VOLUME 12, 2022-2023
Editorial
EDITORIAL
I am delighted to bring before you the Aligarh Journal of Linguistics (AJL) volume 12. At a time when we are gradually limping back to our normal track of academic life, I am gratified by the overwhelming number of manuscripts we have received this year. I was upbeat and at the same time left with a sense of awe concerning the challenges entailing it. The main goal of AJL is to publish research articles and short papers (under Notes & Discussion) on all core aspects of Linguistics including syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics. This volume presents interesting papers that address an array of topics revolving around core areas of linguistics. There is also a review section (Book Review) that gives an overview of current research outcome in particular specialist areas. The thirteen papers included in this volume from scholars worldwide have gone through a rigorous review process.
We are also happy to announce that AJL is now going to be online and can be accessed at:
https://amu.ac.in/miscellaneous/aligarh-journal-of-linguistics
The first paper Critical Thinking and Language Development with a Social Media Project by Gulbahar H. Beckett discusses how project based learning with technology approach can help in honing critical thinking and language development. Krishna Prasad Chalise’s paper Language Contact, Maintenance and Shift in the Magar Community delves on the nature of language contact that the Magar speech community in Nepal is embedded in and also identifies the factors that condition language maintenance, and shift in this speech community. The third paper Utilizing IndoWordNet as a Digital Lexical Resource for Language Learning/Teaching Purposes by Niladri Sekhar Dash and Amrita Bhattacharyya dwell on the special features of the multilingual digital lexical resource IndoWordNet and its application, and functional relevance in language education, translation, sense disambiguation, and lexicography. The fourth paper Intonational Patterns in a Sample of Spontaneous Indian English Dialogue by Meena C Debashish presents description of L1 Hindi speaker’s intonation patterns in Indian English following the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Adil Amin Kak in his paper Language interplay in Srinagar: a Kashmiri-English code-mixing perspective provides a quantitative analysis of Kashmiri-English code-mixed structures and how these are evaluated by the members of the speech community. The next paper Forensic Stylometric Analysis of Suicide Note: A Case Study of The Suicide Note of
Late Sh. Mahant Narendra Giri by Abhinav Kumar Mishra, Shrija Tiwari and Sharwan Kumar shows how forensic stylometric analysis of a suicide note is done for authenticating the authorship and ascertaining the credibility of the suicide note.
Mimi Kevichüsa-Ezung in her paper, Towards a Verbal Architecture for Tenyidie (Angami) and the Languages under the Tenyimia Group analysesa huge set of monotransitive verbs and the ditransitive verb in Tenyidie (spoken in Nagaland) following Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. She also shows how ‘verbal constructions’ categorizes the Tenyimia group into three subgroups. The next paper Syntactic Analysis of Simple Sentences in Telugu: A Psycho-Neurolinguistic Perspective by C. S. Swathi provides a descriptive analysis of syntactic deficits observed in Telugu speaking Broca’s aphasics in the production of simple sentence structures. The ninth paper The Morphosyntactic Processes of War-Khasi and War-Jaiñtia: A Comparison with Standard Khasi by Rymphang K. Rynjah and Saralin A. Lyngdoh present a comparison of War-Khasi and War-Jaiñtia varieties with Standard Khasi spoken in the State of Meghalaya. Pangersenla Walling and NikayBesa in their paper Tense, Aspect and Modality in Konyak sketch the expression of temporality in Konyak, a lesser-known language of Nagaland. AtanuSaha et al. in their paper Issues and Challenges in Developing an Annotated Corpus of Mahali: A Kherwarian Language throw light on the challenges in documenting Mahali, a lesser known Kherwarian language. They also provide a discussion on the morphosyntactic features of this language. The paper Affixation in Tiwa by Aleendra Brahma provides a comprehensive analysis of the inflectional affixes in Tiwa, a vigorously endangered language based in Assam and Meghalaya. The last paper Phonological Awareness among Arabic-Speaking Children in Yemen by Eman Haidar Saleh Almoussabi and BrajeshPriyadarshi examines whether gender and socioeconomic status play any role in the development of phonological awareness skills in the Yemeni-Arabic-speaking childrens.
In addition, there are two small but informative papers in the section on ‘Notes and Discussion’. Ravinder Gargesh and Chander Sekhar Singh provide an acoustic analysis of vowels in Uzbek language, the dominant language of Uzbekistan in their paper, An acoustic analysis of Uzbek vowels. Lalit Raj Kumar in his paper Nominal Honorification in Meiteilon focuses on the morphological and syntactic configurations employed to induce honorificity in Meitei.
With deep sorrow, we report that two stalwarts of South Asian Linguistics, Prof R. E. Asher (16-12-2022) and Prof George D. Bedell (28-10-2022) left for their heavenly abode. We pay a tribute to these great scholars.
We hope that the readers will find this volume informative, interesting and offering stimulating perspective in a wide range of areas in Linguistics and its Allied Disciplines. We are grateful to all the contributors to this issue and our anonymous reviewers for their valuable time and painstaking efforts. We greatly value your association with AJL.
I thank the editors Masood Ali Beg and Nazrin B. Laskar for their efforts.
M J Warsi
Editor-in-Chief
24.01.2023
CRITICAL THINKING AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT WITH A SOCIAL MEDIA PROJECT
Author(s): Gulbahar H. Beckett
KeyWords: project-based learning, critical thinking, language development
Abstract: This article proposes Project-Based Learning (PBL) with technology for critical thinking and language development as an ideal approach for moving the Applied Linguistics field from form-focused paradigm to functional paradigm to prepare students for real world learning and work, contextually.It provides definitions of critical thinking (CT), discusses the need for CT, and illustrates how CT can be taught/learned through a social media project while also teaching/learning CT associated language form/functionutilizing the extended affordances of technology for deeper learning and higher order thinking. It also shows how the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) informed Appraisal Framework can be used to teach, learn, and articulate CT. Suggestions for teaching and research are discussed.This article contributes to teacher training because teachers and students need support for implementing technology mediated PBL, functional language and critical thinking development in both first and second language education. It further contributes to the emerging CT work in second language education with an example that illustrates how CT can be addressed more widely and thoroughly.
LANGUAGE CONTACT, MAINTENANCE, AND SHIFT IN THE MAGAR COMMUNITY
Author(s): Krishna Prasad Chalise
KeyWords: bilingualism, language contact, LM, LS, domains of language use, LWC
Abstract:This paper aims to examine the trend of language contact and identify the factors and forces responsible for LM and LS. In order to identify the factors and forces behind LS, this paper assesses language knowledge and domains of language use. The only sources for the data used are Hilty (2013) and Thakur (2013). For many generations, the community has been bilingual in Magar and Nepali. A tiny portion of the community members have knowledge of Hindi, English, etc., but they do not utilize them in daily life conversations. Historically, bilingualism was largely stable in the community. LS was not prominent during the long period of language contact, but a considerable degree of LS started about five to six decades ago, and it has gradually intensified in the last three decades. It means that external factors like educational policy, modernization, globalization, etc. are responsible for the rapid LS. External forces bring changes in the linguistic ecology of a nation, and the changes in the linguistic ecology change the essences of group factors, which in turn force changes in the essences of individual factors. The country has implemented a supportive policy for the minority languages during the past three decades, yet surprisingly, LS has surged in this community over the past few decades. It implies that the effects of modernization and globalization are more powerful than national policies. But modernization and globalization are unavoidable, so our task is to figure out how to make LM stronger in the context of modernization and globalization. Protecting the home and social domains of language use from outside influences may be the first and most effective measure to protect minority languages from being endangered.
UTILIZING IndoWordNet AS A DIGITAL LEXICAL RESOURCE FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING/TEACHING PURPOSES
Author(s): Niladri Sekhar Dash, Amrita Bhattacharyya
KeyWords: Wordnet, lexical relation, semantic relation, IndoWordNet, synset, language learners
Abstract: The IndoWordNet (https://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/indowordnet/) is a new kind of multilingual digital lexical resource with many unique features and functions that make it academically relevant for Indian learners. It is characteristically different from other structured knowledge resources that are available in printed or digital form. It is different from a dictionary in several aspects?composition, content, data, information, originality, characteristics, operation, and function. Although it possesses some properties and features of general printed dictionaries, it carries many properties and features which are never found in printed dictionaries. Similarly, it is neither a thesaurus nor an encyclopedia. It is a resource of a different kind which is planned, designed, and developed with an operational interface involving a semantic network for conceptually linked words to represent a different kind of lexicographic information of words used in a language. In this paper, we argue how the IndoWordNet is different from other structured lexical resources and how it has developed a unique referential identity and functionality to be useful as a linguistic resource in both first and second language learning. Because of its orientation towards reflecting on semantic relations and sense variations of words of Indian languages included within its ambit, the IndoWordNet showcases language-specificsynsets which are often cited to reflect on unique conceptual spectrums of a language community. Also, we emphasize the role of the IndoWordNet in online language learning where an assessment of lexical knowledge is an important parameter in measuring linguistic proficiencies and communicative competence of learners.
INTONATIONAL PATTERNS IN A SAMPLE OF SPONTANEOUS INDIAN ENGLISH DIALOGUE
Author(s): Meena C Debashish
KeyWords: IndianEnglish,intonation,syllable-timedrhythm, SystemicFunctionalLinguistics (SFL),Hindi
Abstract : Thispaper studies the patterns of intonation in a speech sample (spontaneousdialogue) of Indian English by L1 Hindispeakers. The framework of study for this research is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and the computation tool used for analysis is PRAAT,a speech analysis software. Phonetic and phonological perspectives are presented, including a brief discussion of the question of syllable-timing. The main focusof this paperis to discuss the lexicogrammatical and semantic aspects of intonation (in this particular sample of Indian English)in terms of L1 influence, forexample, contrasts in the semantics of demanding information (questions) versus giving information (statements). Finally, some directions for future research in this area of Indian English are suggested.
LANGUAGE INTERPLAY IN SRINAGAR: A KASHMIRI-ENGLISH CODE-MIXING PERSPECTIVE
Author(s): Aadil Amin Kak
KeyWords: code mixing, intersentential code mixing, intrasentential code mixing, sociopsychological factors
Abstract: The present paper studies the language interplay in Srinagar using a code-mixing perspective. The study is a quantitative one with Kashmiri-English bilinguals from Srinagar being the sample for the study. The sample size was 71 with the age range of 15-54 years consisting of the both males and females. The tools included a detailed questionnaire, the first part of which was used to elicit sociopsychological data including personal information, attitudes, stereotypes, etc. and the second part consisted of 30 Kashmiri-English mixed code sentences to be judged on a 4-point acceptability scale. These questions were previously recorded and then played to the respondents. These sentences were compiled after going through Kashmiri-English codemixed data collected in the initial phase of the study. Furthermore, to create syntactic and morphologically diverse structures some sentences were also constructed. The respondents were asked to fill in the questionnaire eliciting sociopsychological data. They were then provided with the acceptability judgement sheets marked with a 4-point scale. Then the tape-recorded sentences were played to them and they were asked to mark their judgements on the acceptability sheet. The sociopsychological variables which were considered included age, gender, occupation, income, education, schooling, medium of instruction, claimed proficiency in Kashmiri and English, parents' occupation, education and fluency in Kashmiri and English. Data was also elicited about their choice of media, and attitudes and stereotypes of languages. The sentences which were chosen to be evaluated for acceptability were morphologically and syntactically diverse. The total acceptability score for the thirty Kashmiri-English mixed code sentences was observed to be 69.04% with a SD of 11.83. This indicated that the acceptability score actually ranged from 57 to 81%. This is a high acceptability score considering that people react negatively to mixed code in formal situations where the monitor is fully activated. Also, it is important to mention here that many of the sentences were invented sentences as already indicated where the reaction should have been negative.
FORENSIC STYLOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF SUICIDE NOTE: A CASE STUDY OF THE SUICIDE NOTE OF LATE SH. MAHANT NARENDRA GIRI
Author(s): Abhinav Kumar Mishra, ShrijaTiwary, Sharwan Kumar
KeyWords: Forensic Linguistic, suicide note, stylometric, authorship analysis, consistency model
Abstract: This research paper falls under the general purview of authorship attribution based on a Forensic Linguistic analysis of the suicide note of Mahant Narendra Giri. Mahant Narendra Giri was the President of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, the largest organization of Hindu saints in India. This case was allegedly reported as a suicide case. A suicide note was obtained from the crime scene. The note got released in the public domain through print and electronic media. It is available on the internet and serves as the research work’s source. A descriptive qualitative method was used for this research, while forensic stylometric analysis was used for authorship verification to ascertain the credibility of the suicide note. The opinion was formed on the basis of the model of consistency as proposed by Wachal (1966) for authorship studies. Word count, idiosyncratic features, location and presence of signatures, number of negation words, blaming for suicide, size of the letters, the shape of the letter formed, inter and intra-word spacing, the direction of strokes used in the letter formations, etc. were some of the parameters used to form an opinion to conclude that the purported Suicide Note is implanted/fabricated in nature.
TOWARDS A VERBAL ARCHITECTURE FOR TENYIDIE (ANGAMI) AND THE LANGUAGES UNDER THE TENYIMIA GROUP
Author(s): Mimi Kevichüsa-Ezung
KeyWords: VA verb, VO verb, monotransitive, ditransitive, VP core
Abstract: Verbs have been classified into two types, namely the unergative and the unaccusative (Perlmutter 1978). In Tenyidie, a further classification of certain monotransitive verbs is proposed. At the syntactic level, one type bears a closer relationship with the A NP and therefore is termed as the VA verb, while the other type bears a closer relationship with the O NP and been termed as the VO verb. VA verbs permit object drop, whereas the VO verbs do not. At the phonological level the classification of the monotransitive verbs is based on the difference in tone. The VA bears a high tone and the VO bears the low tone.
Ditransitive verbs in Tenyidie have a bipartite structure (Set I and Set II). The underlying form of the ditransitive verb is monotransitive, and the Set I verbs behave like the VA. The verbal construct proposed in this paper is that the VA selects its external argument (subject) directly from within the VP core in line with the VP Internal Subject Hypothesis. In contrast, the VO does not select its external argument. Rather it is the V+O combination that selects its subject, external to the VP core. This is in line with Chomsky 1995. In the ditransitive verb construct, the VP has two layers. Set I verbs originate under V1, and Set II verbs originate under V2.
This phenomenon, when tested across the languages of the Tenyimia group show varying results. The other non-Tenyimia Naga languages do not report these types of verbal constructs
SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE SENTENCES IN TELUGU: A PSYCHO-NEUROLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE
Author(s): C.S. Swathi
KeyWords: simple sentence constructions, Broca’saphasia, agrammatism
Abstract: With nearly 82 million speakers as per the 2011 census, Telugu is the fourth most used language in India after Hindi, Bengali and Marathi. Telugu belongs to the South-Central group of Dravidian Language family. The basic word order in Telugu is Subject-Object-Verb and is flexible to indicate emphasis. Aphasia, resulting from brain damage to language areas in the brain, can be of different types. The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive analyzes of Syntactic deficits seen in Telugu speaking Broca’s aphasics (a type of Aphasia) in the production of simple sentence structures.The analyses revealed errors as: a) Productions of verbs in verbless constructions. b) Among the omission errors subject omission was the most frequent phenomenon followed by verb omission andfollowed by object omission. c) Agreement errors were more in terms of person and number than gender and d) Demonstrative pronouns were omitted in most of the responses. Two-fold conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, as seen in literature, syntactic errors occur when damage to Broca’s area is seen, thus reiterating the fact that Broca’s area is involved in syntactic processing of language cross-linguistically and the secondly some language specific features could be seen.
THE MORPHOSYNTACTIC PROCESSES OF WAR-KHASI AND WAR-JAIÑTIA: A COMPARISON WITH STANDARD KHASI
Author(s): Rymphang K. Rynjah, Saralin A. Lyngdoh
KeyWords: morphosyntactic processes, Standard Khasi, War-Khasi, War-Jaiñtia
Abstract: This paper presents a comparison of the morphosyntactic processes inWar-Khasi and War-Jaiñtia varietieswith Standard Khasi spoken in the northeastern state of Meghalaya.The various morphosyntacticprocesses include nominalization, relativization, complementation, causation, and passivization in all varieties of War-Khasi, War-Jaiñtia, and Standard Khasi. Both War-Khasi and War-Jaiñtia like Standard Khasi belong to the Mon-Khmer group of Austro-Asiatic family of languages.War-Khasi is represented in this study by the Mawlong and Umñiuh varieties, while War-Jaiñtia is represented by the Lamin and Trangblang varieties. The Mawlong variety and Umñiuh variety are spoken in Mawlong village and Umñiuh village located in the East Khasi Hills District of the state of Meghalaya, whereas the Lamin variety and Trangblang variety are spoken in Lamin village and Trangblang village in Amlarem Block in the Jaiñtia Hills District of the state of Meghalaya. The main aim of this study is to examine similarities and differences in the morphosyntactic processes of the varieties of War-Khasi and War-Jaiñtia and evaluate their relationship with Standard Khasi.
TENSE, ASPECT AND MODALITY IN KONYAK
Author(s): Pangersenla Walling, Nikay Besa
KeyWords: tense, aspect, mood, present, past, future, realis, irrealis, perfect, imperfect
Abstract: Tense represents the time of an event while aspect expresses repetition, duration, continuity and perfectness of the event, which is independent of time. Modality denotes the speaker’s attitude toward what they are saying such as, a statement of fact, of desire, of command, etc. Tense, aspect and mood are categories associated with verb. Tense and aspect embody the linguistic encoding of time. From a typological point of view these categories are typical verbal categories. This paper aims to give a description of Konyak tense, aspect and mood. The tense, aspect, mood (TAM) occurs post verbally. Konyak has three tenses. But in certain contexts, the distinction between the present tense and past tense is not clear. Tense, aspect and mood in this language is are morphologically realized and these morphemes attach to the verb. Konyak has both an overt realis and irrealis marker. A sentence with the realis marker cannot be negated. Realis can occur with past and present prefect, and present and past continuous tense.
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN DEVELOPING AN ANNOTATED CORPUS OF MAHALI: A KHERWARIAN LANGUAGE
Author(s): Atanu Saha, Mouma Banik, Namrata Paul, Nirnimesh Bhattacharjee, Nivedita Singh, Sudeshna Roy, Eshha Bhattacharyya, Titirsha Chakraborty, Dipankar Das
KeyWords: corpus, digital humanities, language documentation, Mahali, Kherwarian
Abstract: This paper pivots on the challenges of developing an annotated corpus and a lexicon of Mahali a Kherwarian language primarily spoken in West Bengal, Odisha and parts of Jharkhand states of India and some parts of Bangladesh. We have prepared an annotated audio corpus by using Eudico Linguistic Annotator version 5.8 (ELAN). A lexicon and a text corpus are prepared with the help of Fieldwork Explorer (FLEX) version 8.3.12. The paper also highlights some unique linguistic properties of Mahali which needs to be addressed for natural language processing. The paper narrates the major challenges of data collection, methodology and digitization of data in ELAN and Flex.
AFFIXATION IN TIWA
Author(s): Aleendra Brahma
KeyWords: Tiwa, affixation, verbal affixes, nominal affixes, classifiers
Abstract:The Tiwa (recorded as Lalung in the Census of India 2011) language is a vigorously endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Assam and Meghalaya. Most of Tiwa people have shifted to Assamese and Khasi. Again, a considerable amount of Tiwa lexicon is full of borrowed words from those languages but nativized properly following the phonological rules of the language. Being an agglutinating language, it employs over forty inflectional prefixes and suffixes. This study is an attempt to find out those affixes and their functions from a heap of primary data collected for preparation of a handbook of Tiwa language teaching and learning. Among the inflectional affixes, TAM verbal suffixes, case endings and classifier prefixes are prominent whereas NGP nominal suffixes are also employed.
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS AMONG ARABIC-SPEAKING CHILDREN IN YEMEN
Author(s): Eman Haidar Saleh Almoussabi, Brajesh Priyadarshi
KeyWords: phonological awareness, Arabic, socioeconomic status, typically developing children
Abstract: The acquisition of literacy by young learners is influenced by different aspects. Phonological awareness (PA) is looked at as one of the strongest indicators of reading development. The main objective of this paper is to study the relation of gender and children’s SES with development of PA skills in Yemeni-Arabic-speaking children of grades II to VIII. 420 children (TDC) from government and private schools participated in the research, with 30 pupils (15 males and 15 females) from each grade, respectively. The descriptive analysis of the collected data revealed that there was no statistically significant difference in the performance of boy and girl students. Additionally, the results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the performance of children attending government schools (lower socioeconomic status) compared to children attending private schools (higher socioeconomic status). The children of the private school outperformed children of the government school. The differences between the two schools (private and government) may be mainly attributed to the effect of higher socioeconomic status and lower socioeconomic status respectively.
AN ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF UZBEK VOWELS
Author(s): Ravinder Gargesh, Chander Shekhar Singh
KeyWords: vowel, PRAAT, formant(s), frequenc(y/ies)
Abstract: This paper presents an acoustic analysis of the Uzbek vowels. The investigation of certain acoustic cues will be done by studying the spectrograms and sound waves of vowels of the language. The paper will not only focus on the formant frequencies of Uzbek vowels but it will also focus on the acoustic analysis of the nasalization process in Uzbek language.
NOMINAL HONORIFICATION IN MEITEILON
Author(s): Lalit Rajkumar
KeyWords: honorificity, nominals, Meiteilon, pronominal avoidance
Abstract: The paper discusses on one of the many strategies used to show honorificity in Meiteilon – namely, the nominal honorifics. Nominal Honorification in Meiteilon involves a broad spectrum of approaches ranging from use of honorific root forms and employment of kinship terms to non-kins to avoidance of specific pronouns. The study focuses on the morphological and syntactic configurations utilized to produce honorific utterances using the honorific variants of the pronominals and nominalized constructions.
