Mundari language

Mundari is a Munda language of the Austroasiatic language family spoken by the Munda tribes in eastern Indian states of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and northern Rangpur Division of Bangladesh. It is closely related to Ho and Santali. Mundari Bani, a script specifically to write Mundari, was invented by Rohidas Singh Nag. It has also been written in the Devanagari, Odia, Bengali, and Latin writing systems.

History

The term Muɳɖa means "village headman" in Mundari. Neighboring communities of the Mundas referred to their language as Muɳɖārī, and the Mundas themselves call it hoɽo dʒagar or muɳɖa dʒagar. Studies on Mundari started in the nineteenth century, pioneered by the works of Haldar, Whitley, and Nottrott, though most of them were brief sketches and documentations. Then in 1903, German missionary/linguist John Hoffmann initiated two massive and influential projects on Mundari: Mundari Grammar and Encyclopaedia Mundarica, the latter was completed long after his death and was published posthumously.

Geographical distribution

Mundari is spoken in the Khunti, Ranchi, Seraikela Kharsawan and West Singhbhum, East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, and in the Mayurbhanj, Kendujhar, Sundargarh district of Odisha by at least 1.1 million people. Another 500,000, mainly in Odisha and Assam, are recorded in the census as speaking "Munda," potentially another name for Mundari.

Dialects

Toshiki Osada, citing the Encyclopaedia Mundarica, lists the following dialects of Mundari, which are spoken mostly in Jharkhand state.

Hasada : east of the Ranchi-Chaibasa Road
Naguri : west of the Ranchi-Chaibasa Road
Tamaria or Latar: Panchpargana area
Kera : ethnic Oraon who live in the Ranchi city area.

Phonology

The phonology of Mundari is similar to the surrounding closely related Austroasiatic languages but considerably different from either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian. Perhaps the most foreign phonological influence has been on the vowels. Whereas the branches of Austroasiatic in Southeast Asia are rich in vowel phonemes, Mundari has only five. The consonant inventory of Mundari is similar to other Austroasiatic languages with the exception of retroflex consonants, which seem to appear only in loanwords.

Vowels

Mundari has five vowel phonemes. All vowels have long and short as well as nasalized allophones, but neither length nor nasality are contrastive. All vowels in open monosyllables are quantitatively longer than those in closed syllables, and those following nasal consonants or are nasalized. Vowels preceding or following are also nasalized.

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Mid
Open

Consonants

Mundari's consonant inventory consists of 23 basic phonemes. The Naguri and Kera dialects include aspirated stops as additional phonemes, here enclosed in parentheses.

Verb

Mundari	Transliteration	Translation
रिकाएआ	Rikā'ē'ā	Does
ओलेआ	Ol'ē'ā	Write
जगरेआ	Jagor'ē'ā	Talk
पढ़वएआ	Padv'ē'ā	Read
लेलेआ	Lel'ē'ā	Look / see
सेनेआ	Sen'ē'ā	Come along with
नमेआ	Nem'ē'ā	Found
निरेआ	Nir'ē'ā	Run
सबेआ	Sab'ē'ā	Hold
लेका एआ	Leka'ē'ā	Count
मुकाएआ	Muka'ē'ā	Measure
रिका एआ	Rika'ē'ā	Cut
হেড়েম	Hedem	Sweet
	Kete-e	Hard
	Lebe-e	Soft
	Singi	Sun
	Chandu-u	Moon
	Ipil	Stars
	Sirma	Sky
	Ote Dishum	Earth
	Rimil	cloud
	Hoyo	Air/Wind
	Gitil	Sands
	Dhudi	Dust
	Losod	Muddy
	Hodomo	Body
	Tasad	Grass
	Daru	Tree
	Sakam	Leaf
	Dayir	Branches of Tree

Writing system

Mandari is also written in native Mundari Bani, invented in the 1980s by Rohidas Singh Nag.

Grammar

In 1903, Hoffmann noted something abnormal with the Mundari lexicon: the lack of discrete lexical distinction. Mundari lexemes are not inherently specified for lexical categories. He made several following impressions:
Similar issues with word class distinction have been also reported in other Munda languages, especially North Munda, Ho, Korku, Kharia, Juang. Grierson summarized the issue in his Linguistic Survey of India:
Modern typologist interest in Mundari lexical categories was revitalized by Cook, Langendoen, Sinha, Osada, Bhat, and most famously Evans & Osada. Evans & Osada challenged the flexible analysis, contending instead that Mundari exhibits distinct yet exceptionally fluid grammatical categories. Their argument rests upon three specific criteria for assessing flexibility: explicit semantic compositionality across both argument and predicate functions, bidirectionality, and exhaustiveness. This research prompted an extensive series of peer reviews and criticism within the same volume of Linguistic Typology. Notwithstanding these debates, Osada, Badenoch & Osada, and Badenoch et al. identify expressives as a further open lexical class in Mundari, encompassing a minimum of 1,500 lemmas. Mark Dingemanse comments: "yet the status of this considerable lexical stratum in the language has not featured in any word-class debates."
This section will leave out the discussions on Mundari & North Munda flexibility and focus on the morphological differences between two main dialects, Hasadaʔ and Keraʔ, specifically in relation to their respective approaches to lexical flexibility.
In Hasadaʔ Mundari, entity-denoting lexemes and structures or "noun"-like, "noun phrase"-like, and "adjective"-like all can be used as semantic bases of predicates without derivation. The "verbal" constructions' semantic results are often compositional, but sometimes they can be idiosyncratic.
In contrast, Keraʔ Mundari does not allow such blatant uses of "zero-derivation" like in Hasadaʔ and other dialects. Nouns can only used as verbs with the sense of performing the semantical action with the presence of verbalizing suffix -o/-u. For examples:
1. aɽandi "wedding"
1. sindri "vermillion"
Regarding the limit of flexibility, there is an infix -n- that can be inserted into certain Mundari lexemes, which "transforms the verb root into an abstract inanimate noun stem, which is no longer capable of verb inflection". Per Hengeveld & Rijkhoff, citing Cook 's data:
dal "strike" → da-n-al "a blow"
dub "sit" → du-n-ub "a meeting"
ol "to write" → o-n-ol "the writing"