The Indo-Aryan Languages / Edition 1

by Danesh Jain, George Cardona

Overview

The Indo-Aryan languages, spoken by at least 700 million people in the Republic of India, in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands, and in countries where immigrants from South Asia have settled, constitute a major group within the Indo-European family. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. This language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European. Further, the interaction between Indo-Aryan and Dravidan, Munda, and Tibeto-Burmese languages as well as Arabic and other Indo-European languages affords a rich field of study for borrowing and adaptation. Major features of Indo-Aryan languages have been described before, but there is a need for a synoptic treatment of these languages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700711307
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/10/2003
Series:	Routledge Language Family Series
Edition description:	MULTILINGU
Pages:	1088
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

George Cardona, Danesh Jain

Table of Contents

Part I: General Articles 1. General Introduction George Cardona and Dhanesh K. Jain2. The Sociolinguistics of the Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian Subcontinent Dhanesh K. Jain3. Alphabets and Writing Systems (Historical and Descriptive) Richard SalomonPart II: Language Articles A: Major Languages1. Sanskrit (including Vedic) George Cardona2. Early Middle Indo-Aryan (Ashoka and Pali) Thomas Oberlies3. Later Middle Indo-Aryan: Prakrits and Apabhramsa Vit Bubenik4. Hindi Michael Shapiro5. Urdu Ruth Laila Schmidt6. Bangla (Bengali) Probal DasguptaB: Other Languages7. Asamiya (Assamese) G. C. Goswami and Jyotiprakash Tamuli8. Oriya Tapas S. RayLanguages of Bihar9. Maithili Ramawtar Yadav10. Magahi Sheela Verma11. Bhojpuri Manindra K. Verma12. Panjabi Christopher Shackle13. Nepali Theodore Riccardi14. Sindhi Lachmann M. Khubchandani15. Gujarati George Cardona and Babubhai K. Suthar16. Marathi Rajeshwari Pandharipande17. Konkani Rocky Miranda18. Sinhala James W. Gair19. Dardic Languages Elena Bashir20. Kashmiri Omkar N. Koul

Editorial Reviews

'This carefully produced book is an important reference work. It contains ... a lot of information hard to find elsewhere, and the three indexes ... make this wealth of data easily accessible.' - Asko Parpola, University of Helsinki

From the Publisher