Established in the year 1968, the Dept of Linguistics has been providing an opportunity to advance teaching and research in Linguistics. Since its inception the department has provided post-graduate teaching and research facilities leading to M.Phil and Ph.D., degree in linguistics. In addition to the above the Department offers a full-fledged under-graduate course in linguistics (for both boys and girls separately) and two post graduated diploma courses namely, PG Diploma in Linguistics, and PG Diploma in language of Advertising Media and Market. Keeping with the changing trends in the subject the department regularly updates its syllabi.

There have been many scholarly contributions by the faculty of the department in individual capacity and by the department as a whole. Recognizing these scholarly contributions in terms of teaching and research, the UGC awarded Special Assistance Programme (SAP) to the department. The Phase-I of DRS is completed and now the department has entered Phase-II of DRS-SAP.

The department is Wi-Fi. It has a language lab consisting of around 20 PCS with multimedia support and hi-speed internet connection supported courses. Further the departmental Seminar Library is rich and has more than five thousand titles on various themes of linguistics and Urdu linguistics.

The Department attracts many foreign students in all its courses. The Department has regularly been organizing both national and international seminars, conferences and workshops; and publishes an annual journal on Linguistics – the Aligarh Journal of Linguistics.

7^th Students’ Conference of Linguistics in India

(SCONLI-7)

The Students’ Conference of Linguistics in India (SCONLI) is an international conference organized annually by students. This conference has seen more than half decade from academic year 2006-2012. The aim of this conference has been to organize a meet for the research students of different areas in linguistics. It provides a platform for the students/research scholars to present and discuss their research work dealing with different areas of Linguistics amidst a national and international audience. This conference is only one of its kind, where the papers are peer- reviewed (at least two) and one from faculty of respective area of the study. At present, there are 11 students Core-Committee members representing different universities. SCONLI has much more in terms of:

· Chairing of the session by students

· Peer reviewed papers (ideally three reviews of every paper)

· Special Lectures

· Workshops

· Oral Presentations

· Poster Sessions

· Publication by Students

Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University in collaboration with the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, is going to organize SCONLI-7, after six successful years of the conference. This two day conference would be followed by a one-day workshop in different areas of Linguistics.

This year SCONLI received more than 100 papers from different areas of Core & Applied Linguistics, out of which 34 papers have been selected for oral and 12 papers have been selected for poster presentations. SCONLI-7 boasts of the participants from across India as well as 5 from outside India.

Lt. General (Retd.) Zameer Uddin Shah, Vice-chancellor , Aligarh Muslim University will inaugurate the conference and Prof. Awadhesh K. Mishra, Director, CIIL, Mysore will be the keynote speaker. Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya (University of Delhi) will deliver a lecture as one of the Distinguished Speakers of the conference. Prof. Dipika Mukharjee, Affiliated Fellow International Institute of Asian Studies Leiden, Netherlands will deliver a special lecture.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Genitive Case in Arabic: Structural or Inherent?
Mustafa Al-Humari
Jawaharlal Nehru University
mustafa4008@gmail.com

I argue that Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has two distinct types of genitive Case despite having the same case morphology. Genitive case in nominal phrases, particularly Construct State construction (henceforth CS), which is assigned/licensed by the head bearing [+N] feature, is an abstract Case whereas genitive case in the prepositional phrases, which assigned by a head bearing [-N] feature, is a default case.

The paper is devoted to arriving at a uniform syntactic account to resolve the paradox and keep Chomsky's distinction intact by arguing that Arabic facts can serve as evidence for the existence of abstract Case in UG and its role in determining the morphological case in post- syntactic morphology i.e. Chomsky (1981, 1986, 1995, 2000, 2001& 2005) and Legate (2008) and contra to Marantz (1984) and McFadden (2004) among others where morphological case does not determine and realise abstract Case.

In general, the paper seeks to defend Chomsky's (1981 & 1986) inherent vs. structural Case distinction for the ability to remain intact by arguing for further abstract vs. default Case to capture both types of genitive Case in a smooth and plausible way.

Keywords: Construct State (CS), of-insertion, possessive-genitive, abstract Case, inherent Case, structural Case, syntactic Case, morphological case [m-case]

References
Bardeas, S. (2009). A minimalist approach to the Semitic construct state. York papers in Linguistics 9, 1-22.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries. In Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, eds. Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik. 89-156. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2001a). Beyond explanatory adequacy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
Chomsky, N. (2001b). Derivation by phase. Ken Hale: A Life in Linguistics:1–52.
Chomsky, N. (2005). On phases. Unpublished manuscript. MIT.
Fassi-Fehri, A. (1993). Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Dordecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Hale, K., & J. Keyser (1993). On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Hale, Kenneth/Keyser, Samuel Jay (eds): The view from building 20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (53-109).
Hale, K. & J. Keyser. (1998). The Basic Elements of Argument Structure. In Paper from The UPenn/MIT Roundtable on Argument Structure and Aspect: MITWPL 32, ed. Heidi Harley. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Cambridge, 73-118.
Legate, J. (2008). Morphological and abstract Case. Linguistic Inquiry 39:55–101.
Marantz, A. (1984). On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
McFadden, T. (2004). The Position of Morphological Case in the Derivation: A Study on the Syntax- Morphology Interface. Unpublished Ph.D. Diss, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Mohammad, M. A. (1999). Checking and licencing inside DP in Palestinian Arabic. In E. Benmamoun (Ed.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XII: Papers from the twelfth annual symposium on Arabic Linguistics, pp. 27–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Ritter, E. (1986). NSO noun phrases in Modern Hebrew. In J. McDonough and B. Plunkett (Eds.), Proceedings of NELS 17. UMass, Amherst:GLSA.
Ritter, E. (1991). Two functional categories in noun phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew.
Syntax and Semantics: Perspectives on Phrase Structure: Heads and Licensing 25, 7–62.

The Morpho-Syntax of Nominal Particle -wɑ
Deepak Alok
Jawaharlal Nehru University
deepakalok06@gmail.com

There are two forms of noun; base form and inflected form in Magahi, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language. Inflected forms are made by the adding particles such as -wɑ, -mɑ, -iɑ and -ɑ to the base forms. Alok (2010) claims that these nominal particles are allomorphs of the basic form -wa and are used to show different linguistic and psychological expressions in Magahi. In this paper, I examine the morpho-syntactic property of the particle -wɑ. I argue that the nominal particle is morpheme which is added to the base form of a noun in the lexicon rather than it is a functional head in the syntax. More specifically, I shall show that assuming -wɑ as a head poses a problem for syntactic analysis.

Key words: Morpho-Syntax, Nominal particle, Morpheme, Lexicon, Functional head

References:

Alok, D. (Feb, 2010). Magahi noun-particles: A semantic and pragmatic study. Paper presented in Fourth Students’ Conference of Linguistics in India (SCONLI 4), Mumbai, India.

Bošković, Ž. (2005). On the locality of left branch extraction and the structure of NP. Studia Linguistica 59, 1-45.

Bošković, Ž. (2010). Phases beyond clauses. Paper presented at GLOW 33, Wrocław, Poland.

Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries. In R. Martin, D. Michaels, & J. Uriagereka (Eds.), Step by step (pp. 89-155). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, N. (2001). Derivation by phase. In M. Kenstowicz (Ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language (pp. 1-52). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dayal, V. (2004). Number Marking and (In)definiteness in Kind Terms. Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 393–450.

Dayal, V. (2009). Semantic Variation and Pleonastic Determiners: The Case of the Plural Definite Generic, In N. C. D. Khuong, Richa and S. Sinha, (Eds.), The Fifth Asian GLOW: Conference Proceedings, CIIL (Mysore) and FOSSSIL (New Delhi).

Kidwai, A. (2000). XP-Adjunction in Universal Grammar: Scrambling and Binding in Hindi-Urdu. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kuno, S. 1972. Functional sentence perspective -- a case study from Japanese and English. Linguistic Inquiry 3, 269-320.

Kuno, S. 1973. The Structure of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Löbner, S. (1985). Definites. Journal of Semantics 4, 279-326.

Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nakanishi, K. in prep. Prosodic patterns of the Topic Marker wa in Japanese and its Implication for the Syntactic Structure.

Ms. University of Pennsylvania.

Politeness as a Speaker’s Choice: A Case of Persian Expressions
Marzieh Bashirpour

Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
sara.bashirpour@gmail.com

Language is verbal communication which its speakers use for interpersonal relationships. To have better interaction or relationship, people should be polite with each other and for that reason they have to control their speech behavior which is based on their linguistic choice. The choice of variant speech depends on social factors such as age, gender, class and power which always occur in combination with each other. Coulmas (2005) believes that the speaker politeness and expression politeness is not the same in any language, it is so for Persian as well. What is said in a formal situation and noticed as an impolite expression may be unnoticed in a conversation among friends. The paper shows that direct expressions are mostly impolite and indirect ones are more polite in formal situations. But there are exceptions also in which by choosing indirect expressions, the intention becomes impolite or sarcasm in some situations while the form is polite that they fail to apply in the Leech’s (1983) maxims. The younger generations in Iran seem to deviate from some maxims proposed by Leech in 1983, due to change in social factors with respect to time.

Key words: Speaker’s choice, Leech’s Maxim, Persian expression.

References:
Coulmas, F., 1992a. Linguistic etiquette in Japanese society. In Richard J. Watts, Sachiko Ide and Konrad Ehlich (eds.), Politeness in language: Studies in its history, theory and practice. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 299-323.
Leech, N. G., 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.

The Grammar of Hindi-English Code-Switching
Sakshi Bhatia
University of Delhi
sakshi618@gmail.com

In a country like India, bilingualism or ‘the regular use of two or more languages (or dialects)’(Grosjean 2008) in our everyday lives is extremely common and all pervasive. This paper investigates Hindi-English bilingual speech focusing on intrasentential code switching (henceforth CS) ‘in which an alternation [between languages] occurs below sentential boundaries’ (MacSwan 2004) and is divided into three broad sections.

The first section will present a typology of Hindi-English CS data.

In line with Muysken (2000), who provides a basic typology for CS, we find clear evidence for both insertion and alternation in our dataset. We can identify insertion of X⁰ elements or heads, as well as phrasal constituents such as DPs and adjuncts in the dataset. Alternation where CS has taken place at the clause boundary can also be seen.

The second section seeks to give a theoretical treatment to the data utilizing two frameworks: the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model and a Minimalist approach to CS.

The MLF model (Myers-Scotton1997, 2002, 2006) operates on the idea of an underlying asymmetry between the languages involved. Notice the contrast between (3) a, b and c to this effect:

(1a) tropical forests -mẽ bǝhʊt sare trees hε̃

Loc many all.mp be.pres.p

There are many trees in tropical forests.

(1b) *tropical forests in bǝhʊt sare trees hε̃

(1b) which manipulates the language of the case-marker is ruled out because case-markers constitute a type of morpheme which is required by the System morpheme principle to come only from the Matrix Language, which is Hindi in this case.

MacSwan’s(1999) Minimalist account predicts that CS below X⁰ would not be permitted, and CS involving head movement should be ruled out. Thus, (2b) is ruled out because head movement between the aspectual and the verb would lead to the formation of a code-switched complex X⁰ which would be unpronounceable.

(2a) student kitab bech rǝha hε

book sell stay.imprf.ms be.s

The student is selling the book.

(2b) *The student is bech rǝha the book

Therefore, we find that the MLF model and the Minimalist approach offer us some insight into the grammar of CS for the Hindi-English dataset. However, the data from Hindi-English CS also raises problems for the above models.

The third section discusses one of these puzzles: Code-switched DPs.

Feature Checking or asymmetry based models cannot account for the simple contrast between (3a) and (3b)

(3a) *[those bǝcce] (3b) [vokids]

It is not clear what featural differences there are between the two DPs with both forms having the categorial feature N, which should satisfy the [uN] feature of the D, in addition to the same phi-features, or which language would be the Matrix language. In this regard, work on Nanosyntax (Starke 2011) and Traditional NPs (Bošković 2011) provide insights regarding the differences which are discussed in this section.

References

Bošković, Ž. (2011).LISSIM 5 Handouts.Kangra, May/June 2011.

Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Di Sciullo, A.-M., Muysken, P. & Singh, R. (1986).Government and Code-switching. Journal of Linguistics 22, 1-24.

Grosjean, F. (2008).Studying Bilinguals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

MacSwan, J. (1999). A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Code switching. New York: Garland.

MacSwan, J. (2004). Code switching and Grammatical Theory. In T. K. Bhatia and W.C. Ritchie (eds.), The Handbook of Bilingualism. 283-311. New York: Blackwell Publishing.

Muysken, P. (2000). Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Myers-Scotton, C. (1997). Code-switching. In F. Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 217- 237. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Myers-Scotton, C. (2002). Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes. New York: Oxford University Press.

Myers-Scotton, C. (2006). Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Starke, Michal. (2011). Towards Elegant Parameters: Language Variation Reduces to the Size of Lexically Stored Trees. Electronic version available at http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001183.

Comparatives in Hindi-Urdu
Sakshi Bhatia, Gurmeet kaur & Jyoti Iyer
DU, IIT-D & JNU
sakshi618@gmail.com, gurmeetk88@gmail.com

This paper will look at various ways of expressing comparison in Hindi-Urdu, with the aim of answering the following questions: (1) What is the syntax and semantics of these constructions? (2) What is common/different across the sub-types?

First we provide an overview of Hindi-Urdu comparative constructions across syntactic categories, and degree morphemes. This is followed by an evaluation of zyaadaa based on Bhatt and Takahashi (2011).

In Hindi-Urdu, major syntactic categories such as predicative adjectives and nouns express comparison through similar means. This includes the –se comparative and the relative-correlative comparative constructions.

Degree morphology can be analyzed either as ‘analytic comparative’ type – where words like ‘more’ and ‘most’ serve as comparative and superlative markers for all syntactic categories – or as ‘cross-categorial comparative and superlative morphemes + functional adjective/ adverb’ type (Pancheva 2012). Bhatt and Takahashi (2011) and Bhatt (2012) argue for (phonologically) null -er for Hindi-Urdu which is compatible with Bresnan (1973), for whom the morphology is analyzable as:

a. -er + many/ much = more b. -est + many/ much = most

While Bhatt & Takahashi (2011) argue that zyaadaa is many/much, we observe a split – for some speakers, zyaadaa functions as many/much, for others as more (many/much + -er). In non-obligatory contexts of zyaadaa the presence of zyaadaa sets a benchmark for comparison, thus making the comparison norm-related.

Next we explore the issue of whether Hindi-Urdu is an implicit comparison language or an explicit comparison language.

This section is devoted to showing that Hindi-Urdu is not an implicit comparison language. Note that the explanation for an explicit comparison language with no overt morphological degree head would require us to posit a covert -er. Evidence for the presence of -er comes from Keneddy’s (2007) tests which are discussed in detail.

Looking ‘inside the than-clause’ at wh-movement, quantifiers and ellipses.

This section covers Pancheva’s (2012) diagnostics for the nature of degree operator movement. No island effects other than coordinate structure constraint are shown by comparatives or sub comparatives in Hindi-Urdu, suggesting that there is no degree operator movement. Condition C-Violation facts are utilized for delineating the c-command relations within comparatives. Looking at phrasal comparatives within a Reduction analysis involves testing for presence/absence of reduction operations, which include Gapping, Conjunction Reduction (Lechner 2001, 2004); TP-ellipsis, Stripping (Merchant 2007). We will show that some but not all reduction operations are attested in Hindi. There is reason to believe that what looks like NP-ellipsis is only discourse governed deletion, in which case Hindi does not have comparative sub-deletion. This indicates that Reduction analysis cannot be used for Hindi, which then seems to be a language of the Direct Analysis type. We evaluate this in

detail in the final section of the paper.

References:

Beck, S. (2011) "Comparison Constructions". In C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger and P. Portner (eds.): Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning .Bd. 2. Berlin (u.a.): De Gruyter Mouton, 1341-1389.

Bhatt, R. (2012). “Many or more: the Hindi-Urdu degree word zyaadaa and the analysis of Bare Comparatives”. ms.UMass, Amherst.

Bhatt, R. and R. Pancheva (2004).“Late Merger of Degree Clauses”.Linguistic Inquiry 35, 1-45.

Bhatt, R. and S. Takahashi (2011).“Reduced and Unreduced Phrasal Comparatives”.Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29, 581-620.

Bresnan, J. (1973). “The Syntax of the Comparative Clause Construction in English,” Linguistic Inquiry 4, 275–343.

Heim, I. (2000). “Degree Operators and Scope”.Proceedings of SALT 10, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, Cornell Linguistics Club, 40–64.

Kennedy, C. (2007).“Modes of Comparison”.Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society 43.

Pancheva, R. (2012). LISSIM 6 Handouts.Kangra. June 1-15, 2012.

Sag, I. (1976).Deletion and Logical Form.Doctoral Dissertation.MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

Williams, E. (1974). Rule Ordering in Syntax.Doctoral Dissertation.MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

Forms and Functions of Anaphors in Magahi

Shweta Chandra
Banaras Hindu University
shweta.shar10@gmail.com

Apart from other linguistic areas, there have been various works on different syntactic aspects of Magahi like agreement, movement, small clause, complex predicates etc. Still some areas remain untouched. Anaphora is one among these areas. Anaphora is deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs. It does some special syntactico- semantic functions like; discourse constructions, binding relations of different syntactic expressions, dialogue comprehensions etc. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the form and functions of Anaphors in Magahi, especially anaphoric relations and ambiguity in terms of reflexive pronouns. In others words, in Magahi the antecedent of a given pronoun might be uncertain and referential relations are one of the means that constitute coherence of texts. However, an anaphoric relation helps in resolving what a pronoun, or a noun phrase refers to. Human, readers and listeners can quickly and unconsciously work out the pronoun. The underlying process of how this is done is yet unclear, especially when one encounters more complex sentences in any language. Consequently, the study on anaphoric relations has emerged as an active and challenging area of research in Linguistics as well as in Computational Linguistics. This study is an attempt to explore how Anaphors and Antecedent compensate for most of the roles of Anaphors in Magahi.

References
Bhatt, Rajesh. “Long Distance Agreement in Hindi- Urdu”. Natural language & linguistic theory. 2005 (23): 757- 807.
Chatterji, Suniti Kumar. The origin and development of Bengali language.3 Vols. London: George Allen and Unwin, Reprint 1970.
Cole, Peter and L. Sung. Head movement and long- distance reflexives. Linguistic Inquiry 1994 (25): 355- 406.
Davison, Alice. “Long- distance anaphora in Hindi/ Urdu” . In Long- distance reflexives. Syntax and Semantics 33, edited by Peter Cole et al., 47- 82. Irvine, CA: Academic Press, 2001.
Jayaseelan, K. Lexical Anaphors and Pronouns in Malayalam. In: Lust et al (eds.) 2000: 113- 168.
Jeffers, Robert J. “The position of the Bihari Dialects in Indo-Aryan”. Indo- Iraniyan journal 18 (1976): 215- 225.
Jurafsky, Daniel and James H. Martin. Speech and language processing: an introduction to natural language processing, computational linguistics, and speech recognition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010.
Gair, James W. and Wali Kashi. “Hindi agreement as Anaphor”. Linguistics. 1989 (27): 45-70.
Grierson, G. A. Linguistic Survey of India. Indo Aryan Family, Eastern Group. Pt. II: Specimens of the Bihari and Oriya Language. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas. 1903. (Reprinted 1967).
Halliday, M. & R. Hasan. Cohesion in English. (Longman English Language Series 9).London: Longman. 1976.
Mahajan, A. 1990. The A/A- bar distinction and Movement Theory. Ph.D. Thesis. MIT. Cambridge, Massachusetts.Mahajan, Anoop. 1989. Agreement and Agreement Phrases. MIT.2003

Evaluation of Linguistic Constraints on Code-switching in Bangla-English Bilingual Speech
Basudha Das
ISI, Kolkata
basudha1983@gmail.com

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the validity of three main linguistic constraints on code-switching in the context of Bangla-English bilingual speech as spoken by a limited number of speakers in various informal settings. The study of language contact has been flourished since the works of Haugen and Weinreich in the early fifties and since then many dominant approaches have been developed. Based on these approaches various models of constraints on code-switching have been proposed and formulated (Bentahila et al. 1983; Belazi, Rubin and Turbio 1992, 1994; Di Sciullo, Muysken and Sing 1986; Kachru 1977; Myers-Scotton 1993; Nishimura 1997; Pfaff 1979). These models of constraints mainly “fall into four major groups: language specific constraints, more general and universal constraints, theoretical constraints and matrix language approaches to the constraints” (Naseh 1997:202). For the purpose of this study, only three linguistic constraints (the ‘equivalence of structure’, the ‘size of constituent’, and the ‘free morpheme’) are considered.

The ‘equivalence of structure’ constraint was proposed by Poplack (1980) and it is one of the most influential constraints which attracted researcher’s attention. Poplack proposed ‘code switches will tend to occur at points in discourse where juxtaposition of L1 and L2 elements does not violate a syntactic rule of either language, i.e. at points around which the surface structures of the two languages map onto each other. According to this simple constraint, a switch is inhibited from occurring within a constituent, generated by a rule from one language which is not shared by the other” (Poplack 1980:586). The second constraint is ‘size of constituent’. It states that major and main constituents tend to be switched more frequently than the smaller constituents. Therefore, it can be said that sentences and clauses tend to be switched more frequently than single constituents like noun, verbs, adjective, adverbs etc (Poplack 1980). For the purpose of this study, the third and final important constraint is ‘free morpheme’ constraint which states that code-switching cannot take place “between a bound morpheme and a lexical form unless the latter has been phonologically integrated into the language of the bound morpheme” (Sankoff and Poplack 1981:5). The objective of this paper is to examine the validity of these three constraints mentioned above in the bilingual context of structurally different two languages Bangla and English. Data has been analyzed to examine the syntax of intrasentential code-switching.

So far many research studies have been done in various pairs of languages and there has been a tendency to consider that these constraints are universal and valid. The thought behind this study was to see how far it can be true in the context of Bangla-English bilingual context. In the Bangla-English bilingual speech community, the increased tendency to incorporate English elements in Bangla sentences is a remarkable feature and there must be various reasons behind it as well as various patterns of code-switching. But this study will only concentrate on how far these three linguistic constraints are applicable in this particular bilingual speech event. This is a really novice attempt to examine the matter by analyzing the speech data collected from a group of youngsters residing in Kolkata. Their informal conversations were recorded at four sessions, each session of 15 minutes. The data consists of only young generation’s informal speech style.

A Preliminary Description of Koch Rabha
kalyan Das
DHSS, IIT-Guwahati

kalyanpbc2@gmail.com

Dialectal variation often provides important cues to sound change among varieties of a language across temporal domain and also within a time span. The changes affecting one variety and making it different from the other variety also explains some of the universal properties of language which may also occur in some other language or dialect if attempts were made to find them. There has been no comparative phonological study of the various dialects of Rabha, although a few studies were done to describe the Rongdani variety of the language. This paper makes an attempt to give a preliminary description of the sounds and syllables of the Koch variety of Rabha based on observation and analysis of 215 words pronounced in Koch Rabha by two speakers. The study also focuses on finding those areas which make Koch Rabha a distinct variety from the already studied Rongdani Rabha. A detail look at the information gathered from the rendering of the 215 words selected for the present study revealed that Koch Rabha does not possess voiceless palatal plosive [c] which is found in the phonemic inventory of Rongdani Rabha as mentioned by Basumatary (2004). While looking into the vowel phonemes in Koch Rabha, acoustic information provided evidence for the existence of an unrounded central vowel in Koch Rabha instead of the unrounded back high vowel [ɯ] found in the descriptions of the Rongdani variety. This may be due to a tendency to opt for the neutral vowel from the point of view of articulation in Koch Rabha. Koch Rabha also shows its distinctiveness in initial consonant clusters in syllable. Whereas Rongdani Rabha allows syllable initial [kr] cluster and [tl] cluster, Koch Rabha does not allow such clusters and puts a vowel between such consonant sequences. It is assumed that these preliminary results will be only starting points for a more comprehensive and detailed comparison of the dialects and such studies would certainly provide insights for language evolution as well as synchronic variations of languages.

References

Basumatary. P C (2004) A Study in Cultural and Linguistic Affinities of the Boros and the Rabhas of Assam, Ph D Dissertation, Gauhati Univertisy.

Joseph and Burling (2006) The Comparative Phonology of the Baro Garo Languages, CIIL, Mysore.

Lisker, L and Abramson, A S (1964) A Cross-Language Study of voicing in Initial Stops: Acoustical Measurements

Sarmah. P (2009) Tone System of Dimasa and Rabha: A Phonetic and Phonological Study. Ph D Dissertation, University of Florida.

A Special Function of Onomatopoeic Words in Terms of ‘Verbal Classifiers’ in Thai
Itsarate Dolphen
Khon Kaen University, Thailand
itsdol@kku.ac.th

Onomatopoeic words are normally found in all languages. They are formed in vocal imitation of a natural sound whose sound suggests the sense associated with it. Onomatopoeic words can be used largely as the naming of a thing or action functioning as a noun or a verb. However, they are overlooked in the research literature and published grammars of Thai, and they are not studied in terms of ‘verbal classifiers’ that count the number of times an action expressed by a verb as it has semantic features that are employed to count or measure.

This paper aims to explore the onomatopoeic words functioning as so-called “verbal classifiers’ in Thai theoretically by using a semantic interpretation. A situational approach is proposed to analyze linguistic data. The data used in this paper were collected from current Thai usage found in various documents: newspapers, novels, short stories, academic articles, and interviews. They were retrieved from the “CU-concordance” produced by the department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University. Some of the data analyzed in this paper were also retrieved from worldwide Longdo Dictionary on the website; http:// dict.longdo.com, http://thai-language.com, and some from the researcher’s own speech.

The findings reveal that onomatopoeic words can function as verbal classifiers and realize their semantic interpretations differently from nominal classifiers. The onomatopoeic verbal classifiers collocate with verbs that identify an “event” rather an “item.” It has been found that in terms of situation types, following the approach of C.S. Smith (1991), the onomatopoeic verbal classifiers can be grouped under the verb types of Activity and Semelfactive. The syntactic constructions of onomatopoeic verbal classifiers are parallel to nominal classifier constructions for the most part. It has been also found that onomatopoeic verbal classifiers delimit a “bounded processes” of real situation types namely, Activity and Semelfactive. The main semantic function of these verbal classifiers is to change the original semantic feature of the verb types from [-telic] into [+telic]. A further refinement is reduplication of onomatopoeic verbal classifiers as an indication of prolonging the duration of time and, additionally, to indicate continuity in an event. Because this paper differentiates onomatopoeic verbal classifiers from nominal classifiers, it helps to further illuminate the larger phenomenon of numeral classifiers in Thai.

Keywords: onomatopoeic words, semantic interpretation, classifiers, verbal classifiers, Thai language.

Reference
Burusphat, Somsonge. (2009). A Comparison of Classifiers in Thai-Kadai languages.Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University.
Coon, Jessica. (2007). Counting With Verbs in Chol Mayan. Workshops on determiners and classifiers, University of Toronto.
Dolphen, Itsarate. (2011). A Semantic Interpretation of Verbal Classifiers in Thai.Paper presented at Council on Thai Studies 2011, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.
Hundius, Hundius and Kolver, Ulrike. (1983). “Syntax and semantics of numeral classifiers in Thai”.Studies in Language 7: 105-214.
Hu, Qian (1993). The acquisition of Chinese classifiers by young Mandarin-speaking children.Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University.
Li, Charles N. and Thompson, Sandra A. (1981).Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Noss, Richard B. (1964). Thai Reference Grammar. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Placzek, James Anthony. (1978). Classifiers in Standard Thai: A Study of Semantic Relations between Head-Words and Classifiers. M.A. Thesis, University of British Columbia.
Rungrojsuwan, Sorabud. (2008). Sound-Symbolic Words in Thai.A research project funded by The Thailand research Fund, Thailand.
Saeed, John I. (2009). Semantics, third edition. Singapore: Wiley-Blackwell.
Smith, Carlotta S. (1991). The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Distribution of Topic and Focus Particles in Meeteilon
Ningombam Sanatombi Devi
Manipur University
bembemn@gmail.com

The study of Topic and Focus is not a new thing for linguistics but for Meeteilon there has been no relevant work in this area so far. This paper will examine the interesting phenomena in the usage of topic and focus particles through various types of sentences in Meeteilon. The four focus particles –-su, -phao, - tәŋ, -ngai and the two topic particles budi, and –di will be explored and analyzed.

1.1 Focus particles in Meeteilon

Meeteilon has four focus particles: -su, -phao, -ngai, and -tәŋ. They include both inclusive and exclusive focus markers. The examples in (1) are illustrative.

(1) a.	tomba-	tәŋ	yum-da	čәt	-khi
	tomba-	FOC	home-LOC	go	-ASP
	‘Only Tomba went home.’

b.	tomba-	phao	yum-da	čәt	-khi
	tomba-	FOC	home-LOC	go	-ASP
	Even Tomba went home.’

The examples above show the different uses of focus particles in Meiteilon: exclusive (1a) and inclusive (1b).

(2) a.	jon-nә	wαri	lairik-phao	pa-i
	john-NOM	story	book-NP-FOC	read-ASP
	‘John read even the story books.’

Just like in English, sentence (2a) can be rephrased in topicalised interpretation in Meiteilon also as:-

b.	Wari	lairik-phao,	jon-nә	pa-i
	Story	book-NP-FOC	John-NOM	read-ASP
	‘Even the story books, John read.’

1.2 Distribution of Topic particles ‘-budi’ and ‘-di’ in Meeteilon:-
Meeteilon has two Contrastive Topic particles –budi and –di which carries the same meaning. It can be noted here that –bu in Meeteilon is used as an Accusative case marker and –di as a topic marker. Although it is clear that -bu and –di are separate particles, budi is used as a topic marker in Meeteilon. The usage of this topic particles in Meeteilon are shown below.

(2) a.

tomba-budi,

Lairik

yaam

pa-i

tomba-TOP

Book

a lot

read-ASP

‘As for Tomba, he reads a lot.’

b.	tomba-di,	Lairik	yaam	pa-i
	tomba-TOP	Book	a lot	read-ASP
	‘As for Tomba, he reads a lot.’

1.3 Topic/Focus within Phrase

This part presents the distribution of Topic and Focus particles within phrases in Meiteilon and it goes on to suggest that focus particles can appear within the DP and topic particle outside DP.

(3) a.	lata-tәŋ-gi	lairik	-әsi	budi	Ei	pa-re
	lata-FOC-GEN	Book	this	TOP	I	read-ASP
	‘As for only Lata’s book, I have read it.’

b.	*lata-tәŋ-gi	Budi	lairik	-әsi	Ei	pa-re
	lata-FOC-GEN	TOP	book	this	I	read-ASP
	‘As for only Lata’s book, I have read it.’

This research paper will provide a detailed account on the distribution of Topic and Focus particles and their certain features associated with its construction in different types of sentences in Meeteilon.

References
Aissen, Judith.1992. Topic and Focus in Mayan. Language 68: 43-80
Bhat, D.N.S. and M.S.Ningomba . 1995 . Manipuri Grammar . Ms. CIIL. Mysore
Bhattacharya, Tanmoy. 1999. The Structure of Bhangla DP. PhD dissertation, University College London: London
Brody, Michael. 1990. Some remarks on the focus field in Hungarian. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 2.201-225.
Choudhary, Kamal Kumar. 2004, Topic and Focus in Maithili Syntax. M.Phil. dissertation ,University of Delhi.
Chelliah.Shobhana.L. 1997. A Grammar of Meithei; Mouton de Gruyter Berlin.New York
Singh, Chungkham Yashawanta, 2000. Manipuri Grammar, Rajesh Publications, Delhi

Verbal Suffixes in Inpui

W. Pinky Devi

waikhompinky91@gmail.com

L. Bijenkumar Singh

bijenkumar1@gmail.com

Assam University, Silchar

‘Inpui’ is the name of a language as well as the name of a community. It is spoken in the Haochong of Tamenglong district, Manipur which is 63 km away from the Imphal town. The language belongs to the Naga-Bodo sub group of Kabui section of Tibeto-Burman family (cf:Grierson, LSI Volume iii & part ii). It has a population of 13,000 speakers. The present paper is an attempt to describe the role of verbal suffixes in the language. In this paper we would like to draw out the suffixes which constitute the verbs in the language under study i.e., Inpui. It is an SOV language. Verbal suffix in this language can be classified into seven categories viz., suffixes forming mood, definitive, negative, imperative, interrogative, adverbial and directional. The mood suffix in the language is ‘-nom’ (p^haŋ-nom-me ‘want to see’) indicating ‘desire’ or ‘wish’. It is generally added to a dynamic verb. While certain stative verbs like ‘səy’ ‘tall’ ‘toi’ ‘short’ etc. also takes this suffix. ‘-ləm’ is the definitive suffix in the language. This language has two types of negative suffixes ‘-mək’ ( p^haŋ-mək-o ‘don’t look’) which is used in indicating non future, prohibitive, interrogative, negative, let negative and negative strengthening whereas ‘ -ləy’ ( kəday- ləy-e ‘will not play)which is used to indicate future negative only. Imperative suffixes in the language includes of ‘-zo’,‘-o’, ‘-ŋo’, ‘-t^haŋ’, ‘-ro’, (tui in-ro ‘drink water’). Interrogative suffix in the language is ‘-bo’ (nəŋ zu in-bo? ‘do you drink liquor?’). Adverbial suffix in the language is ‘-gə’(bəzaŋ-gə‘slowly’).Directional suffixes in the language constitutes - k^hut ‘inside’,-sok ‘outside’, -ka ‘upward’, -ta ‘downward’. The above points have been discussed in this paper with appropriate illustrations.

Relative Clauses in Mundari Language

Mayuri Dilip
University of Hyderabad

mayuri.dilip@gmail.com

The present paper discusses the syntactic aspects of relative clauses in Mundari language. Mundari belongs to Munda languages. Austro-Asiatic language family is classified into Mon-Khmer and Munda language groups. Munda languages are further classified into Northern and Southern Munda languages. Mundari belongs to the Northern Munda languages which are also known as Kerwarian languages. The total population according to 1997 census is 2,080,000 (Accessed on 22^nd November 2012). Mundari data is collected from Dr. Thakur Prasad Munda, PhD scholar, Ranchi University, Ranchi.

The paper begins with a structural description of relative clauses in Mundari and then moves on to the description of syntactic aspects observed in such constructions. The structural description includes the following aspects:

i. Mundari consists of External Headed Relative Clauses (EHRCs).

ii. The embedded clause is a non-finite participial form.

iii. The modifying or embedded clause occurs to the left of the relativized head.

The relativization of various grammatical categories is checked on the basis of Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) (keenan and Comrie 1977). NPAH proposition states that the relativization ceases at a point in the NPAH. Subbarao (2012) found that there will be a cession of relativization of grammatical categories at certain point in the hierarchy. However, an alternative structure different from the regular relativizing pattern is adopted in order to relativize such ceased grammatical constructions. Hence, an attempt was made to study the relative clauses in Mundari keeping in view the previous studies. The following facts were observed.

i.) Relativization of grammatical categories in NPAH were verified and found that the relativization ceased when the grammatical category of relativized head is either ablative or comitative case marked object.

ii.) It was verified whether an alternative relativizing structure exists to relativize such ceased grammatical categories. Consequently, it was found that comitative PP as head has an alternative relativizing structure where as ablative does not.

iii.) The reason behind such cession of the regular pattern of relativization was due to the thematic disassociation between the embedded verb and the relativized head.

References

Keenan, E. L. & B. Comrie. 1977. ‘Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar’, Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 8.1 pp. 63-99.

Subbarao, K.V.. 2012. South Asian Languages: A Syntactic Typology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Commercializing Laughter Through Bāngāl: A Linguistic Note on Invoking Laughter in post-partition West Bengal

Arnab Dutta
Department of Comparative Literature
Jadavpur University, Kolkata
bonjourarnab@gmail.com

The plight of a large number of post-partition East-Bengali refugees to somewhat a new ‘political’ land of West-Bengal is quite well-known and much-discussed within the realm of marginal ‘political’ and ‘economic’ discourses. But both before and after independence, the image of the man from East-Bengal has supplied much of the urban-humour of Calcutta. Sometimes, gifted artistes from East Bengal have used this to their advantage as in the case of the pioneering stand-up Bengali comedian Bhanu Banerjee who made a career in the 1940s and 1950s selling precisely the accent Calcuttans loved to laugh at, thereby employing another large group of Bāngāl-comedians to ‘commercially’ cherish their laughter based on the language-dialect politics in that new-land. Laughter is, and needs to be at least within this paradigm, essentially subjective, subjective to such an extent that it allows the entry of even politics of constant minoritisation within the domain of standard-colloquiality. This problematic of subjectivity vis-a-vis invoking laughter in this specific cultural and linguistic position copes with this particular phenomenon of invoking laughter as an urban-linguistic experience, thus paving out possible linguistic/cultural access to existing repository of commercial sound-recordings that has made major success on the fact of constant ‘othering’ of East-Bengali ‘dialects’ and commercially cherishing that ‘othering’. Even political marginalization regarding the linguistic position of Bāngāls (East-Bengalis) in the power-centre of standard-colloquiality was raised up to the question of subverting that linguistic power-order by means of making a fortune through commercializing, in itself, the innate notions of minoritisation. This paper proposes to look at these cultural phenomena, using a large-corpus of sound-recordings that the present author is currently engaged with in terms of digitization, thereby inquiring the very aesthetic-frame of reception of this socio-linguistic trait within the praxis of comparative methodology.

References

Chakrabarty , Dipesh, ‘Remembered Villages: Representation of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the Aftermath of the Partition’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31, No. 32, 1996

Chanda, Ipshita (trans.) Two Plays: Chalachittachanchari, Lakshman’s Shaktishail, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2004

Chatterji, Suniti Kumar. The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1926 (repr. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1979)

Dās, Jñanedramohan. Bāṅgālā Bhāṣār Abhidhān (in 2 vols.), Kolkata: Sahitya Saṃsad, 1986

Kaviraj, Sudipta. “Laughter and Subjectivity: The Self-Ironical Tradition in Bengali Literature”, Vol. 34, No. 2, (May 2000)

Ray, Manas. ‘Growing up Refugee’, History Workshop Journal, No. 53 (Spring, 2002)

Sen, Sukumār. Bhāṣār Itibṛtta, Kolkata: Ānanda Publishers, 1993

The interaction of language, thought, and reality between male and female among Persian and English speakers: A qualitative study of sex dominance

Ghanea, Mahshid & Hamid Reza Zeraatpisheh
Islamic Azad University, Iran
Ghanea1390@gmail.com, Farsiran3@gmail.com

No discussion about culture, language, reality, and thought is complete without the analysis of the interaction of language and thought. In this case, critical discourse Analysis (CDA) is the most comprehensive approach toward discourse analysis which shows the connection between language on one hand and thought and ideology on the other. CDA reveals the hidden effect of features of a text by deconstructing manipulative linguistic elements. The present study is an attempt to make it clear how linguistic elements and discourse structures explicitly and implicitly function in classifying reality, in producing, reorganizing, and enforcing certain ideas, in persuading and influencing other's views and in controlling relation of power. This article also aims at discovering the way male and female interact ideologically with a number of discursive structures, i.e, nominals, passives, and address forms, in English and Persian .So, it focuses on the social as well as grammatical aspects of nominals, passive structures and address forms.

Key words: language, thought, sex

References:

Afkhami, b.(2000)"showkaraan"(hemlock).tehran:tofigh afarin.

Beizaaie,b(1989)"eshqaal"(occupancy).tehran:roshangaran.

Bloom,D.&talwalkar,s.(1977)'critical discourse analysis and the study of reading and writing.'reading research Quarterly.vol.32,no.1,104-112.

Boas,f.(1964)'linguistic and ethnology'. In hymes(ed.),language in culture and society.new york:harper &row.

Chastain,k.(1988) Developing second-language skills.new york:Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich,inc.

Crosby,F&nyquist,l.(1977)'the female register:an empirical study of

Lakoff's hypotheses.'language in society 6:313-22.

Darvish,A.R.(2000)"motevalled-e maah-e mehr (born under libra).

Tehran:tofigh afarin.

Douglas brown,H.(1994)principles of language learning and teaching.

Englewood cliffs:prentice Hall regents.

Eckert,p.(1989)'the whole women:sex and gender differences in variation.'

Language variatioan and language 1,1.245-67.

Ehrlich,S.& king,r.(1994)'feminist meanings and the (de) politicization of the lexicon.'language in society 23,59-76.

Fairclough,n.(1989)language and power.london:Longman

(1995)critical Discourse analysis.london:Longman.

Fasold,R.(1984) the sociolinguistics of society.new york:Blackwell.

Fishman,j.a.(1982)'whorfianism of the thid kind:Ethnolinguistic diversity as a worldwide societal asset.'langauage in society 11.1-14.

Graham,A.(1975)'the making of a nonsexist dictionary.' In thorne,B.&Henley,n.(eds),language and sex:difference and Dominance.Rowley,MA:newbury house.

Greene,J.(1972)Psycholinguistics. Harmondsworth:penguin.

Hodge,R.& kress,G.(1993)language as ideology.london:Routledge.

Hudson,R.A.(1996)Sociolinguistics:Cambridge:Cambridge university press.

Hymes,D.(1964) Language in Culture and Society. New York: Harper & Row.Kramer,Ch. (1975) Woman s speech: Separate but unequal? . In Thorne, B.& Henley, N. (Eds), Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Overview of Amri-Karbi Phonology: A Preliminary Description
Amalesh Gope
DHSS, IIT- Guwahati
amaleshgope5sept@gmail.com

The present paper aims at providing a preliminary description of Amri Karbi phonology. Amri Karbi belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family and is a variety of Karbi language spoken in middle and lower Assam.

For the current study the data was collected from Nazirkhat near Sonapur under Kamrup district of Assam. Three Amri Karbi speakers, all male, were interviewed and recorded. We used the basic Swadesh 200+ item wordlist to construct our dataset. The findings confirm the presence of 24 phonemes (19 consonants and 5 basic vowels /i, e, a, u, ɔ/). The language has bilabial, alveolar, and velar stops. Contrasts between voiced and voiceless stops are found in word initial and word final positions (/pam/ ‘hit’ /bam/ ‘tie’, /tam/ ‘to scold’ /dam/ ‘go’). Aspirated sounds have very limited occurrence and are found only word initially. The voiced alveolar stop /d/ and voiced velar stop /ɡ/ showed very limited occurrences. There are three nasal sounds /m, n, ŋ/ (/lam/ ‘to speak’ /lan/ ‘net’ /laŋ/ ‘water’) and three fricatives /s, z, h/. The only voiceless palatal affricate /tʃ/ is found to be present at word initial position and contrasts with /t/ and /t^h/ (/tʃ/~/t^h/, /tʃeŋ/ ‘to start’ /t^heŋ/ ‘to grind’, /tʃ/~/t/, /tʃam/ ‘wet’ /tam/ ‘to scold’). The approximants, voiced dental /r/ and voiced alveolar /l/ contrast with each other (/let/ ‘enter’ /ret/ ‘(jhum) cultivation’ /ŋt^hel/ ‘beat’ /ŋt^her/ ‘fool’).

Further, an acoustic analysis was conducted for all the vowels to determine the duration and perceptual difference. For this analysis, we chose CV syllables (C being a stop consonant) occurring in the word initial position. A bark table has been drawn to represent the position of the vowels.

Key words: Amri Karbi, minimal pair, duration, pitch

References:

Bhattacharya, P. K. 1977. A Descriptive Analysis of Boro Language. GuwahatiUniversity, Guwahati, Assam.

Burling, R. 2003. “The Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeastern India”. The Sino-Tibetan languages, Thurgood, G. & Randy L. (Eds). London and Newyork, Routledge. pp 169-191.

Joseph, U. V. 2010. “The Numeral ‘One’ in Khasi and Karbi”. North East Indian Linguistics (Vol. 2), Morey, S. & Post, M. (Eds). Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India. pp 149-160.

Joseph, U. V. & Burling, R. 2006. The Comparative Phonology of Boro Garo Languages. CIIL, Mysore, India.

Konnerth, L. 2009. The Nominalizing Prefix *gV- in Tibeto-Burman. M.Phil Dissertation. Dept. of Linguistics & the Graduate School, University of Oregon.

Ladefoged, P. 1996. Elements of Acoustic Phonetics. the University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Mazaudon, M. 2010. “Number-Building in Tibeto-Burman Languages”. North East Indian Linguistics (Vol. 2), Morey, S. & Post, M. (Eds). Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India. pp 117-148.

Conflict and Conceal: A CDA of Selected Print Media on the Representations of Bodo- non Bodo Violence in Assam

Syed Ghufran Hashmi
AMU Aligarh
sghufranhashmi@gmail.com

This paper investigates the language-ideology link and how this link finds representation in a particular construction of a text. This paper employs Systemic Functional Linguistics and transitivity analysis to study this language-ideology link.

An attempt is made to bring to light that the particular construction of text in print news subverts some ideologies at the expense of other. CDA challenges this marginalisation of ideologies and people by striving to get to the meaning not obvious in the language used. Through the analysis of a news report it is revealed how various ideologies are represented and or subjugated with regard to representation of two communities in the violence hit state of Assam.

References:
Brown, Keith. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2^nd Ed. Vol. 1. Elsevier: Aberdeen University Press, 2004.
Critical Discourse Analysis Dijk Teun A. Van. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis ed. By Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton Oxford Blackwell, 2001
Dijk, Teun A. Van. News as discourse. Lawrence Erlbaum New Jersey, 1988
Fairclough, N. Language and Power: London. Longman, 1989.
Fairclough, N. Critical Discourse Analysis: London. Longman,1995.
Halliday, M. A. K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar: London. Edward Arnold,1985.
Leeuwen, Theo van. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. OUP New York, 2008
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/as-calm-descends-kokrajhar-groups-see-hidden-hand-behind-violence/article3728315.ece (15.12.2012)

Supremacy of Online Dictionaries: A Case of Persian to English Translation
Reza Jelveh
University of Isfahan, Iran
r_jelveh@yahoo.com

This study tries to see if the application of online dictionaries in translation of Persian articles can improve the quality of translation. In order to construct a picture, this study investigates the issue both quantitatively and qualitatively in two phases. In the opening phase of the project a questionnaire was given to 100 Iranian translators in five Iranian state universities to investigate the type of dictionaries they use while translating Persian articles to English. In the main phase of the study, four groups of translators with different types of dictionaries, hardcover, computer software, mobile, and online dictionaries were selected and given a task of translating three Persian article abstracts, and their translations were assessed in terms of the accuracy of the words and expressions of the source text and the speed of the job. Results indicated that translators using online dictionaries rendered the texts more accurately and much faster than the other two groups. Translators using computer softwares occupied the second rank, hardcover dictionary users were the third, and mobile dictionary users, bringing up the rear, were the last group to finish the job. This study shows how online dictionaries can provide help that satisfies the need of translators when translating Persian articles into English.

Key Words

Dictionary, Online dictionary, Translation, Speed, Accuracy

References
Baxter, J. (1980). The Dictionary and Vocabulary Behavior: A Single Word or a Handful? TESOL Quarterly, 14(3), 325-336Bejoint, H. (1981). The Foerign Student`s Use of Monolingual English Dictionaries: A Study of Language Needs and Reference Skills. Applied Linguistics, 2(3), 207-222
L’Homme, Marie-Claude. (2010). ‘Designing Terminological Dictionaries for Learners based on Lexical Semantics: The Representation of Actants’. In P. A. Fuertes-Olivera (ed.), Specialized Dictionaries for Learners. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 141–153.
Nielsen, S. (2010). ‘Specialized Translation Dictionaries for Learners’. In P. A. Fuertes-Olivera (ed.), Specialized Dictionaries for Learners. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 69–82.
Pastor, V. and A. Alcina. (2010). ‘Search Techniques in Electronic Dictionaries: A Classification for Translators.’ International Journal of Lexicography, 23.3: 307–354.
Scholfield, P. (1997). Vocabulary Reference in Foreign Language Learning. In N. Schmitt & M.
Mccarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp. 279-302). Cambridge University Press.
Tomaszczyk, J. (1979). Dictionaries: Users and Uses. Glottodidactica. 12, 163-119

Syntax of Non-Finite Clauses in Meeteilon
Alfina Khaidam
Delhi University
alfinakh@gmail.com

This paper is a part of my working dissertation for my M.Phil degree. It focuses on the syntactic analysis of the non- finite clauses in meeteilon, which in the process attempts to study the nature of the inflection -p/-b, obligatorily appearing in non-finite clauses, especially, the issue of whether it is nominal or verbal. The marker -p/-b, shows that the clause is a non- finite clause. The nominalization constructions in most of the Tibeto-Burman languages are often considered as indicators of non- finite clauses. Meeteilon shows a versatile nominalizer. In this paper, I have given the distribution of the non-finite clauses. I also propose that the nature of the inflection -p/-b will be nominal since it carries nominal properties. The syntactic analysis shows that the structure of the clause whether the subject is pronounced or PRO bears the same structure. A restructuring infinitives, according to Wumbrand (2003), does not involve ‘propositional’ or ‘force’ properties such as tense, negation, or complementizers and lack structural case position/ assigner. In the process, I argued Bošković (1997) adoption of Martin (1992) that only [+tense] non-finite can check null case. His account on the case marking of PRO, like other NP arguments, under the case theoretic account seems to be problematic for Meeteilon.

Keyword: Meeteilon, Nominalizer, Restructuring Infinitives,

References

Bhat, D.N.S. & M.S. Ningomba.(1995). Manipuri Grammar. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

Boskovic, Z.(1997). The syntax of nonfinite complementation: An Economy Approach. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Chelliah, S. L. (1997). A Grammar of Meithei. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Chomsky, N. & H. Lasnik.(1993). The theory of principles and parameters In. J.Jacobs, A.von Stechow, W. Sternfield & T. Vennemann,ch (Eds), In Syntax: An international handbook of contemporary research (pp.506-569). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Chungkham, Y.S. (2000).Manipuri Grammar. New Delhi:Rajesh Publication.

Davison,A. (2008). On the categorial identity of infinitives in Hindi/Urdu. Ms. University of Iowa.

Genetti,C.(2001). Nominalization in Tibeto- Burman languages of the Himalayan area: A typological Perspective. In F.Yap Ha, Grunow-Harsta, Karen and W. Janick. (Eds), In: Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives, Typological Studies in Language 96. Amsterdam/ New York: John Benjamins.

Martin, R. (1992b). On the distribution and Case features of PRO. Ms.,University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Stowell, T.(1982).The tense of infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 561-570

Wurmbrand,S.(2003). Infinitives: Restructuring and Clause Structure. Berlin/New York:Mounton de Gruyter.

Neologism in Urdu: A Linguistic Investigation of Urdu Media
Mohsin Khan
Department of Linguistics
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
mohsinkhanyusufzai@gmail.com

Scientific-technical revolution, development of mass media, impetuous development of social life resulted in appearance of an enormous amount of new words and meanings. It resulted in so-called “neologism”. Neologism is an important morphological process to produce new words in a language. It is used as one of the ways to generate new words and word forms in the language.

Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old idea, which have taken on a new cultural context. The present paper will discuss the process of neologisms in Urdu media.

References:

Banjar, Sh. (2011). Neologism and Translation. Retrieved December 26, 2012 from http://www.slideshare.net/dr.shadiabanjar/neologisms-presentation

Bauer, Laurie 1983, English Word-formation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, David (1992). An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Language and languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crystal, David (1997). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (4th

Crystal, David (2002). The English Language. 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books.

Janssen, M. (2011). Orthographic Neologisms Selection Criteria and SemiAutomatic Detection. Retrieved December 28, 2012 from http:// maartenJanssenweb. Net /papers/ neologism.pdf

Katamba, F (1993). Morphology: Modern Linguistics Series. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Rey, A. (1995). Essays on Terminology. J. Benjamins.

Toman, J. (1992) Compounding. In Brown, W. (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yule, G. (1996). The Study of Language. (2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic Factors in Bilingual Texting
Tariq Khan & Deepa V.
safertariq@gmail.com, 4deepav@gmail.com
University of Hyderabad

This paper investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors involved in bilingual Texting in general and bilingual Short Message Service (hereafter, SMS) in particular.[1] It has two dimensions: first, it presents a survey of scriptal, phonological and pragmatic factors involved in SMS and texting. Second, it looks into the effect of bilingualism while performing SMS based tasks. The questions that it seeks to address include the following: What scriptal, phonological and pragmatic factors are involved in texting and SMS activities? How are text messages in two different writing systems coded and decoded?[2] How does bilinguality of an SMS impact its efficiency as a means of communication? In order to address these questions two SMS based experimental studies were conducted on 40 post-graduate and research students at the University of Hyderabad. Both the studies focused on the intricate and essential relationship between SMS strategies and bilingualism. The present work reflects the texting behaviour in general, though its focus remains on SMS texts and bilingualism in Hindi-English (hereafter, HE) and Malayalam-English (hereafter, ME) texts. A study related to this theme titled ‘the effect of bilingualism on communication efficiency in text messages’ was conducted by Carrier and Benitez in 2010. Their study was based on English-Spanish speakers' texting patterns, wherein the script of the text is more or less same and the criterion employed by them was size of the texts. However, the criteria proposed in this paper include the time consumed in keying and processing the text, ratings by peers and prospective recipients and the size of the text. The findings of this study contradict the previous work. This paper has also looked into the factors that could have resulted in the dichotomous results between the two studies. The structure of the paper is as follows: the abstract is followed by an introduction which also deals with the ways in which various technical terms and expressions have been used in this paper. Following that a review of literature dealing with text messages’ past, present and future has been presented. The next section deals with text entry methods and bilingual texting. This section is followed by the two experiments. That is followed by the conclusions and references.

Keywords: (Extra)linguistic factors, Bilingualism, Texting, SMS, Writing Systems

References:
Bautista, M. L. S. 2004. Tagalog-English Code-Switching as a Mode of Discourse. Asia Pacific Education Review. Vol. 5 (2), 226-233
Carrier, L. M. and Benitez, S. Y. 2010. The Effect of Bilingualism on Communication Efficiency in Text Messages. Multilingua. Vol 29. 167-183
Grinter, R. E. and Eldridge, M. 2003. Wan2tlk?: Everyday Text Messaging. Computer in Human Interaction (CHI), Vol. 5 (1), 441-448
Jue, How Y. 2003/04. Analysis of SMS Efficiency. Honours Year Project Report. National University of Singapore.
Khan, Tariq and Deepa V. (2012). Coding and Decoding of Text Messages: Revisiting the Question of Efficiency in Bilingual SMS. Paper presented at 34th All India Conference of Linguists. Shillong. 1-3 November, 2012.
Shieber, Stuart M. and Nelken, R. 2006. Abbreviated Text Input Using Language Modeling. Natural Language Engineering, Vol. 13(2), 165-183
Thurlow, C. 2003. Generation txt? The Sociolinguistics of Young People’s Text Messaging. Discourse Analysis Online. (Accessed on 20-06-2012) http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/v1/n1/a3/thurlow2002003-paper.html
Watkins, S. Craig. 2009. The Young and The Digital. Boston. Beacon Press.
Wei, Li. 2007. The Bilingual Reader. London: Routledge.

Negation in the Dura Language

Kedar Bilash Nagila, Ph D Fellow in Linguistics
Tribhuvan University, Nepal

kedarnagila@yahoo.com

This paper attempts to discuss the different types of negative particles in Dura, one of the endangered Tibeto -Burman languages of Nepal spoken by 2,156(2010 CBS) indigenous Dura people in Lamjung in west Nepal who have lost their language because of several sociolinguistic reasons .Whereas the Gurung and Magar living in Pokhari Thok speak it in all domains and prefer to name it Tandrange Kura . Many scholars and linguists ( Bandhu 2001 ; Lewis 2009;Moseley 2007 ) treated the Dura language as the extinct language but this researcher has been working on the Dura language for the last seven years and encountered the fluent Gurung speakers of the language. Because of several sociolinguistic factors, Duras have adopted Gurung ,Thapa, Rana, Gurung-Dura,Dura-Gurung as their surnames. This paper also discusses how clauses are negated and presents and reviews the effect of Nepali on the Dura language.

A Comparative Study of the Production of Spatial Terms by Meiteilon-Speaking Mentally Retarded and Non-Retarded Children
Benubala Nameirakpam
University of Delhi
benubala@gmail.com

Over the year, there has been a raise in the new attempt to examine the nature of the language and the linguistic impairment of the mentally retarded from a linguistic point of view. This paper presents the result of an investigation on the elicited production of the spatial terms by a group (severe) of Meiteilon-speaking mentally retarded (MR) children and a group of non-retarded children. The finding shows that there is difference in the production rate of the spatial terms by two groups. The finding also shows that the severely retarded group manifests a significant difference when compared to the non retarded group. The MR groups not only has lower production rate but they also lack in several concepts and use generic terms as substitute to specific terms when compare with the non-retarded children.

In Meiteilon, locative relations are marked by a locative marker ‘–dǝ ~ tǝ’ on the referent object Examples:

1) lairik tebəl də ləy.

book table Loc be-Nonfut

“The book is on the table”

In addition, the specific relation is expressed by combining a directional or place denote which are nominal with the locative marker ‘–dǝ~ tǝ’.

2) lairik tebəl-gi məyay- də ləy.

book table-Gen centre Loc be-Nonfut

“The book is in the centre on the table”

The Language of Films and Ours
Ayushi Pandey & Pamir Gogoi
EFLU, Hyderabad
ayuship.09@gmail.com, pamir24x7tennis@gmail.com

The present paper endeavours to establish a connection between Bollywood cinema and Linguistics. Through the established constraints on code-switching and code-mixing in Hindi and English, the paper serves to study the prevalent language in the multilingual Indian situation. Also, the paper attempts to see how this form of language is captured in films, unlike in any other form of mass media. The paper discusses theories of code-switching and mixing in the surroundings. The paper presents a hypothesis language of Bollywood cinema and thus is a major contributor to the fact that lets the audience submit to a willing suspension of disbelief.

The paper primarily focuses on one of the biggest blockbusters in Bollywood, the Rajkumar Hirani directed (2009) super hit film, “3 idiots”. Not only is the film a very influential youth film, but it also uses some very interesting code-switching and mixing examples in very appropriate situations. Keeping the enormous success of the film in mind, the paper explores how the language in the film has been instrumental in bridging the gap between the audience and the film.

The paper discusses some important constraints such as the equivalence constraint, the free-morpheme constraint, the closed-class constraint, the dual structure constraint in some detail. The paper then expands the research into an in-depth linguistic analysis of the film. The paper then investigates whether the language of the film corresponds to some sociolinguistic constraints, and explores the social settings and contexts in which a code-switch and mix is employed. The paper discusses the concepts of “we-code” and “they-code”, and sees their apt reflection in the film. Also, the paper questions the status of the purist version of language against the switched code through the film. The popularity of the film will be substantiated with critical review, economic success and other informal approaches like the number of Youtube views.

Thus, through a detailed analysis of the linguistic aspect of the film, the paper attempts to understand the linguistic connection that the film establishes between the audience and itself. Through a detailed analysis of a major youth film, the paper explores the need of the code-switching and mixing in films. Keeping away from the prescriptive aspect of language, the paper strictly outlines the nature of language in films, its roles in the society, and its association with the real-life practitioner of the same.

Keywords: Bollywood, 3 idiots, Code-switching, Code-mixing, constraints, audience

Typology of Focus in Tamil, Maram and Hindi: A Phonetic and Phonological Study
Kumari Pragya
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Pragya.sahi@gmail.com

This paper presents the study of focus in three Indian languages, Tamil, Maram and Hindi, in the discourse. It also discusses two types of focus and exhibits interesting results which corresponds to the syntactic constituents. The sentences in discourse support this mapping to a great extent. Focus in a language is related to the information structure which can be encoded in various ways. One of the main ways is prosody and prominence. The aim of this paper is to look at the evidences in which prosody reveals focus in conversation. The present study also tries to provide the empirical evidences of focus in natural discourse and question-answer pairs by testing these cases of focus, examining the resulting pitch accent distribution, and measuring the acoustic characteristics of these foci, in terms of F0, intensity and duration. The phonetic study reports the results predicted by phonology, and in this way, it supports the phonology of focus described for these languages.

Focus is a grammatical category in Generative linguistics; it is one of the factors determining the prosodic characteristics of an utterance. It determines new or non-derivable information. It is usually shown either prosodically or syntactically. For example:

I saw [JOHN] or, [JOHN], I saw.

In this paper, I am dealing with the suprasegmental aspects of focus which comes under the phonology of a language. Some recent linguistic analyses (Selkirk 1984, 1995) claim that focus is represented in the phonology by pitch accents, and the placement of these accents is determined by both the type of focus (broad, narrow), syntactic structure, and other factors such as verb argument structure. In this study, an experiment was conducted to test the interaction of focus types and different argument structures within sentences with transitive, intransitive and ditransitive verbs.

The analysed data show the relevant phonetic analysis to describe the phonology of Focus in different types of sentences in Tamil, Maram and Hindi. In the sentences where we have an intransitive verb, the verb in the VP has the highest frequency in the sentence showing a L*H intonation pattern. The adjuncts show a low pitch consequently. Transitive verbs have a H*L pattern as the internal argument has the highest F0. But it seems that the cases of clefting to add extra focus on something may not be described by fundamental frequency as in both the sentences ( No. 5 and No.6), the object noun has the highest frequency; moreover, duration plays an important role here. The duration of the word for ‘fish’ is almost 10 second higher in sentence no. 6 than sentence no. 5. Therefore, the contrastive focused words can be described in terms of duration, whereas fundamental frequency serves as a cue for the conversational sentences and discourse. The purpose of my study is to provide the empirical evidences in these languages for focus in natural discourse and conversation, as well as in question-type sentences by testing these cases of focus, examining the resulting pitch accent distribution, and measuring the acoustic characteristics of these foci, in terms of F0, intensity and duration. To make the study more useful for describing the phonology of focus in Indian language, I have tried to develop some new methodology for this work which would help the researchers of this area to give an insight.

The Notion of Heaviness
Sonali Raj
University of Delhi
sonali.raj@gmail.com

The core debate regarding heavy NP shift constructions has revolved around its syntactic structure—does the direct object move rightward or do verb and indirect objects move leftward in:

I met on the streets of Delhi my rich and scandalous uncle

I have been told to drink after dinner three glasses of water with lemon

Ravi ne daakuon ko di banduuk Or ulta hampe chIlla uthaa

Ravi ne maa ko di ek nayi resham ki saari

The factors that are said to influence movement are understood to be discourse related, such as newness of information and topic-worthiness; and phonological, i.e. the direct object is said to move when it is adequately heavy relative to the indirect object.

*Ravi ne gundon ko di banduuk

*Ravi ne maa ko di sari

*I drank after dinner water

This paper explores the ambiguities surrounding the notion of heaviness, which lacks a consistent definition in the literature. Further, the effect of heaviness hasn’t been scientifically tested in the literature, and this paper demonstrates a method by which, given a robust definition of heaviness that has universal applicability across language families, an experimental procedure can be carried out to observe the effect of weight on sentence acceptability. This is done by formulating series’ of minimal pairs, such that the environment is kept controlled and only the constituent under analysis is incrementally altered to observe the effect of different processes. This method hasn’t been extensively exploited in the literature and, in fact, most minimal pair analyses that are meant to observe structure don’t use incrementally different units, but rather completely different sentences that cannot be called minimal pairs at all, and that do not entail any logical conclusions.

Among the issues that have been stumbled upon in the course of this study is the specific type of unacceptability that affects shift constructions, particularly heavy NP shift. There appear to be two types of acceptability, ungrammaticality and incompleteness, and only the latter is of pertinence where HNPS violations are concerned. This idea is elaborated throughout the paper.

The study, which is only a preliminary exploration of the subject, concludes with a discussion of the way forward in understanding heaviness and the role it plays in shift constructions. Speakers of a language know tacitly whether to use the heavy NP shift construction or the dative shift construction in the case of ditransitive verbs. A deeper, objective understanding of heaviness will also contribute to an understanding of scrambling and topicalisations, which are significant grammatical constructs in Indo-Aryan languages.

Perfect in Meeteilon
Lalit Rajkumar
university of Delhi
litrajkumar@yahoo.com

The ‘present relevance of a past situation’ (Comrie 1976, 1985) that is, the perfect, is in itself confused by most researchers as they are used almost interchangeably with the perfective aspect. Actually, the perfect is the combination of both tense and aspect (Dahl, 1985). When the perfect comes under tense they are classified as perfect tense, pluperfect (i.e., past perfect), and future perfect; and when they are classified in terms of aspect they are distinguished under perfective aspect and non-perfective aspect. As the tense and aspect system of Meeteilon is still worked and reworked upon by many researchers, the present study is of some interest since it deals with the initial morphological settings of the perfect particle and its allomorphs –le, –re, -pe, -me, -ŋe, and –e; and -lə, -rə, -pə, -mə, -ŋə, and -ə. And then, it gradually leads to the finding of double –le sentences which are attached to verb-like items only unlike the Mandarin Chinese double –le sentences where one of them is verbal and the other is sentential (Soh and Gao, 2006).

Keywords: Perfect, Meeteilon, Perfective Aspect, Allomorphs.

References
Arin, Marita Ljungqvist. 2003. Aspect, Tense and Mood: Context Dependency and the marker le in Mandarin Chinese. Sweden: KFS AB.
Bhat, D. N. S. and M. S. Ningomba. 1997. Manipuri Grammar. Munchen; Newcastle: Lincom Europa.
Chelliah, Shobhana L. 1997. A Grammar of Meithei. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems. Cambridge University Press.
Comrie, Bernard. 1985. Tense. Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, David. 2008. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (Sixth Edition). Blackwell Publishing.
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and Aspect Systems. Basil Blackwell.
Rajkumar, Lalit. 2011. Wielding the double-edged Meiteilon Verbal Honorific Markers: in awe of the sharp edges of -čə/-ǰə and –pi/-bi. Paper presented at the 44^th ICSTLL, CIIL, Mysore.
Rajkumar, Lalit. 2012. Nominal and Verbal Honorific Markers of Meiteilon. Unpublished M.Phil. Dissertation. University of Delhi.
Singh, Chungkham Yashwanta. 2000. Manipuri Grammar. New Delhi: Rajesh Publications.
Soh, Hooi Ling and Meijia Gao. 2006. Perfective Aspect and Transition in Mandarin Chinese: An Analysis of Double –le Sentences. Proceedings of the 2004 Texas Linguistics Society Conference, ed. Pascal Denis et al., 107-122. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Xiao, Richard and Tony McEnery. 2004. Aspect in Mandarin Chinese: A corpus-based study. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Issues of Language Endangerment: A Case Study of So:ra:
Ankita Satpathy
University of Hyderabad
ankita.satapathy88@gmail.com

It is a commonplace understanding that ‘Language endangerment’ refers to a situation in which a language is no longer transmitted to the younger generation. It does not function fully in different social domains. It moves in the direction of eventual extinction. The present study is based on a Munda language called So:ra: which is also spelled as Saora, Saura, Savara, or Sora. As there are various levels of endangered languages, So:ra: is identified by van Driem (in Mosely: 2007: 342) as a potentially endangered language and vulnerable by UNESCO, Atlas of the world languages in danger (2010). The present study proposes to look at language endangerment situation of So:ra: spoken in Odisha and examine the nature of endangerment and how it has happened at the linguistic levels. This study examines the changes at the lexical and morpho-syntactic levels. Data have been collected from 40 adults aged between 40-60 as well as 40 young participants aged between 10-30 comprising of both men and women. Data have been collected from both the generations, younger and older in order to see the difference of frequency and fluency level of their mother tongue. This study is in relation to the seminal work by Ramamurthi (1931).

Keywords: Language endangerment, endangered languages, potentially endangered language, vulnerable language, lexical level, morpho-syntactic level.

References
Austin, Peter K and Julia Sallabank (eds). 2011. The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Grierson, G.A. 1967. Linguistic Survey of India. 1967. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing.
Mosely, Christopher J. 2007. Encyclopedia of World’s Endangered Languages. Oxon: Routledge Publication.
Ramamuthi, G.V. 1931. A Manual of So:ra: ( or Savara) Language. Madras: Madras Government Press.
Sasse, Hans J, 1992. Theory of language death. In Matthias Brenzinger (ed.), Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, 18-19. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Van, George D. 2007. South Asia and Middle East. In Christopher Moseley (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages, 342. Oxon: Routledge Publication.
http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/data_on_language.html
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/atlas-of-languages-in-danger/
http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp

The Language Question in the EU and India

Abhimanyu Sharma
University of Bern (Switzerland)
sharma.abhi1@gmail.com

When one spoke earlier of the European integration, one had to face the challenging question, whose integration is being talked about, for the erstwhile EU constitutions themselves pursued the rhetoric of European integration and the preservation of national identities at the same time and even the most vociferous supporters of integration found it hard to deal with this contradictio in adjectio. The 1^st of December 2009, however, marked a turning point in this series of events because – after nearly a decade of negotiations –the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ entered into force on this day, which implies, the EU has a new legal basis, thusly facilitating its democratic functioning better than ever. This has been a historic development in the sense that the new treaty promises to convert the former seemingly futile efforts at integration into a movement. Looking at the measures undertaken by the EU in fields of Educations & Culture, one cannot deny that the EU has made sincere efforts to keep its promise despite the severe economic crisis.

As the ‘language question’ is an important aspect of this movement, it is to be examined, to what extent it has contributed and can contribute to achieving the goal of integration, which the EU has been striving for through a multitude of programs such as The Erasmus program, “The European Year of Languages” (2001), “The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue” (2008) etc. In view of such programs, it’s time to check, to what extent Europe can learn in this field from the other traditional multilingual societies Africa or Asia. This requires critical and comparative study of language policies in these polities as well as a systematic assessment of the relevant political-linguistic research.

This is precisely the focal point of the present paper, whereby a comparative study of EU’s and Indian Language Policies is undertaken. Besides their common goal of achieving/preserving integration, they pursue the goal of preserving their enormous linguistic diversity as they form – from standpoint of number of languages and speakers– two of the largest linguistic groups in the world. Closely connected with this is the goal of bringing equal status to their languages, which seems impossible because of the increasing dominance of English. In this context, the present paper tries to examine in this paper to what extent these two polities have been able to achieve their goals and to what extent their language policies have helped protect their linguistic diversity.

Lexical Strength behind the Striking Language of Swami Vivekananda: A Study with reference to Addresses at the Parliament of Religions
Pankaj Sharma
Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla
metaperceptions@gmail.com

The paper Lexical Strength behind the Striking Language of Swami Vivekananda: A Study with reference to Addresses at the Parliament of Religions, as the name indicates, yearns for the exploration of morphological reasons behind the stunning language of great Indian Orator Swami Vivekananda. The present study specifically deals with the inflectional part of the morphology and thus analyses the effect of the lexemes, their type, number, person etc. based on the form of the words with a special reference to the world-renowned speeches of Swami Vivekananda delivered at the World’s Parliament of Religions –Chicago. The morphological standards thus analyze the types of morphemes used i.e. free morpheme or bound morpheme, lexical items, their connotation, the frequency of the words and its influence, the use of words based on their intrinsic nature, their softness, and harshness is analyzed further. Base on diction, the analysis shall differentiate the words of social or scientific temperament, metaphysical or biological, relationship of words into each other, positivity and negativity of lexis, complexity and coherence shall be studied as well. The study of morphemes in relation to their position in individual segments i.e. suffixes, prefixes and roots, their type i.e. derivational or inflectional, shall be another concern of the study. The accuracy in the use of words, precision, contextual behavior, and synonymy is another fractional concern of the study. The analysis shall also compare the language of Swami Vivekananda with the language of other Indian writers to find out the real morphological strength behind the cracking-effect produced by the language of Swami Vivekananda. The chapter at its final stage settles down the morphological standards explored through study those shall be beneficial for the common user of language to enhance the effect of his language.

Peering into the Dichotomy of Functional and Formal Approaches to the Study of Language
Sudhanshu Shekhar
Jawaharlal Nehru University
shekhar921@gmail.com

This paper zeroes in on the integration of two conspicuous approaches to the study of language: The Functional approach, in which the linguistic structures are motivated by cognitive and functional forces; and The Formal approach, in which the linguistic structures are independent of their functions and meanings. The first section presents a thumbnail sketch of these two approaches. In later parts of this term paper, I have endeavored to present that in lieu of making a dichotomy between these two approaches there is a need for fusion. No single approach can claim to be maxim in Linguistics. Hence, in lieu of choosing between Formal and Functional approaches there is need to incorporate both of these approaches in the study of grammar.

NPs in the Sentences of Indian Sign Language
Hidam Gourashyam Singh
University of Delhi
gourashyam@gmail.com

This presentation is about the nature of distributing NPs in mono-clausal sentences of Indian Sign language (ISL). Looking into the modules of the grammar like sucategorization, theta criterion, case filter and binding theory etc., arguments and NPs seem to be one the important parts of sentences that need to be looked at, therefore, this is an attempt to look for possibilities of predicting the order of signing NPs in ISL sentences through their nature of representation in the sentences. It is attempted here to show how the signing space and the fix number of attested directions of verbs (< P1, P1>, < P1, P2>, <P1, P3 >, <P2, P1 >, <P2, P2 >, <P2, P3 >, <P3, P1>, <P3, P2 >, <P3_i, P3_i>, <P3_j, P3_j>, <P3_i, P3_j > and <P3_j, P3_i > where P = Person, 1/2/3=1^st, 2^nd and 3^rdand < > = asymmetric directional relation between the variables ) born out of the spatial nature of ISL best fit and explain binding theory in terms of ISL. For example; the (co)referential/ (co)-indexing nature of the three types of NPs (Anaphora, R-expressions and Pronominals), the plural nature of reciprocals (Heim, Irene., Lasnik, Howard and May, Robert., 1991), how reflexive construction is formed in ISL and how similar/ different the NPs are. It will further compare the analysis of the traditional binding theory (Chomsky, 1981) and modular binding theory (Reuland, 2011) to look for the best explanation of the ISL data at hand.

References

Bhattacharya, Tanmoy and Hidam, Gourashyam S. 2011. Space-Machine. Presented at epiSTEME4, Homi Bhaba Centre for Science Education, Mumbai
Beck, Sigrid. 2001. Reciprocals are Definites. Natural Language Semantics, Vol. 9, Issue 1, pp 69-13. Kluwer Academy Publishers, Netherlands.
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge. MA: MIT Press.

Dalrymple. Mary. M. Kanazawa. Y. Kim, Sam Mchombo, and Stanley Peters. 1998. Reciprocal expressions and the concept of reciprocity. Linguistics and Philosophy 21, 1 59-2 1 0.

Heim, Irene. 1991. Reciprocal Scope, Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1991), pp. 173-192. The MIT Press

Heim, Irene, Lasnik, Howard and May, Robert. 1991. Reciprocity and Plurality. Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1991), pp. 63-101. The MIT Press

Hidam, Gourashyam S. 2010. Incorporation in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. M.Phil Thesis, CASL, DU, Delhi 7

Huang, Yan. 2000. Anaphora: A Cross-linguistic Approach. Oxford University Press Inc., New York.

Reinhart, Tanya. 2000. Strategies of anaphora resolution. In Hans Bennis, Martin Everaert, and Eric Reuland, eds., Interface Strategies. 295-324. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reinhart, Tanya and Reuland, Eric. 1993. Reflexivity, Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 657-720. The MIT Press

Reuland, Eric. 2011. Anaphora and Language Design. Samuel Jay Keyser edit., Linguistic Inquiry Monograph, The MIT Press.

Reinhart. Tanya. 2006. Interface Strategies: Reference Set Computation. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press.

Sinha, Samar. 2008. A Grammar of Indian Sign Language. Doctorial dissertation, JNU, New Delhi

Zeshan, Ulrike. 2000. Sign Language in Indo-Pakistan: A Description of a Sign Language. John Benjamin Publishing Copany, Philadelphia/ Amsterdam

Morphosemantic Attributes of Meiti Proverbs
Lourembam Surjit Singh
University of Delhi
lsurjit24@yahoo.com

This study proposes to investigate the morphosemantic functions of Meitei proverbs, particularly the attribution of different meaning of the lexical items in Meitei Proverbs. It is interesting to find that the Meitei society has been using proverbs in the all ages, stages of development, social changes, and cultural diversifications to mark their wisdom of social expertise. Meitei used proverbs as an important aspect of verbal discourse within the socio-cultural and ethno-civilization contexts in which skills, knowledge, ideas, emotion, and experiences are communicated. The language use in proverbs reflects the Meitei’s status of life, food habits, belief systems, philosophy, cultural and social orientation. At the same time various attribution of meanings in Meitei proverbs which are in the forms of figurative, witty, pithy, didactic and grammatically insightful thereby creating spaces for a whole range of possibilities for investigating the concrete and abstract functions of morphosemantics, specifically with regard to assigning different meaning to the collection of lexical items in proverbs. The study proposes for carefully examine the use of Meitei/Meiteilon proverbs and the functions of its lexical features in terms of morphology and semantics.

Key Words: Proverbs, attribution of meaning, features of lexical items and morphosemantics.

References

Abrahams, Roger D (1972). Proverbs and Proverbial Eexpressions, In: R.M. Dorson, Ed. Folklore and Folklife, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp.117-127.

Baruah, Mandakini (2008). The Co-Wife and Step-Mother Motifs in Folklore: A Case Study of Some Assamese Proverbs, Indian Folklife: Assamese Folklore, No.31.

Beerjita Devi, Leitongbam (2007). Manipuri Paorou Neinaba, Lamyanba Printers, Imphal: Konung Mamang.

Brunvand, Jan Haroold (1978). The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction, W.W. Norton and Co.Inc., New York, No.1.

Cram, David (1983). The Linguistic Status of the Proverb, In: Wise Words: Essays on the Proverb, (Ed.) Wolfgang Mieder, pp.73–98.

Goodwin, Paul D and Wenzel, Joseph W (1979). Proverbs and Practical Reasoning: A Study in Socio-Logic, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, pp. 289–302.

Lawal, R.A (1992b). English Language and a Patriarchal Woridvicw, Savana, 13:2, pp.74-79.

Lawal, Adebayo (1997). A Pragmatic Study of Selected Pairs of Yoruba proverbs, Journal of Pragmatics, 27, pp.635-652.

Katamba, Francis (1994). Morphology, Mackmillan, London: Hamsphire.

Maria Leach (1996). Definitions of Folklore, Journal of Folklore Research, 33:3, pp.255-264.

McKoon, Gail. Et al. (1993). Morpholosyntatic and Pragmatic Factors Affecting the Accessibility of Discourse Entities, Journal of Memory and Language, 32, pp. 56-75.

Mieder, Wolfgang (2004). Proverbs: A Handbook, Greenwood Press, Wesport: Post Road West.

Mensah, Eyo Offiong (2010). A Morphosyntatic Analysis of Efik Proverbs, An Ambilingual Interdisciplinary Journal, Glossa,Vol. 5:2, pp.250-281.

Mwihaki, Alice (2004). Meaning as Use: A Functional View of Semantics and Pragmatics, Swahili Forum, 11, pp.127-139.

Norrick, Neal R (1985). How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proverbs, New York: Amsterdam.

Salzmann, Z (1998). Language, Culture and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, Oxford: Westview Press.

Spencer, A (1991). Morphological Theory, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Umo, S (2007). Ibibio Proverbs as a Tool for Language Pedagogy, Presented at: Valedictory Symposium in honour of Professor Okon Essien.

E-Reference

http://bibliotecavirtualut.suagm.edu/Glossa2/Journal/Oct2010/A-Morphosyntactic-Analysis-of-Efik-Proverbs.pdf

Issues Related to Pashto Transcription
Inam Ullah
Center for Language Engineering (CLE)
University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore Pakistan.
inam.ullah@kics.edu.pk

Despite the fact that Pashto is one of the state languages and major provincial languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan respectively, it is not only a low-resourced language computationally but its Arabic-script-based orthography is not fully standardized among the community. This paper is to discuss some of the issues while transcribing one hundred hours of broadcast news representing different accents of Pashto language spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially, focusing on the two writing styles of the same language using the same script.

References
Andreas et al (undated), Speech Translation for Low-Resource Languages: The case of Pashto
Bucholtz, M. and Du Bois, J. W. (2006), in the Session Report on “Transcription Issues in Current Linguistic Research,” 80^th Annual Meeting, Linguistic Society of America, pg. 1. New Mexico, USA. Accessed from ---- on 15^th Feb. 2012.
Grierson, G., 1921. Linguistic survey of India . [Reprinted by Accurate Publishers, Karachi, Kakakhel, S. T. U. and Khattak, R. S. (2012). Pakhto Liklar, Pashto Academy, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan.
MacKenzie, D.N, (1959) A Standard Pashto: Bulletin of the SOAS, University of London, Vol. 22, No. 1/3, 231-235
Naeem, Hidayatullah (2006), Pashto Academy, Peshawar University.
Penzl, Herbert , (1954) Orthography and Phonemes in Pashto (Afghan), Journal of the American Oriental Society.
Simon & Schuler, 2010, Reading Booklet 2010, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Periphrastic Causatives in Kannada

Niranjan Uppoor

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

nuppoor@iitk.ac.in, niranjan.uppoor@gmail.com

This paper provides a descriptive account of a relatively unknown periphrastic causative in Kannada. The periphrastic causative under investigation, termed as the SEE-causative in this paper, shares many structural similarities with the periphrastic causative, termed here as the MAKE-causative, reported in the literature on Kannada causatives (Bhat 2003, Lidz 2004, Sridhar 1990, and Song 2012). The verbal complex in both SEE-causative and MAKE-causative is discontinuous. The complementizer 'haage'/ 'ante' intervenes between the constituents of the verbal complex in both causatives. The causal marker in the SEE-causative as well as the MAKE-causative agrees with the causing agentive argument for person, number, and gender. Besides, the causal marker in the SEE-causative and the MAKE-causative carries tense, aspect, and mood. However, the two causatives differ from each other in terms of implication of benefit, enablement, and intentionality. Thus while the SEE-causative invokes the notion of the causer as the beneficiary, the MAKE-causative does not invoke any such notion. Furthermore, the causer in the SEE-causative is more of an enabling agent than an initiating agent whereas the causer in the MAKE-causative is purely an initiating agent. Finally, the MAKE-causative can profile either a causer with intention or a causer without intention, whereas the SEE-causative always profiles a causing argument with an intention.

Keywords: Periphrastic causative, MAKE-causative, SEE-causative

References

Bhat, K V Tirumalesh. 2003. Lexical and periphrastic causatives in The Landscape of Language. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Pvt. Limited.

Lidz, Jeffrey. 2004. Causation and Reflexivity in Kannada in V. Dayal and A. Mahajan (ed.) Clause Structure in South Asian Languages. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Song, Juan Jae. Periphrastic Causative Constructions. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter . Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/110. Accessed on 2012-10-10.

Sridhar, S N. 1900. Kannada: A Descriptive Grammar. London: Routledge.

Poster Presentations

Language of Advertisement: A Study in Critical Discourse Analysis
Spriha Agarwal
EFLU, Lucknow Campus
spriha86@gmail.com

Advertisements have become a part and parcel of our everyday lives. They are designed with the main intent of influencing the reader and getting him/her to behave in a desired way. But the absence of the reader at the time of text production necessitates the advertiser to set a frame of identity for the reader and employ strategies to communicate with that reader in order to persuade him/her. The readers in turn engage with the text and the discourses which the text draws on and situate themselves in relation to them.

The present paper deals with an advertisement on parenting from the women’s magazine Femina. It aims to study the identities of the discourse participants (the text producer, the participants in the text and the reader) in the text for their ideological content, i.e., whether there are power relationships inherent in their production, and the strategies adopted for persuasion including a peep into the discourses which the advertisement draws on for this purpose. A critical discourse analytical approach given by Fairclough (1989) is used to delve into the reader’s contextual interpretation of the linguistic features of the text and the explanation of whether the power relations are sustained or transformed in the text. The elements which feed the context are: women’s magazines, advertisement, reference to the parenting expert and intertextual references to the essentialist role of a mother. The reader immediately positioned as a female (the reader of women’s magazine), a consumer and a parent who seeks the advice of the expert.

The institutional power endowed upon the parenting expert (the speaker in the advertisement) makes her argument trustworthy and establishes a hierarchical relationship between her and the reader (mother). This power hierarchy is maintained and reinforced through the free use of sentences with declarative and imperative speech function. The choice of lexical items reveals that motherhood is oppressive. The speaker purports to purge the woman of her oppressive circumstances but eventually locks the woman in the traditional role of motherhood. The text also subscribes to the biased view that parenting is essentially the domain of the female parent. The text draws upon and reinforces the traditional ideologies related to child care and motherhood. However, this is veiled under the subtle use of language which satisfies the reader’s face wants and becomes an instrument of persuasion. This is achieved through the use of nominalized expressions, positive adjectives, passive voice, modality and presupposition. The use of mental processes and a lot of words signifying emotion are knitted into the text. This appeals to the reader, helps her get closer to the speaker and gets her to believe the speaker. The use of material processes signify actions which lead to a distressing motherhood. But these actions are attributed to the inanimate traditional discourses of motherhood. This saves the reader from any face threatening accusation that she is responsible for her condition. The phrases expressing solidarity between the speaker and the reader are interspersed with those expressing a power relationship between them. This builds a healthy relationship between the two by positioning them at two different pedestals in hierarchy by virtue of authority and yet bringing them closer.

The textual power is evident in the way it limits the subject matter of the advertisement to parenting. The reader creates her identity within that reference frame which makes her duties as a mother an inseparable part of her life as a woman. The advertisement being a part of women’s magazines also fosters the idea that the content is shaped keeping in mind the feminist concerns of individuality and emancipation. This helps shroud the traditional beliefs about motherhood which the text draws on and purportedly refutes.

This is an example of the way in which the consumer is created by the exploitation of power through the subtle use of language in advertisements. This analysis can be extended to all the genres of the women’s magazines to see what ideologies are employed in the maintenance and transformation of women’s identities.

Keywords: advertisement, critical discourse analysis, magazines, parenting

The Language ‘Khortha’ – A Phonetic Study

Atul Aman
ISI, Kolkata
atul.aman1@gmail.com

The present paper is focused primarily on the phonological features of the language khortha from the Indo-Aryan family of languages and the different phonetic characteristics which are very rare in the Indo-Aryan language family. However, it belongs to the most common language family, (i.e.; Indo-Aryan) it also reflects the phonological characteristics pertaining to other language families of that region that are Astro-Asiatic and Dravidian language family.

References:

K.V Subbarao (2012), South Asian Languages: A Syntactic Typology, Cambridge University Press. Available at http://books.google.co.in/books/about/South_Asian_Languages.html

Peter Trudgill, J. Chambers & N. Schilling (2001) Handbook of sociolinguistics: Linguistics outcome of Language contact, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 638-668.

Richa, Ph.D (December 2010) Language in India. Language Shift among the Tribal Languages of India - A Case Study in Bihar .Available at www.languageinindia.com

J Peterson (2010) Language contact in Jharkhand, Linguistic convergence between Munda and Indo-Aryan in eastern-central India. Available at www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/HimalayanLinguistics/.../HLJ0902B.pdf

Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, S. N. Sridhar, (2008) Language in South Asia, Cambridge University press

Mohammad Jahangeer Warsi, (2008) Linguistic dynamism in South Asia, Gyan Publishing House, New Delhi

Sarah G. Thomason (2001) Langauge Contact, Edinburgh University Press.

Ferdinand Hahn(1985) Grammar of kurukh language, Mittal publications

B.N Ohdar (2007) Khortha Bhasa evam sahitya udbhav evam vikash, Khortha Bhasha sahitya Academy ,Ramgarh

A Study of Grammaticalization of ‘lǝg’ verb in Modern Maithili
Md. Asad
Jawaharlal Nehru University
asadthomas@gmail.com

The present study is willing to focus on the process of grammaticalization of the “lǝg” verb in Maithili language. The verb “lǝg” is naturally polysemous in nature, that is, it has more than one meaning in the sentences of Maithili. In the process of grammaticalization of the “lǝg”, this verb shows different kinds of meanings and usages such as begin, attach, seem, and appear and so on & so forth. The author actually also tries to present not only the different meanings and usages of “lǝg” but also morpho-syntactic information of the environment of the process of grammaticalization in Maithili language. The author tries to look the occurrence of “lǝg” verb at two context positions (i) V1 position and (ii) V2 position and the paper also shows information

of the semantic ranges of “lǝg” in these different context positions in the sentences of Maithili. Maithili language is a New Indo-Aryan language and one of the schedule languages of India. It is widely spoken in the eastern and northern part of the Bihar state in India and this language is also broadly spoken in the Tarai districts of Nepal. Maithili is officially the second most spoken language of Nepal. Genetically it belongs to the Magadhi Apabharamsa and that belongs to

Eastern Prakrit.

Examples

A. “lǝg” in V1 position

a) O sadʰu lǝg- ǝit ǝicʰ.

he saint appear- impf aux 3msg Prest

“he appears\seems a saint.”

b) O pagǝl lǝg- ǝit ǝicʰ.

he mad appear- impf aux 3msg Prest

“he appears a mad”

c) ǝhã nik lǝg- ǝi cʰi.

you handsome seem impf aux 2(H) msg Prest

“you seem handsome”

Above examples, “lǝg” appears in V1 position and follows noun in these sentences. It gives a

semantic meaning appear or seem.

When “lǝg” appears in V1 position in the sentences of Maithili then it shows many semantic

meaning such as Appear, Seem, Wear, Close, Exist and Feel.

B. “lǝg” in V2 position

a. ǝhã khana khai lǝg geli.

you food eat begin go- Perf 2nd (H) msg

“you begun to eat food”

Here above example, “lǝg” appears in V2 position and precedes main verb and follows infinitive

verb and it shows a semantic meaning as begin.

When “lǝg” appears in V2 position in the sentence of Maithili then it shows a lot of semantic

meanings such as Begin, Presumptive, Come, Ran, and tell and so on.

Reference

Shapiro, M. C (1987) Hindi lagnaa: A study in Semantic Change. American Oriental Society.

Ahmad, Tafseer. Ablative, Sociative and Instrument Markers in Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.

Fillore, C. J, Atkins, B T S (2000) Describing polysemy. The case of “crawl”. InLeacock. C. polysemy: Theoretical and Computational approaches. Oxford University Press.

Treatment of Vowels: Tolkappiyam and Techne Grammatike
R. Dhanasekaran

Jawaharlal Nehru University
dhanas_jnu@yahoo.com

Vowel is a speech sound made with the vocal tract open. It is a letter which represents a simple inarticulate sound, and in a word or syllable, may be sounded alone. Vowel characters have been dealt in Tolkappiyam and Techne Grammatike. The generic naming of the vowels as uyir and phoneenta in Tamil and Greek respectively.

Tolkappiyam describes the phonetic features of vowels like name and total number of the vowels, production and pronunciation of the vowels, and category of the vowels. Techne Grammatike deals with vowels as name and definition of the vowels, total number of the vowels, and classification of the vowels. A comparison of the vowels in both treatises reveal certain similarities, differences and uniqueness in their presentation.

Similarities: Both the grammatical works start their description of the vowels with a presentation of the total number of vowels; the vowels are classified into short and long based on articulation; they present to us patterns in which the vowels are distributed in their respective languages.

Differences: A slight difference exists in the treatment of vowels in Tolkappiyam and Techne Grammatike. While Tolkappiyam has only short and long vowels based on time duration but Techne Grammatike differs on classifying some vowels as common vowels (a, i, u) which are two – valued as they can occur as both short and long and are not determined by measurement and no justification is also mentioned.

Uniqueness : Tolkappiyam is unique in the treatment of vowels as elaborate description on the manner of articulation of the vowels is given; and gives systematic way of pronunciation of the short and long vowels according to the time unit of measurement. Techne Grammatike has a unique trait of classifying diphthongs proper and improper.

Keywords: uyir; phoneenta; short vowel; long vowel; common vowel; diphthong.

References
Agasthiyalingam , S. & Murugaiyan , K. 1973, Tolkappiya moliyiiyal, Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai University.
Alan Kemp, J. 1987, The Techne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax: English Translation with Introduction and Notes. Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
Balasubramanian , K. 1972, “ Tolkappiyarin Oliyaniyal Kolkai” , Tolkappiaya miliyiyal, PP. 51-82.
Ilakkuvanar , S. 1963, Tolkappiayam in English with Critical Studies , Madurai : Kural Neri Publishing House.
Lindau , Mona , 1978, “Vowel features”, Language, Vol. 54, No . 3, Sep. 1978, PP. 541-563.
Meenakshi , K. 1997, Tolkappiyam and Astadhyayi,, Chennai : International Institute of Tamil Studies .
Murugaiyan, K. 1972, “ Tolkappiyarin Oliyiyal Kolkai”, Tolkappiaya miliyiyal, PP. 01 – 50.
Muthushanmugam , 1975, “Tolkappiyarin Pirappiyal Kotpatu” , Proceedings of the 7th AITTA Conference , Vol. 2, PP. 588 -592.
Peter Bullions, D.D. 1850, The Principles of Greek Grammar, New York : Pratt, Wood Ford and Company.
Shanmugam, S.V. 1980, Eluththilak kanakkotpatu, Annamalai Nagar: All India Tamil Linguistics Association.
Thomas Davidson (Tr. ), 1874, The Grammar of Dionysius Thrax, St. Louis , Mo: R.P. Studley Company.
Tolkappiyam – Eliththatikaram , Ilampuranam , 1979, Chennai: Kazhakam Publications.

Non-Verbal Predicates in English & Iraqi Arabic, and the Status of the Copula 'Be'
Saif Abdulwahed Jewad
University of Delhi
Saif_s2003@hotmail.com

The term ‘non-verbal predicate’ refers to that kind of predicate in which information about the subject is expressed by a non-verbal element regardless of whether there is a copula or not. Therefore, in a sentence like Sarah is sick, it is the adjective sick, not the copula is, that gives information about the subject Sarah. This kind of predicate is, therefore, found in a simple clause construction which involves a subject and a predicate, while the subject may be a noun or pronoun, the predicate may be a nominal, an adjectival or a prepositional. However, on one side, in a language like English, this kind of predicate always appears in connection with a form of the copula be and hence raising the possibility of being a verbal predicate. However, and in order to identify the status of such predicate, i.e., whether verbal or non-verbal, Hengeveld (1992) uses an eloquent technique which basically relies on two criteria; the first one concerns the operation of selection restrictions. That is, in the verbal predicate it is the verb that selects the type of argument involved while in the non-verbal predicate it is the non-verbal element that selects the type of argument involved. Therefore, in a sentence like Ahmed is sick it is the adjectival predication sick that decides the type of argument involved, i.e., animate, for which is not possible to replace this animate argument with an inanimate one as in *the chair is sick. Similarly, in a sentence like Firas is a teacher it is the nominal predication a teacher that decides the type of argument needed, i.e., human for which it is not possible to replace this argument with a non-human one as this would result in an ungrammatical sentence as in *the elephant is a teacher. Thus, it appears that it is the non-verbal element, not the copula, that imposes such restriction on the selection of the arguments. The second criterion concerns the valency of the non-verbal predicates. That is, in the verbal predicates it is the verb that decides the number of the argument required, i.e., intransitive, transitive and di-transitive, while in the non-verbal predicates it is the non-verbal element that decides the number of arguments required as in this car is fast as opposite to this car is similar to mine. Both of these sentences involve the same form of the copula be which is combined with two different adjectives fast and similar respectively, however, the former requires one argument, i.e., the subject, while the latter requires two. Hence, the ungrammaticality of a sentence like *this car is similar is explained by the fact that the adjective similar lacks an essential second argument. Similarly, in a sentence like Firas is a denizen of New Delhi it is the nominal predication denizen that obligatorily takes a complement headed by a preposition, i.e., of New Delhi. Moreover, prepositions in English may also decide the number of the argument required as in Mr. Kumar is from India as opposite to she is nearby. In the former sentence the preposition from is transitive and therefore takes an obligatory complement, i.e., India while in the latter the preposition nearby is intransitive and therefore does not need a complement Tallerman (2011, P 116). Thus, it seems that it is the non-verbal element, not the copula, that decides the number and the type of the argument(s) required. Therefore, if any of these two criteria applies, then the predicate in point can be described as a non-verbal predicate. On the other side, in a language like Iraqi Arabic, it seems that such predicates are expressed without using a copula, at least in the present tense. Therefore, in a sentence like ?ani mudaris-a ‘I (am) a female teacher’ the subject ?ani ‘I’ is put together with the nominal predication mudaris-a ‘female teacher’ without any intervening copula. However, Iraqi Arabic necessarily involves the use of a copulative element, similar to that found in English, in such predicates in the past and future tenses. Nevertheless, it will be shown that such a copula, in both languages, is used just to indicate the tense of the sentence and it does not contribute to the meaning except that of the tense.

Thus, it seems that the non-verbal predicates in English and Iraqi Arabic shows up interesting linguistic property that is worth exploring. Therefore, we attempt to examine such kind of predicates with special focus on the status of the copulative element in these two languages.

Systematicities in Semantic Change of Arabic Words in Urdu
Farha Khan
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
farahkhan31c@gmail.com

In the last few decades there has been growing interest in exploring systematicities in semantic change from a number of perspectives including theories of metaphor, pragmatic inferencing, and grammaticalization. As in earlier studies, these have for the most part been based on data taken out of context. This paper is the first detailed examination of semantic change from the
perspective of historical pragmatics and discourse analysis. Drawing on extensive corpus data from Urdu and Arabic texts and attempts to show that most changes in meaning originate in and are motivated by the associative flow of speech.

References

Antilla, R. (1992). "Field theory of meaning and semantic change." In G. Kellermann and M. Morrissey, eds., Diachrony within synchrony: language history and cognition, pp. 23-83. Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 14. Frankfurt. Peter Lang.
Arlotto, A. (1972). Introduction to historical linguistics. Houghton Mifflin company: Boston
Auwera, J. (2002). More thoughts on degrammaticalization. In Wischer and Diewald, eds., 19-29.
Blank, A. and Koch, P. eds. (1999). Historical Semantics and Cognition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Bloomfield, L. 1984 (1933). Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Brown, C. H. and Stanley R. (1983). Polysemy, lexical change and cultural importance. Man (N.S.) 18(7): 2–89.
Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of Language: its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York: Praeger.
Dik, S. (1980). Studies in functional grammar. Foris, Dordrecht/ Cinnaminson: N J.
Greenberg, Joseph H., Charles A. Ferguson, Edith Moravcsik, eds. (1978). Universals of Grice, Paul. 1989 [1975]. Logic and conversation. In his Studies in the Way of Words, Human Language. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 4 vols.

A Study of Vocabulary Learning Strategies among Undergraduate Learners of AMU
Zoya Khan and Sadaf Zarrin
Aligarh Muslim University
khanzoyaelt@gmail.com, sadaf.amu11@gmail.com

One of the most important challenges that learners face during the process of second language learning is learning vocabulary. Vocabulary has been recognized as crucial to language use in which insufficient vocabulary knowledge of the learners lead to difficulties in second language learning. Thus, in the case of learning vocabulary in second language, students need to be educated with vocabulary learning strategies. For this study, we used Schmitt’s classification of vocabulary learning strategies that are classified as determination, social, memory, cognitive, and meta-cognitive strategies. The main purpose of this paper is to examine and investigate the use of current vocabulary teaching and learning strategies among undergraduate learners at A.M.U. The paper first reviews the historical development of vocabulary status in the recent ELT pedagogy. It then discusses some common vocabulary learning strategies. Based on the aim of this study, it was decided that the best method for this investigation to better understand the use of vocabulary learning strategies by these particular students is to adopt the quantitative research design. The present study, by the use of questionnaire has investigated the second language vocabulary learning situation among 46 under-graduates in terms of their perspective of vocabulary learning, strategy use. Furthermore, statistical analysis of the data revealed that cognitive strategy was found as the most frequently used strategy whereas meta-cognitive strategy as the least frequently one. It indicated that the participants of the current study need more training on vocabulary learning strategies to become more familiar with all types of vocabulary learning strategies. Effective vocabulary learning and teaching strategies need to be incorporated into learners’ vocabulary learning process.

Keywords: Vocabulary learning strategies (VLS), Schimitt’s classification of VLS, ELT pedagogy.

A Cross Linguistic Study on Phonics Skills in typically Developing Children and in Children with Learning Disability in Hindi & English

Navnit Kumar & Sudamini Nayak
AIISH, Mysore & ERC, Kolkata
navnitaiish@gmail.com

Phonics is the association of letters and sounds out written symbols (Jones, 1996). Knowledge of letter names provides a foundation for early reading. Phonics skills can be subdivided into three groups like alphabetic skills, reading and decoding skills and spelling skills.

The present study aimed to develop checklist for assessing phonics skill in Hindi and English and to compare the phonics skills in Hindi and in English in typically developing children and in children with Learning Disability. A total of 60 children were taken as participants for the research. The participants were categorized into two groups: group-1 consisting of children identified with having Learning Disability and group-2 consisted of typically developing children. All the participants were within 7-12 years of age and native speakers of Hindi.

Significant difference was found between typically developing children and children with disabilities on phonics skills task. In cross linguistic comparison both the groups performed better in English than Hindi.

It may be concluded that phonics skill task is a powerful indicator to assess pre-reading skills. The results will help in future therapeutic management for the children with learning disabilities.

Key words: Phonics skill, Learning Disability, Typically developing children, English and Hindi language.

Classification of Marathi Text Documents
Meera Patil
PICT College of Engineering, Computer Dept, Pune
kukademeera2010@gmail.com

Classification has been applied to English language text documents from many years. But very few research works are found for classifying Indian language text Documents. This paper proposes to classify Marathi text documents using Naïve Bayes Classifier and KNearest Neighbor Classifier. This system will be used in Marathi digital libraries.

Keywords— Marathi Text Classification, Naïve Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier

References

K. Rajan, V. Ramalingam, M.Ganesan, S.Palanivel, B. Palaniappan, “Automatic Classification of Tamil documents using Vector Space Model and Artificial Neural Network”, Published in Journal Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal, Volume 36 Issue 8, October, doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2009.02.010, 2009

Abbas Raza Ali, Maliha Ijaz, “Urdu Text Classification”, Published in FIT '09 Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Frontiers of

Information Technology, ACM New York, USA, 2009. ISBN: 978-1- 60558-642-7 doi: 10.1145/1838002.1838025

Nidhi and Vishal Gupta, "Algorithm for Punjabi Text Classification", Published in International Journal of Computer Applications Volume 37– No.11, Jan 2012

S.Kanimozhi "Web based classification of Tamil documents using ABPA", Published in International Journal of Scientific & Engg Research Volume 3, Issue 5, May-2012. ISSN 2229-5518

The Unicode Standard, Version 6.1

Oznur Kirmemis and Gulen Toker, "Text Categorization using k-nearest Neighbor Classification", Survey Paper from Middle East Technical University.

Durga, Mrs A. Kanaka, and A. Govardhan. "Ontology Based Text Categorization - Telugu Documents", Published in International Journal of Scientific & Engg Research Sept 2011.

Fabrizio Sebastiani "Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorization", Published in ACM Computing Surveys March 2002

Upendra Mishra "MAULIK: An Effective Stemmer for Hindi Language", Published in IJCSE May 2012 Volume No 4, Issue No 5, ISSN 0 9753397

Mudassar M. Majgaonker and Tanveer J Siddiqui (2010) “Discovering suffixes: A Case Study for MarathiLanguage”, Published in (IJCSE) International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering Vol. No. 02, Issue No. 08, pp 2716-2720.

Pandey, Amaresh K and Tanveer J. Siddiqui. 2008, “An unsupervised Hindi stemmer with heuristic improvements”, Published in Proceedings

of the Second Workshop on Analytics For Noisy Unstructured Text Data, 303:99-105.

Qurat-ul-Ain Akram and Asma Naseer "Assas-Band, an Affix- Exception-List Based Urdu Stemmer", Published in Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Asian Language Resources, ACL-IJCNLP 2009

Aas K. and L. Eikvil (1999, June). “Text categorisation: A survey”, Technical report in Norwegian Computing Center, P.B. 114 Blindern, N- 0314, Oslo, Norway. Technical Report 941.

Prachi Gondhalekar "Marathi Vyaakraan”,Published by Visa Publication.

http://bionicspirit.com/blog/2012/02/09/howto-build-naive-bayesclassifier.html

Effect of Gender and Schooling on proficiency of English language: A study of Functional English and General English students at higher secondary level in Srinagar

Hafsa Riyaz
University of Kashmir, Srinagar

hafsakachkar@gmail.com

English has occupied a unique place in the educational system of the valley. Moreover it continues to be a major language having a prestigious position in our society. It is the language that is widely used in society and learners need to acquire English in order to survive in a society. Fluency in English enhances an individual’s personality, presentation skill, confidence and eventually his career. In second language learning, sociopsychological factors play a major role in enhancing language learning. The present study focuses on what is considered as the two most important variables: gender and schooling. This paper analyses the relation of gender and schooling with the proficiency of English language in both General English students and Functional English students. The study covered higher secondary institutions of Srinagar city where both functional English and general English were taught. The findings of the study revealed that females were significantly more successful than males in terms of English language proficiency. Depending on the statistical results, it is discovered that there is a significant connection between gender and achievement in English language. Similarly there was significant relation between schooling and proficiency in English language. It was observed that language proficiency is highest in missionaries followed by private and finally in government schools. This study of the social-psychological variables of the students will possibly provide additional insights in better identifying existing challenges and in taking a more realistic perspective about the ELT (English Language Teaching) situation at higher secondary level.

Semantics of Indian TV Advertisements
Ruchi Singh
Banaras Hindu University
ruchisingh.linguistics@gmail.com

Indian TV advertising language is a language which attracts the mind of the audience. This is by the magic of the language viewers are persuaded to buy that particular product. Each sentence and slogan in the advertisement has a meaning and a function. This paper is about the finding of semantic features in advertising language. And the data for the paper has been collected from television itself and downloading the TV advertisements from internet.

In Indian TV advertisements, semantics of the language is very important. That is why, advertisements use the language which is impressive and catchy. To arrest the mind of the audience the advertisers use the striking words and phrases like ambiguous words, weasel words, hyperbole and so on. The ambiguous words are those which have more than one meaning like “jaago re” used in Tata tea advertisement it has two meanings (1) get up from sleep, (2) get up for awareness.

Weasel words are used to suggest meaning without being specific to any other advertisement. Like “only Oreo” advertising slogan it has an open comparison without being specific with others that this product is best.

Hyperboles are used to exaggerate the audience and the adjectives like new, white, clean… are used. For example Santoor advertisement has used “naya sunhara santoor.”

Advertisers avoid using the negative sentences and words in the advertisement because they are focusing on what are the positive quality of the product.

Last but not the least the best semantic feature of advertising language is that it has open interpretation that every word and sentence is open to be interpreted. The audience is free to interpret it in their own way.

References
Chauhan Gajendra Singh, (2010); “Language Media & Society; Essence of Advertising Communication”. Rawat Publications.
Chithra A.R.; “Discoursee Analysis of Language use in advertisements”. Sivashanmugam C., Thayalan V. (2010); “Recent Advances in Linguistics”. Bharathiar University Coimbatore.
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Shift in Indian English
Shiavya Singh
IIT-Patna
shaivya@iitp.ac.in

Language shift a universal phenomenon, can be natural or non-natural. Natural shift is a process of historical change; non natural shift is the result of the interaction between different linguistic groups. Shifting patterns of Indian English is the beginning of a non natural shift which is eventually turning natural. English has entered into India’s linguistic ecology in a big way as if it was always a part of it.

In this paper I propose to study shifting patterns of ‘Indian English’ in India’s multilingual backdrop. The aim of the study is to look at instances of shifts in English spoken in India and the reasons behind such shift. Our goal will be to capture the changing patterns of the ‘Indian English’ language use.

This process of shifting pattern in English has been substantially influenced by the Indian Socio-cultural norms and has acquired new structures and features in India. When such expressions are used in any other language, this can be seen as a real intervention in the language.

Keywords: Indian English, language shift, linguistic features, social structure, communicative praxis.

References:
Agnihotri, R.K., Singh R. (eds.) 2012 Indian English: Toward a New Paradigm, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan
Bhatt, R.M. 2007 On Native/ Non Native Distinction, In Singh, R. (Ed.) Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, New York: Mouton de Gruyter
Dasgupta, P. 1993 The Otherness of English: India’s Auntie Tongue Syndrome, New Delhi: Sage Publications
Fishman, J.A. 1964 Language Maintainace and Language Shift as a Field of Enquiry, Linguistics 9, 32-70
Fishman, J.A. 1965 Who Speaks What Language to Whom and When? La Linguistique 2, 67-88
Fishman, J.A. 1972 Language in Sociocultural Change: Essays by Joshua. A. Fishman, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Gupta, R.S., and Kapoor, K. 1991 English in India: Issues and Problems, New Delhi: Academic Foundation
Kachru, B. B. 1983 The Indianization of English: the English Language in India, Oxford: Oxford University Press
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Meshtrie, R., 2012 ‘Native Speaker, Vernacular Universals and New Englishism’ in Agnihotri, R.K., Singh R. (eds.) Indian English: Toward a New Paradigm, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan
Singh, R. 2007 On Nature Structure and Status of Indian English, In Singh, R. (ed.) Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, New York: Mouton de Gruyter
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[1] ‘Texting’ serves as an umbrella term for SMS, Online chat, IM, tweets etc.

[2] An earlier version of this paper titled Coding and Decoding of Text Messages was presented at 34AICL, Shillong. (1-3 Nov, 2012).

Department of Linguistics, AMU Aligarh

7th Students’ Conference of Linguistics in India

ORAL PRESENTATIONS

7^th Students’ Conference of Linguistics in India