Forty years of language contact and change in Kupwar: A critical assessment of the intertranslatability model

This paper revisits the language contact situation in the Indian border town-village of Kupwar originally reported by . Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border. In D. Hymes (ed.), , 151–168. Cambridge: CUP). The study presents evidence for morpho-syntactic variation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of South Asian languages and linguistics 2016-09, Vol.3 (2), p.147-174
Main Author: Kulkarni-Joshi, Sonal
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bilingualism
Boundaries
convergence
Dravidian languages
Indo-Aryan languages
intertranslatability
Kannada
Kannada language
Kupwar
Language change
Language contact
Marathi
Marathi language
Syntax
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Summary:This paper revisits the language contact situation in the Indian border town-village of Kupwar originally reported by . Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border. In D. Hymes (ed.), , 151–168. Cambridge: CUP). The study presents evidence for morpho-syntactic variation and complexification in the contact varieties of the local languages, Marathi and Kannada. Similar patterns of variation are adduced from contact varieties of Marathi and Kannada from historical data as well as present-day border villages which, like Kupwar, have been traditionally bilingual. The synchronic and historical data point out methodological and theoretical limitations of the original study. The variation and complexity observed in the Kupwar varieties allow for a reconsideration of the notion of intertranslatability or isomorphism in convergence areas. While suggesting a possible geographically defined micro-linguistic area at the Marathi-Kannada frontier, the paper indicates that the recent re-drawing of state boundaries along linguistic lines may have initiated divergence in this convergence area.
ISSN:2196-0771
2196-078X
DOI:10.1515/jsall-2016-0008