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COMPREHENSION IN ENGLISH DEVELOPED BY STUDENTS OF STANDARD IX IN THE SCHOOLS IN TUTICORIN DISTRICT, TAMILNADU ...
A. Joycilin Shermila, Ph.D. - A Socio-Pragmatic Comparative Study of Ostensible Invitations in English and Farsi ...
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
- UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS
- Lord Macaulay and
His Minute on
Indian Education - In Defense of
Indian Vernaculars
Against
Lord Macaulay's Minute
By A Contemporary of
Lord Macaulay - Languages of India,
Census of India 1991 - The Constitution of India:
Provisions Relating to
Languages - The Official
Languages Act, 1963
(As Amended 1967) - Mother Tongues of India,
According to
1961 Census of India
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THE MORPHODYNAMICS OF BENGALI COMPOUNDS -
DECOMPOSING THEM FOR LEXICAL PROCESSING
Niladri Sekhar Dash, Ph.D
COMPOUNDING - A FERTILE PROCESS IN LANGUAGE
Compounding is a highly fertile process. It is quite often used in various innovative ways for generating new words in most of the languages. At the time of compounding the participating members often undergo a process of morphosyntactic change that forces them to lose much of their lexicosemantic information.
CAPTURING THE LEXICOSEMANTIC PROPERTIES
In this paper we make an attempt to capture lexicosemantic properties, which are lost in this process, and try to identify the factors that play active roles behind such metamorphosis of compounds. Our investigation is based on Bengali compounds as the central area of study with occasional references to the English compounds for understanding the phenomenon in a systematic way. The present study has direct applicational relevance in the area of applied linguistics, mainstream linguistics and language technology.
FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCES IN COMPOUNDING ACROSS LANGUAGES
The presence of small or large number of compound words in a natural language is a widely approved phenomenon. But the modus operandi of their formation and the nature of their lexicosyntactic and lexicosemantic functions differ form language to language. These underlying differences necessitate an intimate analysis of forms and functions of compound words in Bengali before they are fit to be placed within a generalised framework of compound classification and processing.
WHY THIS DIFFERENCE?
The process of compound formation and their functional types differ from language to language because compounding involves combination of more than one stem/affix either in free or in bound forms, which is often integrated lexically to function as single lexical units. The basic strength of compound words lies in their indivisibility of structure, since no external element is usually allowed to occupy a place between the two or more members of a compound. Moreover, the specific sequential order of the members is so rigidly fixed that they are hardly allowed to occur in reverse order. Besides, from semantic perspective, the original meanings of compound words cannot be generally, but not exclusively, derived form sum total of meanings of the formative members.ANALYSIS OF BENGALI COMPOUNDS -- A BRIEF REVIEW
The history of analysing Bengali compounds is a long one. Perhaps, William Carey is first scholar who has made a serious attempt to study the Bengali compounds form analytical perspective (1805).
In recent times, Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1926) has presented detailed classification of compounds along with information about their formative and semantic properties. Bamandev Chakravarty (1974) has shown the differences between Tatsama and non- Tatsama compounds while Sukumar Sen (1993) has traced the differences between Bengali and Sanskrit compounds.
Pabitra Sarkar (1998) has discussed the formation patterns of compounds in the context of word formation in Bengali. Satya Ranjan Banerji (1997) has analysed Bengali compounds with close references to Sanskrit and Greek compounds. Sumita Bhattacharya (1983, 1997) has presented descriptive study of Bengali compounds while Sukumar Sen and Subhadra Kumar Sen (1994) have classified Bengali compounds in two groups according to the pattern of change of meaning of formative constituents.
Jyoti Bhusan Chaki (1996) has also tried to find answers to the questions related to actual identity of the compounds as well as the significance of respective head names. Punya Sloka Ray (1997) has tried to draw a line of distinction between compounds and phrases on the basis of some negative potentialities.
THE NATURE OF BENGALI COMPOUNDS
In the present discussion we have tried to analyse the Bengali compounds to find out their patterns of formation as well as their functional roles in the language. The derived structure as well as meaning of compounds is given equal importance because without reference to these issues analysis of compounds is bound to be skewed and incomplete.
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Niladri Sekhar Dash
The Morphodynamics of Bengali Compounds - Decomposing Them for Lexical Processing | The Ringed Realities | In Search of Identity - A Case Study of Tamil Christians | Practicing Literary Translation: A Symposium Round 9 | The English Language Teacher's Awareness and Perceptions | Technology for Indic Scripts - A User Perspective | HOME PAGE OF JULY 2006 ISSUE | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR
Niladri Sekhar Dash, Ph.D.
Linguistic Research Unit
Indian Statistical Institute
Kolkata, India
niladri@isical.ac.in
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