Language Variation in South Asia

by William Bright

Overview

South Asia presents the linguist with a bewildering variety of regional dialects, social dialects, formal and informal registers, literary standards, languages, writing systems, and language families. Written over a period of more than twenty years, these essays by a leading authority on South Asian language cover a broad range of topics in South Asian linguistics. The essays address social dialect, structural borrowing, areal linguistics, the relation between literary and colloquial standards, and the role of written language in South Asian culture from the times of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Offering a sociolinguistic approach, and encompassing both descriptive and historical studies, this collection of twelve of Bright's most important essays reflects his extensive research on the linguistics of South Asia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195063653
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/04/1990
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.69(w) x 8.56(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Editor-in-Chief, Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics

Table of Contents

1.	Linguistic Change in Some Indian Caste Dialects	3
2.	Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Change with A. K. Ramanujan	11
3.	Dravidian Metaphony	19
4.	Language, Social Stratification, and Cognitive Orientation	37
5.	Complex Verb Forms in Colloquial Tamil with J. Lindenfeld	44
6.	Phonological Rules in Literary and Colloquial Kannada	65
7.	Hindi Numerals	74
8.	The Dravidian Enunciative Vowel	86
9.	How Not to Decipher the Indus Valley Inscriptions	118
10.	Archaeology, Linguistics, and Ancient Dravidian	124
11.	Written and Spoken Language in South Asia	130
	Bibliography	149
	Index	163

Editorial Reviews

"Will be of interest not only to most scholars of South Asian language and linguistics for the specific information it contains, but also to sociolinguists and historical linguists in general because of the principles discussed and exemplified."—American Anthropologist

"For beginners in South Asian linguistics and sociolinguistics, this collection has great historical value, since it contains the origins of ideas now considered standard and descriptions used as reference points in both of these fields."—Language

"Will be of particular interest to Dravidianists, as well as to students of other South Asian language families whose research has an areal dimension or incorporates facets of socially conditioned variation."—Journal of the American Oriental Society

From the Publisher