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PREFACE
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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.
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The organisation of the Grammar is based on grammatical
functions rather than on gramml1tical 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 pedagogy-
cal 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.
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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
publication in this series.
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E.ANNAMALAI
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