LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 20:8 August 2020
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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A Phonological Sketch of Asur

Zoya Khalid

Abstract

The paper briefly examines the phonological features of Asur. Asur is North Munda language mostly spoken in Gumla district of Jharkhand in India. Asur being a North Munda language, has phonological features like the presence of glottal sound and unreleased stop /g ? /. Asur phonology is rich in retroflexes and aspirated retroflexes which is also a common feature of Munda languages. The paper looks into the phonemic inventory and allophonic variations in Asur phonology. It also delves into other phonological phenomenon like gemination, syllabication, nasalization, reduplication and morphophonemic adaptation of borrowed verbs in Asur.

1.0 Introduction

Asur language (ISO-639-3) has been categorized as a ‘definitely endangered’ language by UNESCO in 2010. Asur is a language belonging to the Munda branch of Austro-Asiatic family of languages. Being a North Munda language, Asur shares similarities with other North Munda languages like Ho and Mundari. Asur is also known as Ashree, and more commonly known as Asuri. The native speakers or the community members prefer to call their tribe and their language ‘Asur’.

Native speakers of Asurs mostly live in Gumla district of Jharkhand state in India. The people of Asur tribe can also speak Sadri and Hindi language other than Asur. Some speakers can also speak Kurux language due to their close proximity with the Oraon/Kurux tribe. While Asur is an Austro-Asiatic language, Hindi and Sadri belong from the Indo Aryan family of languages and Kurux is a language of Dravidian family. Therefore, there are three different language families coming in contact and much likely influencing each other. Sadri being the lingua franca of Jharkhand has a much greater influence on Asur language. The domains of usage of Asur are continually shrinking, or rather it can be said the lives of the community people is becoming very divergent and domains in life are expanding where Asur language is not used. Sadri or Hindi is spoken in schools and workplaces. There is a massive amount of lexical borrowing from Hindi and Sadri that can be seen in Asur.

2.0 Asur Phonology

Asur, being a language of North Munda family has phonological similarity with other North Munda languages like Mundari, Ho and Santhali. The presence of glottal sound in Munda languages is something that sets Munda languages phonologically apart from the neighboring languages of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian family. Vowel length in North Munda languages is mostly not phonemic and so is nasalization. In following sections explicate the phonology of Asur language with examples.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Zoya Khalid
Assistant Professor
Centre for Endangered Languages
Central University of Jharkhand
khalidzoya11@gmail.com
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