LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 24:9 September 2024
ISSN 1930-2940

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         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
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Structure of Asur Verbs

Zoya Khalid

Abstract

Asur / Asuri is a North Munda language of the Kherwarian branch; a sister language to Mundari and Ho. The Munda verb morphology in general and especially the tense and aspect marking on verbs have been complex and hard to analyze; this is also the case with the Asur language. The study is a preliminary investigation into the verb morphology of the Asur language. Asur language has remained largely undocumented and undescribed by documentary linguistics and therefore, the study along with analysis of verb morphology also provides primary data. It attempts to delve into the complex tense-aspect encoding system of Asur verbs and the need to consider the presence and absence of transitivity markers -n and -d? alongside tense-aspect markers. Within the scope of the study, tense aspect encoding, passivation, narrativization, reciprocal marking, serial verb construction, copula and auxiliary in the Asur language have been investigated.

Keywords: Asur Verbs, passive, causative, reciprocal, tense, aspect, copula.

1. Introduction

In modern Munda languages, the verb morphosemantics have been complex, posing difficulties in categorizing the inflectional categories. The tense and aspect marking in Munda languages have been particularly complex (Anderson, 2011, p. 101). Asur / Assur / Asuri (ISO-639-3: asr) is a North Munda language of the Kherwarian branch of languages that has less than 10,000 speakers (Eberhard et al., 2023); and has been categorized as an endangered language (van Driem, 2007, p.322). Figure 1, adapted from Eberhard et al. (2023) depicts the position of the Asur language in the Austroasiatic family tree. The language is spoken by the Asur community who are mostly found in some parts of Latehar and Gumla district of Jharkhand. Asur language does not have a script, and is written by few native speakers using Devanagari script; however, the orthography remains unstandardized. The language has not been implemented in education and is still lacking in grammars and primers. As a North Munda language, the verb morphology of Asur is something that poses difficulties in categorization and analysis. The study uses mostly primary data to analyze the verb inflections of Asur. The study investigates the tense aspect encoding, passivation, causativization, reciprocal marking, serial verb construction, copula and auxiliary in the Asur language.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Zoya Khalid
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
khalidzoya11@gmail.com
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