INDIA & LINGUISTICS

LINGUISTICS HISTORY OF INDIAE&C Dept. B.Tech 4th Yr IIT RoorkeeWHY THIS TOPIC ?The earliest known linguistic activities date toIron Age India(~8th century BC) with the analysis ofSanskrit.Presently, India is a home to several hundred languages.Indias census recognized 1,652 individual mother tongues.After Independence, language was used as a basis to define many state boundaries. Kerala(Malyalam), Tamil Nadu(Tamil), Andhra Pradesh(Telugu), Maharashtra(Marathi), Karnataka(Kannada), Orissa(Oriya), WestBengal(Bengali), Gujrat(Gujrati) ,Punjab(Punjabi).

It is interesting to study how these languages evolved over and how much important part language plays in such a culturally diverse country.

How it all began ?Sir Willian Jones during his stay in India got interested in Sanskrit and explored its virtues and founded Asiatic Society.

In 1786, he suggested that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit all had a common root.

After which many linguists started studying Sanskrit, finding out its links to other language families.

It marked the beginning of comparative linguistics.

TheSanscritlanguage, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than theGreek, more copious than theLatin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident

Major Language FamiliesIndo Aryan Languages : 72 % populationExample: Hindustani, Punjabi, Bengali, etc.

Dravidian Languages : 25 % populationExample: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, etc.

Austro-Asiatic languages : 1.5 % populationExample: Munda

Tibeto-Burman languages : 0.5 % population

Indo Aryan Languages ~72%

Indo Aryan LanguagesIts history is divided into 3 stages :

(1)Old, comprising Vedic and classical Sanskrit

(2)Middle(from about the 3rd century BC), which embraces the vernacular dialects of Sanskrit called Prakrits, including Pali.

(3)New or Modern, (from about the 10th century AD), which comprises the modern languages of the northern and central portions of the Indian subcontinent.Old-Indo AryanVedic SanskritVedic Sanskritis the language of the Vedas, a large collection ofhymns and religio-philosophical discussions which form the earliest religious texts in India and the basis for much of theHindureligion. Modern linguists consider these hymns to be the earliest in the world.

Old-Indo AryanClassical Sanskrit

It is essentially a prescriptivegrammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit.

The oldest survivingSanskritgrammar isPini'sAtdhyy("Eight-Chapter Grammar") dates back to the 5th century BCE.

Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker ofsocial classandeducationalattainment and was taught mainly toBrahmins.

Sanskrit as a language has its well defined Phonology and Grammar which is more perfect than in any other language.Old Indo AryanScholars from South India often distinguishVedic Sanskritand Classical or "Paninian"Sanskritas separate dialects. However, they are extremely similar in many ways and differ mostly in a few points ofphonology,vocabulary, andgrammar.

Classical Sanskrit can therefore be considered a seamless evolution of the earlier Vedic language.Middle Indo Aryan - PrakritsPrakrit(fromprakti),"original, natural in contrast to perfect Panini grammar,refers to the broad family of Indic languages and dialects spoken in ancient India.

The Prakrits became literary languages, generally patronized bykingsidentified with theksatriyacaste. The earliest inscriptions in Prakrit are those ofAshoka.

Pali the language of the Buddhist canonical writings, is the oldest literary Prakrit. It remains in use in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.Modern Indo-AryanThe Prakrits continued in everyday use until about the 12th century AD, but even by about the 10th century, the Modern Indo-Aryannative languages had begun to develop.

Presently- Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Bihari, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, all native variations of Indo-Aryan are significant, each of which has at least 10 million speakers.

Dravidian Languages ~25%

Dravidian LanguagesTheDravidianfamily of languagesincludes approximately 73 languagesthat are mainly spoken inSouthern India.

Origins of the Dravidian languages, development and the period of their differentiation are unclear, partially due to the lack ofcomparative linguisticresearch into the Dravidian languages.

The Dravidian family has defied all of the attempts to show a connection with other tongues, includingIndo-European.

Dravidian LanguagesTypological Correlation with Uralic language

Some linguists believe that they are native to India.

Human Migration : Africa->Europe->Asia. Indicates that both Dravdians and Aryans are from outside India.

Dravidian LanguagesDravidian Languages show extensive lexical borrowing but only a few traits of structural borrowings from Indo-Aryan.

With Indo-Aryans, it is the other way round

Remarkably Stable- Preservation of root vowels.

Dravidian LanguagesAlthough, over the time, large number of loan words from Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages have entered Dravidian Languages.

example: loan words in Tamilagni akkiniauddha - acutta

With its great antiquity, Tamil can claim one of the oldest unbroken literary traditions of the world's living languages.

Though Dravidian and independent to Sanskrit, over 80% of words inMalayalamandTeluguare pure Sanskrit words.

Dravidian Languages

Classical LanguagesIn 2004, theGovernment of Indiadeclared that languages that met certain requirements could be accorded the status of a "Classical Languagein India".Languages thus far declared to be Classical areTamil(in 2004),Sanskrit(in2005),KannadaandTelugu(in 2008).Evolution of Scripts Indus Script: refers to short strings of symbols associated with theHarappan civilizationofancient India(most of the Indus sites are distributed in present-dayPakistanand northwestIndia) used between 26001900 BC, which evolved from an early Indus script attested from around 35003300 BC.

Brahmi Script: This script is ancestral to most of the Asia,Tibet,Mongolia,Manchuria, and perhaps evenKoreanHangul. TheBrhm numeralsystem is the ancestor of theHindu-Arabic numerals, which are now used worldwide.Evolution of Scripts Gupta Script : It was used for writingSanskritand is associated with theGupta EmpireofIndiawhich was a period of material prosperity and greatreligiousandscientificdevelopments. The Gupta script was descended fromBrahmiand gave rise to theSiddhamscript.

Siddha (Sanskrit, accomplished or perfected), descended from theBrahmiscript via theGupta script, which also gave rise to theDevangarscript as well as a number of other Asian scripts such asTibetan script.At PresentThe principalofficial languageof theRepublic of IndiaisHindi, whileEnglishis the secondary official language.

The dialect that has been chosen as India's official language is Khariboli in the Devnagari script. Other dialects of Hindi are Brajbhasa, Bundeli, Awadhi, Marwari, Maithili and Bhojpuri.

At PresentBihari , spoken in Bihar is the name of a group of three related languagesBhojpuri, Maithili, and Magahi.

Bhojpuri and Magahi is a combination of Kaithi and Devnagari script

Bengali is spoken in West Bengal and by almost the entire population of Bangladesh. Like Hindi, it is descended from Sanskrit, and has the most extensive literature of any modern Indian language.

Oriya, Bengali and Assamese all are quite similar and are considered to be sister languages.

At PresentPunjabiis spoken by inhabitants of the historicalPunjab region(north westernIndiaand in north easternPakistan). Gurmukhi is the script used.

Despite their separate names, Hindi and Urdu are actually slightly different dialects of the same language.

The main differences lie in their vocabulary sources, scripts, and religious traditions. Hindi vocabulary derives mainly from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains many words of Persian and Arabic origin; Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, and Urdu in a Persian Arabic script.

At PresentFrom the British reign, English is trying to fix the language differences in India.

Linguistic Survey of India (LSI)It was a project of the British Rajconducted between 1894 and 1928, under the direction ofGeorge A. Grierson.It described 364 languages and dialects. Online searchable database of LSI is available providing an excerpt of each word.

New Survey : In theEleventh Five-Year Plan(2007-12) Rs. 2.8 billion was sanctioned for the project. It was classified into two sections: a New Linguistic Survey of India and a Survey of Minor and Endangered Languages.

Contribution to TechnologyComputational Linguistics : Sanskrit, because of its perfect grammar and rules there have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as ameta languagefor knowledge representation in e.g.Machine Translation, and other areas ofNatural Language Processing.LINGO KIDS IN INDIA

RAVI - MUMBAITHANK YOU