Areal Linguistics_Linguistics Area_South Asia as a Linguistic Area.pdf

8/12/2023 UNIT 1A_AREAL LINGUISTICS: SOUTH ASIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 1 AREAL LINGUISTICS 8/12/2023  Area linguistics refers to the study of regional dialects or the differentiation of different...

8/12/2023 UNIT 1A_AREAL LINGUISTICS: SOUTH ASIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 1 AREAL LINGUISTICS 8/12/2023  Area linguistics refers to the study of regional dialects or the differentiation of different linguistic patterns within a given area.“  the study of specific languages and dialects within a defined geographical area.  Areal linguistics is about the diffusion of structural features across the languages of a geographical area. 2  8/12/2023  The role of Areal linguistics is to explain what is not explainable by “genetic” historical linguistics. It is not a substitute but complementary to historical linguistics. 3 TYPES OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF WORLD LANGUAGE 8/12/2023  Geneological Classification  Historical and comparative study  Tree, family, branch, group  Areal Classification  Area, zone  Language contact  Sprachbund, Dialect area etc  Typological Classification  Types  Classes  Structure 4  8/12/2023 According to Masica (2001:207)  “Areal linguistics should mean the study of the significantly non-random distribution of linguistic features in space- first of all the facts and if possible the reasons behind them.” 5 LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023  A region in which shared features among a number of languages are found with more than chance probability. 6  Linguistic Area may be defined as a geographically contiguous area, which is characterized by the existence of common linguistic features shared by 8/12/2023 genetically non-related languages.  Hence a Linguistic Area is marked by the “convergence” of linguistic features of various languages spoken in a particular region regardless of the fact that these languages may belong to different families or subfamilies. 7  8/12/2023 The phenomenon of Linguistic Area is also referred to by the terms “Sprachbunde” “diffusion area”, “affinité linguistique”, “adstratum” “multifamilial convergence (or diffusion) area” (as opposed to multilingual” or “multidialectal convergence 8 area”) etc. TERMINOLOGIES RELATED TO LINGUISTICS AREA 8/12/2023  Sprachbund is a German word.  Sprachbund – Federation of Language.  Sprachbund is also known as Linguistic area which refer to the group of languages which share linguistic features resulting from the geographical proximity and language contact. 9 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 8/12/2023  The concept of Linguistic Area had been recognized for a very long time  The scholars of Prague school, like Jakobson, Mathesius, Trnka, Skalicka were the first to identify such areas.  Nicolai Trubetzkoy (1923): He used the German term ‘Sprachbund’ in his paper presented in a conference.  The concept of language union first clearly formulated by Nicolai Troubetzkoy.  Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson as early as 1931, in their long discussion on such kinds of areas like Caucasus and Balkans  but it was H. C. Velton who has discovered the term 10 “Linguistic Area  8/12/2023  The term Linguistic Area was made popular by M.B. Emeneau (1956) who, ironically, defined with little hesitance, the concept of Linguistic Area in a footnote as:  “…..an area which includes languages belonging to more than one family but showing traits in common which are found not to belong to other members of (at least) one of the families”. 11 COLIN P. MASICA 8/12/2023  Colin P. Masica in 1971 wrote a doctoral dissertation on syntactic and semantic typology of the area.  Book: Defining a linguistic area: South Asia (1976) 12 MASICA 1976 8/12/2023  Word order  Causative verbs  Conjunctive Participles  Explicator compound verbs  Dative construction  Dative construction feature is fully accepted as an areal feature of South Asia 13 REASON OF FEATURE SHARING 8/12/2023  The reason for such sharing lies in contact between speakers whose own language comes under the influence of others in their environment.  there are many contact scenarios and many situations of bi- or multilingualism (Field 2002) in which individuals speak different languages to varying extents. 14 SOME EXAMPLES OF LINGUISTIC AREAS 8/12/2023  The Caucasus  The Balkans  Northern Eurasia  Ethiopia  South Asia/India  South-East Asia (Vietnamese and Thai) 15 8/12/2023 16 8/12/2023 17 THE CAUCASUS 8/12/2023  Medieval Arab geographers called the Caucasus “a mountain of tongues.”  Catford (1978) can only find three features shared by all indigenous languages of the Caucasus:  uvular consonants;  glottalized obstruents;  Ergativity  Glottalized obstruents are shared with Indo- European and Turkic languages of the Caucasus.  Languages from Southern Alaska upto Central 18 California CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES 8/12/2023  The term “Caucasian languages” usually applies only to languages that belong to one of the three linguistic families indigenous to the Caucasus:  Kartvelian (also referred to as South Caucasian),  West Caucasian (Northwest Caucasian, Abkhaz- Adyghe), and  East Caucasian (Northeast Caucasian, Nakh- Daghestanian). 19 BALKAN SPRACHBUND 8/12/2023  The Balkans, also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in Southeast Europe with various geographical and historical definitions.  The Balkans are usually characterized as comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montene gro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia 20 8/12/2023 21  8/12/2023 SOME RELATED CONCEPTS 22 DIALECT 8/12/2023  a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language.  Despite the differences, they are mutually intelligible.  Dialect is also defined by other factors like social class and ethnicity. 23 ISOGLOSS 8/12/2023  Greek word  -iso- ‘same’, gloss-tongue  Dialect geographer draw a line between the area where one item was found and areas where others were found, showing a boundary for each area called an Isogloss.  In other words, a line on map which represents the geographical boundary (limit) of regional linguistic variants is called Isogloss 24  8/12/2023  For example, in the USA the greasy/greazy isogloss is a line roughly corresponding to the Mason-Dixon line which separates the North Midlands from the South Midlands; it runs across the middle of the country until it dives down across south-eastern Kansas, western Oklahoma and Texas. North of the line, greasy is pronounced with s; south of the line it is pronounced with z. 25 MASON-DIXON LINE 8/12/2023 26 WAVE THEORY 8/12/2023 It is based on the assumption that changes in language spread outwards from centers of influence to the surrounding areas in much the same way that a wave spreads from the place where a stone is dropped into a pool. 27 CONVERGENCE 8/12/2023  Language convergence occurs primarily through diffusion, the spread of a feature from one language to another.  Causes- highly depends upon the specifics of the contact between the languages involved.  One of the major causes are motivated by bilingual code mixing or code alternation  Why is it so?  To be full expressive or to express similar meaning 28 SOME EXAMPLES 8/12/2023  The border between Oriya (Indo Aryan language) and Telugu (Dravidian) i.e. Ganjam presents caste communities which are said to be “indiscriminately bilingual”.  The Saurashtran weaver community, settled in Tamil speaking Madurai an unknown number of century ago (as early as 1705), still retains its Indo-Aryan speech.  Kannada, a Dravidian language, has a long history of mutual convergence with Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. 29 SOME OTHER EXAMPLES OF CONVERGENCE 8/12/2023  Sanskritization,  Persianization and  Englishization 30 DIVERGENCE 8/12/2023  Linguistic evolution, as a resul t of which certain dialects of one language are isolated from the o ther dialects of this language an d form independent lang uages.  The opposite of convergence. 31  8/12/2023 SOUTH ASIA: LINGUISTIC AREA 32 SOUTH ASIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023  Linguists estimate that over 2000 languages and their varieties are spoken in the South Asian region. These belong to at least eight major language families spoken in various countries of South Asia. Some languages are still isolates, meaning thereby that their affiliation to a known language family is not yet established. 33 SOUTH ASIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023  In their historical and functional contexts, the South Asian languages exhibit an extended tradition of diffusion, mutual contact, and convergence.  This earlier, and ongoing, linguistic convergence (Sprachbund) between and among typologically distinct languages is also evident in their literatures, folk traditions, and three major linguistic impacts, those of Sanskritization, Persianization, and Englishization. 34 SOUTH ASIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023  The processes of convergence continue to be evident in contemporary languages in their linguistic hybridizations and fusions in every region of South Asia. These contact phenomena are evident in what may be described as linguistic ‘‘look-alikeness’’ in the languages of the region beyond the lexical level: the areal characteristics of the South Asian languages have been studied, discussed, and illustrated in convergence processes in grammar, phonology, discourse, and literary creativity. 35 SOUTH ASIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023  On the basis of evidences of areal features and the convergence processes in grammar, phonology, discourse, and literary creativity, India/South Asia has been characterized as a linguistic, literary, and sociolinguistic area. For example, Kannada, a Dravidian language, has a long history of mutual convergence with Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. This type of productive process is also evident in other Dravidian languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam.  There is indeed an extensive and much-discussed body of research on such convergence, termed the Indo-Aryanization of Dravidian languages and 36 Dravidianization of Indo-Aryan languages PERSIANIZATION 8/12/2023  With the gradual stabilization of Mughul power, Persian became the language of courts, administration, and literary creativity in several regions of South Asia. The domination, diffusion, and social penetration of the Persian language cultivated a distinct literary and intellectual culture that left a deep impact on South Asia’s major languages, literatures, and a variety of administrative and legal genres. 37 K. V. SUBBARAO (2008) 8/12/2023  In the South Asian subcontinent, languages belonging to different genetic groups exhibit common structural traits largely owing to two main reasons:  (1) thousands of years of prolonged language contact amongst languages because of intense bi- and multilingualism, and  (2) the fact that all these languages (except Khasi, and Kashmiri) are verb final and verb finality plays an instrumental role in the manifestation of many identical structural traits. 38 SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES 8/12/2023 There are 8 countries in South Asian Region:  India  Pakistan  Bangladesh  Bhutan  Nepal  Sri Lanka  Maldives  and Afghanistan Details about South Asian Countries: 39 https://www.library.illinois.edu/ias/sacollec tion/sa_countries/ 8/12/2023 40 LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN SOUTH ASIA 8/12/2023  Indo-European  Indo-Aryan (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives)  Indo-Iranian including Nuristani (Afghanistan, Pakistan)  Dravidian(Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives)  Austroasiatic  Mon-Khmer (India)  Munda (India, Nepal, Bangladesh) 41 LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN SOUTH ASIA 8/12/2023  Tibeto-Burman (India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bhutan)  Tai-Kadai (India)  Great Andamanic (India)  Austronesian  Angan (India)  Malay (Sri Lanka)  Turkic (Afghanistan) 42 LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN SOUTH ASIA 8/12/2023  Isolates  Burushaski in Pakistan  Shom Pen and Nahaliin in India  Vedda in Sri Lanka  Kusunda in Central Nepal 43 INDIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023  India which has largest number of languages and language families leading to unparalleled diversity in the region.  India represents seven language families: 44 INDIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA 8/12/2023 1. Indo-Aryan with 574 languages, 2. Tibeto-Burman with 226 languages, 3. Dravidian with 153 languages, 4. Austro-Asiatic, with 65 languages, 5. and the small, but extremely vulnerable language families of Great Andamanese (2), 6. Austronesian ( 2 languages ‘Angan’ the Onge- Jarawa) and Tai-Kadai (6). 45 8/12/2023 46 INDIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA: INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES 8/12/2023  Indo-Aryan languages occupy the largest geographical area in the country and are spread in the vast area covering the North, West, East, Central and parts of South of India. 47 INDIA AS A LINGUISTIC AREA: INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES 8/12/2023  Modern Indo-Aryan languages or New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages can be classified into four major groups depending upon the geographical areas they are spoken into. These are: - North Western languages such as Sindhi, Lahnda, Punjabi and Roma; -Central languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Pahari, Rajasthani, and Bhojpuri; -Eastern languages such as Bangla, Assamese, Oriya, Maithili, and Bihari -South Western languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, and Konkani.  There is a chain of mutual intelligibility that runs through Indo-Aryan languages from West to East and from North to Central India with two points of the 48 end of the chain unintelligible to each other. TIBETO-BURMAN 8/12/2023  Tibeto-Burman languages belong to the Sino- Tibetan language family and are spoken in the Himalayan ranges  stretching from Northwest India to Northeast India and further extending to Nepal, Burma and China. 49 AUSTROASIATIC LANGUAGES 8/12/2023  Austroasiatic languages known to be the oldest and predating any other language family except those represented in the Andaman Islands.  ` consists of two major groups—  Munda represented in Central and East of India and  Santhali is the major Munda language  Mon-Khmer languages spoken in the Northeast in Meghalaya hills and in Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.  Khasi occupies the major position among Mon-Khmer languages.  Nicobarese with five varieties are not given any official 50 status. Nicobarese languages are not well documented  AUSTRO-ASIATIC West East 8/12/2023 Mon-Khmer Nahali Munda (Kol) Mon Khmer Khasi Nicobarese Wa East West Central Southern Kūrkū Kharia Juang Sora Pareng Gutob Remo Santhali Mundari Ho Bhumij (Source: Pinnow 1959)  Nicobarese is the link between Munda and Mon. 51  Nahali data is scanty. DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES 8/12/2023  Dravidian languages occupy the Southern part of India although Kurux and Malto, the two languages of the same family are spoken in Central India and thus, are known as North Dravidian languages. The term is reserved to include Brahui, the only Dravidian language spoken in the Northwest of Pakistan. 52 SOUTH ASIAN AREAL FEATURES: RETROFLEX 8/12/2023  Retroflex segments of one kind or another occur in the vast majority of South Asian languages, including some from each of the main families represented in the region, and that the distribution of languages with retroflexion corresponds very closely to the area of South Asia.  Retroflexion extends well beyond the limits of South Asia into what is commonly considered East Asia (i. e., China) 53 WORD-ORDER 8/12/2023  Word-order- SOV,  Postposition 54 REDUPLICATION 8/12/2023  Being an important structural phenomenon of the South Asian languages, reduplication plays a vital role in the system of communication and so demands a vivid description of its functional and formal aspects with reference to the semantic interpretation as well.  Indo-Arayan and in Tibeto-Burman  On the basis of the morpho-semantic structures, the T.B. languages can be divided into main verb reduplicating and non main verb reduplicating languages. 55 DATIVE-SUBJECT CONSTRUCTION 8/12/2023  Dative subject constructions sentences in which the logical subject of a clause takes the dative case, rather than the nominative case are a widespread areal feature of South Asian languages, though also found in other language families, such as Germanic. 56 CONJUNCTIVE PARTICIPLE CONSTRUCTION 8/12/2023  Conjunctive Participle Construction  Example: mɛ̃ ɡhər jaː kər khaːnaː khaːū̃ɡaː 57 8/12/2023 58