LISSIM 6

June 1-15, 2012@ Kangra

Selected Essays

 

BUNDELI AND IT’S CONCORD PATTERN

Ruchi Jain
PhD, JNU

I am a student (PhD candidate) of Linguistics in JNU, looking forward to Linguistics Summer/Spring School in the Indian Mountains (LISSIM) 6 with great expectation and also hope that like last three LISSIMs (2007, 2008 & 2009, which I attended) it will also prove to be a fruitful, rewarding and enriching experience with respect to my research and academic aspects.

Bundeli which is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh and in southern of Uttar Pradesh of India. It is also known as Bundelkhandi language. It uses Devanagari script as its writing system. According to Census 2001 data, Bundelkhand has a population of around 15.5 million.

Bundeli is the most common dialect spoken in the area of Bundelkhand, which in turn consists of several sub-dialects. All South Asian Languages (SALs) have been in intense language contact with each other for centuries and hence, convergence, so is the case with Bundeli. Grierson in his historically known work Linguistic Survey of India (Vol.9.Part1.) has subdivided Bundeli in 20 varieties. Agrawal, Rameshavar Prasad in his book  Bundeli Ka Bhasha –Shastriya Adhayayan (1963), also provides the division of the language on the basis of phonology, namely, KhaaN boli, KhoN boli and KoN boli.

Bundeli inherited the typological characteristics of the other South Asian languages/Indo-Aryan Languages (IALs). Like all other SALs/IALs Bundeli too have Relatively Free Word Order (Scrambling), which means the constituents in a sentence can be freely moved or scrambled.

I am interested in the Agreement pattern of Bundeli. As far as I have looked I found that Bundeli’s agreement system is very rich so I would like to study it formally considering the Tense and Aspect phenomenon along with PNG agreement facts. It is also a pro-drop language like Hindi.    

In languages, agreement or concord is the relationship between a form of one word which requires a corresponding form of another word .Agreement plays a vital role in terms of Person, Number, Gender and Case.

Agreement is a parametric quality of languages. Some languages possess/exhibits strong agreement between Subject-verb and object-verb etc. such as, the Agreement of the verb with subject and in ergative languages agreement of the verb with subject is common almost in all SALs/IALs. But it is not a universal phenomenon so there are languages which do not show agreement at all, such as Malayalam and Manipuri (Tibeto-Burman) (Sarju Devi & Subbarao, 2003). There are various types of agreement such as Subject-verb, Object-verb (Indirect Object & Oblique Object) Adjectival agreement.

 

 

VARIOUS TYPES OF AGREEMENT

 

SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

 

In all the tenses subject-verb agreement is found in Bundeli. Here are some examples from Sagar variety of Bundeli:

(1) a.  hAm     jEMheM.

          I            go.Be.FUT.1.sg

         ‘I will go’.

 

     b. tum     jEMhoM.

         You    go.Be.FUT.2.sg

         ‘You will go’.

 

      c.  baa/bo    jEhe

           S/He       go.Be.FUT.3.sg

           ‘S/He will go’.

 

OBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT

 

In Bundeli ergativity blocks the subject-verb concord in that case verb agrees with objects just like Hindi. Examples from Sagar variety of Bundeli:

 

(2) a. hAm-ne     roTii      pAkaayii              tii.

         I-ERG       bread.f   cook.f.PRS.PRF  be PST                 

         ‘I had cooked bread’.

 

     b. tum-ne       roTii      pAkaayii              tii.

         You-ERG  bread.f   cook.f.PRS.PRF  be PST

         ‘you had cooked bread’.

 

      c. uu-ne           roTii       pAkaayii               tii.

          S/He-ERG   bread.f    cook.f.PRS.PRF   be PST

          ‘S/He  had cooked bread’.

 

ADJECTIVAL AGREEMENT

 

The agreement pattern of adjectives is very rich in Bundeli. According to the gender of the noun adjectives too take different shapes which have a quite interesting pattern. Examples from Sagar variety of Bundeli:

In Bundeli there are some of masculine Adjectives, which have “-a” ending, e.g.

 

(3) lRMka        ‘quarrelsome fellow/one who quarrels’

(4)     kMTa         ‘one-eyed fellow’

 

Adjectives: “-o”ending

 

In Bundeli there are a lots of masculine Adjectives, which have “-o” ending, e.g.

 

(5) giThAlo      ‘short-height’

(6) hAlko         ‘small/younger’

 

Adjectives: “-ii”ending

 

In Bundeli there are a lots of feminine Adjectives, which have “-ii” ending, e.g.

 

(7) hAlkii          ‘small/younger’

(8) noMnii        ‘nice/handsome’

 

Adjectives: “-r”ending

 

In Bundeli there are a few masculine and feminine Adjectives, which have “-r” ending, e.g.

 

Masculine

 

(9)   bEro                 ‘deaf’

(10) AMdhAro         ‘blind’

 

Feminine

 

(11) bEru                ‘deaf’

(12) AMdhAru        ‘blind’

 

Adjectives: “exceptional/non-changing”

 

In Bundeli there are mostly a few colour term Adjectives, which have “-exceptional/non-changing” ending, and they do not reflect gender as such, e.g.

 

(13) kAriiya     ‘blackish/black in colour’

(14) sAped        ‘white in colour’

 

Subbarao (2000) divides SALs in four distinct Types (Type A, Type B, Type C, and Type D) with regards to Agreement. Bundeli falls in Type A where the subject in the nominative case triggers agreement. At the same time Agreement is blocked by the presence of a postpositional case marked ergative in Bundeli alike most of the Indo-Aryan languages. Here, verb exhibits the agreement with the theme commonly termed as default agreement which is also homophonous with the Singular masculine marker.

Here, in particular, I would like to look at the structure of the VP in Bundeli to zero in on the agreement checking pattern of the language using an agreement-rich projection structure.

In this study, the agreement system in Bundeli attempts to present a coherent picture of different shells within the VP, like, Aux, Asp, etc. In this connection the study will examine the hierarchical relation between different “verbal” materials, as pointed out above, and then the argument structure of the verb itself in the terms of the arrangement of the IO and DO arguments.

 

The need for Shell-like structure of the VP is promoted by data such as the following:

 

(15) a. bo  jaa-t       aaye.                                                                                                                  

         he  go-Asp  Aux.                                                                                               

         ‘He goes’.

 

     b.  baa jaa-t       aaye.                                                                                                                                    she    go-Asp   Aux.                                                                                                             

          ‘She goes’.

 

(16) a. moN   jaahoN.                                                                                                                     

         I        go-Fut.                                                                                                                             

        ‘I will go’.

 

      b. tEN   jaaheN.  

          You   go-Fut.      

          ‘You will go’.

 

      c. bo   jaahe.                                                                                                                          

          he    go-Fut.                                                                                                                                             ‘He will go’.

 

This suggests that the structure of the VP in Bundeli is:

 

                   [(NP)            Aux             Asp              V]

 

In addition, lack of agreement with the habitual aspect and with future shows that ASP and Modality (if we take future as a modal) absorbs agreement checking.

 

               Finally, since the IO asymmetrically c-commands the DO, we get a Larsonian VP-Shell   Structure as follows:-

 

          [vp                  NP₁-DAT              NP₂    Aux    Asp    V]

 

 

However, certain intricate issues like argument binding militates against this structure and the study will resolve this by arguing for a structure based on Miyagawa’s (2004) argument for generation of the two arguments in different Shells of the VP.

 

In LISSIM 6 the expert of various linguistics theories (Morphology, Syntax and Semantics) will be the part of it as the faculty members. So it will be a great chance to get insight regarding the different linguistics interfaces (Morpho-syntax and syntax-semantics), which will be great help in sharpening my research question and also look for the possible answer of the same.

 

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