Documentation of the Kullui language: problems, results, prospects

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Evgeniya A. Renkovskaya, the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences FieldworkFieldwork researchresearch

Kullui – an Indo-Aryan language of the Himachali Pahari (also known as ) •Expedition 2014 Fund of Fundamental Linguistic Research, project 2014 “Documentation of Kullui (Western Pahari)” •Expedition 2016 Russian State Fund for Scientific Research № 16-34-01040 «Grammar description and lexicon of Kullui» •Expedition 2017 Russian State Fund for Scientific Research № 16-34-01040 «Grammar description and lexicon of Kullui» Project participants

Yulia Mazurova Evgeniya Renkovskaya Anastasia Krylova

Irina Samarina Elena Shuvannikova Ksenia Melnikova Kullui – minor Indo-Aryan language of Northern

• Himachali Pahari group  Dialectal continuum in (mostly), also in Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir  From 10 to 60 of languages / dialects (according to different sources)  About 6 million speakers • Kullui  Located in in Himachal Pradesh  About 100 thousand speakers (according to Ethnologue, Census 2001) Functional domains of languages

• Local languages (Himachali Pahari idioms and some others) – languages of the oral communication in the villages, languages of folklore tradition (songs, tales, legends), some religious practices. • – lingua franca of the region, language of school education, official organizations, state government, language of towns • English – interlanguage, language of education in some private schools, the second language of official organizations, state government. Himachal Pradesh, District Kullu Goals of the project

•Documentation of Kullui on the modern linguistic and technical level: dictionary, corpus of morphologically glossed texts with audio and video recordings. •Theoretical research of the Kullui phonology and grammar •Sociolinguistic research of the Kullui language. Functional domains of the languages. Language vitality •Geographical location of the Kullui language •Fieldwork research of the Himachali dialectal continuum •Description of the areal and typological features of the Himachali dialectal continuum •Development of the information source pahari-languages.ru Why Kullui?

 Not sufficiently described  Definitely endangered (according to UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger)  Kullui-speaking area has close and long- standing ties with Russia – The International Roerich Memorial Trust (IRMT) founded in 1993 by Svetoslav Roerich is located in Naggar (Kullu district). Nowadays this place is one of the focuses of the Russian-Indian cultural cooperation. Not sufficiently described? Works on Kullui • Bailey T.G. 1908. The Languages of the northern Himalayas, being studied in the grammar of twenty-six Himalayan dialects. • Grierson G.A. 1916. Kulu Group // Linguistic Survey of India. Vol.IX. Part IV.

• मौलरामू ठाकरू . म.र. 1975 पहाड़ी भाषा कलईु ु के वशेष संदभ म. दल, 1975. • Ranganatha M. R. 1980. Survey of and Kului in Himachal Pradesh. • शमा द. ‘सारवत’, 2014. कलतीु ू -हंद याकरण. एक तलनामकु अययन Mauluram Thakur Dayanand Sharma Definitely endangered?

Oral speech mostly, no written codification  Some Kullu residents consider their native language as being low-status and preventing them from mastering Hindi Many parents speak Hindi with their children from childhood, so children do not know their native language Questioning of school- age children:

• Parents speak Hindi with them (from childhood) • In school and with friends they speak Hindi •They speak some Kullui only with grandparents (many people of older generation are almost monolingual or can speak ) •Some children can only understand Kullui, but do not speak Language in danger = culture in danger

• folklore tradition (songs, tales, legends) • some religious practices LanguagesLocal language in thein religious the religious practices practices Local language in the religious practices Sociolinguistic questionnaire 2017 Geographical borders of Kullui Kullu district is a classic example of the dialectal continuum. The questionnaires on isoglosses from the speakers of several tahsils show substantial phonetical and grammatical differences. Local languages of Kullu district Kullui, Banjari, Sainji, Siraji (…) Local languages of Himachal Pradesh Mandeali, , Kangri, Sirmauri (…) Kullu Dussehra

Kullui- speaking area Grammatical study

• Thesaurus (including grammatical information) • Grammatical questionnaires (in Hindi and English) • Recording and translation of spontaneous texts Programs we use in our work:

• ELAN (used for writing and translation of texts with the help of native speakers)

• FieldWorks (used for text annotation and dictionary processing) ELAN is used for writing and translation of texts with the help of native speakers

FieldWorks is used for dictionary processing FieldWorks is used for text annotaion Tankri script Tankri script Digitalizing of Tankri manuscripts pahari-languages.ru

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