The Nihali language: grammar, texts and vocabulary

343 Pages·2014·1.784 MB·Central Institute of Indian Languages

by  K. S. Nagaraja

THE NIHALI LANGUAGE
(GRAMMAR, TEXTS AND VOCABULARY)

K.S. Nagaraja

Central Institute of Indian Languages
Manasagangotri, Mysore-570 006, INDIA
Book Name : THE NIHALI LANGUAGE
(Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary)
Author : K.S. Nagaraja
Contact: Email ID: [email protected]
CIIL Pub. No. : 1045
Year of Published : 2014 January
No. of Copy printed : 500

ISBN No. 978-81-7343-144-9
Cost: Rs.250.00

Printed and Published : Awadesh Kumar Mishra, Director,
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Manasagangotri, Mysore-570 006, INDIA
Cover Design : H. Manohar
ii
FOREWORD

It is well-known that there are seven language families in India (cid:1) Indo-
Aryan, Dravidian, Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Austronesian [Onge-
Jarawa], Great Andamanese and Tai-Kadai, and each and every
language belongs to one of these families. However, there are at least
two languages which have defied such categorization, namely
Burushaski, spoken in the North-West frontiers of our country, and
Nihali/Nahali, spoken in a couple of villages of the Buldana district of
Maharashtra. At present, the Nihals living in the parts of Madhya
Pradesh speak Nimari, an Indo-Aryan language. However, in some
places like the Buldana district of Maharashtra, the Nihals do speak
their own language but it is highly influenced by Korku and other
languages. That is why it was felt necessary to study this language.

Nihali is not only a ‘language isolate’, it is critically endangered as it
is spoken by around three thousand speakers. These two aspects make it
a ‘must-study’ language. Paradoxically even then all these years there
was very little study on it. Now Dr. K. S. Nagaraja has filled this gap
with a detailed study on the language. The work being published is an
outcome of the research he did as a Fellow at this Institute between
2010 and 2012. So, fittingly this is being brought out under the
Institute’s banner. The language holds a great challenge to the scholars
to explore the possibilities of its relationship with other languages; and
also try to explain the reasons for loss of extensive native vocabulary
and structures.
It has been the endeavour of this Institute to encourage scholars to
work on Indian languages, particularly on non-scheduled and
endangered ones. From that point of view, it is a very important work
filling the void. It is hoped that it finds favour with the linguists’
community.

Awadesh Kumar Mishra
Director
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ABOUT THE BOOK . . . .

India is the homeland of languages of five different families- Dravidian,
Austroasiatic, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman and Andamanese. There are a few
languages which are not part of any of these genetic groups and Nihali
happens to be one of them. Nahals come under scheduled tribes and their
population is estimated to be around 4000. The Language Tables of Census of
India 2001 enumerate a total of 122 languages at the national level- 22
Scheduled and 100 Non-Scheduled. This is an outright understatement of the
existing reality. There are around 200 languages in the country out of which
75% to 80% are spoken by the tribal communities, which are ignored by the
criterion of having less than 10,000 speakers. To remedy the situation the
Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore has undertaken a massive
national project to protect and preserve these endangered languages.
Globalization and overwhelming importance of English are commonly cited as
causes of language endangerment in India. But even the major regional
languages like Telugu, Marathi, Hindi or Odiya also act as killers of minor
tribal speeches. Over the past millions of years, the Indian experience had
been one of retention of minor tongues, but with the intrusion of electronic
media of regional languages, the younger generation is shifting its loyalty
towards them at the cost of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances the
study of Nihali by Prof. Nagaraja is a vital addition to our understanding of
the current phenomenon of language endangerment.

As the title suggests the present volume consists of grammar, texts and
vocabulary besides a brief introduction. Dr.Nagaraja has commenced his
fieldwork on Nihali in the late 1990s and since then he has been eliciting and
analyzing the data, intermittently for the last one and half a decade. The Nihali
speakers of Buldana district of Maharashtra, spread over 5-6 villages, have
been his main informants. The speakers are bilinguals speaking Nihali and
Korku (some of them know Marathi or Hindi). The impact of Korku on Nihali
is noticed at all levels and the scholar’s intensive work on the former
unearthed the different areas of convergence.

The grammatical analysis and description are carried out within the model
of modern American Structural linguistics. Establishment of functional
sounds, their contrasts, distribution and allophones together with syllable
structure form the description of phonology. The term grammar comprises the
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traditional morphology as well as syntax with convincing examples drawn
from elicited data and texts. Under noun morphology person, number, gender
and case are detailed together with pronouns and numerals. The morphosyntax
of verb-structure reveals the unique structural patterns of Nihali. The original
analysis is supported by nearly 250 phrases, clauses and sentences, each point
dwelling and dealing with structural nuances. Dr.Nagaraja’s Nihali Language:
Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary is a landmark of his years of linguistic
fieldwork on different minor, neglected and tribal languages. He has firsthand
experience of working on Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman and Dravidian group
of languages. One may recall his earlier grammatical treatises on Khasi, Korku
and Konyak together with texts and multilingual dictionaries.

One of the seminal issues regarding Nihali is about its genetic affiliation. It
is shown that Nihali shares certain phonological and grammatical features
with Korku (of Austroasiatic group) and more lexical items, which may be due
to contact in a bilingual situation. Nihali still remains as an isolate of the
Central Indian linguistic area.

Nihali texts represent the narratives dealing with several aspects of tribal
life including the traditional knowledge, life style, equality of persons, joy and
sorrow of the people and their philosophy of life. The texts are represented in
phonetic transcription, rather than transliteration, to preserve the spoken style
of the narratives. Each sentence is numbered, with word-to-word meaning and
free translation into English. Nihali lexical items are given in the English
alphabetical order with their meanings on the left side and the source of
borrowing, if any, on the right (in a three-column arrangement).
Nihali was identified as a separate speech in the mid 1950s by the late
Sudhibhushan Bhattacharya and after a lapse of nearly six decades, the present
volume is the first original detailed study of this endangered language isolate.
It will be of great interest to the students and scholars of Linguistics,
Anthropology, Folklore, Lexicography, Education and Language Planning.
Dr.Nagaraja deserves the appreciation of academic community for his
unceasing seminal linguistic fieldwork and language analysis, with untiring
commitment.

Dr.B.Ramakrishna Reddy
M.A; Ph.D (Edinburgh)
Formerly Professor of Linguistics
Osmania University and P.S.Telugu University, Hyderabad.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work, as my other works, has taken almost a decade to complete, or
to get to this shape. It is difficult to say whether it is really complete. An
effort has been made to make it as exhaustive as possible.

I started taking interest on this language way back in 80s and 90s of
last century when I used to teach a course in Languages of South Asia in
which Nihali was also included. But at that time very little information on
the language was available except for Sudhibhushan Bhattacharya’s paper
based on a field trip in fifties of the same century. All other works
belonged to much earlier periods. Naturally I wanted to work on this
language. After completing work on Korku, I decided to work on Nihali.
The first fieldtrip was conducted in 1996 to locate the speakers of this
language. After locating the speakers every year I used to make short
visits to the areas and collect some data and compare the same with the
previous data to ascertain whether it is really same or different from them.

In this, knowledge of Korku assisted me to a great extent as I could
easily identify what is Korku and what is not Korku. Data collection was
in bits and pieces for many years. Even that I could not do during the last
three years of my service, as I was heavily burdened with administrative
and other responsibilities. During that time, Professor Rajesh Sachdeva of
Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, wanted me to work on
Nihali much more seriously and for that he generously offered me a
fellowship in his Institute. I readily accepted the offer as it gave me
adequate time to work on the language in detail. The present work is the
result of that endevour.

I thank first of all Deccan College Post-graduate & Research Institute,
Pune where I served till end of October 2009, and was encouraged to work
on this language and also I was allowed to work on the same language for
the Fellowship as well. I am highly grateful to the Institute for all the
support.

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During the fellowship, I again visited the field a couple of times to
collect more data and also to verify the data collected before. This has
helped me to expand the work and also to improve the work. I thank my
informants for their patient support; particularly the following: Babulal
Kisan, and Babulal Motiram, both from Kuverdeo; Dongorvesh Nihal
Vadi, Mohan Jumaklal Nihal, Kailash Ganesh and Kashiram Shanu from
Jamod; Korda Vilas from Wasali.

I thank Prof. Rajesh Sachdeva, Director I/c, for the fellowship and all
the assistance he extended me during this work which has enabled me to
complete the work. I also thank the Director I/c, Prof. S.N.Barman, who
was incharge when my fellowship came to an end; and Prof. Awadesh K.
Mishra, the present Director, who not only gladly agreed to get this
volume printed in the Institute itself, but also gave valuable suggestions
for the improvement of the work; and the staff, the Library for their
assistance to make my work environment conducive. My sincere thanks
are due to Shri Venugopal, in-charge of Fellowship section for all the
support in making my stay more comfortable. I thank Professor
B.Ramakrishna Reddy of Hyderabad for reading the previous versions of
the manuscript and suggesting many corrections and also for writing a
meaningful introductory note for this volume. I am grateful to Professor
Panchanan Mohanty for valuable comments on the previous version of
this work.

I thank also Dr. Kedusto Kapfo, the Deputy Director and in-charge of
Press, Dr. Srinivasacharya, looking after the publications, and the Press
personnel, particularly Sri Subrata Chowdhury, Press Manager i/c for
printing of the book and Sri M.N. Chandrashekar of Publication Unit for
pagination of the entire book, Sri H. Manohar for making the book cover
designing and the staff of the Press for seeing through this volume
meticulously and efficiently. I am grateful to them for their sincerity and
dedication to their work.

K.S. Nagaraja
Author
vii
CONTENTS
FOREWORD iii
ABOUT THE BOOK iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi

PART A: STRUCTURE
Chapter 1
1. INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter 2
PHONOLOGY
2.1. Phonemic inventory 7
2.2. Establishment of contrasts 9
2.3. Phonemes and their allophonic distributions 13
2.4. Distribution of phonemes 15
2.5. Syllabic structures 24
Chapter 3
3. GRAMMAR 27
3.0. General remarks 27
3.1. Morphological processes 27
3.1.1. Affixation 27
3.1.2. Compounding 28
3.1.3. Derivation of Nouns 29
3.2. Number 30
3.3. Gender 31
3.4. Pronouns 33
3.4.1. Personal pronouns 33
3.4.2. Demonstrative pronouns 33
3.4.3. Interrogative pronouns 37
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3.4.4. Indefinite pronouns 42
3.4.5. Verbal nouns 45
3.5. Cases 45
3.5.1. Nominative case 46
3.5.2. Accusative case 46
3.5.3. Instrumental, dative, locative cases 47
3.5.4. Ablative, sociative cases 47
3.5.5. Possessive case 47
3.5.6. Postpositions 48
3.5.7. Reflexive constructions 50
3.5.8. Emphatic constructions 51
3.5.9. Reciprocal formation 52
3.6. Numerals 52
3.7. Verbs 54
3.7.0. General remarks 54
3.7.1. Types of verbs 56
3.7.2. Verbal paradigms 61
3.7.3. Tenses 63
3.7.4. Aspects 66
3.7.5. Moods 67
3.7.6. Imperative verbal construction 67
3.7.7. Negative formations 68
3.7.8. Transitive formation 75
3.7.9. Causative formation 77
3.7.10. Non-finite verbal constructions 78
3.8. Adjectives 83
3.9. Adverb(ial)s 85
3.10. Particles 90
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3.11. Reduplication/Echo formations/Onomatopoeic expressions 93
3.12. Phrasal constructions 97
3.12.1. Noun phrases 97
3.12.2. Verb phrases 97
3.12.3. Word order 101
3.12.4. Sentence types 102
Chapter 4
4. IS NIHALI, AN ISOLATE ? 131
4.0. General remarks 131
4.1. Phonology 132
4.2. Morphology 133
4.2.1. Number 134
4.2.2. Gender 134
4.2.3. Personal pronouns 135
4.2.4. Demonstrative pronouns 136
4.2.5. Interrogative pronouns 139
4.2.6. Case 140
4.2.7. Numerals 141
4.2.8. Negative forms 142
4.2.9. Kinship terms 143
4.2.10. Word Order 144
4.2.11. Comparative word list 145
4.2.12. Conclusion 156
References

PART B: NIHALI TEXTS 165-259

PART C: VOCABULARY 261-376
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