Korku language
Image:Munda-Sprachen.png|thumb|Distribution of the Munda languages in India, with Korku the leftmost in central India
Korku is a Munda language spoken by the Korku people of central India, in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. It is isolated in the midst of the Gondi people, who are Dravidian, while its closest relatives are in eastern India. It is the westernmost Austroasiatic language.
Korkus are also closely associated with the Nihali people, many of whom have traditionally lived in special quarters of Korku villages. Korku is spoken by around 700,000 people, mainly in four districts of southern Madhya Pradesh and three districts of northern Maharashtra .
The name Korku comes from Koro-ku, Koro 'person, member of the Korku community'.
Sociolinguistics
The Indian national census of 2011 reported 727,133 people claiming to speak Korku, which contributes to Korku being an unscheduled language according to the Indian system. However, Korku is classified as "vulnerable" by UNESCO, the least concerning of the levels of language endangerment nonetheless. Most adult men are bilingual in Hindi, or multilingual in Hindi and the local Dravidian languages. Literacy in the language is low.Throughout recent history, the use of the Korku language has been heavily influenced by larger hegemonic languages, especially Hindi. A few Korku-speaking groups have had relative success in increasing the viability of their dialect, specifically the Potharia Korku from the Vindhya Mountains.
Dialects
Zide lists two dialects for Korku, a Western and an Eastern one. The Western Dialect, which has a handful of subdialects is also called Korku. Among the Western varieties, the one spoken in Lahi is notable for its loss of the dual number.- Western '''dialect: spoken in the districts of Melghat, Betul-Narmadapuram, and Narmadapuram.
- Eastern : spoken in the Chhindwara district of southeastern Madhya Pradesh.
Geographical Distribution
Korku is spoken in the following regions :- South-central Madhya Pradesh
- *East Nimar district
- *Betul district
- *Narmadapuram district
- *Chhindwara district
- Northeastern Maharashtra
- *Amravati district
- *Buldana district
- *Akola district
Phonology
Vowels
Korku has 10 phonemic vowels, which can occur short or long, plus one mid vowel that only occurs as a short segment /ə/.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
Consonants
Korku has a large consonant phoneme inventory, in which stops occur in several places of articulation. Like many languages of India, Korku stops distinguish between voiced, plain voiceless, and voiceless aspirated consonants.Word-finally, all stops are unreleased.
Tone
Korku has two contrastive level tones: low and high. The high tone is unmarked. In many reduplicated verbs, the prefixed element takes the low tone. Only non-initial syllables exhibit tone distinction. In allegro speech, low tone can inject the whole noun phrase, as if there is a low tone in the phrase, every syllable after it will express with low tones. Example iɲ-àʔ sanì kẽᶑe siɽi "my black small goat" → iɲàʔ sànì kẽᶑè sìɽì.Vowel harmony
Verb suffixes and demonstrative derivatives, particularly stems with a final vowel will trigger vowel harmony in morphology: in-èn > enèn. Initial vowel is harmonised to match with the stressed final syllable. Verb suffixes with -CV structure contract with and are reduced when preceding suffixes with initial vowels. Eg. kul-ki-èʔ-ej becomes kulkhèʔnèj when is spelled.Morphosyntax
Korku is a highly agglutinating, suffixing language. It has postpositions, a case system, a two-gender system, and three numbers. The verb phrase can be complex in Korku; functions that in English and other languages may be encoded in by the use of auxiliary verbs and of prepositions may be expressed in Korku through suffixation.Word order
Korku, as all Munda languages, shows a strict Subject–Object–Verb word order.Adjectives are expressed verbally - as intransitive verbs - with the exception of a few cases in which a separate word occurs before the noun they are modifying.
Morphology
Nouns in Korku are assigned one of two grammatical genders: animate, and inanimate, and inflect for several different grammatical cases.Grammatical number
Korku distinguishes three grammatical numbers: singular, dual, and plural for nouns in the animate class. Nouns in the inanimate class are rarely marked for number. Final vowels are sometimes deleted before dual or plural endings.| Singular | Dual | Plural |
| konɟe-Ø ‘daughter’ | konɟe-kiɲ ‘two daughters’ | konɟe-ku ‘daughters’ |
| koɾo ‘man’ | koɾkiɲ ‘two men’ | koɾku ‘men’ |
| siʈa ‘dog’ | siʈakiɲ ‘two dogs’ | siʈaku ‘dogs’ |
Case system
In Korku, the function of participants in a sentence is expressed through grammatical case markings on nouns. Additionally, ideas that are expressed via prepositions in English are also expressed via case markings in Korku. The table below illustrates the different cases and the suffixes used to express them.| Case | Marker | Example | Function |
| Nominative | -Ø | ɖiɟ ‘s/he’ siʈa ‘the dog’ | Subject |
| Accusative-Dative | -kʰe/ | ɖiɟkʰeʔ ‘her/him’ siʈakʰeʔ ‘the dog’ | Direct object |
| Genitive | -à | ɖiɟàʔ ‘her/his' ɟikɽaàʔ ‘of a porcupine’ | Possession |
| Locative | -èn | uɾagèn ‘in the house’ Nagpuɾèn ‘in Nagpur’ | Spatio-temporal location |
| Comitative | -gon/-gella | konɟegon ‘with a daughter’ | Company, togetherness |
| Instrumental | -ten | kolomten ‘by/in pen’ | Means |
| Allative | -ʈae | Acalpurʈae ‘towards Achalpur' | Direction at/towards |
| Ablative | -ten | uɾagàten ‘from the house’ | Source, spatial origin |
Other directional and time markers include:
- Adessive -àʔmera-èn
- Superessive -àliɲ-èn
- Postessive -àʔtau-èn
- Subessive -àʔita-èn
- Temporal -à-sutuʔ
- Temporal ''-à-baadòn''
Argument marking
Additionally, Korku regularly marks direct object on the verb, as in other Munda languages. In the sentence below, the suffix /eɟ/ on the verb compound /senɖawkʰen/ indicates that it was someone else who was given permission to go.Another example,
Korku has evidence of subject marking in the past, but in modern day subject indexation has been fossilized and restricted to third persons of locative copulas and nominal predicates in the locative case.
Table below lists pronominal markers in Korku that encode person/number for the object arguments.
Tenses/Moods/Aspects/Directionality
Given that the general trend in Munda languages is the fusion of tenses with voices, Korku stems are subjected to complex stem alternations in tense/aspect marking in regards to transitivity, animacy, and augmentation. There are two tenses in Korku: Future/Present and Past. Depending on whether the verb is in active or middle voice, its structures may vary. In Future/Present forms, intransitive stems take intransitive marker -ùʔ except some few verbs such as sen, hej, and niɽ.| Intransitive | Transitive | |
| Future/Present | Σ-bà Σ-e-bà Σ-Mode-ùʔ-bà | Reduplicated-Σ-bà Σ-Mode-Object-bà |
| Past | Σ-Mode-en | Σ-Mode-Object-èʔ |
Korku utilizes partial reduplications of certain monosyllabic stems to create imperfective, habitual, and infinitive forms. In some instances, the reduplicated variant can convey effects and anticipations of an immediate about-to-happen action.
Verb stems can take other markers to express modality/mood/aspects/orientations. Note that many of those suffixes have overlapping functions/fused with other TAM/person categories or assimilated/harmonized with final stressed suffixes. For example, the continuous progressive -lakken that often occurs with reduplicated allomorph to describe unfolding actions contains two elements, the auxiliary -lab and the perfective/unaccomplishment -ken, itself a contracted form of translocative, intensive mode, recent past -ki and intransitive past -en, but are functionally different.
| Affixes | Function |
| -ki | Intensive Mode, Translocative, Recent Past, Probabilitative |
| -lì | Cislocative |
| -ya | Translocative, Remote past |
| -ʈʰà | Attemptive, Tentative Mode |
| -jom | Delayed action |
| -wa | Benefactive |
| -ɲ | Past transitive |
| -ùʔ | Passive-potential |
| -kʰùʔ | Durative mood |
| -yùʔ < -ya-ùʔ | Potential, ability |
| -lab | Continuous aspect |
| -ken | Prefective, Unaccomplishness |
| -daːn | Past Habitual |
| -da | Unaccomplishness |
| -ka | Continuative aspect |
| -ye | Capabilitive mood |
| wa- | Permissive mood |
Pronouns
Personal pronouns
Sources:Personal pronouns in Korku show different number and gender patterns depending on the person. The first person distinguishes not only the three numbers but also whether the hearer is included or excluded in the communicative context. The second person only encodes number, whereas the third person distinguishes gender, and number for animate nouns.
Demonstratives
In Korku, demonstratives encode not only distance but also gender and number. Unlike English, which only distinguishes between a single proximal and distal spatial references, Korku demonstratives encode four levels of proximity to the speaker, plus a fifth distinction, when one is pinpointing. The table below illustrates the forms used in Korku.Derivation
In Korku, the infix -nV- is sometimes injected into verbs to derive nouns. This method is no longer productive as compared to the Kherwarian languages and other Munda lects.kaɽub → kanuɽub
jukhrij → ''junuʔ''
Lexicon
Numerals
The basic cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 are:| 1 | miɲaʔ |
| 2 | bari |
| 3 | apʰai |
| 4 | apʰun |
| 5 | monoe |
| 6 | tuɾui |
| 7 | ei |
| 8 | ilaɾ |
| 9 | aɾei |
| 10 | gel |
Numbers after 11 are mainly of Indo-Aryan origin.
Kinship terms
As with many Austroasiatic languages, Korku has several words to refer to members of one's family, including the extended family and in-laws. There are often separate terms for people depending on their gender and seniority, for instance /bawan/ "wife's older brother" and /kosɾeʈ/ "elder brother's son". In the tables below, words that include the suffix -/ʈe/ refer to someone else's family member, so that /kon/ means "my son", whereas /konʈe/ is used when talking about someone else's son, for instance /ɖukriaʔ konʈe/ "the old woman's son".| mother | anʈe / maːj |
| father | baːʈe / aba |
| daughter | konɟaj / konɟeʈe |
| son | kon / konʈe |
| younger sister | bokoɟe / bokoɟeʈe |
| older brother | ɖaj / ɖajʈe |
| younger brother | boko |
Korku has words to refer to pairs or groups of people in the family.
| parents | anʈebaːʈe |
| children | baːlbacca |
| children and wife | konkuɟapaj |
| mother and son | ajomkokoɲa |
| father and son | baːkokoɲa |
| siblings | bombuku |
| wife | ɟapaj |
| wife's elder sister | ɟiɟikaɲkaɾ |
| wife's younger sister | bewanɟe |
| wife's sister's husband | saɽgi |
| wife's elder brother | baːw |
| wife's younger brother | bawan |