Causative constructions play a significant role in different areas of the grammar of a language. Some languages exhibit morphological causativization whereas some languages undergo complex syntactic processes to realize causative constructions. Magahi, like major Indic languages such as Hindi and Bangla, show morphological marking to realize causativization of a verb (haT ‘move’ -> haTaa ‘move’ -> haTbaa ‘cause (somebody) to move something’). Causativization of verb has significant syntactic and semantic consequences and scholars have worked on this topic for various Indian languages (Kachru 1973, 1976, Amritavalli 2001, etc). In this paper, I attempt to examine the process of causativization in Magahi. I look at the morphological processes involved in causativising a verb and also the properties of various arguments in causative constructions in Magahi. The most common morphological marker for causative is a suffix –baa (dauR ‘run’ -> dauR-baa ‘to cause to run’) but there are also variations (dauR ‘run’ -> dauRaa ‘to cause to run’). I attempt to show that this variation can be semantically explained. In the first case, the causer is close/direct whereas in the latter case, the causer is distant/indirect. In the second case, there is also a scope for an extra argument whereas in the first one there is a single causer (1). This distinction is not available to all the verbs. For instance, in the case of gir ‘fall’ -> giraa ‘drop/cause to fall/fell’ -> girbaa ‘make (s.b) cause (s.b) fall’.

Wh-Questions in Sinhala

M. G. Lalith Ananda

Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

E. Mail: mlalithananda@yahoo.com

This paper aims to discuss WH-Question phenomena of Sinhala in Root, Embedded, and Yes/No questions with special emphasis on certain syntactic and morpho-syntactic operations that seem to interact with a number of other modules of grammar. In particular, it will examine the role of verb morphology in WH questions, types of movement, the relation between WH and Focus, and D-Linked WH phrases and will also attempt to integrate the Sinhala WH-facts in to the cross-linguistic typology of WH phenomena. As shown in example (1), WH in Sinhala displays the following characteristics of whose configurations lead to different syntactic and semantic representations.

(soodanava ‘wash’, soodanna ‘to wash’, seeduwa ‘washed’, seeduwE ‘E- form’)

1) Ravi mokak da seeduwE?

Ravi (nom) what Q washed-E

What did Ravi wash?

· Question word remains in-situ

· Question word is followed by Q-morpheme “da”

· E-marking of the verb

The paper will argue that Sinhala WH-facts motivate both overt and covert movement, overt movement being restricted to partial WH movement in the embedded periphery. In particular, it will be shown that the relevant heads for WH operations in Sinhala are FORCE, INT(ERROGATIVE), and FINITENESS that constitute the left periphery as proposed by Cinque (1997, 1999). It will also be argued that the E-morphology of the verb interacts with Pragmatics making a distinction between De Re/De Dicto reading thereby showing more evidence for Syntax-Pragmatics interface. A significant generalization that surfaces in the study is that the left periphery of South Asian Languages is more articulate than had been once assumed as shown by Wh–in situ, a disjunctive particle, and a Quotative that can occupy the same clause. Another generalization is that Sinhala WH always has covert movement just like any other SOV language like Chinese or Japanese.

Crosslinguistic Semantic and Translation Priming in Normal Bilingual Individuals across Gender

Pravesh Arya, Akanksha Gupta, & Brajesh Priyadarshi

All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore

E. Mail: pravesh_arya_here@yahoo.co.in; akanksha041184@yahoo.co.in; brijesh_aiish@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION

The terms bilingual is used to describe comparable situations in which two languages are involved. A bilingual person, in the broadest definition, is one who can communicate in more than one language, be it actively (through speaking and writing) or passively (through listening and reading).

Potter, Von Eckardt and Feldman (1984) proposed two models i.e. Word association model and Concept mediation model, to understand the nature of a bilingual’s semantic memory, where former model states that lexical representations from language 1 are directly linked to the conceptual system whereas, the words of language 2 are connected only to language 1 and have no direct connections to the conceptual system and later model suggests that representations of the two languages are not directly connected and operate as separate systems that are directly connected to the amodal conceptual system.

To understand whether a bilingual’s semantic representations are linked across the two languages researchers have frequently used the semantic priming method. Semantic priming is based on the premise that , upon presentation of a word, the corresponding concept and associated conceptual nodes are automatically accessed.

Several studies have examined the nature of crosslinguistic and semantic priming in normal bilingual adults. Some investigators used bilinguals who acquired L2 sometime between childhood and adulthood (Chen & Ng,1989; Kirshner et al; 1984) while others studied those who learned L2 during adulthood (Frenck and Pynte,1987)

As for translational priming in early bilinguals, all experiments reviewed reported significant transition priming in the L1-L2 direction while only one-third found significant translation priming in the L2-L1 direction. The trends are similar in the late bilinguals, i.e robust L1-L2 priming and less consistent L2-L1 priming. Overall, the translation priming data suggest that L1-L2 priming is very robust and that early and late bilingual process L1 primes in a similar way but what differentiates the group is performance in processing L2 primes.

Results of a recent study done by Kiran, Swathi; Lebel, Keith R.(2007) on Semantic and Translation Priming in English –Spanish normal bilingual individuals and bilingual aphasics ,showed that there was no difference between translation and semantic priming effects for normal group and two participants among 4 participants demonstrated greater priming from Spanish to English whereas two participants demonstrated the opposite effect.

AIM :

Aim of the study is to examine crosslinguistic semantic and translation priming during lexical decision task in Hindi-Kannada speaking normal adult male and female bilingual individuals.

The present study is aimed to answer the following research questions that are-

What effect does language direction have on accuracy and reaction times and on semantic and translation priming in Hindi-Kannada bilinguals?
Are there any differences among adult male and female bilinguals’ reaction time for translation and semantic priming?

METHOD

Participants

A total of 24 Hindi-Kannada speaking normal bilingual individuals (12 male and 12 female; age range- 18 to 30 years) will be participated in the study.Participants will be selected on the criteria of having normal or corrected-to-normal vision and no known reading or learning disorder. All participants will be having no neurological and medical histories.

Tools

All testing will be done on IBM-compatible notebook computer with an Intel-Pentium processor, running Windows XP and loaded with DMDX software(foster & foster,1999).

Procedure

Two prime –target relationship will be developed : semantically related pairs and translation pairs. Twenty critical words list will be prepared for all critical word pairs. Each word will be paired with a semantically related word to form 20 semantically related SR ,for e.g cat (‘billi’ in hindi)- dog (‘nai’ in kannada ) word pairs. All word pairs will be contained one Hindi and one Kannada word. Further, one half (10) of the word pairs will be containing a Hindi prime and a Kannada target (H-K) and the other half will be containing a Kannada prime and a Hindi target (K-H) to balance language direction. To examine translation priming, each of the 20 target words will be paired with its corresponding translation TR for e.g cat (‘billi’in hindi )- cat( ‘beku’ in kannada) , one half the word list will be Hindi-Kannada and other half Kannada –Hindi.

Using the stimuli discussed above,different versions of the testing will be created. Within each version, each participant will be shown 40 word pairs presenting in random order : 10 crosslinguistic semantically related (SR), 10 crosslinguistic unrelated (SU) 10 translation pairs (TR), 10 translation unrelated (TU), within each of these above conditions , there will be equal numbers of word pairs in each direction (Hindi-Kannada and Kannada-Hindi). To counterbalance the language seen first by each participant, initial versions of the experiment will be started with Hindi primes and later versions will be started with Kannada primes. Two practice versions will be created using 5 word pairs.

Results and discussion: This section of the study will be discussed later.

REFERENCES:

-Chen,H.C.,&Ng,M.L.(1989). Semantic facilitation nad translation priming effects in Chinese-English bilinguals.Memeory and cognition,17,454-462.

-Frenck,C.,&Pynte,J(1987). Semantic representation and surface forms: a look at across language priming in bilinguals.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,16,383-396

-Kiran S.& Lebel K.(2007).Crosslinguistic semantic and translation priming in normal bilingual individuals and bilingual aphasia.Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics,21,277-303. --Poter,M.c.,So,K-F.,Von Eckardt,B.,&Feldman,L.B.(1984). Lexical and conceptual representation in beginning and proficient bilinguals. Journal of verbal learning and verbal Behavior,23,23-48.

Enhancing Students Writing Ability through Task Oriented Responses to Listening Exercises: The Case of Pre-University Students in Iran

^@Mahan Attar and ^*S.S.Chopra

@ Research student, Department of English, University o Pune, Pune-India.

[Ministry of Education, Hamedan District, Hamedan, Iran]

E. Mail: attarm@yahoo.com

* University of Pune, Pune, India.

E. Mail: silloochopra@hotmail.com

Writing skill as one of the crucial aspects of communication is an obstacle for many students. It is a complex process which requires attention to spelling , punctuation ,choice of words , sentence structure and a number of other aspects .

Some methodologists such as Celce - Murcia (1991), have suggested the task-oriented response to listening exercises in order to involve the learners in language learning, more communicatively. According to Celce – Murcia, there are two basic types of students responses in listening exercises: 1) The question-oriented response model. 2) The task -oriented response model. In question-oriented response model students are asked to listen to an oral text, then answer a series of factual comprehension questions on the content. In task -oriented response model students make use of the information provided in the spoken text, not as an end in itself but as a resource to use.

This paper looks at pre-university EFL learners in Iran and describes a research project which involved the implementation of task oriented vs. question oriented responses to listening exercises, designed to enhance students’ writing ability.

Quantitative analysis performed on the data suggests that the task oriented responses to listening exercises is more effective than question oriented responses in promoting writing ability of Iranian students.

Data

N = Number of students SD = Standard Deviation

M = Mean T = t_observed

Table 1

The data derived from writing Pre test

N M SD T

Experimental group 25 44.9 12.6

0.29

Control group 25 43.85 12.55

D.F. = 48 P = 0.05 t-critical = 2.00

Table 2

The data derived from writing Pre test

N M SD T

Experimental group 25 67.9 9.2

3.52

Control group 25 54.65 16.35

D.F. = 48 P = 0.05 t-critical = 2.00

References

Bahns, J., (1995). There’s More to Listening than Meets the Ear (respective review article.) System 23(3):531-547

Canale M, Swain M. ‘Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing’. Applied Linguistics (1980) 1(1):1–47.[Medline]

Celce_Murcia , M. (1991). Teaching English as a second or Foreign Language. 2^nd ed.

California: Heinle and Heinle Co.

Hymes D. ‘On communicative competence’ in J. B. In: Sociolinguistics—Pride, Holmes J, eds. (1972) Harmondsworth: Penguin

Lynch,T .(1996).Communication in the language classroom. Oxford : Oxford University Press.

Nunan,D. (1989). Designing tasks for the communicative classroom. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prabhu, N. S. (1987). Second language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vandergrift,L.(1997). The Cinderella of Communication Strategies: Reception Strategies in Interactive Listening. Modern Language Journal. 81(4):494-505.

Wilkins, D. (1976). Notional syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-based learning. Harlow, Essex, U.K.: Longman/Addison-Wesley.

Phonological, Grammatical and Lexical Interference in Adult Multilingual Subjects

Avanthi. N & Abhishek. B.P & Deepa M.S.

J.S.S. Institute of Speech and Hearing, Ooty Road, Mysore

E. Mail: avanthi.niranjan@gmail.co; abhishek.bp@gmail.com; deepalibra@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION: Bilingualism is defined as using or knowing more than one language (can be more than two languages); so every bilingual person is also multilingual, but the contrary is not necessarily true.. Language interference is the alternative use by bilinguals of two or more languages in the same conversation. Language interference is a linguistic practice constrained by grammatical principles and shaped by environmental, social and personal influences including age, length of time in a country, educational background and social networks. The ability to switch linguistic codes, particularly within single utterances requires a great deal of linguistic competence. Interference of L1 on L2 occurs in many components levels like phonological, lexical, grammatical. Researchers argue that transfer is governed by learner’s perceptions about what is transferable and by their stage of development in L2 learning. In learning a target language, learners construct their own interim rules.

AIM: To analyze the different types of language interference (Phonological, Grammatical and Lexical) in multi lingual adult speakers.

METHOD: The method was designed to uncover something of the complexity of language use in a particular sample of language learners and so it had an explicit descriptive purpose. 20 multilingual subjects were considered in the age range of 21- 22 years of age. Among which 10 subjects were native Kannada speakers and the other 10 subjects were non native Kannada speakers (Malayalam, English and Kannada). 3 tasks were considered Conversation, Narration and Picture Description. All the three tasks were carried out in Kannada for both the groups (Native & Non Native Speakers). Analysis was done for content and complexity of language. The data were transcribed verbatim, with verification for accuracy. To prepare the transcribed data for analysis, repetitions, false starts and irrelevant speech were deleted. The basic unit for segmenting the data was the T unit, defined as one independent clause plus the dependent modifiers of that clause. The narrative discourse tasks in the study were analyzed in terms of sentential grammar, discourse grammar and subjective quality.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Analysis was done in 2 steps, analysis of content and analysis of complexity. The analysis of content was grouped under 3 measures, Phonological, Grammatical and Lexical. The analysis of complexity was done by using T unit based analysis. To depict relationship between the scores of native and non native Kannada speakers, paired comparison t test was carried out for Narration and Picture Description tasks. There was highly significant statistical difference between the two groups considered, in terms of number of T units, number of Clauses / T unit, number of words/clause, number of words/ T unit, number of Clauses, number of Irrelevant clauses and number of words/ irrelevant clauses. The statistical analysis indicated that difference was found in all the measures considered. The results are indicative of, the content and complexity seen in the non native speakers is distinctively different from the native speakers. And the interference is explained in the content part of the study and the phrase length, compleixity of utterance which is the reflect of the language proficiency is explained in terms of the T units.

CONCLUSION: The study aimed at assessing the qualitative and quantitative differences in the non native speakers of the language, their proficiency of language and the different types of influence or transfer of the dominant language to the non native language. The results also indicate that there will be considerable influence or borrowing of features from a language that is learnt earlier or used more excessively in one’s social context. In the present study, the phonological, grammatical and lexical interference were studied. Further the study can be extended by studying the influence of both L1 and L2 on L3 separately, analysing stress, rhythm, intonation of the non native language can be done objectively and can be compared with the native language, and studying more complex structures of grammar of non native language.

REFERENCES:

Sima Paribakht. T., December (2005). The Influence of First Language Lexicalization on Second Language Lexical Inferencing : A study of Farsi – Speaking Learners of English as a Foreign Language. Language Learning, 55:4, 701-748.

Baljit Bhela, 1999. Native language interference in learning a second language: Exploratory case studies of native language interference with target language usage. International Education Journal, Vol 1, No 1.

Ellis, R. (1994). Factors in the Incidental Acquisition of Second Language Vocabulary from Oral Input: A review essay. Applied Language Learning, 5(1), 1-32.

Frederika Holmes (1999). Cross-language interference in lexical decision. Department of phonetics and linguistics, Vol. 12 (2), 380-398.

Faerch, C. & Kasper, G. 1983, ‘Plans and strategies in foreign language communication’, in Strategies in Interlanguage Communication, ed. C. Faerch and G. Kasper, Longman, London.

Poulisse, N. (1993). A Theoritical account of Lexical Communication Strategies. The bilingual lexicon. Vol. 32, 157 – 189.

Ecke and Herwig (2001). Linguistic transfer and the use of context by Spanish – English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18, 431 – 452.

Yu, L. (1996a). The role of crosslinguistic lexical similarity in the use of motion verbs in English by Chinese and Japanese learners. Canadian Modern Language Review, 53(1), 190 – 218.

Comparative Study of Nagpuri

SUNIL BARAIK

Deptt. Of Tribal & Regional Languages of Jharkhand, Ranchi University, Ranchi

E. Mail: s_baraik_in@yahoo.com

Nagpuri is the Mother-tongue of ChikBaraik as well as 9 other tribes of Jharkhand. In this state many ancient tribes like Munda, Oraon, Kharia, Chik Baraik and the total of 32 tribes dwell together peacefully, all from different language groups (Austro Asiatic, Dravidian and Indo Aryan). It is also the pidgin of Jharkhand. Almost all the tribal people speak Sadani with some local variation. It is used by a large section of tribal as well as non-tribal population either as a Mother tongue or as lingua franca. There are different views regarding the origin and status of Nagpuri. According to the Encyclopedia Mundarica, Sadri is the language of Sadans It is also used as a Mother-tongue among some Munda, Oraon and Kharia families residing in some parts of Simdega, Gumla, Lohardaga, Hazaribagh, Ranchi and Khunti Districts. Apart from Jharkhand,

Nagpuri is also spoken in Assam, West Bengal, Orissa, Chhatisgarh and Bhutan where the people of Jharkhand migrated to earn their living. In those places this language is also known as Sadri, Sadani, Gawari, Nagpuri, Nagpuria and even Jharkhandy language. It is observed that almost all the Oraons know this language. It is said that Oraons were banned of using their Mother-tongue (ie; kurukh) in Chotanagpur by the kings. Hence they were forced to adopt Nagpuri as their mode of communication because it was the (Rajbhasha) official language of Chotanagpur at that time.

Though the Oraons adopted this language as means of communication, they also mixed some other tribal as well as Hindi words. Nagpuri spoken by the Chik Baraiks is pure and is very much distinct from the others. Nagpuri spoken by Chik Baraik tribe and Oraon tribe can very easily be differentiated. My paper will be based on the comparative study of Nagpuri spoken by Chik Baraiks and Oraons of Jharkhand.

A Comparative Study of Reduplication in Gujarati and Telugu

Asma I. Barodawala & T. Sree Ganesh

Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore

This study aims at a comprehensive but at the same time concise account of the functions of reduplication across Gujarati and Telugu. Reduplication is understood as syntactic reduplication as defined by Wierzbicka (1986). While recognizing the origins of reduplication in discourse, clausal and intraclausal repetition, universally used pragmatic devices, are excluded from this study. Likewise, reduplication involving full copies will be at the center of the analysis while partially reduplicated forms are considered to be variants eroded from fully reduplicated ones.

Complete Reduplication:

GUJ: ઉભા ઉભા /ʊbʰa ʊbʰa/ ‘standing standing’

TEL: నిల్చుని నిల్చుని /niltʃuni niltʃuni/ ‘standing standing’

Partial Reduplication:

GUJ: રમત ગમત /rəmət gəmət/ ‘playing and things like that’

TEL: ఇల్లుగిల్లు /illʊ gillʊ/ ‘house and things like that’

Although reduplication can be argued to constitute the least marked morphological process (Couto 2000). The second and perhaps more important goal of this paper is to unearth the patterning of reduplication in Gujarati and Telugu. It is argued that in spite of the universality of reduplication, substrate influence plays a crucial role in determining the exact functions of reduplication. This hypothesis is corroborated by my findings from the study of the partly overlapping area of ideophones (Bartens 2000) which will be discussed as a speacial category of reduplicated items in some of the creoles under survey.

Naming Deficits in Bilingual Aphasia

Ridhima Batra & Pallavi Malik & Shyamala K.C

All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Manasagangotri, Mysore – 06

E. Mail: canif_ridhima@yahoo.com; charuthecharm@yahoo.co.in; shyamalakc@yahoo.com

INTRODUCTION

Naming calls into play multiple levels of processing. When used in conjunction with other basic tasks, it is usually possible to determine whether the principal cause of naming deficits are perceptual, semantic, or language output impairments. Naming of a visual stimulus such as an object or picture begins with early visual processing and recognition. The process of confrontation naming requires the formation of a perceptual representation of the object. It requires access to some sort of semantic representation to specify the concept that will then be tagged with the correct verbal label.

Bilingualism is an intriguing phenomenon and has been defined variously by different authors. According to Fabbro (1999) people who speak and understand two or more languages and dialects are referred to as bi/multilinguals. Aphasia in a multilingual can lead to different language deficits in the languages known and is called as bi/multilingual aphasia.

Naming deficits in aphasia are seen as retrieval failures which take different forms, depending upon the stage at which the breakdown occurs. A failure to retrieve the target lemma results either in selection of another lemma that has a similar semantic description i.e., semantic paraphasia; or a failure to retrieve a word’s phonological description i.e., phonological paraphasia in which the word sounds like the correct word but sounds are substituted, added or rearranged; or a neologistic paraphasia with a production of a non-sense word. Paraphasias are common in aphasia and can help differentiate fluent from non-fluent aphasia.

AIM: To examine naming deficits in bilingual aphasics and highlight the variation/correlation of these across languages.

METHODOLOGY

SUBJECTS: 6 Kannada-English Bilingual aphasic subjects were taken for the study. All the participants were males.

SUBJECT SELECTION CRITERIA:

v Types of aphasia: Both fluent and non-fluent aphasic syndromes were considered which was decided on the basis of clinical observation and WAB-K (Kertesz & Poole, 1982) findings. Three fluent (2 anomic and 1 Wernicke’s) and three non-fluent (2 Broca’s and 1 Transcortical motor) aphasics were taken for the study.

v Age range: 25-50 years.

v All subjects were right handed which was determined using self-report and information from significant others.

v Subjects had Kannada as their mother tongue and had learnt English as second language before the age of 10 years.

v Subjects with any auditory or visual deficit were excluded from the study.

v Ethical considerations were met.

PROCEDURE: Subjects were seated comfortably. Then by casual talking, the subjects were made to feel at ease and the procedure was explained before the evaluation and recording began. The environment was made as distraction free as possible by carrying out the procedure in a quiet room and by removal of any potential visual distracters. The entire verbal interaction with the subjects was audio recorded using Wavesurfer 6.0software.

TEST ADMINISTERED: Naming section of Western Aphasia Battery (Kertesz & Poole, 1982) was administered in both Kannada and English language.

ANALYSIS: The naming section of WAB, for all the subjects in both the languages was transcribed and analyzed for the presence of paraphasias (semantic, phonological paraphasias and neologisms). Variation of paraphasias among the fluent and non-fluent aphasic group and language specific errors in them were identified and described.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Appropriate statistical measure was used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The type of naming deficits exhibited by the fluent and non-fluent bilingual individuals with aphasia will be discussed in detail, in the paper.

REFERENCES

Fabbro, F. (1990). The Neurolinguistics of Bilingualism- An Introduction. London: Psychology Press.

Kertesz, A., & Poole, E. (1982). The aphasic quotient: The taxonomic approach to measurement of aphasic disability. The Canadian Journal of Neurological sciences, 1, 7-16.

Voicing patterns in Indian English

Pratibha Bhattacharya

Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi, Delhi

E. Mail: thepratibha@yahoo.co.in

The present study aims to understand and account for the variability that exists with reference to voicing patterns as in the following categories:

a) Plural allomorphs (such as /s/ in [kQt-s] ‘cats’ ;/z/ in [bQg-z] ‘bags’; /Iz/ in [mez-Iz] ‘mazes’)

b) Possessives (such as ‘black buck’s legs’ in the sentence ‘The black buck’s legs are broken’)

c) 3^rd person singular forms (such as ‘loves’ in the sentence ‘He loves that girl’) in English language in Delhi, India (commonly referred to as Indian English).

The paper also attempts to explore various possible linguistic factors (acoustic phonetic, phonological and morphophonemic factors) that are known to influence voicing.

The commonly assumed understanding of the three plural allomorphs of English (the standard version) [s], [z] and [Iz] is that, these allomorphs differentiated by the voicing or lack of it are induced by the final consonant of the singular form of the noun as shown below.

a) cat-s [kQt-s]

Plural à [s] / C ---------------- #

[- voice] [Plural]

b) bag-s [bQg-z]

Plural à [z] / C ------------------ #

[+ voice] [Plural]

c) maz-es [mezIz]

Pluralà [Iz] / C ---------------- #

[sibilants] [Plural]

[palatals]

The need for exploring the voicing pattern is to ascertain to what extent English in India follows the same pedagogical rule as described above. In the present context, it refers to the consonants in Indian English and their ability to induce voicing in the adjacent environments. It must be mentioned that ‘Indian English’ is an umbrella term that covers several varieties of English used as a second language in India. These varieties are generally assumed to exhibit significant phonological variations, stemming from various regional linguistic differences. Yet the results of the present study show remarkable stability in voicing patterns and the contributory factors across speakers in the sample.

The study is based on data comprising spontaneous speech and data obtained through reading tasks such as word-lists, sentences and texts collected from a sample of 15 people born and brought up in the city of North and North-West Delhi and who belonged to the age group of 25 to 30 years.

Resultative and Stative in Bangla: How different?

Shiladitya Bhattacharya

University of Calcutta, Kolkata

In Bangla we can have three different semantic readings of Event, State and Result in passive constructions. In Eventive Passive constructions there should be an agent who will be performing the action where as in both Resultative and Stative readings there is absence of an clearly indicated agent which makes them both different from that of Eventive .Now when we look at the Resultative and the Stative readings what we can mark as an essential difference between those is that-the Resultatives have an indication to a result that is caused by an action(which is done previously, by some agent may not be as clear as the Eventive reading which has got a mandatory agent.).On the other hand in the Stative interpretation of a sentence we find only the state of a thing/object/entity. So in brief the distinction among the three can be put like this. Eventives have a mandatory agent, Resultatives may or may not have an agent (i.e. the action may be without a direct agent to say a voluntary or self agentive action or it may have an agent which is not as clearly understandable as that of an Eventive one) and the Statives express the state of thing/object /entity (the presence or absence of the agent is not important).

Our problem with Bangla is that the two readings of Stative and Resultatives are sometimes phonetically similar. In most of the cases when copula is dropped from the Resultatives the two phonetic forms becomes similar and thus hard to distinguish. Examples are given below. And it will be necessary to mention here that in case of some verbs this difficulty arises. We are yet to make generalization that all the verbs show the same phenomenon. In colloquial Bangla, the copula drop from Resultatives is a common phenomenon and so the aim of this paper will be to try to distinguish between these two readings at the conceptual level with the help of some syntactic tests or devices.

Bangla Passive constructions have a clear distinction between its 1. Eventive and 2. Stative and /or 3. Resultative readings. But, the real problem, as explained above is to differentiate between its (the Passive construction) Stative and Resultative readings as in most of the cases their phonetic forms are similar.

E.g. Eventive: /drj(a khola holo/

Door open happen-past

‘The door was opened.’

Resultative: / drj(a khola /

Door open-present

‘The door is opened.’

Stative: / drj(a khola / ( /khola drj(a / ‘ the opened door’ is an

Door open Adjectival Use)

The opened door.’

E.g. Eventive: /dorja bondho holo/

Door close happen

‘The door was closed.’

Stative : /bondho dorja/

Closed door

‘Closed door’

Resultative: /bondho kora dorja/

Closed do-inf. door

‘Closed door.’

/bondho dorja/

closed door

‘Closed door.’

The aim of this paper will be to try to identify any diagnostic procedure(s) that can provide a clear distinction between the two readings (Resultative and Stative) in Bangla.

Reference:

Landau, Idan. Unaccusatives, Resultatives and the Richness of Lexical Representations. Paper downloaded from http:// ocu.mit.edu/ visited on 31.10.2008

The Indo-Portuguese Creole of Diu: ‘participant’, ‘alien’ or ‘observer’ of the Indian Linguistic Area?

Hugo Canelas Cardoso

Universiteit van Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

E. Mail: hugoccardoso@gmail.com

The Indo-Portuguese Creole spoken in Diu (U. T. Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar-Haveli), like most high-contact varieties across the world, establishes important typological links with the various languages which were involved in its formation and/or with which it coexists. In the specific case of Diu Indo-Portuguese (henceforth DIP), the early days of contact, in the early 16th-century, involved Kathiawadi Gujarati and Portuguese. However, it is likely that other codes also contributed to the initial `feature pool' (Mufwene 2001), including possibly previously restructured varieties of Portuguese, and neighbouring Indian laguages. In highly multilingual India, examples of extreme linguistic convergence through contact are hardly uncommon (recall the well-known case of Kupwar village, described in Gumperz & Wilson 1971) but, unlike most such cases, the formation of the Indo-Portuguese Creoles did not involve strictly languages which traditionally participate of the Indian Language Area (henceforth ILA). It is my purpose to ascertain to what extent the admixture observed in DIP has brought it into the realm of the ILA by investigating its (non-)conformance with the defining or salient typological characteristics identified for the ILA (Emeneau 1956, Masica 1976, Subbarao 2008).

This study reveals that DIP aligns with its primary ancestor languages (Gujarati and Portuguese) in ways that are often difficult to predict, and also that it is very difficult to try and rank the influence of one language with respect to the other. A systematic comparison shows that, alongside its links with Gujarati (e.g. case assignment) and Middle Portuguese (e.g. basic word order), the (modern variety of the) Creole diverges from both other domains (e.g. the relative absence of inflectional morphology) - which raises important questions concerning the process of creolization, on the one hand, and the exact composition of the initial `feature pool', on the other.

References

Emeneau, Murray B. 1956. ‘India as a linguistic area’. Language 32:3-16.

Gumperz, John J. & Robert Wilson. 1971. ‘Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border’. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages. London: Cambridge University Press. pp. 151-67.

Masica, Colin P. 1976. Defining a linguistic area: South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mufwene, Salikoko. S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Revised Receptive Expressive Emergent Language Scales for Kannada Speaking Children

Deepa M.S., Madhu K, Harshan K & Suhas

J.S.S. Institute of Speech and Hearing, Ooty Road, Mysore

E. Mail: deepalibra@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION :

Language development is a process that starts early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Child language development move from simplicity to complex. Many tests have been developed for language in toddlers. Even though they have been developed many decades back, they are still in practice in almost all clinics in India. But the tests need to be revised because children are observed to be developing many skills at very early age.

AIM: To revise the REELS (Receptive Expressive Emergent Language Scales) for children exposed to Kannada language.

METHOD: 720 children from all over Karnataka with age range of 0-3yrs served as subjects for the study. The children were divided into different age ranges 0-3 months to 33-36months. The milestones in REELS both receptive and expressive skills were numbered and used for the study as questionnaire which was administered to the parents/caregivers. The responses were tabulated and analyzed.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION: The results collected from all three regions were gathered and standard deviation was calculated. To rearrange milestones 80%criteria was used. If 80% of children are passing a particular milestone that milestone stone is shifted to the lower age groups. There was highly significant difference seen in 1^st to 3^rd year but the milestones did not differ significantly in the lower age group that is less than 1 year

CONCLUSION: Results revealed that there was significant difference seen in second to third year of life than in first year, both in reception and expression. So the revised REELS contain the skills which have been shifted to lower age group using 80% criteria. But the scale need to be administered to clinical population and has to be checked for validity. Also there is unequal number of skills in each age range, equal number of skills has to be distributed and revised further.

REFERENCES

American academy of pediatrics.,(1980). Caring for your baby and young child: Cambridge UK. 213-224.

Anerew, N.M., Freckerit, Z.,(2007) Association between media viewing and language development in children under 2 year age: Washington DC: Author. 92-100.

Anisfeld, M.,(1979) Interpreting "imitative" responses in early infancy. Science, 214-215.

Aslin, R.N., & Pisoni, D.B.,(1980) "Effects of early linguistic experience on speech discrimination by infants: " Child Development, 107-112.

Bzoch, K., League, R. and Brown, L. (2002) REELS (receptive expressive emergent language scale) 1^st and 3 rd edition.

Caroline, B. (1998), Typical Speech Developmen: Washington DC: Author..240-253

Elisabeth, H., Yousef, E. (2000) Developing a Language Screening Test for Arabic-Speaking Children.

Harlekar, G.(1987) 3-Dimensional language test

Johnson, C.J., & Anglin, J.M. (1995) Qualitative developments in the contents and form of childrens definitions. JSHR, 28:612-629.

Moog, J.S., and Geers, A.V. 1975. Scales of early communicatin skills (SECS)

Nippold, M.A. (1998) Later language development. The school age and adolescent year. Cambridge UK. 219-240

Natson, R .(1985) Towards a theory of definitions, Journal of child language development, 12:181-197.

Prathanef, B., Pongajanyakul, A., (1998) International journal of language & communication disorders.41, 214-120

Reed, V. (1992) Introduction to child language disorders (1995). Springer publishers. 345-356.

Relationship between Symbolic Play, Language and Cognition in Typically Developing Kannada Speaking Children

Devika.M.R, Navitha U & Dr. Sapna N.

All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Manasagangotri, Mysore – 06

E. Mail: dvkspdevika@gmail.com; naviudew@gmail.com

Introduction: Play is defined as any voluntary activity engaged for the enjoyment it gives without consideration of the end result (Piaget, 1962). Play serves as a platform for social interaction (including co-operating with each other and working together towards a goal, turn taking, decision making, problem solving etc.), emotional, motor, cognitive and language development. It combines action, language and thought (Tassoni & Hucker, 2005). Symbolic play is one of the surface manifestations of symbolization. Symbolization is the fundamental process of cognitive development. Play develops throughout a child's life, and it evolves from simple physical manipulation of objects to sophisticated and planned sequenced play. The ability to play symbolically emerges during the second year of life.

For many years, language pathologists, psychologists and other researchers have tried to discover evidence for the linkage between language, play and cognition. In the west, many studies carried out on typically developing children evidenced mixed results, some which confirmed the fact that there is a correlation between symbolic play and language(McCune-Nicolich, 1981, Ogura 1991).Lyytenin, Laakso(1997) and Chik Hsia Yu Kitty (2000), others which showed no significant relationship between symbolic play and language, particularly mean length of utterances (MLU) Shore, (O-Connell and Bates 1991) In addition, there are limited studies which investigated the relationship between play, language and cognition especially in the Indian context. Hence it becomes necessary to study the correlation between these three skills in typically developing children.

Objectives: Is there any relationship between symbolic play, cognition and language development in typically developing children? Does play correspond with the language comprehension and/or expression?

Method:

Subjects:

The sample included 10 typically developing Kannada children in two different age groups 24 to 30 months and 30-36 months. Subjects were mainly recruited through nursery, kindergartens. Each group consisted of 5 subjects with close to equal number of males and females in each group. The children included in the study had no history of medical problems, emotional, behavioural or sensory disturbances. Each child was administered Three-Dimensional Language Acquisition Test (3D-LAT) (Geetha Harlekhar, 1986) to assess their receptive, expressive and cognitive skills. Assessment checklist for play skills (Swapna, Jayaram, Prema, Geetha, in progress) was administered to get the age equivalent play scores.

Procedure: To study the symbolic play behavior, two sessions of play were organized in which all the children participated in two types of play situations viz. free play and structured play. The play sessions were video recorded.

Structured play: Each child was presented with four sets of thematically related toys, one set at a time, and they were allowed to interact with them for approximately 5 minutes each. The sets included several standard toys which would facilitate symbolic play and either a stick or a block as an item to be transformed.

Free play: Each child was presented toys such as kitchen set,furniture set,doll,quilt .truck,tool kit etc which were spread in the vicinity of the child. The child was invited to play with the toys. The mother was seated in the room but was asked not to intervene in the child’s play. This session lasted for approximately 10 minutes.

The symbolic play behaviours such as functional play, sequential play and verbalized elaborate play were studied The qualitative differences in symbolic play and the frequency of symbolic play in the two different age groups were analyzed. The play behaviors observed during the free and structured play was used to rate the assessment checklist for play skills. This was done in addition to the information obtained about the play behaviour though parental interviews. Based on the observations made the age equivalent scores for play were calculated. During free play, the toy preferences also were noted in terms of the toys that are reached out first and the duration of play with a specific toy. Gender differences were also studied.

Results: Appropriate statistical analysis was applied to investigate the differences with respect to the symbolic play patterns, the relation between symbolic play, language and cognitive development, toy preference among both the groups and the difference in genders. The findings indicated that there was a positive relationship between the subjects' chronological age and play, language and cognitive age. The data supported the hypothesis that symbolic play correlates with language and cognitive development. The results will be discussed in detail with respect to variables such as toy preferences and gender differences. The developmental differences between various play behaviors are also discussed.

Conclusion: The study of child language to describe and analyze spontaneous production of spoken language, with a cognitive and pragmatic framework contributes not only a more accurate understanding of normal play and language development, but also has an efficient clinical value. This suggests that play and language reflect the different underlying mental capacities in the young child. Such information would contribute to the assessment and diagnosis of children with communication difficulties.

References:

Bates, E., Benigni, L., Bretherton. I.,Camaioni, L.,& Volterra, V.(1979).The emergence of symbols:cognition and communcation in infancy. New York:Academic Press

Chick Hsia Yu Kitty (2000) ‘Correlation between symbolic play and language in normal developing Cantonese speaking children.’ Dissertation submitted as a part of partial fulfillment for the bachelor of science, speech and hearing sciences. University of Honk kong .

Geetha Harlekhar (1986) ‘Three dimensional language acquisition test (3D-LAT)’ unpublished dissertation, speech and hearing. Mysore university.

McCune-Nicolich, L. (1981). Toward symbolic play functioning: Structure of early

pretend games and potential parallels with language. Child Development, 52, 785- 797.

Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton and Company

Swapna, Jayaram, Prema, Geetha, (in progress), an ARF project undertaken at AIISH, Mysore

Tassoni, P., & Hucker, K. (2005). Planning play and the early years. Heinemann

ELDP Data Collection: Some Baram Experiences

Dubi Nanda Dhakal, TR Kansakar, YP Yadava, KP Chalise, BR Prasain & Krishna Paudel

Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

E. Mail: dndhakal@yahoo.com

We have been documenting the Baram language, a language of Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the western Nepal since May 2007. This programme has been supported by ELDP (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme), School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and hosted by Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. The sociolinguistic setting of the language reveals that this is a seriously endangered language when we assess the degree of language endangerment by means of the criteria set by UNESCO (2005). There are about three dozens of fluent language speakers, and only about a dozen of fluent language speakers can actually contribute good texts for language documentation. The language is not used for natural communication. The task of collecting data is more challenging because the Baram community does not use it in natural setting.

We follow Himmelmann (1998) in the beginning to collect the data which are more varied and functional. He explains that the communicative events can be placed in a continuum. On the one extreme that are spontaneous expressions like exclamation, or the expressions to show pain and anger and on the other extreme there are expressions which are well planned like the language used in ritual and so on. All sorts of human communication is possible with different kinds of interactions between these two extremes. Unfortunately, in the Baram language we did not find the use of language in both of these extremes. The language is neither used at natural setting nor is it used in the rituals.

Taking Himmelmann (1998) as a departing point, we expanded the inventory of communicative events covering several areas. We follow Lupke (2005) while expanding the inventory. In order to have very restricted structure of the language we follow Leech and Jan Svartvik (1994). They help us get the paradigm for writing a sketch grammar. We also follow Franchetto (2006:189) to collect data on ethnographic topics like celebration of festivals, cultural occasions and so on.

We may summarize the inventory of communicative events and genres which are (1) Exclamative (cries, signs of surprise, joys etc (2) Directive (ordering, permission, telling, vocative etc) (3) Conversational (conversation, chat, discussion, interview, songs etc. (4) Monological (historical, personal), myths, speeches and routines etc. (5) Rituals (ritual, birth and death ceremony) etc.

Due to the restricted use of language, we are unable to have data for the genres like language of rituals, formulaic expressions like greetings and leave taking and so on. We followed very rigorous method of data collection for this process and finally succeed in collecting the representative corpus.

Due to very limited language use, we also used stimuli like documentary films, clips of songs, photographs, and some questions typed on the laptop etc. We hope the methodology can be used while working with severely endangered languages.

In this paper, we are discussing various strategies used in data collection. Aside from this, we also talk about different language speakers and which area they can contribute. We find that some speakers can contribute to the narrative texts whereas some others are useful in myths and rituals. We have collected about 65 hours of texts including audio and video recordings. Most of these files were recorded at our field office in Gorkha which is located in the western part of Nepal.

We suggest the following recommendations for field workers based on our field work:

(1) Make an inventory of different genres, communicative events and ethnographic topics. This help you capture diverse sessions with different uses of the language. (2) Work with different speakers. One may be good at narrating stories, another at giving instruction and another perhaps at data elicitations for making paradigms.(3) Make a proper analysis of data you have collected before you record texts for hours! You will be surprised to see that the linguistic contents of the speaker who speaks for a long time may be worthless! (4) Make your sessions of moderate length. If they are very long, i.e. for an hour, they may be difficult to handle in some computer softwares like ELAN, TOOLBOX, AUDACITY when these files are edited and annotated. (5) Record some sessions which are directly related to grammar, i.e. 'conditional clause', 'purposive clause', etc. This helps you get the language in use while writing grammar. (6) The language speakers should be properly trained before recording the sessions if you intend to have specific topics and structures recorded.

References:

Abbi, Anvita. 2001. A Manual of Linguistic Fieldwork and Structures of Indian Languages. Lincolm Handbooks on Linguistics, No.17. Munchen: Lincom Europa.

Franchetto, Bruna. 2006. Ethnography in language documentation. Essentials of Language Documentation. (Ed) Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Ulrike Mosel. Berlin and New York; Mouton de Gruyter.

Grinvald, Colette. 2003. Speakers and documentation of endangered language. 53-72. Language Documentation and Description Vol. 1. (Ed) Peter K. Austin. Endangered Language Project.

Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1998. Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. Linguistics 36:161-95.

Leech, Geoffrey and Jan Svartvik. 1994. A Communicative Grammar of English. Singapore: ELBS.

Lupke, Fiederike. 2005. Small is beautiful: contributions of field-based corpora to different linguistic disciplines, illustrated by Jalonke. 75-105. Language Documentation and Description Vol 3. (Ed) Peter K. Austin. London: Endangered Language Project.

Samarin, William J.1967. Field Linguistics: A Guided to Fieldwork. New York: Holt Rinehart and sinston, Inc.

Yavada, Yogendra P.1998. Lexicography in Nepal. Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy.

UNESCO. 2005."Safeguarding of the Endangered Languages: The Endangered Language Fund Newsletter, 7:1.

Some Methodological Observations on Linguistic Fieldwork: Case Studies from the Maharashtra Karnataka Border

^*Arvind Jadhav & ^#Nick Ward

^*Y C College of Science, Karad. Distt. - Satara. Pin-415124 India (MS)

^# University Of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW. AUSTRALIA

E. Mail: lecturer.arvind@gmail.com; nwar3485@mail.usyd.edu.au

Two current case studies are used to illustrate some methodological considerations in undertaking linguistic fieldwork. One is an investigation into the language of the traditional Indian healing systems of Ayurveda and Yog-therapy, as they are practiced in Kolhapur. The other examines the multilingual situation at the Maharashtra-Karnataka border area in two villages.

The investigators have ample theoretical background and are in the process of applying this theoretical knowledge to their fieldwork studies. Past methodologies are discussed, and their applications to the present researchers’ work are considered and reflected upon.

Case study 1: In this study recordings of consultations between Ayurvedic practitioners and Yog-therapists, and their patients are used as a basis for investigating metaphor and figurative language within the formal linguistic frameworks of these traditional practices in Marathi. The data are collected from the Kolhapur district in southern Maharashtra. The overarching rationale of this study is located within the literature of the ‘cognitive approach’ to metaphor, which sees these linguistic devices as reflections of underlying cognitive behavioural patterns (e.g. Lakoff, 1990, Valenzuela and Soriano, 2005), as well as in linguistic and ethnographic studies of healing discourses (e.g. Barrett and Lucas 1993, Konitzer et al 2002).

Case study 2: Language convergence process occurring due to prolonged language contact situation has been a topic of interest and intense enquiry in Sociolinguistics. Other than prolonged language contact situation, language convergence occurs due to immigration and in the case of tribal languages. In India, prolonged language contact has been the major cause of convergence (e.g. Pandit, 1971). One of the first reported cases of this type was that of Kupwar in Sangli district (Gumperz and Wilson, 1971). Similar sociolinguistic processes are found in many more villages around border regions in India. At the Mahrashtra-Karnataka border, three languages (Marathi, Hindi-Urdu, and Kannada) have been coexisting for centuries, in villages such as Arag, Bedag, Ugar, Abdul Lat, Kagal, Kagwad, and Kudachi. In the current study data from the village of Kagwad, which is now in Karnataka state, is analyzed and compared with some updated data from Kupwar. Of particular focus are the syntactic structures of the converging languages and some grammatical categories.

General issues of linguistic fieldwork methodology are identified (as articulated, for example, in Eckert, 2000; Rajyashree, 1986; Milroy 1987), and strategies for addressing these issues are discussed with specific reference to the above case studies. Amongst these general issues and challenges are the following:

1. Selection of the locality for the study.

2. Consideration of what type of language required for recording (e.g. Spoken or written; casual conversation or a more structured format like a ceremony or ritual).

3. Entering the communication network, and the implications of the chosen method.

4. Consideration of what specific things are to be looked at in the language (e.g. lexical items such as slang words or address forms; syntactic structures; pragmatic strategies, etc.), and how to elicit the required forms.

5. Legal and ethical implications such as consent and voluntary participation of respondents.

6. Self involvement of the primary investigators, and dependence on assistants for certain purposes.

7. Methodological tools to be used and their standardization.

8. Representation of all social variables, and consideration of which variables are relevant.

This paper will employ a multi-disciplinary approach to make a meaningful contribution to the fields of linguistic methodology, and Indian language studies.

REFERENCES:

Barrett, Robert J, and Lucas, Rodney H. 1993. ‘The Skulls Are Cold, the House Is Hot: Interpreting Depths of Meaning in Iban Therapy’. Man. 28(3). September. pp.573-596. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Massachusetts, Oxford: Blackwell

Gumperz, J.J. and Wilson, Robert. 1971. ‘Convergence and Creolization-A case from the Indo-Aryan/ Dravidian border in India’. In Hymes, D.(Ed.) ‘Pidginization and Creolization of Languages’. Cambridge: CUP. P-151-167.

Konitzer, M., Schemm, W., Freudenberg, N., and Fischer, G.C. 2002. ‘Therapeutic interaction through metaphor: An interactive approach to homeopathy’. Semiotica. 141-1/4. pp.1-27.

Lakoff, George. 1990. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. University of Chicago Press

Milroy, Lesley. 1987 (2^nd Ed). Language and Social Networks. Oxford, New York: Basil Blackwell

Pandit, P.B.,1972. ‘Bilingual’s Grammar -Tamil Saurashtri Grammatical Convergence’. In India as a Sociolinguistic Area. Poona: Deccan College.

Rajyashree, K.S. 1986. An Ethnolinguistic Survey of Dharavi: A Slum in Bombay. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

Lexical Organization in Malayalam-English Bilinguals

Sweety Joy, Meera Priya.C.S, Aiswarya Anand & Jayashree Shanbal

J.S.S. Institute of Speech and Hearing, Ooty Road, Mysore

E. Mail: sweety.slp20@yahoo.com; meeracs_18@yahoo.co.in; aiiisu_aiiisu@yahoo.co.in; jshanbal@gmail.com

Introduction:

Haugen, (1953) defined bilinguals as individuals who are fluent in one language but who “can produce complete meaningful utterance in the other language”. Since majority of world population is comprised of bilinguals (De Bot, 1993), a host of studies on bilinguals is documented in the recent past. The nature of bilingual lexical organization is an enduring question in bilingual research (Snodgrass, 1984). An attempt has been made to understand this with different models and experiments by various researchers. Amongst these experiments, priming studies have been one widely used method to understand processing organization. Relationship between lexical organization of a bilingual semantic, translation priming paradigm and picture naming tasks can be used to evaluate lexical decision in bilinguals. Studies conducted till date, have been mostly in alphabetic languages like English, which falls into the Latin language family. Indian languages, on the other hand are considered syllabic or semi-syllabic languages. Studies investigating priming patterns in Indian English bilinguals (like Malayalam-English) are thus necessary to study the nature of language processing and its representation in syllabic or semi-syllabic (non-alphabetic languages).

Aims of the study:

Present study was designed with the following objectives,

1. To investigate cross language priming (translation and semantic) in normal M-E bilinguals adults at 250 millisecond stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), using a stimulus set designed for automatic processing.

a) prime presented in Malayalam , (L1) and the target in English (L2) ; L1-L2 condition

b) prime is presented in English (L2) and the target in Malayalam ( L1);L2-L1 condition

2. To investigate cognitive flexibility using picture naming task and thereby check the

sensitivity of word association (Potter,1984) and concept mediation model (Potter 1984),by comparing the reaction time taken for picture naming task and L1-L2 translation task.

Method:

Subjects:

Eighteen adults in the age range of 17- 30 years, with Malayalam as mother tongue and English as second language, participated in the study. Educational qualification with a minimum of 12 years of formal education was considered for subject selection. Subjects were categorized as bilinguals or monolinguals based on ISLPR (International Speech Language proficiency rating scale) (Wiley & Ingram, 1985) scores.

Test Stimuli

List 1: Translation equivalent word pairs, semantically related word pairs, semantically unrelated word pair forms the stimulus material for lexical decision task. Prime words would be given in Malayalam and target was in English.

List 2: Prime words would be given in English and the target was in Malayalam.

List 3: 10 categories of nouns with each set of five pictures in series having four pictures from one lexical category. A total of fifty pictures were chosen for the study.

Instrument

A Compaq 2374 model laptop with DMDX software (Forster & Forster, 1999) was used for the experiment.

Procedure

Task 1: The experiments comprised of two language conditions: Malayalam – English and English to Malayalam, consisting of 3 blocks the stimulus set in each block containing 63 word targets ( 21 translation equivalent (TE, ) 21 related( R ) word , 21 unrelated (UR) prime – target word pairs. The final list consisted of 126 word targets in both the language order. Prior to each experimental session (i.e. for each individual subjects), the order of items with in each of this block randomized and then the order of three blocks was randomized so as to decrease the likelihood of extraneous serial effects such as practice or fatigue. Stimulus presentation was controlled by DMDX software (Forster & Forster, 1999). Subjects responded by pressing the key ‘1’ (for a ‘yes’ response) and key ‘0’ (for a ‘no’ response) on the key board. Reaction times (RTs) were recorded to the nearest millisecond and stored in the computer.

Task 2: Series of pictures were shown on the computer screen .Subjects was instructed to name the picture as early as possible in their native language. The verbal responses were recorded with the help of a microphone connected to a computer.

Recording and Scoring

The reaction times in milliseconds of all the critical targets were automatically recorded in Microsoft excel by the software further data was analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS-10.0) version software.

Results and Discussion

The results will be discussed in light of the differences in lexical organization in bilinguals proposed for bilinguals in the western population in comparison to the Indian population following a different script structure.

REFERENCE:

Colthart., & Karanth,P.,(1984).Analysis of the acquired disorders of reading in Kannada.

Journal of All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, 15, 65-71.

De Bot, K. (1993). A Bilingual production model: Levelt’s speaking model adapted.

Applied Linguistics, 13, 1-24

Forster,J., & Forster,k.(1999).http:// www.u.arizona.edu/~ kforster /dmdx., retieved on

12/9/2008.

Haugen, E. (1953). The analysis of linguistic borrowings. Language, 26,210-231

Potter, M.C., So, K.F., Von Eckhart, B., & Feldman, L.B. (1984). Lexical and conceptual

representation in beginning and proficient bilinguals. Journal of Verbal Learning and

Verbal Behavior, 23, 23-38.

Wylie., & Ingram, E.D., (1985). How native like? Measuring language proficiency in bilinguals. Journal of Applied Linguistics, XI (2), 47-64

Temporality in Bengali: A Syntacto-Semantic Framework

Samir Karmakar

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Kanpur

E. Mail: samirk@iitk.ac.in

The syntactic pattern of Bengali verb morphology shows the following structure:

1. V-aspect-tense_i-person_i

For example:	gey-ech-il-o
	sing-perf-past-3_past
	(s)he had sang.

Here, I would show how the syntactic structure corresponds to the temporally significant semantic aspects, such as temporal ordering, viewpoints, lexical aspect, and argument structure, in Bengali.

Following Reichenbach (1947), the information about the temporal order could be captured in terms of speech time (= S), and reference time (= R), whereas the relation between reference time and event time (= E) gives an idea about the viewpoints. These two relations are popularly known as first and second referencing, respectively. On the other hand, the information of lexical aspect is a consequence of aktionsarten.

structure-bengali

Fig 1: Syntacto-Semantic Frame of Temporality in Bengali

The information pertinent to temporal order and viewpoint constitutes the outer layer of the frame; whereas aktionsarten along with the argument structure constitutes the inner layer of the frame (Verkuyl 1989, 1993). Inner layer of the frame represents lexical aspect in terms of duration, and telic features. Outer layer is mainly concerned with (i) the relation between speech time and reference time, in terms of precedence and overlap, and (ii) the relation between reference time and event time, to construct either perfective or imperfective viewpoints. Arche (2006) has shown how these semantic notions could be incorporated into a syntactic framework, simply by assuming tense and aspect to be dyadic predicate relations. The framework, which I have outlined here differs in certain respects from that of Arche’s one, mainly due to the language specific peculiarities of Bengali.

The adverbial adjunct modifies the lexical aspect of a sentence either as state, or process, or event, thus coercing the verb semantics. Such modification is proposed to be dealt with in the inner layer of the frame, under the node of aspect.

2(a)	panero	miniT-e	gey-ech-il-o
	fifteen	minute-particle	sing-perf-past-3_past

The sentence from Bengali above has two readings: (i) the act of singing was accomplished in fifteen minutes (accomplishment); and, (ii) the act of singing was started in fifteen minutes (inception). However, in case of (2b), no such problem arises. It simply means, the act singing had been performed for fifteen minutes.

2(b)	panero	miniT	dhar-e	gey-ech-il-o
	fifteen	minute	hold-particle	sing-perf-past-3_past

As a consequence the inner layer of aspect needs to be further decomposed in the following way:

vp-internal-aspect

Fig 2: Further Specification of VP-internal Aspectualities

Integration of syntax and semantics is crucial, since it shows how the semantics of tense, aspect (both grammatical and lexical), and the adjunct interact with each other, while construing the temporal interpretation of a sentence that takes into cognizance the discourse level contextualities.

References:

Arche, M.J. (2006). Individuals in Time: Tense, Aspect and the Individual/Stage Distinction, Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing Co.

Verkuyl, H. (1989). Aspectual Classes and Aspectual Composition. Linguistics and Philosophy, Vol. 12, 39-94.

Verkuyl, H (1993). The Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: The Free Press.

Gilchrist's 'A Grammar of Hindoostanee Language': Some Colonial and Contemporary Imprints

Santosh Kumar

Deptt. Of Linguistics, University of Delhi, Delhi

E. Mail: santoshk.du@gmail.com

The contextual and textual analysis of a piece of grammar has always been an interesting and challenging area of inquiry. This paper examines Gilchrist’s A Grammar of Hindoostanee Language with the aim to show that often grammar-writing can be seen to provide a framework to ‘keep in circulation’ the imperialist project (Bhattacharya 2004) The history of writing grammars shows that grammars are written for specific linguistic reasons such as to provide a principled description of a particular language; to be a basis for language pedagogy; to compare one grammar with another for typological, historical, and aerial characteristics or for pedagogically oriented contrastive analysis, and to test linguistic theories (Ferguson, 1978). However, there are some non-linguistic reasons such as culture, religion, ecology, aesthetics, pragmatism, etc. that influence the practice of writing grammar, wittingly or otherwise (Scharfe, 1977). The latter perspective provides a significant site for raising questions of representation, power and historicity. John Borthwick Gilchrist’s ‘A Grammar of Hindoostanee language or part third of volume first of a system of Hindoostanee philology’ (Calcutta, Chronicle Press, 1796) is one of the earliest grammars written on the Hindustani language. This well-studied text can however be seen as representative of the colonial language policies put in place by the British to serve their needs in addition to its being representative of the British attitudes towards Indian vernaculars in general and Hindustani in particular. Notwithstanding problematic such as these in a purportedly scientific activity like grammar writing, this paper also presents comparative evidence to show that the contemporary mindset is not without blemish when it comes to pursuing an imperialist agenda through academic writing.

Reference:

Bhattacharya, Tanmoy. 2004. Hand me my slippers and other such phrases as a part of grammar: Pettigrew’s Tangkhul Naga Grammar. Paper presented at the 26^th AICL Meeting, NEHU.

Bhatia, Tej K. 1987. A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition: Hindi-Hindustani Grammar, Grammarians, History and Problems. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.

Ferguson, C.A. 1978. Multilingualism as object of linguistic description. In Kachru, Braj B. ed. Linguistics in the Seventies: Directions and Prospects. Department of Linguistics, Urbana, University of Illinois.

Gilchrist, J.B. 1796. A Grammar of the Hindoostanee language or Part third of volume first of a system of Hindoostanee philology. Calcutta: Chronicle Press.

Scharfe, Hartmut, 1977. Grammatical Literature. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

Suleri, S. 1992. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

The Biolinguistic Diversity Index of India

Ritesh Kumar

Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

E. Mail: riteshkrjnu@gmail.com

In recent times there has grown a strong hypothesis which asserts that the biological, cultural and linguistic diversity of a country or a region are positively correlated. These three diversities are together termed as 'biocultural diversity'. Thus, biocultural diversity unifies the diversity of life in all of its manifestations: biological, cultural, and linguistic. These are interrelated and have coevolved within a complex socio-ecological adaptive system. There are three basic assumptions underlying the concept of biocultural diversity:

The diversity of life does not only mean the diversity of plants and animal species, habitats, and ecosystems found on the planet, but also the diversity of human cultures and languages.
These diversities are not separate or exist in parallel realms, but rather they interact with and affect one another in complex ways.
The interaction among these diversities have developed over time through mutual adaptation between humans and the environment at the local level, which is, probably, of a coevolutionary nature and, thus, a causal one.

The cumulative effect of all these local interlinkages, interdependencies and interaction between the humans and the environment implies that at the global level, biodiversity and cultural diversity are also interlinked and interdependent. Thus, it has significant implications for the conservation of both the diversities. Recent global cross-mappings of the distributions of biodiversity and linguistic diversity (taken as a proxy for cultural diversity) have revealed significant geographic overlaps between the two diversities, especially in the tropics. Moreover, they have shown a strong coincidence between biologically and linguistically megadiverse countries.

It has been noted that generally the social factors combine with the geographic and climatic factors leading to a higher or lower diversity. For example, geography and climate of a particular area affects its carrying capacity and access to resources for human use. Ease of access to abundant resources seems to favour localized boundary formation and diversification of larger numbers of small human societies and languages. Where resources are scarce, the necessity to have access to a larger territory to meet subsistence needs favours smaller numbers of widely distributed populations and languages. The development of complex societies and large-scale economies, which tend to spread and expand beyond their borders, also correlates with a lowering of both linguistic and biological diversity. Moreover, there is a significant overlap between the location of threatened ecosystems and threatened languages. On the other hand, low population density, at least in tropical areas, seems to correlate positively with high biocultural diversity.

It has been argued that similar forces are currently posing a danger to both the linguistic and the biological diversity on Earth. And the preservation of both the diversities is extremely necessary for similar reasons. While biodiversity provides us the resources of Nature on which we can fall back for our sustenance and better living, linguistic diversity gives us the vast pool of knowledge from which we can draw upon to make our life better. The knowledge of biodiversity and how it can be used is encoded in thousands of so-called tribal, backward and insignificant languages. Once these languages are lost, we lose this vast pool of knowledge in the form of traditional knowledge, from which we could have learnt a lot.

One of the biggest obstacles in this nascent field of biocultural (or, biolinguistic, for my purpose) diversity is the lack of a proper methodology and a good database. Since these diversities are best expressed in terms of figures and numbers, we need to have some kind of mathematical and statistical index for representing this integrated notion of biolinguistic diversity and then by studying the fluctuations in this index over a period of time, we can gauge the extent to which these diversities are under threat. Obviously after that the qualitative analysis regarding the causes and the possible solutions to this threat is necessary. But in order to get the qualitative analysis to the point and exact, we need to know the exact proportion and extent of the threat.

Harmon and Loh calculated the 'Index of Biocultural Diversity' (IBCD) at the global-level (they calculated the index for each country and then compared them). However the problem with their methodology was that it could not be used for smaller areas or intra-country calculation of index. So it required some modification. In this paper I have calculated the IBLD (Index of Biolinguistic Diversity) of India using a similar methodology. However I have introduced some modifications. Instead of taking the politically divided states as the reference point for comparison, I have taken the eco-regions of India as the reference point. I think this will give a better idea of the diversities because these eco-regions are divided by WWF on the basis of the distribution of biological species. Thus they are scientifically constructed for studying biodiversity itself and so more appropriate for my study. Besides this, the availability of data is another reason (a kind of bonus) for selecting eco-regions as the reference point, instead of the political states. Moreover, I have also calculated the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between the ranks of the eco-regions on the basis of biodiversity and linguistic diversity so as see whether these are correlated at the intra-country level (in India, in particular). And this comes out to be quite high. Thus the correlation between biodiversity and linguistic diversity is mathematically established, at least, for India. The presence of a positive correlation between biodiversity and linguistic diversity at the intra-country level conclusively establishes the fact that these two are indeed correlated. The calculation also establishes the north-eastern and gangetic valley region as the most biodiverse as well as linguistically most diverse regions of the country. Finally the fact that geographic factors and climate affect the development of both kinds of diversities is also established. Gangetic Valley and North-East of India are the most productive and resourceful areas of India (as is shown by their extreme biodiversity) and also linguistically most diverse. Thus the hypothesis that abundance of resources favours both biological and linguistic diversity also holds true in case of India.

Now that the preliminary calculations are carried out and basic facts are established, further work is required to calculate the change in these diversities over a time-period and see if there is any correlation related to the factors and the rate of the change. Terralingua is working on a database for the time-series data of linguistic diversity; for biodiversity it is already available. Once the database is complete, further insights into the field can be obtained. Moreover, the conclusions above are not established unanimously; there are some glaring exceptions which need to be explained and for that we need better database; a more refined methodology; and perhaps, a better hypothesis.

References:

1. Carder, Maurice. A Word of Difference, from ‘Resurgence Magazine’ 2008, 250.

2. Gupta, S.C. and V.K. Kapoor (2003). Fundamentals of Mathematical Statistics. Sultan

Chand & Sons.

3. Loh, Jonathan and David Harmon. A global index of biocultural diversity, from

‘Ecological Indicators’, 2005.

4. Maffi, Luisa. Language: A Resource for Nature, from ‘The UNESCO Journal on the

Environment and National Resources Research’ 1998, 34(4).

5. Maffi, Luisa. Linguistic, Cultural and Biological Diversity, from ‘Annual Review of

Anthropology’ 2005.

6. Maffi, Luisa. Biocultural Diversity and Sustainability ‘The Sage Handbook of

Environment and Society’ 2007.

7. Maffi, Luisa. Cultural Vitality, from ‘Resurgence Magazine’ 2008, 250.

8. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove (2008). Linguistic genocide in Education or Worldwide

Diversity and Human Rights. Orient Longman.

Bhojpuri waalaa

Shailendra Kumar & Neha Vashistha

Dept. of Linguistics, BHU, Varanasi

E. Mail: shail.linguistics@gmail.com

In many north Indian languages, waalaa plays a very diverse functional roles. In major languages such as Hindi (Bhatia 2008, Sharma 1958, Shapiro 1989) the topic has been studied in detail. Although, waalaa seems to have more or less similar roles in many of the languages in which it is used and can be categorized on similar ground. However, the uses of waalaa in Bhojpuri deserve a separate discussion. In this paper, we attempt to do this. First of all we examine the various uses of waalaa in Bhojpuri. For this we rely on my own native language intuition and also collect relevant data from friends and other speakers. Secondly, we attempt to make a categorization of waalaa according to its functional roles. Some illustrative examples are presented below:

(1) a. tohaar waalaa kaam kab hoi? (sabhane ka to kaam kabka hogawaa baa).

your CF work when happen-will

‘When will YOUR work happen?’ (all the others have finished their work long time back)

b. phon-waalaa pEsaa kahaaN baa?

phone-for/from money where is

‘Where is the money meant for/that came from phone?

In the first use (1a), waalaa is used as a contrastive focus (CF) marker as it can be contrasted with the work assigned to others (this is shown in the bracketed part of the example). In (1b), on

the other hand, the use of waalaa can have many interpretations as is shown in the English translation of the sentence.

In this paper, we examine the various uses of waalaa in Bhojpuri and categorize them according to their various functions. We also examine the constructions that do not allow the uses of waalaa in certain contexts and the constraints on them.

References:

Bhatia, T. (2008). Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course for Beginners: Routledge

Shapiro, M. (1989). The Primer of Standard Hindi. Motilal Banarasidas. Delhi.

Sharma, A. (1958). A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi. CHD, Govt. of India.

Gitanjali’: A Study in Lyrical Patterns (Syntax, Diction & Rhythm)

Kusum

Govt. College Boys, Civil Line, Ludhiana (Punjab)

E. Mail: kusumgopal@yahoo.co.in

Rabindranath Tagore said that each language possesses its own rich resources and energies. Although originally written in Bengali, the English translations of ‘Gitanjali’ read like original poems. The language used by Tagore as translator is highly emotive, highly charged with the energies of the heart.

The French symbolist poet Mallarme said: “Poetry is written with words, not ideas”. The words used by the poet are remarkable for their sound, sense and suggestion. He is a quite aware of the importance of the Liquid Consonants –

/l/m/n and/s and/j/.

Now, I ask, has the time come at

last, when I may go in and see thy face

and offer thee my silent salutation?

Since the songs in Gitanjali are devotional and the divinely inspired, patriotic and have nationalistic strains, the tone, rhythm, pitch, cadence are have inner rhyming. The poems don’t have any regular proper meter. They are proper free but still they have proper discipline. This is due to the fact that the poet creates “form within form”. They have a openness of Alexander Pushkin’s poetry, e.g.

IF thou speakest not I will fill my heart

With thy silence and endure it.

I will keep still & wait like the night.

Into that heaven of freedom, my

Father, let my country awake.

The present paper proposes to establish how in early 20th Century GURUDEV TAGORE proved that translation of poetry is the second most important thing literature. The paper will also explore the linguistic structures used for poetic purposes and creative function. Poetry for Tagore was an act of faith. Translation, transcends, the barriers of language, cultures, continents & communities.

Case marking in Asamiya in comparison with Bangla

Bornini Lahiri

Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

E. Mail: lahiri.bornini@gmail.com

The present paper focuses on case marking in animate and inanimate objects of Asamiya in comparison with Bangla. These two outer Indo-Aryan languages share many features. If one looks at the case marking of the two then it can be seen that they share most of the cases though they are realized differently through affixation and postpositions. The reason behind their similar case marking feature lies behind the fact that both belong to eastern group of Indo-Aryan languages and are descendent of Magadhi Prakrit.

Both the languages differentiate between animate and inanimate objects through their case marking features. In both the languages the accusative (ACC) case marking of an inanimate object is dropped.

eg1 (a): ram hori-k dekhile (Asamiya)

Ram hari-ACC saw (word-to-word)

Ram saw Hari (free translation)

eg1 (b): ram am-to dekhile (Asamiya)

Ram mango-CLA saw (word-to-word)

Ram saw the mango (free translation)

In Asamiya accusative case marking does not come with an inanimate object but in Bangla if it is not dropped then the inanimate object gives the reading of an animate object which in most of the instances is ungrammatical like Asamiya but not always as can be seen in example-2 (c).

eg2 (a): ram hori-ke dekhlo (Bangla)

ram hari-ACC saw (word-to-word)

Ram saw Hari (free translation)

eg2 (b) ram am-ta dekhlo (Bangla)

ram mango-CLA saw (word-to-word)

Ram saw the mango (free translation)

eg2 (c): ram boStu-ti-ke dekh-lo (Bangla)

ram thing-CLAS-ACC see-1^st PER SING (word-to-word)

Ram saw the thing(animate). (free translation)

In example -2 (c) accusative case marking is used with an inanimate object but the reading is that of an animate. Here some person or some animal has been degraded to an inanimate object and the sentence reveals that the speaker has purposely done so. But it should be noted that the object here takes accusative case marking after taking the classifier /-ti/. Without any classifier like /-ti/, /-ta/, /-gulo/, an inanimate object can never take an accusative case marking, in Bangla.

The distinction between animate an inanimate is also maintained through locative (LOC) case marking in Bangla and instrumental (INST) case marking in both the languages. Locative case marking when used with animate in Bangla doesn’t give locative meaning but can be used for generating many other meanings, including that of generic, coupled reciprocals and accusative-dative.

eg3 (a): kukur – e kamre dae. (Bangla)

Dog - LOC bite give (word-to-word)

Dogs bite (free translation)

eg3 (b): dui bondhu-te jhogra (Bangla)

two friend-LOC quarrel (word-to-word)

There a dispute between the two friends. (free translation)

eg3 (c): o ama-e/-ke bollo (Bangla)

he/she I-LOC/-ACC said (word-to-word)

He/she told me. (free translation)

Asamiya uses two different case markers for instrumental case depending on whether the object is animate or inanimate. Whereas Bangla uses a postposition for instrumental case but when the object is animate then the postposition is preceded by the accusative case marking.

eg4 (a): jharu dije jhat deao (Bangla)

broom INST sweep give (free translation)

Get it swept by the broom. (word-to-word)

eg4 (b): dai-ke dije jhat deao (Bangla)

maid-ACC INST sweep give (free translation)

Get it swept by the maidservant. (word-to-word)

This paper is a trial to focus on the problem of different types of case marking used in the two languages, depending on whether the object is animate or inanimate. Both, Asamiya and Bangla perceive differences between animate and inanimate objects through various case markings. Though both the languages follow a similar pattern to differentiate between animate and inanimate objects through case marking yet there lie differences like Asamiya uses two different markers for animate and inanimate objects in instrumental case while Bangla uses the same with an additional accusative marking for the animates. In this paper I have tried to study various case markings of Asamiya and Bangla which create difference between animates and inanimates and have also looked upon the instances where a particular case marking differentiates between the two, in one language but not in the other.

References:

Abbi A (1994), Semantic universals in Indian languages .Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.

Blake, B. J. (1994).Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dasgupta P (2003) ‘Bengali’. The Indo-Aryan languages. edi: Cardona G & Jain D

London: Routledge Publication

Goswami S (2003) ‘Asamiya’, The Indo-Aryan languages. edi: Cardona G & Jain D

London: Routledge Publication

Masica , C.P (1991).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Masica , C.P (1976). Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

The Semantics of Classifiers in some Indian Languages

Bornini Lahiri, Ritesh Kumar, Sudhanshu Shekhar & Atanu Saha

Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

E. Mail: lahiri.bornini@gmail.com; riteshkrjnu@gmail.com; shekhar921@gmail.com; atanu.jnu@gmail.com

Every language in the world classifies Nouns and nominals in one way or the other. Predominantly people categorise the world through their language in terms of universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, sex, shape, form, consistency, and functional properties. Basically there are two kinds of noun classification systems found in the languages of the world-- noun class system and classifier system. Both these systems classify nouns on the semantic basis. But they differ morphosyntactically as well as on the basis of preferred semantic features. Noun class systems are those in which the classification of Noun is not represented morphologically; rather the different classes of Nouns are shown by the grammatical agreement with verb. For example, Hindi is a noun class system, where every Noun is kept in either of the two classes-- Masculine and Feminine. There is no universal morphological marking which is given to Nouns belonging to one class; but obviously there is agreement with verb. While in Hindi, Nouns are classified just into two classes, it can go up to 10 as in some Bantu languages and even to several dozen as in some South American languages. The classifier languages differ from the class languages on the account of being morphologically represented. Nouns or numerals are marked by the classifier they take. While in Noun classifier languages the classifier comes with the Noun, in Numeral classifier languages, it is represented on the numeral (and so it comes only in the cases where noun comes with the numeral). All the Tibeto-Burman languages, Eastern Indo-Aryan, some Munda languages, Khasi and a few Dravidian languages in India are classifier languages.

We carried out a typological survey regarding the occurrence of classifiers (both numeral and noun classifiers) in 17 languages across 4 language families of India. We looked at 6 languages from Indo-Aryan—Assamiya, Bangla, Magahi, Maithili, Bhojpuri and Oriya; 2 languages from Austroasiatic—Santhali, and Khasi; 3 languages from Dravidian family—Telugu, Tamil, and Kurux; and 6 languages from Tibeto-Burman family—Nyishi, Tagin, Galo, Ao-Naga, Meithei, and Mizo. All these language have classifiers in some form although their number varies from 2 (in Indo-Aryan language like Magahi) to around 80 (in Tibeto-Burman languages like Tagin). Looking at the overall picture, it can be concluded that numeral classifiers are more predominant in these languages when compared to noun classifiers. Except the languages belonging to Tibeto-Burman family (and some languages from Indo-Aryan), all languages have only numeral classifiers.

In this paper we have enumerated and described the findings of this survey. We have chiefly concentrated on the semantics of the classifier systems since the choice of the classifier generally depends on the semantics of the head noun. In almost all the languages, animacy forms one of the basic criteria for the classification on nouns in language. In Tibeto-Burman languages the classification system is very extensive and there is huge number of classifiers, particularly numeral classifiers. Moreover, in languages like Tagin, Galo and Nyishi, there is a system of reduplicating the first syllable of the noun and the reduplicated syllable is attached with the numeral, which acts as the classifier. This is done for almost all the nouns which do not occur with any of the commonly-used classifiers. These classifiers are, thus, used with only one noun. However there are other classifiers also which are guided by such semantic properties of the nouns as shape, size, material of the object, animacy, etc. These languages have only numeral classifiers. However some other Tibeto-Burman languages like Ao-Naga, Meithei and Mizo have both noun and numeral classifiers. When the noun occurs without a numeral, the classifier follows the noun but when there is a numeral, the order becomes numeral-classifier-noun.

We have studied only two Austroasiatic languages (the study is still under way and we are trying to get data for other languages like Ho, Mundari, Sora, Kharia and Panar). Out of these two, Khasi has a very extensive classifier system, particularly numeral classifier system and resembles its surrounding Tibeto-Burman languages. But in Santhali the system of numeral classifier is very limited and complex. The classifier is not used with every numeral (and obviously not with every noun) and quite a complex system emerges out. In case of Dravidian languages also the system is not very elaborate and quite complex.

In case of Indo-Aryan languages the system, again, differs from language to language. Assamiya has the most productive and extensive system of both the noun and numeral classifiers. Bangla, Oriya and Maithili do not have such an extensive system as Assamiya but still the use of classifiers is quite significant when compared to other Indo-Aryan languages. However in case of Bhojpuri and Magahi the system becomes very limited with both having just two classifiers each. In Magahi the distinction seems to be of human and non-human; but in Bhojpuri even that distinction is blurred. And for that matter even in Magahi the distinction is not maintained by all the speakers and in conscious speech everyone agrees that one can be substituted for the other without producing any kind of strict ungrammaticality.

Despite these differences between the distribution and occurrence of classifiers in different languages, it emerges that the semantic basis of the classification is similar. Typical semantic parameters are animacy, humanness, and physical properties such as dimensionality, and shape. We have also noted the cases of specific classifiers for nouns which may be considered culturally important, e.g., canoe, house. Moreover in several languages one noun can take several classifiers depending on which feature or characteristic of the noun the speaker is trying to point out or emphasize.

References:

1. Aikhenvald, A Y (2000). Classifiers: a typology of noun categorization devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Aikhenvald, A Y (2006). Classifiers and Noun Classes: Semantics, from ‘Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics’ eds Keith Brown (editor-in-chief), Anne Anderson, Laurie Bauer, Margie Burns, Jim Miller and Graeme Hirst (Elsevier Pvt. Ltd., 2006).

3. Kidwai, Ayesha and Joyshree Sutradhar (2008). The Morpho-Syntax of Classifiers in (three) Indian Languages: The Mass/Count Distinction, presented in CGIML-08 at IIIT-H.

Word Retrieval Abilities in Bilingual Geriatrics

Ramya Maitreyee^*, Ridhima Batra^*, Mr. Brajesh Priyadarshi^**

^* II M.Sc. (SLP), All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore- 570006.

^** Lecturer, Clinical Linguistics, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore- 570006.

E-mail: maitreyee_ramya@yahoo.co.in, canif_ridhima@yahoo.co.in, brajeshaiish@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION

Bilingualism is a major fact of life in today’s world. Weinreich (1953) defined bilingualism as “the alternate use of two languages” and Haugen (1953) suggested bilingualism began with “the ability to produce complete and meaningful utterances in the second language”.

The term “word retrieval” refers to the processes involved in mentally identifying and then producing the word or words needed to express a thought or name an object. Word retrieval relies on the development of two systems; the meanings of words are stored in the brain in the Semantic Storage System as a large number of connections and systems of connections among nerve cells which correspond to word associations. On the other hand, the sounds in a word and their organization are stored in the phonologic storage system of the brain. Thus there are two storage systems and they need to work in harmony in order to support fast, fluent, and effortless retrieval of words.

Word problems occur when a person tries but fails to produce a word that is known to be part of his receptive vocabulary. Word retrieval problems are indicated by the “tip-of-the-tongue” difficulties, by frustration at not being able to say what one wants, by frequent use of nonspecific words or circumlocutions or by frank admission of retrieval difficulty. Word retrieval problems might result in slow but accurate retrieval, slow and inaccurate retrieval, fast but inaccurate retrieval, or total retrieval failure. Elderly individuals frequently report difficulties in word retrieval. Such failures in lexical retrieval have been demonstrated in both cross sectional and longitudinal studies (e.g. Au et al., 1995) and include not only the findings of referents to a definition but also of verbs and proper names, beginning as early as the late 50s and increasing as the individual reaches the 70s. In a study conducted by Hough (2007), he found that overall, 28% of the adults exhibited abnormal word finding standard scores on the Test of Adult Word Finding (German, D. J., 1990).

Till date majority of the studies have focused on word retrieval abilities in monolingual geriatrics, but is the same mechanism involved even in a bilingual yet needs to be confirmed. How is it possible for a bilingual to keep her two languages separate during language production, and therefore translate the preverbal message into words of only one lexicon? This is an important issue, because failure to achieve lexical selection in the desired language may have disastrous effect on communication.

AIM: To test the word retrieval abilities in bilingual geriatrics.

OBJECTIVES

1) To examine the difference, if any, in the word retrieval abilities of bilingual geriatrics in both their first and second language on picture confrontation naming task.

2) To examine if there is an effect of grammatical class on word retrieval abilities.

METHOD

Participants: A total of 25 adult bilingual participants were included in the present study. All the participants were native speakers of Kannada (L1) and had acquired English as their second language (L2) for academic and communicative purposes and were highly proficient users of the language. All subjects were normal, with no past / present history of any neurological, psychological problems and or sensory deficits.

Ethical concerns: Participants were selected by ethical procedures. They were explained the purpose and procedures of the study, and an informed verbal and/or written consent was taken.

Age range: 60 years and above.

Materials

· Stimuli used: A non-standardized list of proper and common nouns and verbs in picture form served as the test stimuli. The 45 picture stimuli consisted of:

ü 15 proper nouns

ü 15 common nouns

ü 15 verbs

· Selection of stimuli: The words ranging from simple to complex levels were chosen for the study.

· Recording of stimuli: The picture stimuli were collected and transformed into the DMDX software (Forster & Forster, 1999). All the 45 stimuli were randomized and each item was presented twice and the average response for each item was considered.

Procedure: The International Second Language Proficiency Rating (ISLPR) (Ingram, 1985) was administered and all the participants having vocational proficiency in English were chosen for the present study. The final test material was presented in an individual set-up in a quiet environment using the DMDX software run on a laptop. Before the administration of the final stimuli 3 test trials were given to each of the participants.

Task: The participants were asked to look carefully at the pictures and were asked to name them in Kannada (L1). The same picture stimuli were used again for checking word retrieval in the second language (L2) i.e. English in the current study. For retrieval of verb forms the participants were asked to answer to the question “what is the person in the picture doing?” The responses were audio recorded using a microphone connected to the laptop.

Scoring and coding: The responses were measured for accuracy and reaction times (RT) (in ms). A score of 1 was coded as correct/ accurate and a score of ‘0’ was coded as wrong/inaccurate.

RESULTS: Both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data was done and the results indicated a decline in word retrieval abilities with old age. It was also seen that the word retrieval abilities for common and proper nouns was more impaired than the verbs. Statistical analysis and the results will be discussed in detail in the paper.

REFERENCES:

German, D. J. (1990). Test of Adolescent / Adult Word Finding. Allen, TX: DLM teaching Resources.

Haugen, E. (1953). The Norwegian Language in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hough,M.S.(2007).Incidence of word –finding difficulties in normal aging. Folia Phoniatrica Logopaedics,59(1).

Ingram, E.D. (1985). How native like? Measuring Language Proficiency in bilinguals. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11, 47-64.

Weinrich, U. (1953). Languages in contact. New York: Linguistics Circle of New York.

Implementation of Transfer Grammar in Telugu Hindi Machine Translation System

Christopher Mala

IIIT-Hyderabad, Gachibowli, Hyderabad

E.Mail: christopher.mpg08@reserach.iiit.ac.in, guraohyd@yahoo.com

This paper describes experiments on Transformation of grammar from one language to another while translating text through machine. As it is know that every language has its own phenomena and its own way of representation. But while translating from one language to another its very important to retrieve theses language phenomenal information of target language from source language, which may not be there in the source language. These language dependent phenomena can be seen when we are translating languages of cross language family's. In this paper we have tried to explain how grammar is transferred from Telugu (Dravidian language family) to Hindi (Indo-Aryan family). There may be many criteria that has to be taken in consideration while transferring the grammar, like, 1) Adding of language Copula and other language specific data 2) Deletion of grammar that is not required in the target language 3) Modification of the source language grammar according to target language 4) Smoothing of the target language grammar. In this paper it has also explained Transfer Grammar engine which is of language independent and can be used by giving rules to it. This engine takes input in Shakti Standard format and give output in Shakti Standard format. This study is used in Indian Language -Indian Language Machine Translation (IL-ILMT) system which is funded by Govt. of India ( Ministry of Information Technology) at CALTS lab in University of Hyderabad under guidance of Prof. G. Uma Maheshwar Rao.

Automatic Extraction and Incorporation of Purpose Data into Purposenet

P. Kiran Mayee, Rajeev Sangal & Soma Paul

International Institute of Information Technology, Gachibowli, Hyderabad-500032

E. Mail: advalakiranmayee@gmail.com

PurposeNet is a knowledge base of objects and actions in which the knowledge is organized around purpose. Such knowledge also connects with language – namely, verbs for related actions. It can be used with an embedded reasoner, resulting in an effective system for QA, topic-listing, summarization and other tasks. However, extracting PurposeNet related data manually is time consuming, labour-intensive, and expensive. This paper describes a framework for automatic purpose data extraction, given a corpus. It identifies a set of lexico-syntactic patterns that are easily recognizable, that occur frequently and across text genre boundaries, and that indisputably indicate the lexical relation of purpose data. It also deals with the subsequent automatic incorporation of this data into the PurposeNet resource. The results are used to augment and critique the structure of a large hand-built resource. The extent of success, in terms of richness of the resource, achieved in the process is also discussed.

Data

Three sets of data were used for our experiments. The first set was the English corpus obtained from wordnet containing an artifact file with 11,469 artifact descriptions. This was used for artifact identification in Sentences. The second set was a corpus obtained from IIIT , Hyderabad with 1,32,321 sentences. The corpus was insufficient for our purpose. Therefore, we also used an independent English corpus of 42,163 sentences. The second and the third corpora were used to test the success rate for extraction. The newly built resource was the input data for comparison with the hand-built one.

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Developing a Morphological Analyzer for Kashmiri

Nazima Mehdi, Aadil A. Laway & Feroz Ahmad Lone

Department of Linguistics, University of Kashmir, Hazratbal, Srinagar-190006

E. Mail: nazimamehdi@gmail.com; aadillawaye@yahoo.com

The role of morphology is very significant in the field of NLP, as seen in applications like MT, IE, IR, Spell Checker, Lexicography, etc. So, from a serious computational perspective the creation and availability of a Morphological Analyzer for a language is important. The basic function of a Morphological Analyzer is taking a word as an input and analyzing its grammatical features like its root, stem, affixes and so on. Attempts in this direction have been made at Language Technologies Research Centre IIIT, Hyderabad (Khan et al, 2005).

The present paper uses the above mentioned article as a starting point and attempts to develop a Morphological Analyzer for Kashmiri. A morphological analyzer is a computational tool, which performs automatic morphological analysis and synthesis of word forms using an electronic dictionary of base forms. A morphological analyzer takes a word as an input and produces the root and its grammatical features as output. Words in the input text are first processed by the morphological analyzer. Its task is to identify the root, lexical category, and other features of the given word. The Morphological Analyzer in question will be a paradigm based (as opposed to Finite-state Machine based Morphological Analyzer). The notion of a pa