Variation in South Asian Languages From Macro to Micro-Differences

The book addresses some raging questions in linguistics today: What kind of variation do typologically related languages display? Do we expect to find the same variation in genealogically unrelated languages spoken in the same area? What makes dialects different? The current book answers these questions using data from languages spoken in the Indian subcontinent—an area known for its linguistic richness and diversity. Each chapter in the book presents a wealth of data collected through extensive fieldwork or controlled experimental setups. The chapters examine macro-variation in relative clauses, word order and negation found among Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman languages. It also investigates meso-level variation among related Eastern Indo-Aryan languages and intra-language and dialectal changes. It encourages scholars to probe deep into the mechanisms that underlie the immense intra- and inter-language variation in the area. It serves as a resource book for postgraduate and research scholars of linguistic typology, theoretical syntax, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and for scholars interested in South Asian languages.

Introducing Language Variation.- A Panorama of South Asian Relatives: A case of Structural Convergence, Divergence, Innovation and Syntactic Change.- Negation in select South Asian Languages.- Effect of non-canonical word order and argument proximity on processing of SOV languages.- A correlative typology mixing syntactic and semantic parameters.- A Comparative Study of the Lexicalization of the Bangla Polar Question Particle ki and the Assamese Polar Question Particle ne.- Comparing Honorificity Agreement in Maithili and Bangla.- Towards an Understanding of Microvariations: Decoding the Hierarchical Module of Variation and the Correlates of Mappila Malayalam.- Dialect Variation and Dialect Change: A social-dialectological approach.- Parametrizing Ergativity: Insights from Western Indo-Aryan languages.- Cross-linguistic Variations in the Processing of Ergative Case: Evidences from Punjabi.- On Gender Micro-variation.

Pritha Chandra is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, USA. Her research is mainly centered around the theoretical constructs of case, agreement and formal features in South Asian languages; her more recent publications are on feature variation and language change in Indo-Aryan languages. She has been collaborating with researchers from both Indian and international universities. Her supervisees now hold faculty and postdoctoral positions in reputed universities in India and abroad.