LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 1 January 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.

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Case and Case-like Postposition in Surjapuri

Md. Shahzad Alam, M.A, Ph.D. Scholar

Introduction

Surjapuri is one of the 26 languages grouped under Hindi with 1.2 million speakers. It is a lesser known language which has not flourished in terms of language and literature as well as its documentation. There is also a controversy regarding the grouping of this language - whether it is to be marked as a dialect of Maithili or that of Bengali. According to International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, VI, 2nd Edn., it may be a dialect of Maithili. Till now Census of India has kept this language under the Hindi umbrella. However , from its vocabulary and also from the viewpoint of the location of the language speakers it could be preliminarily stated that Surjapuri bears close resemblances to languages like Maithili, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Rajbanshi and Assamese . The paper attempts to throw some light upon the inflecting nature vis-à-vis the syntactic and semantic functions of case and postpositions of Surjapuri.

Inflecting Nature

Surjapuri exhibits an inflecting nature. Thus, it bears enough scope to have an interesting glance at the case inflection system as well as the postpositions which seem to be like those used in other Indo-Aryan languages.

Case or case-marking is a morpho-syntactic device or mechanism that is used to indicate who is doing what to whom. In Harris and Campbell's (1995:89) formulation, 'cases develop from postpositions when the postposition is felt to be so closely connected to its attribute noun that together they are re-interpreted as one word …'

Layers of Forms with Case-like Functions

In New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages we observe a rapid increase in use and grammaticalization of new post positions. In order to go with a systematic approach, so far as Surjapuri language is concerned, we take the model of "layers of forms with case-like function" put forward by Colin P. Masica (1991:230-248).

There are at least three layers with case-like functions typically made up of 'inherited synthetic, new agglutinative and quasi-analytic elements'. Depending upon language, the function of a marker in a given layer is carried to a different layer. For example, the agentive function in Layer II post-position -ne in Hindi is indicated by Layer I in Sindhi and Kashmiri. However, descriptions have recognized either two layers of affixes and one of post-positions, or one layer of affixes and two layers of post-positions.

Like Hindi, Bengali, and Rajbanshi, it is difficult in Surjapuri also to determine whether a single layer of case marking is affixal or adpositional. Therefore, following the Indo-Aryan inheritance, the case marker in Surjapuri is basically suffixed to the stem.

However, in our further discussion we shall evaluate how the "morphological status of the markers may vary from bound morphemes (case-suffixes), tightly connected to the nominal stem, to free morphemes (postpositions).

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

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Md.Shahzad Alam, Ph.D Scholar
Department of Linguistics through C.I.I.L.
University of Mysore
Mysore 570006
Karnataka, India
shahzad8@gmail.com

 
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