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Munda languages

"Munda language" redirects here. For the Kili language, also known as the Munda or Mundari language, see Mundari language.

The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.[1][2][3] Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages.[4] They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, which means they are more distantly related to languages such as the Mon and Khmer languages, to Vietnamese, as well as to minority languages in Thailand and Laos and the minority Mangic languages of South China.[5] Bhumij, Ho, Mundari, and Santali are notable Munda languages.[6][7][1]

Munda
Mundaic
Geographic
distribution		Indian subcontinent
EthnicityMunda peoples
Linguistic classificationAustroasiatic
  • Munda
Proto-languageProto-Munda
Subdivisions
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5mun
Glottologmund1335
Map of areas with significant concentration of Munda speakers
Grierson's Linguistic Map of India, 1906

The family is generally divided into two branches: North Munda, spoken in the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, as well as in parts of Bangladesh and Nepal, and South Munda, spoken in central Odisha and along the border between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.[8][9][1]

North Munda, of which Santali is the most widely spoken and recognised as an official language in India, has twice as many speakers as South Munda. After Santali, the Mundari and Ho languages rank next in number of speakers, followed by Korku and Sora. The remaining Munda languages are spoken by small, isolated groups, and are poorly described.[1]

Characteristics of the Munda languages include three grammatical numbers (singular, dual and plural), two genders (animate and inanimate), a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns, the use of suffixes or auxiliaries to indicate tense,[10] and partial, total, and complex reduplication, as well as switch-reference.[11][10] The Munda languages are also polysynthetic and agglutinating.[12][13] In Munda sound systems, consonant sequences are infrequent except in the middle of a word.

Origin

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Present-day distribution of Austroasiatic languages

Many linguists suggest that the Proto-Munda language probably split from proto-Austroasiatic somewhere in Indochina.[citation needed] Paul Sidwell (2018) suggests they arrived on the coast of modern-day Odisha about 4000–3500 years ago (c. 2000 – c. 1500 BCE) and spread after the Indo-Aryan migration to the region.[14][15]

Rau and Sidwell (2019),[16][17] along with Blench (2019),[18] suggest that pre-Proto-Munda had arrived in the Mahanadi River Delta around 1,500 BCE from Southeast Asia via a maritime route, rather than overland. The Munda languages then subsequently spread up the Mahanadi watershed. 2021 studies suggest that Munda languages spread as far as Eastern Uttar Pradesh and impacted Eastern Indo-Aryan languages.[19][20]

Classification

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Munda consists of five uncontroversial branches (Korku as an isolate, Remo, Savara, Kherwar, and Kharia-Juang). However, their interrelationship is debated.

Diffloth (1974)

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The bipartite Diffloth (1974) classification is widely cited:

Diffloth (2005)

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Diffloth (2005) retains Koraput (rejected by Anderson, below) but abandons South Munda and places Kharia–Juang with the northern languages:

Munda 
 Koraput 
 Core   Munda 

Kharia–Juang

 North   Munda 

Korku

Kherwarian

Anderson (1999)

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Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows.[21]

However, in 2001, Anderson split Juang and Kharia apart from the Juang-Kharia branch and also excluded Gtaʔ from his former Gutob–Remo–Gtaʔ branch. Thus, his 2001 proposal includes 5 branches for South Munda.

Anderson (2001)

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Anderson (2001) follows Diffloth (1974) apart from rejecting the validity of Koraput. He proposes instead, on the basis of morphological comparisons, that Proto-South Munda split directly into Diffloth's three daughter groups, Kharia–Juang, Sora–Gorum (Savara), and Gutob–Remo–Gtaʼ (Remo).[23]

His South Munda branch contains the following five branches, while the North Munda branch is the same as those of Diffloth (1974) and Anderson (1999).

Sora–Gorum   Juang ↔ Kharia ↔ Gutob–Remo ↔ Gtaʔ

  • Note: "↔" = shares certain innovative isoglosses (structural, lexical). In Austronesian and Papuan linguistics, this has been called a "linkage" by Malcolm Ross.

Sidwell (2015)

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Paul Sidwell (2015:197)[24] considers Munda to consist of 6 coordinate branches, and does not accept South Munda as a unified subgroup.

Typology

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The Munda languages share some unified characteristics that make them considerably standout from the rest of the Austroasiatic languages: Munda word order is SOV or AOV, though SVO is numerous in Sora, an archaic Munda language; morphologically, the Munda languages are highly synthetic and agglutinating, while the non-Munda Austroasiatic are primarily analytic, isolating (Cambodian, Vietnamese) to inflectional (Khasian). The Munda languages are generally observed to be trochaic and do stress in second syllable, but Sora and Gtaʼ exhibit iambic word pattern. They also use a great number of suffixes, compared to few and sporadic in non-Munda Austroasiatic. However, most Munda suffixes are of native origin, have cognates with non-Munda Austroasiatic free morphemes, suggesting that these were proto-Munda innovations.

The Munda languages also make themselves radically different from the mainstream Indian languages: Munda verbs are much more synthetic than Indian, to the extreme that which is not found in any typical Indo-European and Dravidian languages. For example, a sentence in casual Kharia conversation can be squished into a single long word:

ᶑoᶑ-kay-ʈu-ᶑom-bhaʔ-goᶑ-na-m

carry-BEN-TLOCtranslocative-PASS-quickly-COMPL-FUT-2SG.OBJ

ᶑoᶑ-kay-ʈu-ᶑom-bhaʔ-goᶑ-na-m

carry-BEN-TLOCtranslocative-PASS-quickly-COMPL-FUT-2SG.OBJ

"Get yourself there for me quickly" Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

The Munda languages also make extensive uses of prefixes and infixes, in contrast to exclusively suffixing Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Causative infixes -pV- and -nV, agentive -m-, which are pan-Austroasiatic features, are very productive in Munda.

The Sora-Gorum-Juray languages exhibit noun incorporation, with Sora being the most productive; Korku, Gutob, and Kherwarian languages have lost the ability to form noun incorporation due to stronger influence from less-synthetic Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, but still have the remnants. None of the Dravidian and Indo-European languages does have this property. Overall, degrees of complex morphology and polysynthesis in Munda can reach to the most highest in Sora and Santali. Sino-Tibetan languages in the mountainous region around East Himalaya including the East Kiranti languages such as Limbu, Chintang, Kham, Galo display similar prominence patterns and extremely synthetic morphosyntactic structure with Austroasiatic Munda, and Burushaski. Researchers suggest that these similarities reflect a hypothetical areal morphological profile (sprachbund) that might have existed in Northeastern South Asia before Indo-Aryan-Dravidian linguistic profile spread into the area.[25]

Distribution

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Language name Number of speakers (2011) Location
Korwa 28,400 Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand
Birjia 25,000 Jharkhand, West Bengal
Mundari (inc. Bhumij) 1,600,000 Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar
Asur 7,000 Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha
Ho 1,400,000 Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal
Birhor 2,000 Jharkhand
Santali 7,400,000 Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Assam, Bangladesh, Nepal
Turi 2,000 Jharkhand
Korku 727,000 Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra
Kharia 298,000 Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh
Juang 30,400 Odisha
Gtaʼ 4,500 Odisha
Bonda 9,000 Odisha
Gutob 10,000 Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
Gorum 20 Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
Sora 410,000 Odisha, Andhra Pradesh
Juray 25,000 Odisha
Lodhi 25,000 Odisha, West Bengal
Koda 47,300 West Bengal, Odisha, Bangladesh
Kol 1,600 West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bangladesh

Reconstruction

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Main article: Proto-Munda language

The proto-forms have been reconstructed by Sidwell & Rau (2015: 319, 340–363).[26] Proto-Munda reconstruction has since been revised and improved by Rau (2019).[27][28]

See also

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References

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d Anderson, Gregory D. S. (29 March 2017), "Munda Languages", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.37, ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5
  2. ^ Hock, Hans Henrich; Bashir, Elena, eds. (23 January 2016). The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia. doi:10.1515/9783110423303. ISBN 9783110423303.
  3. ^ "Santhali". Ethnologue. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  4. ^ Anderson, Gregory D. S. (8 April 2015). The Munda Languages. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-317-82886-0.
  5. ^ Bradley (2012) notes, MK in the wider sense including the Munda languages of eastern South Asia is also known as Austroasiatic
  6. ^ Pinnow, Heinz-Jurgen. "A comparative study of the verb in Munda language" (PDF). Sealang.com. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
  7. ^ Daladier, Anne. "Kinship and Spirit Terms Renewed as Classifiers of "Animate" Nouns and Their Reduced Combining Forms in Austroasiatic". Elanguage. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
  8. ^ Bhattacharya, S. (1975). "Munda studies: A new classification of Munda". Indo-Iranian Journal. 17 (1): 97–101. doi:10.1163/000000075794742852. ISSN 1572-8536. S2CID 162284988.
  9. ^ "Munda languages". The Language Gulper. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  10. ^ a b Kidwai, Ayesha (2008), "Gregory D. S. Anderson the Munda Verb: Typological Perspectives", Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM], Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 265–272, doi:10.1515/9783110211504.4.265, ISBN 978-3-11-021150-4
  11. ^ Anderson, Gregory D. S. (7 May 2018), Urdze, Aina (ed.), "Reduplication in the Munda languages", Non-Prototypical Reduplication, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 35–70, doi:10.1515/9783110599329-002, ISBN 978-3-11-059932-9
  12. ^ Donegan, Patricia Jane; Stampe, David. "South-East Asian Features in the Munda Languages". Berkley Linguistics Society.
  13. ^ Anderson, Gregory D. S. (1 January 2014), "5 Overview of the Munda Languages", The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages (2 vols), BRILL, pp. 364–414, doi:10.1163/9789004283572_006, ISBN 978-90-04-28357-2
  14. ^ Sidwell, Paul. 2018. Austroasiatic Studies: state of the art in 2018. Presentation at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, 22 May 2018.
  15. ^ "Sidwell AA studies state of the art 2018.pdf". Google Docs. Retrieved 12 May 2023.
  16. ^ Rau, Felix; Sidwell, Paul (2019). "The Munda Maritime Hypothesis". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (JSEALS). 12 (2). hdl:10524/52454. ISSN 1836-6821.
  17. ^ Rau, Felix and Paul Sidwell 2019. "The Maritime Munda Hypothesis." ICAAL 8, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 29–31 August 2019. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3365316
  18. ^ Blench, Roger. 2019. The Munda maritime dispersal: when, where and what is the evidence?
  19. ^ Ivani, Jessica K; Paudyal, Netra; Peterson, John (2021). Indo-Aryan – a house divided? Evidence for the east–west Indo-Aryan divide and its significance for the study of northern South Asia. Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 7(2):287–326. doi:10.1515/jsall-2021-2029
  20. ^ John Peterson (October 2021). "The spread of Munda in prehistoric South Asia -the view from areal typology To appear in: Volume in Celebration of the Bicentenary of Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute (Deemed University)". Retrieved 1 September 2022.
  21. ^ Anderson, Gregory D.S. (1999). "A new classification of the Munda languages: Evidence from comparative verb morphology." Paper presented at 209th meeting of the American Oriental Society, Baltimore, MD.
  22. ^ Anderson, G.D.S. (2008). ""Gtaʔ" The Munda Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. London: Routledge. pp. 682–763". Routledge Language Family Series (3): 682–763.
  23. ^ Anderson, Gregory D S (2001). A New Classification of South Munda: Evidence from Comparative Verb Morphology. Indian Linguistics. Vol. 62. Poona: Linguistic Society of India. pp. 21–36.
  24. ^ Sidwell, Paul. 2015. "Austroasiatic classification." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill.
  25. ^ Hildebrandt, Kristine; Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2023). "Word Prominence in Languages of Southern Asia". In Hulst, Harry van der; Bogomolets, Ksenia (eds.). Word Prominence in Languages with Complex Morphologies. Oxford University Press. pp. 520–564. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198840589.003.0017.
  26. ^ Sidwell, Paul and Felix Rau (2015). "Austroasiatic Comparative-Historical Reconstruction: An Overview." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill.
  27. ^ Rau, Felix. (2019). Advances in Munda historical phonology. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3380908
  28. ^ Rau, Felix. (2019). Munda cognate set with proto-Munda reconstructions (Version 0.1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3380874

General references

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  • Diffloth, Gérard (1974). "Austro-Asiatic Languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. pp. 480–484.
  • Diffloth, Gérard (2005). "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology to the homeland of Austro-Asiatic". In Sagart, Laurent; Blench, Roger; Sanchez-Mazas, Alicia (eds.). The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. RoutledgeCurzon. pp. 79–82.

Further reading

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  • Anderson, Gregory D S (2007). The Munda verb: typological perspectives. Trends in linguistics. Vol. 174. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-018965-0.
  • Anderson, Gregory D S, ed. (2008). Munda Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. Vol. 3. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-32890-6.
  • Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2015). "Prosody, phonological domains and the structure of roots, stems and words in the Munda languages in a comparative/historical light". Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics. 2 (2): 163–183. doi:10.1515/jsall-2015-0009. S2CID 63980668.
  • Anderson, Gregory D. S.; Boyle, John P. (2002). "Switch-Reference in South Munda". In Macken, Marlys A. (ed.). Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (PDF). Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, South East Asian Studies Program. pp. 39–54. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 June 2015.
  • Brown, E. K., ed. (2006). "Munda Languages". Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Press.
  • Donegan, Patricia; Stampe, David (2002). "South-East Asian Features in the Munda Languages: Evidence for the Analytic-to-Synthetic Drift of Munda". In Chew, Patrick (ed.). Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Special Session on Tibeto-Burman and Southeast Asian Linguistics, in honour of Prof. James A. Matisoff. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. pp. 111–129.
  • Newberry, J (2000). North Munda hieroglyphics. Victoria, BC: J Newberry.
  • Śarmā, Devīdatta (2003). Munda: sub-stratum of Tibeto-Himalayan languages. Studies in Tibeto-Himalayan languages. Vol. 7. New Delhi: Mittal Publications. ISBN 81-7099-860-3.
  • Varma, Siddheshwar (1978). Munda and Dravidian languages: a linguistic analysis. Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand Vishva Bandhu Institute of Sanskrit and Indological Studies, Panjab University. OCLC 25852225.
  • Zide, Norman H.; Anderson, G. D. S. (1999). Bhaskararao, P. (ed.). "The Proto-Munda Verb and Some Connections with Mon-Khmer". Working Papers International Symposium on South Asian Languages Contact and Convergence, and Typology. Tokyo: 401–421.
  • Zide, Norman H.; Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2001). "The Proto-Munda Verb: Some Connections with Mon-Khmer". In Subbarao, K. V.; Bhaskararao, P. (eds.). Yearbook of South-Asian Languages and Linguistics. Delhi: Sage Publications. pp. 517–540. doi:10.1515/9783110245264.517.
  • Anderson, Gregory D. S.; Zide, Norman H. (2001). "Recent Advances in the Reconstruction of the Proto-Munda Verb". In Brinton, Laurel J. (ed.). Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Vol. 215. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 13–30. doi:10.1075/cilt.215.03and. ISBN 978-90-272-3722-4.
Historical migrations
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