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    Linguistic Area

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    India represents a classic example of a linguistic area, as it is home to over 1600 languages across six unrelated language families spoken by over one billion people. Despite their genetic differences, the languages of India share several common features, such as retroflex sounds, SOV word order, morphological derivation of causative verbs, and partial or complete word reduplication. These convergent traits cut across families and define India as a cohesive linguistic region characterized by patterns of both divergence and convergence among its many languages over time.

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    Linguistic Area

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    EASSA
    940 views16 pages
    India represents a classic example of a linguistic area, as it is home to over 1600 languages across six unrelated language families spoken by over one billion people. Despite their genetic differences, the languages of India share several common features, such as retroflex sounds, SOV word order, morphological derivation of causative verbs, and partial or complete word reduplication. These convergent traits cut across families and define India as a cohesive linguistic region characterized by patterns of both divergence and convergence among its many languages over time.

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    India represents a classic example of a linguistic area, as it is home to over 1600 languages across six unrelated language families spoken by over one billion people. Despite their genetic differences, the languages of India share several common features, such as retroflex sounds, SOV word order, morphological derivation of causative verbs, and partial or complete word reduplication. These convergent traits cut across families and define India as a cohesive linguistic region characterized by patterns of both divergence and convergence among its many languages over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    940 views16 pages

    Linguistic Area

    Uploaded by

    EASSA
    India represents a classic example of a linguistic area, as it is home to over 1600 languages across six unrelated language families spoken by over one billion people. Despite their genetic differences, the languages of India share several common features, such as retroflex sounds, SOV word order, morphological derivation of causative verbs, and partial or complete word reduplication. These convergent traits cut across families and define India as a cohesive linguistic region characterized by patterns of both divergence and convergence among its many languages over time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 16

    Linguistic Area

    India as a Linguistic area

    India represents six distinct language families


    spread over a large region and spoken by more
    than one billion speakers. The language families
    are:

    1. Indo-Aryan
    2.Indo-Iranian
    3.Dravidian
    4.Austro- Asiatic
    5. Sino- Tibetan
    6. Tibeto-Burman

    There are more than 1600 languages


    spoken in the present India.
    The government of India reports only 122
    languages and recognizes as scheduled or
    official

    Typologically distinct languages add to the


    diversity scene.
    Indo-Aryan is highly inflecting,
    Dravidian is both agglutinative and
    inflecting,
    Austro-Asiatic language is highly
    polysynthetic and incorporating, and
    Tibeto-Burman is analytic.

    Linguistic Area
    The term Linguistic Area was made popular
    by M.B. Emeneau (1956) : Language and
    Linguistic area
    He Defined Linguistic area as an area
    which includes languages belonging to
    more than one family but showing traits in
    common which are found not to belong to
    other members of (at least) one of the
    families.

    Linguistic area
    Linguistics Area may be defined as a
    geographically contiguous area, which is
    characterized by the existence of common
    linguistic features shared by genetically nonrelated language.
    Hence a Linguistic Area is marked by the
    convergence of linguistic features of
    various languages spoken in a particular
    region regardless of the fact that these
    languages may belong to different families or
    sub families

    For example, India represents a classic


    example of linguistic area
    as the languages of the mainland India
    belonging to four different language families
    i.e. Indo Aryan, Indo-Iranian, Dravidian,
    Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman share
    several linguistic traits among themselves.

    India is known for its multiplicity and


    diversity of languages it is because of our
    tribal languages. The rate of bilingualism as
    well as the numerical strength of the
    distinct varieties of languages is highest
    among tribal population.
    Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic language
    family are represented by 100% tribal
    population

    Features of Indian Linguistic


    area
    Indian linguistic area is characterized by
    common linguistic traits such as
    retroflex sounds, SOV word order, absence
    of prepositions, morphological reduplication
    (expressive), echo formations,etc.

    Phonological
    Retroflex and voiceless aspirated sounds
    are widely spread even in those languages
    that were isolated for thousands of years,
    eg. Andamanees

    Central vowel [] is also widely present in


    Indian languages.

    Morphological
    Almost all languages offer morphologically
    derivable pairs of transitive and causative verbs.
    Some languages have double causatives.
    Eg. Hindi
    pina drink[TR]
    pIalana drink[CAUS1]
    pIlwana drink[CAUS2]
    Malayalam.
    tinnu ate (TR) tiRRiccu ate(CASU1), tiRRippiccu
    ate (CAUS2)

    Echo Formations

    Echo Formations is a concatenation of a base word followed


    by an echo word. It is partially repeated form of the base
    word, such that the initial sound [Vowel/Consonant] or the
    initial syllable of the base word is replaced by another sound
    or another syllable.
    The echo word does not change the canonical shape of the
    base word . A repetition of a part of a lexical item carrying a
    semantic modification,
    e.g. Hindi ghar> ghar var 'house etc'. (partial reduplication)
    puli-gili tiger etc. are examples of echo formations
    where the second morpheme has rigid replacer
    phoneme/lexeme unique to each language.

    Word Reduplication
    This refers to a complete or partial repetition of a
    word/lexeme.
    Complete word reduplication is constituted of
    two identical (bimodal) words. That is, both
    form and meaning are repeated once. The
    combined meaning give various modified
    meanings
    The repetition of the entire lexical item, e.g.
    Hindi ghar house > ghar ghar house
    house each and every house' (complete
    reduplication)

    Syntax

    The SOV order and implicational ordering elements exist


    in all Indian languages.
    Exceptions are Khasi, Nicobarese (Austro-Asiatic) and
    Kashmiri (Indo-Aryan), which maintain SVO.
    Khasi is a proto typical example of SVO ordering.
    Hindi
    Ram-ne sohan ko kitab di
    Ram- sohan- book give. FEM.PST
    Ram gave a book to Sohan
    The sentence above shows postpositions such as ne and
    ko attached to nouns, a typical characteristic feature of
    SOV language.

    Apart from areal features, there are also those features that
    identify a micro-area.
    1 Nasalisation (Northern India) Hindi: h 3plural
    2. Aspiration (Northern India) Hindi: bharat India
    3. Gender agreement (Western India) cgi [ADJ] kui [N]
    good girl
    4. Right hand is eating hand
    5. Relative-correlative pronoun (Northern India). Hindi:
    jo kitab aj khridi
    vo kl
    paega
    REL book
    today buy.PST.FEMSG CORREL tomorrow
    read.FUT.MSG
    The book (I ) bought today (that book) (I ) will read tomorrow.

    Since Linguistic Areas are result of convergence of


    Linguistic features, it implies a simultaneous process of
    divergence of the languages.
    When a language A becomes a like a language B
    because of the influence of the mutual contact, it also stats
    deviating from the other genetically related languages of
    its stock. This is inevitable in the process of language
    change as well as in the emergence of linguistic area.
    It is the multilingualism which is responsible for the genesis
    of South Asia or India as a linguistic area. Such areas are
    actually cultural areas and should interest cultural
    anthropologists and ethnographers.

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