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The
tribal people in India have for long lived in isolation except
to be exposed for exploitation. They have not participated
to their benefit in the socioeconomic development of the country.
To come out of their isolation, it is necessary for them to
learn the language of the majority people around them and
a number of them have done so. but this bridges the communication
gap only in one way and the whole burden of building up this
bridge is carried by the minority group It is necessary, however,
for developing mutual understanding and good-will, to increase
bidirectional communication between the tribal people and
the majority of people of the region. for this purpose, the
majority people, especially those who come in contact with
the tribal people for various reasons such as civil administration,
security, social service, trade, etc., should learn their
language. The Grammar, which forms part of the package consisting
of phonetic reader, bi- or tri-lingual dictionary and teaching
manual is prepared to help them in their learning of the tribal
language.
The
organisation of the Grammar is based on grammatical functions
rather than on grammatical forms. this will help the new learner
to find easily how the different functions, which he already
knows and wants to express, are formalised in this language.
Since this Grammar is primarily meant for pedagogical purposes,
theoretical discussions and justifications for a particular
analysis are kept to a minimum. The Grammar is divided generally
into two broad categories of noun morphology and verb morphology.
A description of adjectives and adverbs follows verb morphology.
The chapter on syntax describes the order of the constituents
at the surface level.
Though
the Grammar is primarily aimed at the language learner and
the teacher, it is hoped that it will also be useful to Linguistics
interested in typology and universals.
Data
for the Grammar were collected in the field primarily from
one informant by elicitation through word and sentence lists.
They were then cross-checked with some other informants. The
description may not be exhaustive and there might be gaps.
there might be possibilities for alternative analyses. Comments
and suggestions passed on to us will be useful to improve
our future publications in this series.
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