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 socio-economic 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, 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-lingual 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
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 purpose, theoretical discussions and justifications for
a particular analysis 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.
Though the Grammar is primarily aimed at the language learner and the
teacher, it is hoped that it will also be useful to Linguistics 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 alternative
analysis. Comments and suggestions passed on to us will be useful to improve
our future publications in this series. |