The Dravidian Languages
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Sign Language Typology Series
SIGN LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY SERIES The Sign Language Typology Series is dedicated to the comparative study of sign languages around the world. Individual or collective works that systematically explore typological variation across sign languages are the focus of this series, with particular emphasis on undocumented, underdescribed and endangered sign languages. The scope of the series primarily includes cross-linguistic studies of grammatical domains across a larger or smaller sample of sign languages, but also encompasses the study of individual sign languages from a typological perspective and comparison between signed and spoken languages in terms of language modality, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to sign language typology. Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Languages Edited by Ulrike Zeshan Sign Language Typology Series No. 1 / Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages / Ulrike Zeshan (ed.) / Nijmegen: Ishara Press 2006. ISBN-10: 90-8656-001-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-8656-001-1 © Ishara Press Stichting DEF Wundtlaan 1 6525XD Nijmegen The Netherlands Fax: +31-24-3521213 email: [email protected] http://ishara.def-intl.org Cover design: Sibaji Panda Printed in the Netherlands First published 2006 Catalogue copy of this book available at Depot van Nederlandse Publicaties, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (www.kb.nl/depot) To the deaf pioneers in developing countries who have inspired all my work Contents Preface........................................................................................................10 -
Grammatical Gender in Hindukush Languages
Grammatical gender in Hindukush languages An areal-typological study Julia Lautin Department of Linguistics Independent Project for the Degree of Bachelor 15 HEC General linguistics Bachelor's programme in Linguistics Spring term 2016 Supervisor: Henrik Liljegren Examinator: Bernhard Wälchli Expert reviewer: Emil Perder Project affiliation: “Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush Region,” a research project supported by the Swedish Research Council (421-2014-631) Grammatical gender in Hindukush languages An areal-typological study Julia Lautin Abstract In the mountainous area of the Greater Hindukush in northern Pakistan, north-western Afghanistan and Kashmir, some fifty languages from six different genera are spoken. The languages are at the same time innovative and archaic, and are of great interest for areal-typological research. This study investigates grammatical gender in a 12-language sample in the area from an areal-typological perspective. The results show some intriguing features, including unexpected loss of gender, languages that have developed a gender system based on the semantic category of animacy, and languages where this animacy distinction is present parallel to the inherited gender system based on a masculine/feminine distinction found in many Indo-Aryan languages. Keywords Grammatical gender, areal-typology, Hindukush, animacy, nominal categories Grammatiskt genus i Hindukush-språk En areal-typologisk studie Julia Lautin Sammanfattning I den här studien undersöks grammatiskt genus i ett antal språk som talas i ett bergsområde beläget i norra Pakistan, nordvästra Afghanistan och Kashmir. I området, här kallat Greater Hindukush, talas omkring 50 olika språk från sex olika språkfamiljer. Det stora antalet språk tillsammans med den otillgängliga terrängen har gjort att språken är arkaiska i vissa hänseenden och innovativa i andra, vilket gör det till ett intressant område för arealtypologisk forskning. -
Nilgiris District, Tamil Nadu Connie Smith Tamil Nadu Overview
Nilgiris District, Tamil Nadu Connie Smith Tamil Nadu Overview Tamil Nadu is bordered by Pondicherry, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Sri Lanka, which has a significant Tamil minority, lies off the southeast coast. Tamil Nadu, with its traceable history of continuous human habitation since pre-historic times has cultural traditions amongst the oldest in the world. Colonised by the East India Company, Tamil Nadu was eventually incorporated into the Madras Presidency. After the independence of India, the state of Tamil Nadu was created in 1969 based on linguistic boundaries. The politics of Tamil Nadu has been dominated by DMK and AIADMK, which are the products of the Dravidian movement that demanded concessions for the 'Dravidian' population of Tamil Nadu. Lying on a low plain along the southeastern coast of the Indian peninsula, Tamil Nadu is bounded by the Eastern Ghats in the north and Nilgiri, Anai Malai hills and Palakkad (Palghat Gap) on the west. The state has large fertile areas along the Coromandel coast, the Palk strait, and the Gulf of Mannar. The fertile plains of Tamil Nadu are fed by rivers such as Kaveri, Palar and Vaigai and by the northeast monsoon. Traditionally an agricultural state, Tamil Nadu is a leading producer of agricultural products. Tribal Population As per 2001 census, out of the total state population of 62,405,679, the population of Scheduled Castes is 11,857,504 and that of Scheduled Tribes is 651,321. This constitutes 19% and 1.04% of the total population respectively.1 Further, the literacy level of the Adi Dravidar is only 63.19% and that of Tribal is 41.53%. -
A Contemporary Assessment of Tree Species in Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve, Southern India
Proceedings of the International Academy of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, 2017, 7(2): 30-46 Article A contemporary assessment of tree species in Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve, Southern India M. Sathya, S. Jayakumar Environmental Informatics and Spatial Modeling Lab, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry 605014, India E-mail: [email protected] Received 28 December 2016; Accepted 5 February 2017; Published online 1 June 2017 Abstract Tree species inventory was carried out in five forest types of Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR). The forest type was divided into homogenous vegetation strata (HVS) based on the altitude, temperature, precipitation and forest types. A total of 8 ha area was sampled using 0.1 ha (20m 50m) plot and all tree species ≥ 1cm girth at breast height (gbh) within the plot were enumerated. In all, 4614 individuals were recorded that belonged to 122 species representing 90 genera and 39 families. Fabaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Rubiaceae, and Combretaceae were the species-rich families. The mean stand density of STR was 577 ha-1, but it varied from 180 ha-1 to 779 ha-1. Similarly, the mean basal area of the STR was 14.51 m2ha-1 which ranged between 8.41 m2 ha-1 and 26.96 m2 ha-1. The stem count was low at the lowest girth class (1-10 cm gbh) and high at 20-30 cm gbh in all the forest types. Anogeissus latifolia was the dominant species in the semi- evergreen and deciduous forest types while Chloroxylon swietenia was dominant in the thorn forest. -
Telugu Wordnet
Telugu WordNet S. Arulmozi Department of Dravidian & Computational Linguistics Dravidian University, Kuppam 517425, India [email protected] Abstract Section 4 gives a statistical account on the synsets developed. The last section This paper describes an attempt to develop Telugu WordNet, particularly construction of summarizes the work. synsets in Telugu language along the lines of Hindi synsets using the expansion approach. 2 The Telugu Language Based on the Hindi WordNet synsets, we assign Telugu synsets manually using the Offline Tool Telugu belongs to the South Central Dravidian Interface. We share the challenges faced in the subgroup of the Dravidian family of languages. construction of core synsets from Hindi into It has recorded history from 6th Century A.D. Telugu language. A brief account on Telugu th language and its notable features are also and literary history dating back to 11 Century provided. A.D. It has been recently awarded the Classical Status. It is the second most spoken language 1 Introduction after Hindi in India. Telugu has been the language of choice for lyrical compositions for WordNet building activities in Dravidian its vowel ending words, rightly called the languages started with the work of Tamil “Italian of the East”. WordNet1 at AU-KBC Research Centre using The vocabulary of Telugu is highly Rajendran’s (2001) ontological classification Sanskritized in addition to the Persian-Arabic of Tamil vocabulary. Work on Dravidian borrowings / kaburu/ `story ’, WordNet (comprising WordNets in four major కబురు జవాబు /javaabu/ `answer ’; Urdu /taraaju/ Dravidian languages, viz. Kannada, తరా灁 Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu) started during a 2 `balance’. It does have cognates in other Workshop held at Chennai in which synsets Dravidan languages such as puli/ `tiger ’, were built for Construction Domain. -
A Comparative Phonetic Study of the Circassian Languages Author(S
A comparative phonetic study of the Circassian languages Author(s): Ayla Applebaum and Matthew Gordon Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Languages of the Caucasus (2013), pp. 3-17 Editors: Chundra Cathcart, Shinae Kang, and Clare S. Sandy Please contact BLS regarding any further use of this work. BLS retains copyright for both print and screen forms of the publication. BLS may be contacted via http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/bls/. The Annual Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society is published online via eLanguage, the Linguistic Society of America's digital publishing platform. A Comparative Phonetic Study of the Circassian Languages1 AYLA APPLEBAUM and MATTHEW GORDON University of California, Santa Barbara Introduction This paper presents results of a phonetic study of Circassian languages. Three phonetic properties were targeted for investigation: voice-onset time for stop consonants, spectral properties of the coronal fricatives, and formant values for vowels. Circassian is a branch of the Northwest Caucasian language family, which also includes Abhaz-Abaza and Ubykh. Circassian is divided into two dialectal subgroups: West Circassian (commonly known as Adyghe), and East Circassian (also known as Kabardian). The West Circassian subgroup includes Temirgoy, Abzekh, Hatkoy, Shapsugh, and Bzhedugh. East Circassian comprises Kabardian and Besleney. The Circassian languages are indigenous to the area between the Caspian and Black Seas but, since the Russian invasion of the Caucasus region in the middle of the 19th century, the majority of Circassians now live in diaspora communities, most prevalently in Turkey but also in smaller outposts throughout the Middle East and the United States. -
Socio-Economic Characteristics of Tribal Communities That Call Themselves Hindu
Socio-economic Characteristics of Tribal Communities That Call Themselves Hindu Vinay Kumar Srivastava Religious and Development Research Programme Working Paper Series Indian Institute of Dalit Studies New Delhi 2010 Foreword Development has for long been viewed as an attractive and inevitable way forward by most countries of the Third World. As it was initially theorised, development and modernisation were multifaceted processes that were to help the “underdeveloped” economies to take-off and eventually become like “developed” nations of the West. Processes like industrialisation, urbanisation and secularisation were to inevitably go together if economic growth had to happen and the “traditional” societies to get out of their communitarian consciousness, which presumably helped in sustaining the vicious circles of poverty and deprivation. Tradition and traditional belief systems, emanating from past history or religious ideologies, were invariably “irrational” and thus needed to be changed or privatised. Developed democratic regimes were founded on the idea of a rational individual citizen and a secular public sphere. Such evolutionist theories of social change have slowly lost their appeal. It is now widely recognised that religion and cultural traditions do not simply disappear from public life. They are also not merely sources of conservation and stability. At times they could also become forces of disruption and change. The symbolic resources of religion, for example, are available not only to those in power, but also to the weak, who sometimes deploy them in their struggles for a secure and dignified life, which in turn could subvert the traditional or establish structures of authority. Communitarian identities could be a source of security and sustenance for individuals. -
THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY — the LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE by Brian D
THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY — THE LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE by Brian D. Joseph, The Ohio State University 0. Introduction A stunning result of linguistic research in the 19th century was the recognition that some languages show correspondences of form that cannot be due to chance convergences, to borrowing among the languages involved, or to universal characteristics of human language, and that such correspondences therefore can only be the result of the languages in question having sprung from a common source language in the past. Such languages are said to be “related” (more specifically, “genetically related”, though “genetic” here does not have any connection to the term referring to a biological genetic relationship) and to belong to a “language family”. It can therefore be convenient to model such linguistic genetic relationships via a “family tree”, showing the genealogy of the languages claimed to be related. For example, in the model below, all the languages B through I in the tree are related as members of the same family; if they were not related, they would not all descend from the same original language A. In such a schema, A is the “proto-language”, the starting point for the family, and B, C, and D are “offspring” (often referred to as “daughter languages”); B, C, and D are thus “siblings” (often referred to as “sister languages”), and each represents a separate “branch” of the family tree. B and C, in turn, are starting points for other offspring languages, E, F, and G, and H and I, respectively. Thus B stands in the same relationship to E, F, and G as A does to B, C, and D. -
Journal of South Asian Linguistics
Volume 8, Issue 1 July 2018 Journal of South Asian Linguistics Volume 8 Published by CSLI Publications Contents 1 Review of The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Contemporary Guide 3 Farhat Jabeen 1 JSAL volume 8, issue 1 July 2018 Review of The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Contemporary Guide Farhat Jabeen, University of Konstanz Received December 2018; Revised January 2019 Bibliographic Information: The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Contemporary Guide. Edited by Hans Heinrich Hock and Elena Bashir. De Gruyter Mouton. 2016. 1 Introduction With its amazing linguistic diversity and the language contact situation caused by centuries of mi- gration, invasion, and cultural incorporation, South Asia offers an excellent opportunity for linguists to exercise their skill and challenge established theoretical linguistic claims. South Asian languages, with their unique array of linguistic features, have offered interesting challenges to prevalent formal linguistic theories and emphasized the need to expand their horizons and modify their theoretical assumptions. This book is the 7th volume of The World of Linguistics series edited by Hans Heinrich Hock. The current book is jointly edited by Hans Heinrich Hock and Elena Bashir, two excellent South Asian linguists with extensive experience of working in the field on a number of South Asian languages. At more than 900 pages, the volume is divided into ten sections pertaining to different linguistic levels (morphology, phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics), grammatical traditions to study South Asian languages, sociological phenomena (contact and convergence) and sociolinguistics of South Asia, writing systems, as well as the use of computational linguistics approach to study South Asian languages in the twentieth century. -
ROGER D. WOODARD, Ed. the Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas
ROGER D. WOODARD, Ed. The ancient languages of Asia and the Americas. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xix, 264. This is one of five volumes derived from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages (2006), from the same editor and publisher. The ten chapters, prepared by noted specialists, are supplemented by 24 figures, 16 tables, and a map. The contents are indexed separately for subject, grammatical and linguistic terms, languages, and establish laws and principles referred to in the text, e.g., Bartholomae’s Law, Grassmann’s Law. The first appendix (234 – 250) provides a comprehensive discussion of methods and problems for reconstructing ancient languages, focusing on the comparative method, while discussing questions of morphology and syntax as well, in the context of Indo-European reconstruction. This is understandable, if not ideal; after all, Indo European languages, despite the rapid advances in East Asian linguistics and especially in more recent work on Austronesian languages, the languages that make up the Indo-European taxa remain the most studied and best understood of the world’s languages. The second reproduces the TOC of the Encyclopedia and the other volumes in this series. We certainly agree with the remark in the Preface, “An ancient language is indeed a thing of wonder — but so is every other language” (1). Since the capacity for language is the faculty that distinguishes the category human, the breadth and scope of the diversity of manifestations of that faculty, along with the means to record it and extend it in space and through time, count as the supreme wonders of existence. -
Dyron Daughrity
Hinduisms, Christian Missions, and the Tinnevelly Shanars: th A Study of Colonial Missions in 19 Century India DYRON B. DAUGHRITY, PHD Written During 5th Year, PhD Religious Studies University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta Protestant Christian missionaries first arrived in south India in 1706 when two young Germans began their work at a Danish colony on India's southeastern coast known as Tranquebar. These early missionaries, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Pluetschau, brought with them a form of Lutheranism that emphasized personal piety and evangelistic fervour. They had little knowledge of what to expect from the peoples they were about to encounter. They were entering a foreign culture with scarcely sufficient preparation, but with the optimistic view that they would succeed in their task of bringing Christianity to the land of the “Hindoos.”1 The missionaries continued to come and by 1801, when the entire district of Tinnevelly (in south India) had been ceded to the British, there were pockets of Protestant Christianity all over the region. For the missionaries, the ultimate goal was conversion of the “heathen.” Vast resources were contributed by various missionary societies in Europe and America in order to establish churches, 1 In 2000, an important work by D. Dennis Hudson entitled Protestant Origins in India: Tamil Evangelical Christians, 1706-1835 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000) brought to light this complex and fascinating story of these early missionaries encountering for the first time an entirely new culture, language, and religion. This story sheds significant insight on the relationship between India and the West, particularly regarding religion and culture, and serves as a backdrop for the present research. -
Adeyemi Et Al., 2012)
Ife Journal of Science vol. 15, no. 2 (2013) 303 A REVIEW OF THE TAXONOMY OF AFRICAN SAPINDACEAE BASED ON QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE CHARACTERS *Adeyemi, T.O., Ogundipe, O.T. and Olowokudejo, J.D. Department of Botany, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria. e-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] *Corresponding author: [email protected], +2348029180930 (Received: April, 2013; Accepted: June, 2013) ABSTRACT This study was conducted using qualitative and quantitative morphology to characterise and group different representative species of the family Sapindaceae in Africa. The morphological characters used included leaf, stem and fruit. Essentially, the similarities among various taxa in the family were estimated. A total of 28 genera and 106 species were assessed. Members possess compound leaves (paripinnate, imparipinnate or trifoliolate); flowers are in clusters, fruits occur as berry, drupe or capsule and contain seed with white or orange aril. UPGMA dendograms were generated showing relationships amongst taxa studied. The dendograms consists of a single cluster from 0 57 % similarity coefficients suggesting a single line decent of the members of the family. At 65 % two clusters were observed with Majidea fosterii being separated from the cluster. Also, at 67 % similarity coefficient, two clusters were discerned separating the climbing forms from the shrubby forms. Paullinia pinnata was separated from the other climbing forms at 67 % while Allophylus species were separated into two clusters at 91 % similarity coefficient. The dendograms revealed that the family can be separated into eleven (11) clusters based on qualitative morphological data. A key to the identification of genera is presented in this work.