| As an Institute
under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department
of Education, Government of India, the Central Institute
of Indian Languages is charged with the responsibility
of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research
and application work done on various Indian languages
to a common purpose and to narrow the gap between the
basic research and applicational research in the field
of languages and linguistics in India. In order to achieve
this goal the Institute brings out rescarch monographs,
instructional materials, maps audio visual materials
computer softwares, etc., as part of its publication
programme.
Ph.D. theses arc one of die sources of new knowledge.
Most of these theses however do not get wider dissemination.
Several important findings made in the Ph.D. dissertations
do not reach other investigators resulting in duplication
and lack of progress in research.
The CIIL, charged with the development of Indian languages
has also the responsibility of dissemination of research
on India languages.
With these objectives the CIIL is introducing a new
scries of publications called Doctoral Dissertation
Series. It intends to publish doctoral research work
of high quality in linguistics and related fields, which
has direct relevance to the research, material production
and training programmes of the Institute. This will
be very selective and limited in number.
The present book, A Descriptive Analysis of Yerava,
describes in detail the phonology and morphology of
the Yerava language, also gives a brief ethnographic
description of the community and discusses the place
of Yerava in the Dravidian family. This study adds to
the current knowledge about Dravidian languages.
I hope that this dissertation will stimulate further
research in the area and will be useful for applicational
work for the development of Indian languages. |
