Linguistics

Satish Kumar Nadimpalli^1* & Bh V N Lakshmi^{2  
1,2}Dept. of English, SRKR Engineering College, Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, India. *Corresponding author.

^{Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 16, Issue 2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n2.34g
Full-Text PDF Issue Access}

Abstract

Complex Predicates (CPs hereafter) are abundant in Dravidian Languages spoken in the Southern part of India. A CP is a multi-word expression that acts as one verbal unit where a Light Verb (LV hereafter) plays a vital role (Amberber et al., 2010). LVs, with their syntactic and semantic features and preverbs, determine the argument structure of the whole CP construction. LVs have a distinctive feature of acquiring contextual meanings in combination with the preverbal elements, and this phenomenon is common across language families. (Hook 1991, 1993, Butt 1995). N+LV CPs and Noun Incorporation (NI) structures, which appear to be the same phenomenon, are two different structures altogether, though both have N+V composition. Baker (1988) proposes some defining characteristics for NI structures, which are indeed short for Dravidian languages like Kannada and Telugu, which are highly rich in morpho-syntactic features. According to SK Nadimpalli et al. (2022), additional characteristics exist that can effectively distinguish CPs from NIs. These were demonstrated using Telugu data. The present research concentrates on the difference between NIs and CPs with regard to the argument composition of the whole predicate. The study will also investigate how preverbal nouns in CPs, with specific semantic features, combine with different LVs and how the whole argument structure is composed, with the help of Kannada data as a case in point. The LVs exhibit a wide range of syntactic and semantic properties in consonance with the preverbal noun it combines with to constitute a CP construction. The selection of LVs is inherently language-specific, with LVs in Kannada potentially exhibiting different syntactic and semantic behaviors compared to their counterparts in Telugu.  This study, with data from Kannada, would add to the syntactic and semantic repertoire of LVs and N+ LV CPs in Dravidian languages in particular and to the Universal Grammar at large.

Keywords: Complex Predicate, Noun Incorporation, Light Verbs, Argument Structure, Kannada.

Gatha Sharma   
 Associate Professor, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, India.

^{Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 16, Issue 2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n2.30g
Full-Text PDF Issue Access}

Abstract

India is home to hundreds of languages. Each Indian language is unique and an identity marker for individuals, communities, and their culture. The English language, though not native to India, has a significant presence in this vast country. One hundred and ninety years of British colonial rule over India had established English as the ‘dominant language’ in the country long ago. Rapid urbanization; and the consequent proliferation of telecommunication networks have further increased its dominance over Indian languages in the last few decades. The heavy code-mixing of English words in the Indian languages is reducing the richness of the vocabulary of the Indian languages by replacing their words with English words, thereby initiating ‘lexical depletion’ based language change in the native languages. This paper is an empirical study to map the code-mixing of English words in the Hindi language and its impact on the Hindi language, as observed in Greater Noida, a town that has seen rapid urbanization since 1991. This paper attempts to explain the implications of code-mixing on the Hindi lexicon by analysing a corpus of spoken language data using corpus-linguistics and computational linguistics methodologies.

Keywords: English Language, Hindi Language, Telecommunication, Urbanization, Lexical Depletion.

Tanushree Sarkar   
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Hyderabad,-500075, Telangana, India.

^{Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 16, Issue 2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n2.24g
Full-Text PDF Issue Access}

Abstract

This study deals with the different word formation processes in Bangla under the framework of Lexical Phonology and Stratal OT with both descriptive and theoretical goals. The study attempts a) to provide a description of the morphophonemics of Bangla that result from the concatenation of morphemes, b) to use the theory of Lexical Phonology and Morphology (Kiparsky, 1982,1985; Mohanan, 1982) and later developments in Stratal OT (Kiparsky, 2003; Bermudez- Otero and McMohan, 2006) and others.

Keywords: Lexical Phonology, Stratal Optimality Theory, Bangla, Rule-based account