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Syntax |
| 3.0. Introduction:
The agglutinating character of Mundari is also neglected in its
syntactic structure. While it has been demonstrated in the previous
chapter that words are neither generally inflected nor they undergo
significant morpho-phonemic changes, the composition of words into
larger structure of phrase, of phrase into a clause and of clause
into a sentence is systematically manipulated through linear juxtaposition
of the involved free segment of morphemes, which are recognized
easily within the structure. A Mundari sentence, therefore, is a
loosely agglutinated string of smaller segments. which along with
intonational features occur in an absolute position. Some of the
notable characteristics of Mundari sentence are outlined below: |
3.0.1. Mundari
sentence is phrase-based: Structure and function of a word in Mundari
are somewhat flaid. What a Mundari native speaker may identify as
a word can came out to be a bound form structurally. Again, in slots
of subject, predicated etc., a word does not fit in, it is generally
a phrase which performs such syntactic functions. Apart from fitting
into the subjstitution cirterion of the traditionalists, the phrase
is a string of morphemes with one free and other free or bound or
semi-bound morphemes in which the constituent elements may be related
to each other syntactically. As for example, the noun phrase may
include such phrases where case relations have been expressed or
a vocative is intended and so on. Other arguments are following:
(a) Most of the grammatical functions are performed by postpositions
and particles. These items, although treated as |
| a) Most
of the grammatical functions are performed by postpositions and
particles. These items, although treated as separaate words by native
speakers, are semi-bound forms, i.e., neither they occur quite independently
as content words nor completely dependently. Functionally also,
such segments are not independent and they jointly with other morphemes
make one unit. In the example like /nekaredo/, composed of four
morphemes ne+ka+re+do, while the words could be three neka+re+do,
functionally the whole has to be treated as one unit. This expression
which means ‘if like this, however,’ is nothing else a phrase and
there is no point in taking into account three words, involved,
on the syntactic level. |
(b) The
so-called bound forms, such as plural or dual marker, even if they
semantically belong to the particular noun, structurally they belong
to the whole phrase, when it comes to sentence level, Such as /tekoko a/
‘towards boys’ has /ko’ suffixed to the preceding particle /te/
‘towards’ and not to /koa/
‘boy’ for which it is meant. The normal phrase structure /koakate/
can also be used optionally. Thus, it will be evident that in certain
cases Mundari also allows some positional variation within the phrase.
Obviously. Therefore, this whole form cannot be treated as one word,
rather as one phrase. In this way, the intergrity of a word as such
along with even a dependent morpheme is hardly maintained. |
(c)
The structural cut for a word is difficult to be ascertained. Even
in case of the above examples/nekaredo/ four different I-C analyses
are possible and the case may be argued for each of them: neka+redo;
nekare_do; neka + re + do and nekaredo. The forms/ redo/, /re/,
/do/ all are free morphemes, where /redo/ is a compund, co-occuring
very frequently. The whole phrase ‘sentantanai may be treated as
either one word or so may words like sen+tana+i
bu this verbal phrase actually represents a whole sentence. If the
word is defined as ‘free ± bound morphreme’,
the majority of Mundari sentences would turn out to be words, with
the two situations examplified above.
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