Kharia language
The Kharia language is a Munda language of the Austroasiatic language family, that is primarily spoken by the Kharia people of eastern India.
History
The first systematic description of the Kharia language is Banerjee 's Kharia grammar, followed by Tea Districts Labour Association and Floor et al., which resulted in a Kharia-English Dictionary. An ethnological study on the tribe was published in 1937 by Roy & Roy.The first major academic approach to Kharia were taken by linguist Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow in the 1950s and 1960s with studies published in both German and English. Other works include Biligiri 's full study and lexicon; Mahapatra on Kharia and Juang verbs, Malhotra Ph.D. dissertation attempting a comprehensive grammar of Kharia; Abbi on language change and contact; Rehberg on Kharia phonology.
Classification
Kharia belongs to the Kharia–Juang branch of the Munda language family. Its closest extant relative is the Juang language, but the relationship between Kharia and Juang is remote.Kharia is in contact with Sadri, Mundari, Kurukh, Hindi, and Odia.
Distribution
Kharia speakers are located in the following districts of India.Phonology
- are only marginally phonemic and are normally intervocalic allophones of /ɖ, ɖʱ/.
- /f/ came from earlier */pʰ/ and can also be pronounced among some speakers as an affricate, which was most likely an intermediate stage between the /pʰ > f/ shift.
- /c, cʰ, ɟ, ɟʱ/ are often realized as affricate sounds, especially in loanwords.
- is an allophone of /ɡ/ when in coda position.
- /i, e, o, u/ have lax allophones of .
- /a/ can have allophones of .
Morphology
Nouns
Case
Kharia NPs has three cases:- Nominative: unmarked
- Oblique: =te
- Genitive: ''=aʔ''
Gender
Grammatical gender is not a morphosyntactical feature of Kharia, but the language has independent words to identify whether a male or female of a lexical word is intended. Eg. kokro siŋkoy 'rooster' and kitur siŋkoy 'hen'.Person
Inalienable nominals are cross-referenced with possessive markers showed in the table below.Numerals
Kharia has two numeral systems. The one native to Kharia is no longer in common productive use, therefore having great disparities and disagreements. The other, which was borrowed from Sadri, is used in daily life.| native numerals | borrowed from Sadri | |
| 0 | sun | |
| 1 | moɲ, muɖu | ek |
| 2 | ubar | dui |
| 3 | upʰeʔ | tin |
| 4 | ipʰonʔ, tʰam | cair, ceir |
| 5 | moloy, tʰum | pãc |
| 6 | tibru, tibʱru, ʈibru | chaw |
| 7 | gʰul, tʰam, tʰom, tʰoŋ | sat |
| 8 | tʰam, tʰom, tʰomsiŋ, gʰul | aʈh |
| 9 | tʰomsiŋ, tomsiŋ, gʰal, gʰul | naw, nãw |
| 10 | gʰol | das |
| 100 | moloy ekɽi | say, saw, sos |
| 1000 | hajar |
The Sadri derived numerals often go with numeral classifiers. Classifiers occur very seldom with native numerals, at least by modern speakers, perhaps due to the unfamiliarity of the modern speakers with the Kharia numerals.
Verbs
Subject marking
Similar to Remo, Gutob, Gtaʔ, and recently Juang, Kharia predicate only marks person/number of the subject argument. Distinction between animate and inanimate agents is not so profound in Kharia as they are both marked, although Biligiri stated that "there is a stronger tendency to observe number agreement with an animate subject than with an inanimate subject."Tense, aspect, mood
Kharia, like many Munda languages, merges TAM categories with active and middle voices.Causative verb
The causative derivation increases the valency of a verb stem by introducing a higher or superordinate agent who causes the lower agent to act or a non-agentive event to happen. In Kharia, the signature marker of the Austroasiatic family -b- is used as the causative prefix or infix. Double causative constructions are also allowed.| root | gloss | Simple causative | meaning | Double causative | meaning |
| aloŋ | 'sing' | a-ˀb-loŋ | 'have someone sing' | ob-a-ˀb-loŋ | 'someone make someone sing' |
| ɖeˀb | 'rise, climb' | o-ɖeˀb | 'raise, offer up, sacrifice' | oˀb-ɖeˀb | 'have someone sacrifice' |
| lemeˀɖ | 'go to bed' | le-ʔ-meˀɖ | 'put someone to bed' | oˀb-le-ʔ-meˀɖ | 'have someone put someone to bed' |
| sore | 'become ready' | so-ˀb-re | 'prepare' | ob-so-ˀb-re | 'have someone prepare' |
Passive
The passive voice/reflexive in Kharia is realized as standalone word ɖom, itself has no lexical meaning. Historically, it might have stemmed from the verb dʒom, as it appears to cognate with Santali passive -jɔn and Sora-Juray reflexive/low transitive denoting marker -dəm-.Telicity
There are two telic markers in Kharia which serve the narrative structure:ɖoˀɖ indicates that another event follows directly upon the event denoted by the predicate that it marks;goˀɖ denotes a turning point or culmination in a narrative.Incorporation
In Kharia, incorporation of nouns and adjuncts is possible but mostly limited to certain stems and under a lexicalized degree. Polysyllabic nominals are subtracted from their final syllable while there are no phonological adjustments occurring on monosyllabic items. The incorporated compounds may obscure or alter the original meaning of the nominal or the verbal element.1.
2.