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 I for them to learn the language
of the majority people around them and
a number of them have done so. But this bridges
is 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 goodwill, 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 to
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 trilingual
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 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 precedes verb morphology and that
of adverbs follows it. The chapter on syntax
describes the order of the constituents at the
surface level.
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