Tikaram poudel

English in Nepal: History, Development, and Policies documents the historical development of the English language in Nepal. The author argues that English entered Nepal about 250 years ago as a link language between the rulers of Kathmandu and the East India Company officials. In these 250 years, English has functioned differently i.e., in the early stages as the language of political negotiation and a language of the elite class of Kathmandu to differentiate themselves from the common mass. Gradually, English became a major language of education as it was patronized by the ruling elites. This book documents how the English speakers of Nepal developed distinct phonological, morphological,
and syntactic features that are distinct from other varieties of English. Finally, the book discusses how the educational policies of the 1950s onwards contributed to the unique features that speakers of English in Nepal developed.

English in Nepal: History, Development and Policies documents the historical development of the English language in Nepal. The author argues that English entered Nepal about 250 years ago as a link language between the rulers of Kathmandu and the East India Company officials. In these 250 years, English has functioned differently i.e., in the early stages as the language of political negotiation and a language of the elite class of Kathmandu to differentiate themselves from the common mass. Gradually, English became a major language of education as it was patronized by the ruling elites. This book documents how the English speakers of Nepal developed distinct phonological, morphological and syntactic features that are distinct from other varieties of English. Finally, the book discusses how the educational policies of the 1950s onwards contributed to the unique features that speakers of English in Nepal developed.

This study investigates exponents expressing the categories of person and number in several South Asian languages. The study has the following objectives: i) To understand the possible source items of these exponents. ii) To understand the mechanisms that lead to the cumulation of these exponents, and iii) To understand the reasons for resisting cumulation and remain separative. A closer analysis of these data also suggests that the phonological fusion is less likely to cumulate the separative exponents of the categories of person and number as suggested in Mathews (1991). However, semantic transfer and paradigmatic reanalysis are stronger factors than that of phonological fusion for the morphological cumulation of exponents of person and number.

This is a study of Rajbanshi, an Indo-Aryan langauge of Assamese-Bengali sub group. The present study is based on the dialect of Rajbanshi spoken in the Eastern districts of Jhapa, Morang and Sunsari of Nepal. The focus is functional rather than theoretical. Rajbanshi has six vowels and 29 consonants. Height and back-front of the tongue are responsible for making the vowel phonemes contrastive in this language. Stop, aspiration, affrication, friction, etc. are the major contrastive features for consonants. Rajbanshi favors simple syllabification, hence, consonant clusters are quite rare. Nouns inflect for number, gender, case and classifiers. Both adjectives and adverbs are formed from nouns and verbs. Verbs inflect for tense, aspect, modality and negation. The negation puzzle of Assamese Bengali group is also found in Rajbanshi. Compounding and noun incorporation are quite common verbal phenomena in this language. Like other NIA languages, Rajbanshi makes use of compound verbs. They have the aspectual, attitudinal and modal functions in Rajbanshi discourse. The compound verbs are marked categories in the language. The author suggests four ways of identifying compound verbs in this language. They are semantic bleaching of the vector verbs, test of negation, reduplication test and non-finiteness of the first verb. There are restrictions of transitivity, volitionality and the forms of main verbs on the selections of vectors. The process of noun incorporation is a device of changing a nominal category to a verbal one using highly grammaticalized verbs called light verbs. Rajbanshi is a nominative-accusative SOV language. It forms causativization lexically, morphologically and periphrastically. The study concludes with a sample text with interlinearized and free translation.

This study is an innovation in its kind with its rich data on Santali, one of the least studied languages of South Asia. The strength of the study is the presentation of data necessary for the grammatical description and the understanding of discourse properties of the language. The author brings his linguistic skills and creativity as well in presenting his data. This study will be a landmark in the preservation of the language. The data can be useful to theoretical and computational linguists, developers of Santali educational materials, scholars interested in Santali culture and people.

The semantics of the ergative in Nepali, a modern Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan and in some states of India, differs from other New Indo-Aryan languages of the region. In the Western and Central New Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Hindi-Urdu, Panjabi, etc.), aspectual split determines the ergative system (Beames 1872-79, Kellogg 1893, Hook 1992, Dixon 1994, Peterson 1998, Bynon 2005, Butt 2006). In these languages such as Hindi-Urdu, the (agentive) subject in the perfective transitive clauses gets ergative marking and the verb agrees with the object. However, Nepali defies these prevalent trends of ergative marking of New Indo-Aryan languages. In several contexts, the Nepali ergative is typologically unexpected, for example, arguments of participialized clauses or nominalizations. Unlike its sister languages, in some contexts, the subjects of transitive clauses in non-past tenses get ergative marking whereas, in some other contexts, they are marked with nominative case. Th...

This study investigates the exponents expressing the terms-present and past, transitive and intransitive, singular and plural, first and nonfirst-realizing the categories of tense, transitivity, number and person respectively in Santali (Munda), Urawn (Dravidian), Newar (Tibeto-Burman), Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan) and language isolate Kusunda to understand the mechanisms of cumulation and separation.

The educational language policy of the British Raj undervalued the indigenous languages of Indian sub-continent and promoted English to construct ‘a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’ (Macaulay, 1972) in the educational system of the sub-continent. This threatened our cultural and linguistic diversities by imposing cultural values and ideologies of the west. The Raj educational system constructed a distinct identity of peoples speaking diverse languages of the sub-continent devaluing these languages and promoting the English language.   The English language was instrumental for linguistic and cultural assimilation of these people speaking diverse languages against the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of the region. The Raj succeeded in instilling the western ideology intervening the educational system. Gradually, the peoples of the region have widely adopted the western values and created a gap between the...

Early marriage is one of the major traditional practices that affects the life of both boys and girls in many different ways. In this context, this research assessed the prevalence of early marriage and derived its underlying causes. Adopting a mixed methods approach, first, the study surveyed a sample of 1350 households of Nepal in which at least a marriage took place within the five years before the survey. Following a survey, secondly, the study explored 30 unique cases of early marriage, and ten among them were studied in more depth through face-to-face interviews. Logistic regression was applied to determine the factors that could influence the prevalence of early marriage. It was then followed by an analysis of the qualitative data. The research findings demonstrate that there is a high prevalence of early marriage (49.6%) among households within Nepal; nevertheless, the overall trend of early marriage is noted at a decreasing trend over the years. Undoubtedly, factors such as...

The ergative systems of Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages have drawn the attention of scholars because of their interesting variations. The tense/aspect based split ergative system (Dixon 1994) found in languages like Hindi-Urdu and other Western Indo-Aryan languages have dominated the ergative literature of South Asian linguistics (Klaiman 1978, Hock 1986, Hook 1992, Mohanan 1994, Butt 2006, Deo & Sharma 2006, etc.). In the Central and the Eastern regions, in contrast, some Tibeto-Burman languages such as Tamang (Mazaudon, 2003) and Bhujel (Regmi 2007) are consistently ergative, i.e., they have an ergative marking on the subjects of all transitive clauses and nominative marking on the subjects of all intransitive clauses. Some Tibeto-Burman languages of this region, such as Kham (Watters 1973), display NP-hierarchy split ergativity (Silverstein 1976). In addition to these ergative systems of South Asian languages, Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language from the Pahari group (Grierson 1928) and Manipuri, a Tibeto-Burman language (Chelliah 1997), show split ergative system based on individual-level and stage-level predications, i.e. individual-level predicates align with ergative marking and stage-level predicates align with nominative marking. With the synchronic data from Nepali and Manipuri, this study systematically demonstrates that these languages employ the ergative case to distinguish individual-level predications from stage-level ones.

This study investigates the exponents expressing the terms-present and past, transitive and intransitive, singular and plural, first and nonfirst-realizing the categories of tense, transitivity, number and person respectively in Santali (Munda), Urawn (Dravidian), Newar (Tibeto-Burman), Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan) and language isolate Kusunda to understand the mechanisms of cumulation and separation.

This paper has the following objectives: • To develop the language internal tests to the distinctions of unergative and unaccusative intransitive constructions in Manipuri. • To establish that Manipuri does not have the category of adjectives and the semantic adjective equivalents in other languages like English have verbal morphology. • Manipuri intransitive constructions make clear distinction between individual level and stage level predications. • Finally, to show the case marking alternations on the subjects of intransitive constructions. 2 Unergative vs. unaccusative distinctions 2.1 The debate • Perlmutter (1978) formulated the Unaccusative Hypothesis (UH), which states that the subjects of unaccusatives share certain properties with direct objects of transitive predicates and the subjects of unergatives have non-derived subjects.

We suggest that the distribution of the ergative in Nepali must be understood in terms of primarily semantic factors. In particular, stage vs. individual level predication seems to play a role in Nepali. 1.1 Standard Conception • The standard conception of ergativity is a primarily structural one (Dixon 1979).

The arguments of The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya are grounded in the multidisciplinary nature of area studies i.e., linguistics, political science, anthropology and geography. Focusing on the area study of the trans-border region of the Himalaya, the contributors enrich their arguments through specific case studies of their respective areas. For all the contributors, the issues of language contact are central and all of them provide contextual analyses of this issue. The contributors raise placing their issues in the emerging discourse of language contact making the collection accessible not only to linguists but also to scholars interested in anthropology, sociolinguistics, political science and Asian studies.

This study critically examines the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policy documents of Nepal, not only to understand the specific plans of the government agencies in designing, implementing and expanding TVET programmes but also to problematise discursive practices of TVET programmes in the existing socioeconomic and power hierarchy of Nepali society. More specifically, it aims at understanding the ineffectiveness of these training programmes concerning the target groups. This study makes use of Fairclough’s (1995) model of Critical Discourse Analysis of three inter-related dimensions of description, interpretation and explanation within the theoretical framework of capabilities approach (Sen, 2009).  The findings indicate that the policy documents of Nepali TVET prioritise the development of semi-skilled human resources for the low-paid international labour market but ignore the conservation and development of indigenous knowledge systems of diverse ethnic co...

... bol-da-cha Ram today English speak-Impf-NonPast.M.3.Sg 'Ram will speak English (today ... Old Indo-Aryan used case alternations to express semantic distinctions ... in Urdu the originally spatial marker ko 'side, near' now marks experiencers (sub-jects of psych verbs) and specific ...

The ergative systems of Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages have drawn the attention of scholars because of their interesting variations. The tense/aspect-based split ergative system (Dixon 1994) found in languages like Hindi-Urdu and other Western Indo-Aryan languages have dominated the ergative literature of South Asian linguistics (Klaiman 1978, Hock 1986, Hook 1992, Mohanan 1994, Butt 2006, Deo & Sharma 2006, etc.). In the Central and the Eastern regions, in contrast, some Tibeto-Burman languages such as Tamang (Mazaudon, 2003) and Bhujel (Regmi 2007) are consistently ergative, i.e., they have ergative marking on the subjects of all transitive clauses and nominative marking on the subjects of all intransitive clauses. Some Tibeto-Burman languages of this region such as Kham (Watters 1973) display NP-hierarchy split ergativity (Silverstein 1976). In addition to these ergative systems of South Asian languages, Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language from the Pahari group (Grierson 1928) and Manipuri, a Tibeto-Burman language (Chelliah 1997), show split ergative system based on individual-level and stage-level predications, i.e. individual-level predicates align with ergative marking and stage-level predicates align with nominative marking. With the synchronic data from Nepali and Manipuri, this study systematically demonstrates that these languages employ the ergative case to
distinguish individual-level predications from stage-level ones.

... Manipuri Intransitive Constructions Tikaram Poudel Tikaram.poudel@uni-konstanz.de, trpoudels@yahoo.com University of Konstanz, Germany. Workshop on Transitivity and Case Alternations University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany January 14-15, 2008. 1 Objectives ...

The semantics of the ergative in Nepali, a modern Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, Bhutan and in Butt 2006). In these languages such as Hindi-Urdu, the (agentive) subject in the perfective transitive clauses gets ergative marking and the verb agrees with the object. However, Nepali defies these prevalent trends of ergative marking of New Indo-Aryan languages. In several contexts, the Nepali ergative is typologically unexpected, for example, arguments of participialized clauses or nominalizations. Unlike its sister languages, in some contexts, the subjects of transitive clauses in non-past tenses get ergative marking whereas, in some other contexts, they are marked with nominative case. This split ergative system in non-past tenses can be explained in terms of semantic notions of individual-level and stage-level predications.

When an indivisible morpheme refers to more than one semantic level, the morpheme is said to be cumulative. On the other hand, when a morpheme stands for single semantic level, the morpheme is said to be separative. Plank (1991) illustrates this distinction from the Old English and Turkish examples. The word for ‘field’ in Old English and Turkish are feld and tarla respectively. Both Old English and Turkish inflect for number and case.

(1) Old English
feld-a
field-PL.ACC
(2) Turkish
tarla-lar-i
field-PL.ACC
In Old English, the single morpheme –a stands for plural number as well as accusative case. Hence, the Old English –a is an example of cumulative morphology. On the other hand, Turkish requires two separate morphemes for plural number and accusative case i.e., the morphemes –lar and –i in this case. Hence, the Turkish example is the case of separative morphology.
This paper presents data from Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and language isolate like Kusunda of South Asia in order to understand the mechanisms that languages use for morphological cumulation or resist cumulation and remain separative. The phonological fusion is the sole mechanism for the cumulation of exponents (Mathew 1972) leading to isolating or agglutinative languages to flectional such as Proto-Indo-European (Shields 1992). This paper argues that paradigmatic reanalysis and semantic transfer are stronger factors than phonological fusion for the morphological cumulation of exponents.

This paper investigates the origin of the Nepali ergative marker le. In the literature on ergativity in Indo-Aryan languages, two explanations of the origin of ergative markers are provided — the passive-to ergative reanalysis (Trask 1979, Dixon 1994) and the emergence of the ergative clitic in New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages such as ne in Hindi-Urdu and le in Nepali (Beames 1972-79, Kellogg 1893, Hook 1992, Dixon 1994, Peterson 1998, Bynon 2005, Butt 2006). Earlier investigations on the origin of Nepali ergative clitic le postulate two hypotheses. According to the first hypothesis, the ergative clitic le was imposed by the rulers, who came to Nepal from north-western India in about 16th century (Wallace 1982). The second hypothesis points towards a lexical source of the ergative clitic (Beames 1972-79). This paper examines both these hypotheses and concludes that the Nepali ergative clitic le emerged from earlier participle form of the verb lag- ‘to attach’. A close examination of the historical data from Nepali indicates that the verb lag- ‘to attach’ got first grammaticalized into a case marker lāi marking recipient/goal argument and then to the case marker le marking recipient arguments initially. However, as time passed, gradually it began to encompass verbs of wider semantic classes, which required more agent-like arguments.

The ergativity literature on Indo-Aryan languages dominates the aspectual split-ergative system of the Western region such as Hindi-Urdu. However, the ergative-nominative alternation found in generic clauses in Nepali such as in (1a) and (1b) respectively below has not been explored in detail.

(1) a. hari=le gaari calaaun-cha
Hari=Erg car.Nom drive-NonPast.3.Sg
‘Hari drives cars.’

b. hari gaa ri calaaun-cha
Hari.Nom car.Nom drive-NonPast.3.Sg
‘Hari drives cars.’
When questioned about the semantic difference between minimal pairs as in (1), native speakers of Nepali feel the difference, but what that difference is, cannot usually be articulated. In line with (Butt and Poudel 2007), this paper argues that the difference lies in individual- vs. stage-level predication and establishes that this aspect of ergative pattern in Nepali is coherent and systematic like other systems of natural languages. Earlier studies have clearly established that stage vs. individual level predication is a cross-linguistic reality (Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995, Ogawa 2001, Jaeger 2004).
This phenomenon of Nepali ergativity has never been got serious attention in the ergative literature. This paper provides a systematic analysis of ergativity in Nepali in generic sentences. With the synchronic data, the paper shows that Nepali employs the ergative case to distinguish individual level from stage level predications. This finding is significant for both typological generalizations and general linguistic theorizing as it provides a systematic approach to look at the phenomena of ergative system. More explicitly, this paper argues that individual level predication aligns with ergativity and nominative goes with stage level in transitive generic/non-past sentences in Nepali establishing the fact that the ergativity in Nepali is determined by semantic factors.

The educational language policy of the British Raj undervalued the indigenous languages of the Indian sub-continent and promoted English to construct, 'a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect' (Macaulay) in the educational system of the sub-continent. This threatened our cultural and linguistic diversities by imposing cultural values and ideologies of the west. The Raj educational system constructed a distinct identity of peoples speaking diverse languages of the sub-continent devaluing these languages and promoting the English language. The English language was instrumental for the linguistic and cultural assimilation of these people speaking diverse languages against the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of the region. The Raj succeeded in instilling the western ideology intervening in the educational system. Gradually, the peoples of the region have widely adopted western values and created a gap between the English-educated and non-English speaking masses.

In South Asia including Nepal, both school and university curricula of English language tend to follow either British Received Pronunciation or Standard American English. Giving priority to native varieties creates multiple problems to learners as well as to teachers in classrooms. The teaching materials are out of context, never experienced by learners. None of our teachers are familiar with the variety of English they are teaching. Nepal has English for more than 250 years and it has evolved as a distinct variety in its sound systems and morpho-syntax as well. A systematic descriptive grammar of English in Nepal is first prerequisite to bring it into classroom. Bringing national varieties into classrooms has several advantages in the learning process. First, local teaching materials that are within the experience of learners can be integrated into our curricula. Second, it gives a feeling of ownership and we will not take English as an instrument for imposing western ideology and cultural hegemony and so on. Taking a case of English in Nepal, in this paper I develop a methodology that enables us to collect data and analyze them to understand the process of evolution of a particular variety of English.

Morphology is about words and their structure. The next question we ask is what exactly we mean by the term ‘word’. One of the ways to look at the word is that a word is a building-block of sentences. However, it is not that simple because it is a building-block with a meaning and that meaning is often unpredictable  (Carstairs-McCarthy, 2002, p. 6). That is why even the intuition of native speakers, sometimes, does not work and they have to consult a dictionary in order to get confirmed its meaning. Keeping in view the complexity of definition of ‘word’, for our purpose we take it to be a linguistic unit, which is almost at the bottom in the hierarchy of linguistic units according to their complexity i.e., below the PHRASE and above only by MORPHEME. In this introductory chapter we define words and discuss the ways of analyzing structure of the word in English.

Morphology is about words and their structure. The next question we ask is what exactly we mean by the term ‘word’. One of the ways to look at the word is that a word is a building-block of sentences. However, it is not that simple because it is a building-block with a meaning and that meaning is often unpredictable  (Carstairs-McCarthy, 2002, p. 6). That is why even the intuition of native speakers, sometimes, does not work and they have to consult a dictionary in order to get confirmed its meaning. Keeping in view the complexity of definition of ‘word’, for our purpose we take it to be a linguistic unit, which is almost at the bottom in the hierarchy of linguistic units according to their complexity i.e., below the PHRASE and above only by MORPHEME. In this introductory chapter we define words and discuss the ways of analyzing structure of the word in English.