The
tribal people in India have for long lived in isolation except to be exposed
for exploitation. They have not participated to their benefits 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 peiople
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 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
thanon 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 discussion and justification for
a particular analysis are kept to a minimum. The Grammer 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 consitituents at hte surface level.
Though the Grammar is primarily aimed at the language learner and the
teacher, it is hoped that it will also be used to Linguists interested
in typology and universals.
Data for the Grammar were collect in 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 useful to improve our future
publication in this series.
|
