Linguistic History and Language Diversity in India: Views and Counterviews
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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. -
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. -
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. -
Modern India 1857-1972 [Rai Foundation Final]
Subject: MODERN INDIA (1857 – 1969) Credits: 4 SYLLABUS Historical background – British rule and its legacies, National movement, Partition and Independence Origins and goals of the Indian National Congress, Formation of the Muslim League Roles played by Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and the British in the development of the Movement for independence Challenges faced by the Government of India, Making the Constitution, Political, Economic and Social developments from 1950-1990, The Nehru Years – challenges of modernization and diversity, Brief on Indira Gandhi Developments post-1990, Economic liberalization, Rise of sectarianism and caste based politics, Challenges to internal security Foreign Policy: post – Nehru years, Pakistan and Kashmir, Nuclear policy, China and the U. S. Suggested Readings: 1. Ramachandra Guha, Makers of Modern India, Belknap Press 2. Akash Kapur, India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India, Riverhead Hardcover 3. Bipin Chandra, History Of Modern India, Orient Blackswan 4. Barbara D. Metcalf, Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press CHAPTER 1 IMPERIALISM, COLONIALISM AND NATIONALISM STRUCTURE Learning objectives Imperialism and colonialism: A theoretical perspective Imperialism: Its effects The rise of national consciousness The revolt of 1857 Colonialism: The new administrative system - pre and post 1857 Consolidation of the Raj: Frontier and foreign policy Review questions LEARNING OBJECTIVES After going through this Unit you will be able to learn: What is colonialism, its -
Verb Agreement and Case Marking in Burushaski
Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session Volume 40 Article 5 1996 Verb agreement and case marking in Burushaski Stephen R. Willson SIL-UND Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/sil-work-papers Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Willson, Stephen R. (1996) "Verb agreement and case marking in Burushaski," Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session: Vol. 40 , Article 5. DOI: 10.31356/silwp.vol40.05 Available at: https://commons.und.edu/sil-work-papers/vol40/iss1/5 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session by an authorized editor of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Verb Agreement and Case Marking in Burushaski Stephen R. Willson 1 Burushaski verb agreement and case marking phenomena are complex and have not been described adequately by any current theory ofsyntax. In particular, no explanation has yet been given as to why a variety of nominals can trigger agreement in the verbal prefix. In some cases the apparent subject triggers this agreement, in others the direct object appears to do so, in others the indirect object, in others the possessor of the direct object, in others a benefactive or source nominal. Also, the constraints on the usage of ergative, absolutive and oblique case, and other indicators ofgrammatical relations on nominals, have been insufficiently characterized in the literature on Burushaski. -
The Dravidian Languages
THE DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES BHADRIRAJU KRISHNAMURTI The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011–4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarc´on 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Bhadriraju Krishnamurti 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2003 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Times New Roman 9/13 pt System LATEX2ε [TB] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0521 77111 0hardback CONTENTS List of illustrations page xi List of tables xii Preface xv Acknowledgements xviii Note on transliteration and symbols xx List of abbreviations xxiii 1 Introduction 1.1 The name Dravidian 1 1.2 Dravidians: prehistory and culture 2 1.3 The Dravidian languages as a family 16 1.4 Names of languages, geographical distribution and demographic details 19 1.5 Typological features of the Dravidian languages 27 1.6 Dravidian studies, past and present 30 1.7 Dravidian and Indo-Aryan 35 1.8 Affinity between Dravidian and languages outside India 43 2 Phonology: descriptive 2.1 Introduction 48 2.2 Vowels 49 2.3 Consonants 52 2.4 Suprasegmental features 58 2.5 Sandhi or morphophonemics 60 Appendix. Phonemic inventories of individual languages 61 3 The writing systems of the major literary languages 3.1 Origins 78 3.2 Telugu–Kannada. -
Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Halm, R
Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Halm, R. & Slater, J. Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Robert Halm 1 Bloomington, IN, USA Jay Slater Pittsburgh, PA, USA Following up on recent work, we consider morpheme-final nasals in the Nivkh language family of northeast Asia using the Standard Comparative Method, and attempt to reconstruct the inventory and morphophonemic behavior of morpheme-final nasal phonemes in Proto-Nivkh (PN). Previous work has pointed towards PN nasals at four loci, /*m/, /*n/, /*ɲ/, /*ŋ/, of which at least /*ŋ/ could be phonemically either “strong”, triggering fricatives to surface across morpheme juncture, or “weak”, triggering plosives to surface; with weak /*ŋ/ place-assimilating to following plosives across morpheme juncture, and weak /*n/ and weak /*ŋ/ elided in the Amur and West Sakhalin lects. However, with the benefit of more and better data than were available to previous authors, we find instead that elision must have been conditioned by a feature other than the strong-weak contrast (provisionally, length), but which interacted with the strong-weak contrast (“short” strong nasals were inextant), and that this “length” contrast also conditioned assimilation or non-assimilation of final /*ŋ/ (only “short” weak /*ŋ/ assimilated, not “long” weak /*ŋ/). We confirm that the strong-weak morphophonemic contrast existed for at least /*m/, /*ɲ/, and /*ŋ/ (rather than only for /*ŋ/), and the “length” contrast for /*n/ as well as /*ŋ/. Keywords: Nivkh, Gilyak, Proto-Nivkh, nasal, Comparative Method 1 Address correspondence to: [email protected] Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 1 Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Halm, R. -
A Nthropology N Ew Sletter
Special theme: Languages and Linguistics at an Ethnological Museum National Museum of Language is a window into the human mind and reflects human activities, Ethnology while linguistics is an academic field where languages are analyzed from a scientific view-point. As an ethnological museum, Minpaku has a strong focus Osaka on fieldwork, which is necessary for linguists and ethnologists to study languages and learn about human beings and their diversity. Essays in this Number 39 issue present glimpses of the thoughts of linguists at Minpaku who combine linguistic fieldwork and later analysis at their desks. What is unique to December 2014 researchers at Minpaku, however, is that we are also involved with exhibitions for the public and have everyday communication with Anthropology Newsletter anthropologists in other fields. Languages do not exist without humans and humans do not exist without language. We believe that linguistic research is a good starting point on the path to a better understanding of who we are. MINPAKU Yak and Pig, Glacier and Sea Noboru Yoshioka National Museum of Ethnology Why do many Japanese-language dictionaries contain the word yaku [jakɯ] ‘yak’? When I was in the field, this question all of a sudden struck me. To make sure that my facts were correct, I checked the desktop dictionaries that I was carrying — a pocket-size dictionary published in 1979, a student dictionary published in 1996, and one Contents published in 2008 — and confirmed that all of these actually contained Languages and Linguistics the word as I had thought. Living in at an Ethnological Museum Japan, it is hard to see real yaks. -
Correlation of the Burushaski Pronominal System with Indo-European and Phonological and Grammatical Evidence for a Genetic Relationship
Correlation of the Burushaski Pronominal System with Indo-European and Phonological and Grammatical Evidence for a Genetic Relationship Ilija Çasule Macquarie University The Burushaski personal and demonstrative pronominal system is correlated in its entirety with Indo-European. This close correlation, together with the extensive grammatical correspondences in the nominal and verbal systems (given as an addendum), advances significantly the hypothesis of the genetic affiliation of Burushaski with Indo-European. The article includes a comprehensive discussion of the Burushaski-Indo-European phonological and lexical correspondences. It proposes that Burushaski is an Indo- European language which at some stage of its development was in contact with an agglutinative system. 1. Introduction 1.1. Brief overview of sources and previous studies Being a language with undetermined genetic affiliation, Burushaski has attracted considerable interest, especially in the last twenty years, but also earlier. There have been many attempts to relate it to languages as diverse as Basque, Nubian, Dravidian, various Caucasic as well as Yeniseian languages, Sino-Tibetan and Sumerian (for a brief overview, see Bashir 2000:1-3). These endeavors have failed mostly because of unsystematic or inconsistent correspondences, incorrect internal reconstruction, excessive semantic latitude and incoherent semantic fields, root etymologizing and especially lack of grammatical and derivational evidence. Burushaski is spoken by around 90,000 people (Berger 1990:567) in the Karakoram area in North-West Pakistan at the junction of three linguistic families — the Indo- European (Indo-Aryan and Iranian), the Sino-Tibetan and the Turkic. Its dialectal differentiation is minor. There are Volume 40, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2012 60 Ilija Çasule three very closely related dialects: Hunza and Nager with minimal differences, and the Yasin dialect, which exhibits differential traits, but is still mutually intelligible with the former two. -
THE TEXTS, POLITICAL HISTORY and ADMINISTRATION Till C. 200 BC
History of Ancient India Volume III THE TEXTS, POLITICAL HISTORY AND ADMINISTRATION Till c. 200 BC Editors Dilip K. Chakrabarti and Makkhan Lal Vivekananda International Foundation New Delhi Aryan Books International New Delhi Cataloging in Publication Data—DK [Courtesy: D.K. Agencies (P) Ltd. <[email protected]>] History of ancient India / editors, Dilip K. Chakrabarti and Makkhan Lal. v. 3 cm. Contributed articles. Includes index. Contents: v. 3. The texts, political history and administration, till c. 200 BC. ISBN 9788173054822 1. India—History. 2. India—Politics and government. I. Chakrabarti, Dilip K., 1941- II. Makkhan Lal, 1954- III. Vivekananda International Foundation. DDC 954 23 ISBN: 978-81-7305-482-2 © Vivekananda International Foundation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, utilised in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior permission of the authors and the publishers. Responsibility for statements made and visuals provided in the various papers rest solely with the contributors. The views expressed by individual authors are not necessarily those of the editors or of publishers. First Published in 2014 by Vivekananda International Foundation 3, San Martin Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi - 110 021 Tel.: 24121764, 24106698; Fax: 91-11-43115450 E-mail: [email protected] www.vifindia.org in association with Aryan Books International Pooja Apartments, 4B, Ansari Road, New Delhi - 110 002 Tel.: 23287589, 23255799; Fax: 91-11-23270385 E-mail: [email protected] www.aryanbooks.co.in Designed and Printed in India at ABI Prints & Publishing Co., New Delhi.