Project work on Linguistic diversity | Class-10 Social science-EduGrown

Abstract and Figures

This paper addresses the theme of the seminar from the perspective of historical linguistics. It introduces the construct of ‘language family’ and then proceeds to a discussion of contact and the dynamics of linguistic exchange among the main language families of India over several millennia. Some prevalent hypotheses to explain the creation of India as a linguistic area are presented. The ‘substratum view’ is critically assessed. Evidence from historical linguistics in support of two dominant hypotheses – ‘the Aryan migration view’ and ‘the out-of-India hypothesis’ – is presented and briefly assessed. In conclusion, it is observed that the current understanding in historical linguistics favours the Aryan migration view though the ‘substratum view’ is questionable.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to lend a linguistic perspective on the issue of human diversity and ancestry in India to the non-linguists at this seminar. The paper is an overview of the major views and evidence gleaned from the available literature.The paper is organized as follows: Section 1introducesthe linguistic diversity and language families of India. It concludes by stating two contesting hypotheses regarding the peopling of India. Section 2 briefly presents the methods of historical linguistics, some relevant data, and inferences based on the data. Section 3proceeds to examine data made available to address the Indo-Aryan Migration Problem. A summary of the evidence and a conclusion are presented inSection

1.1 Languages and language families of India

India is home to a wide variety of languages. The estimates of the actual number of languages vary. Ethnologue (accessed on 10 September 2018) lists 462 individual languages(these include 448 living and 14 extinct). According to the census of India (2011), the total number of languages stands at 121: 22 scheduled and 99 non-scheduled (Source: Language: India, States and Union Territories (Table C-16), Office of the Registrar General, India. Part 1, p. 21). The estimates differ partly because it is not easy to define language as distinct from dialect –these are entities defined on the basis of social, political, and cultural criteria more than linguistic criteria. This vast number of languages is classified into four (or six) language families or genealogical types: Austro-Asiatic(Munda), Dravidian, Indo-Aryan (IA), and Tibeto-Burman; more recently, two other language families have been reported –Tai-Kadai and Great Andamanese. South Asia is also home to languages with no known genealogical associations –these are referred to as language isolates; of these, Nihali is an isolate spoken in central India while Burushaskiis spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan in, Kusunda in Nepal, and Vedda in Sri Lanka

1.2 Documentation of Indian languages

Systematic documentation of languages,1linguistic affinitiesand classification of Indian languages was undertaken for thefirst time in the British colonial era. This exercise was largely motivated by the need to understand the culture and social organization of their colony in India better through its1George Grierson’sLinguistic Survey of India (1905–1926), which documented 364 languages, remains an indispensable resource for linguists in India.

‘The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refinedthan either, yet bearing to both of them a strongeraffinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtics, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.

1.3 India as a linguistic area

The languages in India (the Indian subcontinent), although belonging to different language families, the show shared linguistic traits. These include retroflex sounds, SOV word order, absence of prepositions, morphological reduplication(expressive), echo formations, reduplicated verbal adverbs, explicator compound verbs, use of converbs, oblique marked subjects, morphological causatives among many others.Hence, India has been described as a linguistic area (Eme-neau 1956; Kuiper 1967; Masica 2005)

Summary and conclusion

The overview in this paper focused on presenting evidence from historical linguistics used in reconstructing population movements and contact situations of the past in India. The point of departure was the construct of ‘language family’(the genealogical model of language classification) based on the comparative method in historical linguistics. The firstsystematic documentation and genealogical classification of Indian languages was traced back to the British colonial administrative practices in the country. Problems in equating language families (a linguistic construct) with racial group-ings were noted.The presence of non-genetic linguistic traits in the language families of India triggered a discussion of the sociolinguistic processes as a result of which linguistic material may have been transferred. We noted that a majority of historical linguists favor the unidirectional process of language shift/substratum effect to explain the transfer. This model entails a claim for unequal social relations. Our overview proceeded to examine the implications of this linguistic evidence for South Asian (Indian) linguistic pre-history. Of the various migrations/population movements the Indian subcontinent has experienced, the putative in-migration of the Aryan-language speakers has received inordinate attention within historical linguistics. The Aryans (i.e.speakers of Aryan languages) are said to have arrived not in a linguistic vacuum but in a space that was inhabited by speakers of various other languages belonging to either Dravidian or Munda or some lost linguistic groups. We assessed the ‘Dravidian substratum’view to explain the non-Aryan element in Rgvedic Sanskrit. However, there is no consensus among scholars in the field either on the lexical or the structural evidence. Bryant (2012: 80), for example, concludes his reassessment of the substratum view thus:‘The apparent “evidence”of a linguistic substratum in Indo-Aryan, in and of itself, cannot be used as a decisive arbitrator in the debate over Indo-Aryan origins.’Alternative models are being proposed based on fresh linguistic evidence which suggests that the Aryans and other language speakers in Indiainteracted on an equal social footing and that the transfer of linguistic material may have resulted from bilingualism and bidirectional transfer rather than shift to a socially more prestigious Aryan language. Explanation based on bilingualism and bidirectional transfer is a minority view. We then turned our overview to collating views of historical linguists on the origins of the Aryan language speakers in India. Two competing hypotheses were examined: the Aryan migration view and the Out-of-Indiahypothesis. Linguistic evidence such as sound changes can be subjected to critical analysis and thus presents stronger evidence. The current understanding of the linguistic evidence does not support the ‘Sanskrit (OIA) as preview. Further, the ‘Out-of-India’hypothesis which does not appear to be based on linguistic evidence is difficult to verify or falsify.To conclude our overview based on secondary sources in the field of historical linguistics: in the current state of our understanding of the linguistic evidence, the question regarding the linguistic ancestry of India cannot be answered with confidence