A Kharia-English Lexicon
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A Kharia-English Lexicon John Peterson Universität Leipzig Himalayan Linguistics Archive 5 Himalayan Linguistics Archive 5. (2009) i-xv, 1-212 © 2009 All rights reserved. Table of contents Foreword iii The lexicon iii Kharia − a brief overview vi Acknowledgements xii Abbreviations xii Literature xiii Lexicon 1-212 Foreword The lexicon The present study is a revision of the second volume of my Habilitationsschrift or “professorial dissertation” which was submitted at the University of Osnabrück in 2006 (Peterson, 2006). Volume I of that three-volume study was an extensive grammar, which is currently being reviewed (in revised form) for publication, while Volume III consisted of a collection of texts, glossed, annotated and translated into English. This Kharia-English lexicon contains all of the morphemes found in the texts in Volume III of that study as well as many which occurred in conversations with native speakers. In addition, it contains all of the morphemes found in the texts in Pinnow (1965a; b), in the first half of the texts in Kerkeʈʈā (1990), as well as in the Kharia-English lexicon in Biligiri (1965). There are also a few entries from Roy & Roy (1937) and Malhotra (1982). I have made every attempt to check all entries with native speakers although it has not yet been possible to check all lexical entries from Pinnow's texts and Biligiri's lexicon with native speakers. Where I have not been able to check these yet, and in cases in which the speakers I questioned were not familiar with these items or when they gave different meanings for these items than Pinnow or Biligiri (which is often the case), I have indicated this in the entry through one of the abbreviations given at the end of this introduction, followed by the page number and, in the case of Pinnow's texts, the line of text, where this is numbered in his texts. In cases where I have spoken with native speakers with respect to the morphemes from these two authors, or where I have found similar forms in Hindi or Sadani/Sadri (the Indo-Aryan lingua franca of the region), I do not indicate the source of the form, since I have been able to verify its usage. All English translations of Hindi words are based on the entries in McGregor (ed.) (1997), unless otherwise noted, although not always verbatim, and English translations of Sadani/Sadri words are from either Jordan-Horstmann (1969) or Blain (1975), again, unless otherwise noted and also not always verbatim. The alphabetical order used in the following pages is as follows, based largely on the Eng. alphabet: Ɂ, a, b, bh, c, ch, ɖ, ɖh, d, dh, e, g, gh, h, i, j, jh, k, kh, l, m, ŋ, ɲ, ɳ, n, o, p, ph, ɽ, ɽh, r, s(ś), ʈ, ʈh, t, th, u, w, y iii Peterson: Kharia-English Lexicon; Foreword In general, however, due to the extremely marginal status of Ɂ, this segment is ignored word-internally, so that it has no affect on the order given here. Its presence at the beginning of the list above refers only to the few entries (all allomorphs of grammatical morphemes) which begin with this segment. As with any language, there are a variety of different pronunciations and written forms for many of the entries contained in this lexicon, and I have made every attempt to include them all. In general, these different entries are all listed under the first entry in alphabetical order and also individually with the comment “See …”, which refers to the entry where the definition and all variant forms are listed. In some cases, where I felt reasonably certain as to which form is the most common or which is considered standard by most speakers, these are listed under that form, which is not necessarily the first form alphabetically. Each entry is ordered as follows: Morpheme 1. Meaning in ACTive voice; 2. meaning in MIDdle voice; 3. (morphological) CAUSative and DOUBle CAUSative forms; 4. meaning as the head of a complement phrase (≈ “NP”) / attributive meanings. The term “GENEReric” found in many entries refers to the generic function of the middle voice, discussed in Peterson (2006, Volume I: §6.4.2.2), and can refer to habituality, a prolonged action, distant past or an uncertain or distant future event. This order is consistently followed throughout the lexicon, even in cases where, at least from an English-speaking perspective, a particular morpheme appears to be clearly “nominal” − here as well, the predicative uses are given first, for the sake of consistency. As any contentive morpheme in Kharia can be used predicatively, referentially or attributively1, I believe that any re-ordering of these functions on the basis of my own English-based intuitions would do Kharia an injustice, as any and every contentive morpheme in the language is “flexible” in this sense. Hence, although this may appear somewhat disconcerting at first, there is good reason for maintaining this order throughout the lexicon, and I believe that this should not cause the reader any difficulties. It is important to note that, whether or not all three of these major functions (i.e., predication, reference and attribution) are given for a particular morpheme, my data to date show that, without exception, each and every contentive (or “lexical”) morpheme in Kharia can appear in all of these functions. For practical reasons, however, it has not yet been possible to ascertain the exact meaning of each morpheme in each function, so that 1 For reasons of space, we cannot go into this discussion here in any detail. For a detailed discussion, see Peterson (2005; 2006; 2007) and the brief discussion in the following section of the main text. iv Himalayan Linguistics: Archive No. 5 not all functions are given for all morphemes. However, I must stress here that this has no futher implications, and the lack of such information is not an indication of the impossibility of a particular function but rather simply a lack of knowledge with respect to the meaning of a particular morpheme in a particular function. For the many morphemes deriving from Sadani/Sadri verbs and which have alternating stems, these are listed directly adjacent to one another in the lexicon, e.g., cettay, ACT: cettay: warn < S. cetā- 'warn' cet(t)e MID: cet(t)e: worry; understand; cettay: GENER of active Ɂ CAUS: o b-cettay; no CAUS of cette See also cinta In these cases, if no further information is given, “ACTive” refers to the stem ending in -a(y) and “MIDdle” to the stem ending in -e. Where e.g., the form ending in -a(y) can also appear in the middle voice, as in the case here with a generic interpretation, I indicate in the entry which form I am referring to. If no meaning is given for the CAUS and DOUB CAUS forms (where I have this information), this indicates that their meanings are predictable, i.e., morphological causative = semantic causative, morphological double causative = semantic double causative. Only deviations from this principle are listed. The example entry above also shows that I have included information, where this was available, on whether the form in all likelihood derives from Indo-Aryan, generally either Sadani/Sadri or Hindi, noted by “< …” in the entry. Nevertheless, the absence of such information does not exclude the possibility that the form derives from some Indo-Aryan source, due to a lack of data, nor does the inclusion of a similar Sadani form necessarily mean that Kharia has derived this lexeme from Sadani: As the Hindi and Sadani forms are often very similar, we often have no way of knowing which language is the source. Furthermore, it is not entirely out of the question that Sadani, which is used as a lingua franca by speakers of many different languages throughout Jharkhand, may have occasionally borrowed from Kharia or other indigenous languages of the region. Hence, the sign “<” is best considered an abbreviation for “has a form closely related to” or perhaps “possibly derives from”. Also, where I am relatively certain that a term has been borrowed from Indo-Aryan but have not been able to locate a phonologically and semantically similar term in Sadani or (Standard) Hindi, the first similar term which I have been able to locate is given, whether it be from Awadhi, Brajbhasa, Gujarati, Konkani, Nepali or some other source. This information should NOT be taken as implying v Peterson: Kharia-English Lexicon; Foreword that this is the source language, only that the term has, in all likelihood, been borrowed from an (as yet unidentified) Indo-Aryan source. Finally, I have attempted to include reference to other forms in this lexicon which are similar either semantically, as with cinta in the example above, or in terms of form. The reader will often find the abbreviation “conj.v.” in the entries, as in the following example under ɖel 'come': akil ɖel conj.v. think of something, of a thought to come This term has been borrowed from the South Asian linguistic tradition and refers to a so-called “light verb” construction.2 As this construction has in all likelihood been borrowed from Indo-Aryan, I have decided to retain the traditional Indological terminology in referring to it, although the term “light verb” is usually only found in the entry of the corresponding “light verb” itself (in the above case, ɖel 'come'). In these cases, the lexical item which carries most of the meaning, here akil 'think; thought; knowledge', is listed individually and its meaning can be ascertained there. Kharia − A brief overview3 Kharia is a South Munda language spoken primarily in the southwestern districts of the state of Jharkhand in central eastern India, as well as in the adjacent districts in eastern Chattisgarh and northwestern Orissa.