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Central Institute of Indian Languages is engaged in the description and
teaching of, material production in and interdisciplinary research on
Indian Lanugages. The ultimate aim in all these activities is to help
the development of Indian languages. The research results and the expertise
developed at the Institute are disseminated through conferences and workshops
and also through its publications. The Publications are brought out in
various series and the Grammar Series contains descriptions of grammar
of the Indian languages.
There is a great need for writing grammars of tribal languages which have
been little described. The grammar is the most important component of
the linguistic description. it is an aid in language teaching and it is
a step towards language development. The Institute aims at ahieving all
these in its grammars of tribal languages. It tries to reach the langauge
teachers by straighforward descriptions without going into discussion
of alternative analyses and the choice among them it does not discuss
theoretical issues explicitly. it tries at the same time to satisfy the
linguists by the range of data and systematic analysis. It does not follow
any particular theoretical model and puts emphasis on simplicity and clarity
of exposition.
The grammar forms part of the package of materials consisting of a Phonetic
Reader, a Multilingual dictionary, a collection of folk literature and
primers in the tribal languages.
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. The Grammar is divided generally into
two broad categories of noun morphology and verb morphology and a description
of aedverbs follows verb morphology. The chapter on syntax describes the
order of the constituents at the surface level. There is also a chapter
on word formation, which describes the ways in which words are formed
and new concepts are expressed.
Though the Grammar is primarily aimed at the language learner and the
teacher, it is hoped that it will also be useful to Linguists 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 better alternative
analysis. Comments and suggestions passed on to us will be useful to improve
our future publications in this series.
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