Thesis--Berlin. / Vita. German and Mundari. Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-281) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1964. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-93).

Ho, an under-documented North Munda language of India, is known for its complex verb forms. This dissertation focuses on analysis of several features of those complex verbs, using data from original fieldwork undertaken by the author. By way of background, an analysis of the phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Ho is first presented. Ho has vowel harmony based on height, and like other Munda languages, the phonological word is restricted to two moras. There has been a long-standing debate over whether Ho and the other North Munda languages have word classes, including verbs as distinct from nouns. Looking at the distribution of object, property and action concepts, this study argues that Ho does, in fact, have word classes, including a small class of adjectives. Several new morphological analyses are given; for example, what has previously been called 'passive' is here analyzed as 'middle'. The uses of the middle -oʔ in Ho overlap with uses documented for other middle-marking languages, suggesting that this is a better label than 'passive'. Ho traditionally marks aspect in the verb rather than tense, especially for transitive verb constructions. Several aspect suffixes follow the verb root. Ho is developing a periphrastic past tense construction with the past tense copula form taikena. Also, the combination of perfect(ive) aspect suffixes and the transitivity suffix -ɖ always gives a past tense interpretation, to the extent that -ɖ may be re- grammaticalizing to past tense. Three types of complex clauses are discussed in the dissertation: complement clauses; relative clauses and serial verb constructions. Like many South Asian languages, Ho has productive serial verbs and several serialized verbs are grammaticalizing to become more like auxiliary verb constructions.

The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of contention between Adivasi communities, like the Munda, and the national government. This is a relationship between these communities and centralized, outside power that has existed for centuries in different forms. To understand this ongoing conflict, we need to understand the root causes of contention. Various scholars have traced this to a general rejection by Adivasis of State-sanctioned neoliberal development projects like land-grabbing and mining. I analyze, based on a fifteen month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict, based on several forms of qualitative data. I argue that at the core of this ongoing conflict lie questions of identity construction and representation, neoliberal market forces, gender, and a historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. Importantly, to best understand Adivasi politics and their relationship to their local environment, one must actively listen to how these communities represent themselves. / Doctor of Philosophy / The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of an ongoing conflict between the Munda Adivasi (indigenous) community and the State. This contentious relationship has existed for several centuries and continues until now. Various scholars describe the conflict as the general rejection of the attempts of State and corporate actors to grab lands in order to carry out neoliberal development projects such as mining and hydroelectricity dams in the region. I analyze, based on a fifteen-month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict. I argue that the current ongoing conflict underlie questions of identity construction and representation embedded in the historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. More specifically, one must understand the subaltern communities, such as the Munda Adivasi, through their discourses.

This dissertation explores the nature and extent of retroflex consonant harmony in South Asia. Using statistics calculated over lexical databases from a broad sample of languages, the study demonstrates that retroflex consonant harmony is an areal trait affecting most languages in the northern half of the South Asian subcontinent, including languages from at least three of the four major families in the region: Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Munda (but not Tibeto-Burman). Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages in the southern half of the subcontinent do not exhibit retroflex consonant harmony. In South Asia, retroflex consonant harmony is manifested primarily as a static co-occurrence restriction on coronal consonants in roots/words. Historical-comparative evidence reveals that this pattern is the result of retroflex assimilation that is non-local, regressive and conditioned by the similarity of interacting segments. These typological properties stand in contrast to those of other retroflex assimilation patterns, which are local, primarily progressive, and not conditioned by similarity. This is argued to support the hypothesis that local feature spreading and long-distance feature agreement constitute two independent mechanisms of assimilation, each with its own set of typological properties, and that retroflex consonant harmony is the product of agreement, not spreading. Building on this hypothesis, the study offers a formal account of retroflex consonant harmony within the Agreement by Correspondence (ABC) model of Rose & Walker (2004) and Hansson (2001; 2010). Two Indo-Aryan languages, Kalasha and Indus Kohistani, figure prominently throughout the dissertation. These languages exhibit similarity effects that have not been clearly observed in other retroflex consonant harmony systems; retroflexion is contrastive in both non-sibilant (i.e., plosive) and sibilant obstruents (i.e., affricates and fricatives), but harmony applies only within each manner class, not between them. At the same time, harmony is not sensitive to laryngeal features. Theoretical implications of these and other similarity effects are discussed.

This dissertation explores the nature and extent of retroflex consonant harmony in South Asia. Using statistics calculated over lexical databases from a broad sample of languages, the study demonstrates that retroflex consonant harmony is an areal trait affecting most languages in the northern half of the South Asian subcontinent, including languages from at least three of the four major families in the region: Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Munda (but not Tibeto-Burman). Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages in the southern half of the subcontinent do not exhibit retroflex consonant harmony. In South Asia, retroflex consonant harmony is manifested primarily as a static co-occurrence restriction on coronal consonants in roots/words. Historical-comparative evidence reveals that this pattern is the result of retroflex assimilation that is non-local, regressive and conditioned by the similarity of interacting segments. These typological properties stand in contrast to those of other retroflex assimilation patterns, which are local, primarily progressive, and not conditioned by similarity. This is argued to support the hypothesis that local feature spreading and long-distance feature agreement constitute two independent mechanisms of assimilation, each with its own set of typological properties, and that retroflex consonant harmony is the product of agreement, not spreading. Building on this hypothesis, the study offers a formal account of retroflex consonant harmony within the Agreement by Correspondence (ABC) model of Rose & Walker (2004) and Hansson (2001; 2010). Two Indo-Aryan languages, Kalasha and Indus Kohistani, figure prominently throughout the dissertation. These languages exhibit similarity effects that have not been clearly observed in other retroflex consonant harmony systems; retroflexion is contrastive in both non-sibilant (i.e., plosive) and sibilant obstruents (i.e., affricates and fricatives), but harmony applies only within each manner class, not between them. At the same time, harmony is not sensitive to laryngeal features. Theoretical implications of these and other similarity effects are discussed.

In this thesis, I explore the use of copulas in non-copula constructions in the languages of South Asia to establish possible genetic and areal tendencies in the distribution. Using materials – language descriptions and data – from Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, I examine the phenomenon in 206 languages from four families (Munda, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Sino-Tibetan). It is found that the languages of South Asia appear to be more likely than the world-wide average to use the copula in non-copula constructions and that at least Munda, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan use it in the same way with regards to tense, namely in the past and present but not the future. Finally, I argue that there is some evidence supporting that the use of the copula in non-copula constructions is an areal feature, though more work is needed to make any definitive conclusions.