Complexification in the South Asian languages in hill areas

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370475
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Kobayashi Masato 東京大学, 大学院人文社会系研究科(文学部), 准教授 (90337410)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: Korwa / Austroasiatic family / Kurux / Dravidian family / linguistic description / linguistic fieldwork

Outline of Final Research Achievements

During the period, I mainly studied two languages, Korwa (Austroasiatic, Chhattisgarh, India) and Kurux (Dravidian, Jharkhand, India), and also its dialectal varieties. For Korwa, I conducted fieldwork in Jashpur and Surguja Districts, Chhattisgarh, every year, recorded Korwa narratives, transcribed, glossed and translated them. I published three of such texts, read one paper on the past tense suffixes of Korwa, and submitted a paper based on the presentation for publication.
For Kurux, I described the grammar based on interviews with my Kurux consultants conducted in Tokyo and in Gumla District, Jharkhand, transcribed, glossed and translated recordings, and compiled a lexicon, with the help of Bablu Tirkey. The result was published as The Kurux Language, co-authored with Bablu Tirkey, from Brill in 2017. This book contains grammar, texts and lexicon of Kurux.

Free Research Field

言語学