A grammar of Bhojpuri

669 Pages·2020·10.992 MB·English

by  Gopal Thakur Lohar

A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of
Tribhuvan University in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
LINGUISTICS

By
GOPAL THAKUR LOHAR
T. U. Regd. No. 14176-83
Ph. D. Reg. No. 24/2010 (January)

Tribhuvan University
Kathmandu, Nepal
July 2020

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this dissertation entitled A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI
submitted to the office of the Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Tribhuvan University, is an entirely original work prepared under the supervision of
my supervisor and expert. I have made due acknowledgements to all ideas and
information borrowed from different sources in the course of writing this dissertation.
The results presented in this dissertation have not been presented or submitted
anywhere else for the award of any degree or for any other purposes. I shall be solely
responsible if any evidence is found against my dissertation.

_________________
Gopal Thakur Lohar
Date: July 12, 2020

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, my profound acknowledgement is due to Prof. Dr. Dan Raj
Regmi, my supervisor and former head, Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan
University, Nepal, for his genuine encouragement, continuous guidance, valuable
suggestions and insightful comments in accomplishing this dissertation.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Madhav Prasad Pokharel,
Central Department of Linguistics, T.U., for his encouragement, constructive
suggestions and insightful comments as the expert to improve this dissertation.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Bhim Raj Suwal, the Act. Dean, and
Dr. Govinda Prasad Sharma 'Sukum', Assistant Dean, Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Tribhuvan University, for providing me this opportunity to take part
in the research.
I would also like to thank Mr. Bijaya Kumar Ghimire and Mr. Krishna Karki, assistant
administrators, and other staff of the Dean(cid:146)s Office, Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Tribhuvan University, for helping me for completion of the research.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Yogendra Prasad Yadava,
former head of Central Department of Linguistics, who has always encouraged me for
the research since I joined the Department for study. I am thankful to Prof. Dr. Tej
Ratna Kansakar and Prof. Dr. Chudamani Bandhu, former heads, Central Department
of Linguistics, Prof. Dr. Novel Kishore Rai and Prof. Nirmal Man Tuladhar for their
valuable encouragements. I tender my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Paras Nath Yadav,
executive director, CDC, TU for his valuable cooperation.
I am also grateful to Prof. Dr. Dubi Nanda Dhakal, the head, Central Department of
Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, for inspiring and guiding me to this research. I am
indebted to Dr. Balaram Prasain, Reader, Central Department of Linguistics, T. U.,
without whose cooperation in computer handling time and again, this research was
impossible to take shape. I express my sincere thanks to Mr. Krishna Chalise,
Lecturer, Central Department of Linguistics, for his proper technical support.
In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Karnakhar Khatiwada and Dr.
Ambika Regmi, from the Central Department of Linguistics of T.U., for their help and
support in completion of this study.
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I express my humble gratitude to my parents Mr. Aphimi Lal Thakur and Mrs.
Parameshwari Devi Thakur who not only encouraged me for my entire studies but
also supported me as informants for acoustic analysis of the aspirate sonorants in
Bhojpuri. I express lovely thanks to my wife Mrs. Gajamatiya Devi Thakur who
supported me in the research. I express thanks to my youngsters Mr. Anand Kumar
Gupta and Ms. Jyoti Tiwari who helped me as informants. I express thanks to Mr.
Chhotelal Prasad Yadav, Mrs. Sabita Yadav, Mr. Rambabu Yadav, Mr. Noor Alam
Badshah and Mrs. Pinky Khatun for the same. I thank Mr. Ram Ekwal Thakur, my
brother-in-law, who assisted me every moment I required for logistic supports.
I pay tributes to the senior citizens Late Harihar Yadav, Late Pt. Deep Narayan
Mishra and Late Hira Bhagat Yadav along with my grandparents Late Dhupa Thakur
and Late Bachiya Devi who inspired me by transmitting different genres of Bhojpuri
folklore as well as responding me in the beginning of this research.
At last but not the least, I express my sincere obligations to Com. Pushpa Kamal
Dahal 'Prachanda', Chairman, and Com. Matrika Prasad Yadav, Member of the
Standing Committee, of the Nepal Communist Party, who encouraged me for
managing time and logistics required for this research.
Gopal Thakur Lohar

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ABSTRACT

This study presents a grammar of Bhojpuri within the framework of the functional-
typological grammar with adaptive approach developed by T. Givόn (2001a & b and
2009). Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the districts of central Tarai
(Madhesh); namely, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara, Parsa, Chitwan, Nawalparasi (East and West
of Susta) and Rupandehi in Nepal as well as in the adjacent Indian territories of Western
Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and other provinces, too. It is also spoken as mother
tongue worldwide, due to indentured labour in the past and foreign employment
contemporarily. The main goal of this study is to analyze the forms and functions of
different grammatical categories of the Bhojpuri language and compare them to the
characteristic structural features of Indo-Aryan languages from the typological
perspectives. Mainly based on the field study, this grammar examines morphosyntactic
structures manifesting the relationship between linguistic forms and functions at both
sentence and discourse levels of the form of Bara-Parsa variety of Bhojpuri.
The study is organized into 16 chapters. Chapter 1 presents major objectives of the study,
literature review and significance and limitations of the study. Chapter 2 deals with the
theoretical framework of the study. Chapter 3 discusses some sociolinguistic aspects as
background information. Chapters 4-14 deal with different aspects of grammar of the
language, viz., phonology, morphophonology, word classes, simple verbal clauses and
argument structure, grammatical relations and case-marking, noun phrases and word
order, tense, aspect and modality, non-declarative speech-acts, marked topics and
contrastive focus, inter-clausal and referential coherence. Chapter 15 deals with
typological implications of the study. Chapter 16 presents summary and conclusions.
This study has revealed a number of interesting features of the Bhojpuri language. This
language is used in different domains of language use with positive attitude of the
speech community. East-west areal dialectal variations occur in the language along with
ethnic and religious ones. There are 36 consonants and 8 oral vowels with their nasal
counterparts in Bhojpuri. Bhojpuri presents different strategies such as deletion, raising,
assimilation and coalescence between the preceding and succeeding segments during
word formation. Morphosyntactically, Bhojpuri consistently displays nominative-
accusative case-marking system. The case-markers are postpositional, but suffixed with
pronominals. Tense-aspect-modality agreement markers are suffixal in Bhojpuri.
Regular word order in Bhojpuri clauses is SOV with flexibility for different pragmatic
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uses. Non-verbal predicates are significantly used for present habitual. Passivization,
reflexivization and causativization are primarily morphological in Bhojpuri. A noun
phrase consists of a single noun or pronoun as the simplex one and with other elements
as the complex. Bhojpuri displays two genders, two numbers and three degrees of
honorificity inherent in as well as marked with nouns and finite verbs morphologically.
The relative clauses occur in externally and internally headed or headless position under
strategies of a gap, pronoun retention and use of different correlative pronouns to
relativize different grammatical relations. The non-declarative speech acts in Bhojpuri
include interrogative with polar, constituent and negative polarity questions, and
manipulative with imperative and hortative constructions. Reflexive, reciprocals,
insertion of dative, benefactive or associative arguments and passive constructions are
used in de-transitive voices. EPCs, Y-movement, left and right dislocations, dative-
shifting and raising may be utilized in marked topic constructions as well as affixes and
quantifiers, contrastive strength, reference and topicality, negation and polar questions
in contrastive focus. The subordinate adverbial clauses are generally marked through
the special non-finite verb forms in Bhojpuri. Conjoined clauses exhibit the
conjunctive, disjunctive and adversative relationships among themselves and express
rejection and cause too. Complement-taking verbs include perception-cognition-
utterance, modality and manipulation verbs. The referential coherence is encoded by the
morphological devices in terms of grammar of pronouns and the grammatical
agreement. Bhojpuri displays a number of typologically interesting features similar to
and different from its neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages.
This study has also revealed some striking features in the language. They may include
aspirate sonorants, triphthongization, phonemic word-stress, smaller to greater order of
counting upto 200, declension of adverbs in word-formation as well as for emphasis,
development of genuine prefixes and infixes, allocutive agreement and absence of
gender marking (in eastern variety), use of present tense copula bɑ with its negative
counterpart nʌikʰe, verbless utterances in proverbs and relative clauses and clause-final
plural maker particle sʌ, sʌn and jɑ with a consistent nominative-accusative pattern.
The annexes include details of sociolinguistic data collection and informants in the
study, map of the common Bhojpuri speech zones in Nepal and India, tables of
distribution of consonants and vowel sequence and samples of the analyzed texts,
followed by references.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Recommendation letter i
Approval letter ii
Declaration iii
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract vi
List of tables xvii
List of figures xx
List of diagrams xx
List of maps xx
List of abbreviations xxi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1-12
1.0 Background 1
1.1 Statement of the problem 1
1.2 Objectives of the study 2
1.3 Review of the literature 2
1.4 Research methodology 9
1.5 Justification of the study 11
1.6 Limitations of the study 11
1.7 Organization of the study 12
CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 13-34
2.0 Outline 13
2.1 Theoretical developments in grammar writing 13
2.2 Functional-typological and adaptive approaches 16
2.2.1 Functional-typological approach 16
2.2.2Adaptive approach to grammar 29
2.3 Assumptions of the framework 32
2.4 Summary 33
CHAPTER 3: SOME SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS 35-52
3.0 Outline 35
3.1 The native speakers and language 35
3.1.1 Caste/Ethnic groups 37
3.1.2 Religion 38
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3.1.3 Literacy 38
3.1.4 Marriage system 38
3.1.5 Occupation 38
3.1.6 Demography and distribution 39
3.1.7 Linguistic affiliation 40
3.1.8 Writing system 41
3.2 Language resources and organizations 43
3.3 Language proficiency and multilingualism 44
3.3.1 Mother tongue proficiency in Bhojpuri 44
3.3.2 Bi/multilingualism 44
3.4 Domains of language use 45
3.5 Language vitality, transmission and maintenance 45
3.6 Language attitude 45
3.7 Language development 45
3.8 Dialectal variation 46
3.9 Summary 51
CHAPTER 4: PHONOLOGY 53-102
4.0 Outline 53
4.1 Inventory of the consonants 53
4.1.1 Phonological oppositions in consonants 54
4.1.2 Aspirate sonorants 68
4.1.3 Distribution of consonants 79
4.2 Vowels 81
4.2.1 Inventory of oral monophthongs 81
4.2.2 Phonological contrasts in oral monophthongs 82
4.2.3 Nasal monophthongs 88
4.2.4 Diphthongs and tripthongs 92
4.3 Distinctive features 93
4.3.1 Distinctive features of the consonants 93
4.3.2 Distinctive features of the oral monophthongs 94
4.4 Syllable 95
4.4.1 Syllable pattern 95
4.4.2 Syllable structure 95
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