serial verb constructions. I discuss their functions, which cover valence changes, as well as the marking of associated motion and aspect/Aktionsart. Complex predicates are seen as a feature of South Asian languages, but the types found in Tibeto-Burman languages appear to be quite different, morphologically, from what is found in Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages. This article therefore represents a language-specific description as a contribution to cross-linguistic research on the topic.

The article, based on field data collected by the authors, analyzes the modern sociolinguistic situation of the Sora language (South Munda languages, Odisha, India) in various religious communities. The religious communities such as Baptists, Catholics, Vishwa-Hindus, Animists, Mattar Banom and Alekh are analyzed. The data on the use of various languages in the religious practices of these communities is considered, accompanied by rich illustrative material. According to the findings of the authors, the preservation of Sora is most successful in the Baptist and Mattar Banom communities.

This article continues the discussion on the nature of the early language of Buddhism and the language that the Buddha spoke, arguing that the received Pāli transmission evolved out of an earlier Middle Indic idiom, which is identified as a koine . Evidence for this koine can be found by examining correspondence sets within Pāli and its various varieties and by examining parallel, cognate correspondence sets between Pāli and other Prakrits which have survived. This article compares 30 correspondence sets transmitted in the Dhammapada recensions: the Gāndhārī Prakrit verses, the partially Sanskritized Pāli and Patna Dhammapada Prakrit verses, and the fully Sanskritized verses of the Udānavarga . By comparing cognate words, it demonstrates the existence of an underlying inter-language which in many cases can be shown to be the source of the phonological differences in the transmission. The paper includes a discussion on the two major factors of dialect change, evolution with variation over time, and the diffusionary, synchronic influence of dialect variation; it concludes that both are important, with dialect variation – and the phonological constraints of indigenous speakers who adopted MI as a second language – providing the pathways on which the natural evolutionary process was channeled.