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Extracting and analysing meaning-related information from natural language data has attracted the attention of researchers in various fields, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), corpus linguistics, data sciences, etc. An important aspect of such automatic information extraction and analysis is the semantic annotation of language data using semantic annotation tool (a.k.a semantic tagger). Generally, different semantic annotation tools have been designed to carry out various levels of semantic annotations, for instance, sentiment analysis, word sense disambiguation, content analysis, semantic role labelling, etc. These semantic annotation tools identify or tag partial core semantic information of language data, moreover, they tend to be applicable only for English and other European languages. A semantic annotation tool that can annotate semantic senses of all lexical units (words) is still desirable for the Urdu language based on USAS (the UCREL Semantic Analysis System) semantic taxonomy, in order to provide comprehensive semantic analysis of Urdu language text. This research work report on the development of an Urdu semantic tagging tool and discuss challenging issues which have been faced in this Ph.D. research work. Since standard NLP pipeline tools are not widely available for Urdu, alongside the Urdu semantic tagger a suite of newly developed tools have been created: sentence tokenizer, word tokenizer and part-of-speech tagger. Results for these proposed tools are as follows: word tokenizer reports F₁ of 94.01%, and accuracy of 97.21%, sentence tokenizer shows F₁ of 92.59%, and accuracy of 93.15%, whereas, POS tagger shows an accuracy of 95.14%. The Urdu semantic tagger incorporates semantic resources (lexicon and corpora) as well as semantic field disambiguation methods. In terms of novelty, the NLP pre-processing tools are developed either using rule-based, statistical, or hybrid techniques. Furthermore, all semantic lexicons have been developed using a novel combination of automatic or semi-automatic approaches: mapping, crowdsourcing, statistical machine translation, GIZA++, word embeddings, and named entity. A large multi-target annotated corpus is also constructed using a semi-automatic approach to test accuracy of the Urdu semantic tagger, proposed corpus is also used to train and test supervised multi-target Machine Learning classifiers. The results show that Random k-labEL Disjoint Pruned Sets and Classifier Chain multi-target classifiers outperform all other classifiers on the proposed corpus with a Hamming Loss of 0.06% and Accuracy of 0.94%. The best lexical coverage of 88.59%, 99.63%, 96.71% and 89.63% are obtained on several test corpora. The developed Urdu semantic tagger shows encouraging precision on the proposed test corpus of 79.47%.

A well-defined vocalic and consonantal system is a prerequisite when investigating the perception and production of a second language. The lack of a well-defined Urdu vowel system in the multilingual context of Pakistan motivated investigation of the acoustic and phonetic properties of Urdu vowels. Due to the significant influence of a number of first languages, the study focuses on the Urdu spoken in Punjab, Pakistan. A production experiment reports the acoustic properties of the monophthongs and six diphthongs in Urdu. The results showed that Urdu distinguishes between short and long vowels, and lacks an open-mid front and an open-mid back vowel. Since the central vowel is fairly open and retracted, it appears that the central vowel space is empty. This was reflected in the difficulty of perceiving the central vowels of Standard Southern British English (SSBE) by Punjabi Urdu speakers. The acoustic and phonetic evidence partially supports the phonetic existence of diphthongs in Urdu. The acoustic investigation of the Urdu vowel system helped to predict the perceptual assimilation and classification patterns of SSBE vowels by Punjabi-Urdu speakers. A cross-language perceptual assimilation and a free classification experiment was conducted in three different consonantal contexts to test the predictions of three mainstream models of L2 perception: SLM, PAM and L2LP. The assimilation patterns in a cross-language and category goodness rating task varied according to familiarity with the target language. The patterns of perceptual assimilation failed to predict the perceptual similarity of the SSBE vowels in the auditory free classification task. Thus, the findings support the model predictions with regard to the role of L1; however acoustic similarities between L1 and L2 neither predict the patterns of cross-language perceptual assimilation nor perceptual similarity.

This thesis seeks to use the politics and practices of language to understand social hierarchies and social change in a post-conflict and postsocialist context. My research was conducted among Roma who speak four languages in Prizren, Kosovo. My participants were primarily from a compact Roma area which is relatively central and integrated into the town, and my major fieldsite was there, and at a local Romani NGO and radio station. Shifts in language practices have reflected the demise of Yugoslav socialism, ethno-nationalist politics and conflict, and the post-war reversal of power relations in Kosovo. At the same time Prizren is still seen as one of the more cosmopolitan areas, retaining pre-war multiculturalism. The position of Roma in this cosmopolitanism is ambiguous; while they stress their relative integration, their position is fragile in the face of Albanian nationalist politics, and imported neoliberal economic strategies. Within this, Roma NGO workers have managed to carve an economic niche through the minority and multiculturalist project work funded by western governments. However this has led to further subdivisions among Roma, and in particular with the newly formed ethnic groups Egyptians and Ashkali. I discuss the historical trajectory and current configurations of a Romani organisation in the town, the standardisation of Romani and the hierarchical organisation of linguistic forms and language learning, the self-representation of Roma and the 'gypsy' image through Romani language drama, and attitudes to purism, mixing and cosmopolitanism. My central research question is: How are social hierarchies articulated through linguistic ideology and speech practices at different scales? By ethnographically investigating both usage and ideology of language, and treating language as metonymic of social relations more broadly, I argue that language is used to represent and reproduce social hierarchies. My central method was language learning: by positioning myself as a learner I was able to elicit ideologies related both to Romani language and Romani multilingualism, as well as conflicts and inconsistencies between language ideology and speech practices. As such the thesis complicates and critiques both purist and cosmopolitanist understandings of language and of multilingualism, and suggests that by further embedding language in social relations it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of the way the dynamics of political change are played out on a local level.

One of the main features of the correlative construction is the necessity of an appropriate correlate (either a demonstrative or a pronoun) in the main clause. While the syntactic features of the correlative construction are well established, the relationship between the correlative clause and its correlate remains unclear. In this dissertation, I propose that the correlative clause is the overt pronunciation of the index of the demonstrative. The correlative, therefore, does not adjoin to IP (Dayal 1996) or the demonstrative (Bhatt 2003) but enters the syntax as the indexical argument of the demonstrative phrase (Nunberg 1993; Elbourne 2008). I then turn to the adverbial correlative clause, which involves an adverbial relative phrase, and show that it is also the overt pronunciation of the index and, further, that it is interpreted as a definite description and contributes an individual of type e. Having established the relationship between the correlative clause and its correlate, I develop a new analysis of the semantic contribution of both the single headed correlative, involving one relative phrase, and the multi-headed correlative which involves multiple relative phrases. I propose that the correlative gets its interpretation through a Q particle, QCOR, which raises from the relative phrase to Spec-CP. It is QCOR which allows both adverbial and nominal correlatives to have a definite interpretation. I present new data from Hindi and Marwari which shows that the multi-headed correlative is basegenerated inside of the main clause, at the highest demonstrative or below, and denotes an ordered pair. Each member of that set is then an argument of one of the demonstratives in the main clause. Finally, if the proposed analysis is correct, then it should be follow that other types of phrases can occur in the same position. Not only is this possible in Hindi and Marwari, but sign languages and Mandarin Chinese allow overt indices as well.

The dissertation presents a comparative synchronic study of the morphosyntactic features of modern spoken Sinhala and Tamil, the two main languages of Sri Lanka. The main motivation of the research is that Sinhala and Tamil, two languages of diverse origins—the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) and Dravidian families respectively—share a wide spectrum of morphosyntactic features. Sinhala has long been isolated from the other NIA languages and co-existed with Tamil in Sri Lanka ever since both reached Sri Lanka from India. This coexistence, it is believed, led to what is known as the contact-induced restructuring that Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone on the model of Tamil, while retaining its NIA lexicon. Moreover, as languages of South Asia, the two languages share the areal features of this region. The research seeks to address the following questions: (i) What features do the two languages share and what features do they not share?; (ii) Are the features that they share areal features of the region or those diffused into one another owing to contact?; (iii) If the features that they share are due to contact, has diffusion taken place unidirectionally or bidirectionally?; and (iv) Does contact have any role to play with respect to features that they do not share? The claim that this research intends to substantiate is that Sinhala has undergone morphosyntactic restructuring on the model of Tamil. The research, therefore, attempts to answer another question: (v) Can the morphosyntactic restructuring that Sinhala has undergone be explained in syntactic terms? The morphosyntactic features of the two languages are analyzed at macro- and micro-levels. At the macro-level, a wide range of morphosyntactic features of Tamil and Sinhala, and those of seven other languages of the region are compared with a view to determining the origins of these features and showing the large scale morphosyntactic convergence between Sinhala and Tamil and the divergence between Sinhala and other NIA languages. At the micro-level the dissertation analyzes in detail two morphosyntactic phenomena, namely null arguments and focus constructions. It examines whether subject/verb agreement, which is different across the two languages, plays a role in the licensing of null arguments in each language. It also examines the nature of the changes Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone because of the two kinds of Tamil focus constructions that Sinhala has replicated. It is hoped, that this dissertation will make a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the morphosyntax of the two languages, the effects of language contact on morphosyntax, and more generally, the nature of linguistic variation.

This thesis presents the research and development of a novel text based goal-orientated conversational agent (CA) for the Urdu language called UMAIR (Urdu Machine for Artificially Intelligent Recourse). A CA is a computer program that emulates a human in order to facilitate a conversation with the user. The aim is investigate the Urdu language and its lexical and grammatical features in order to, design a novel engine to handle the language unique features of Urdu. The weakness in current Conversational Agent (CA) engines is that they are not suited to be implemented in other languages which have grammar rules and structure totally different to English. From a historical perspective CA’s including the design of scripting engines, scripting methodologies, resources and implementation procedures have been implemented for the most part in English and other Western languages (i.e. German and Spanish). The development of an Urdu conversational agent has required the research and development of new CA framework which incorporates methodologies and components in order overcome the language unique features of Urdu such as free word order, inconsistent use of space, diacritical marks and spelling. The new CA framework was utilised to implement UMAIR. UMAIR is a customer service agent for National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) designed to answer user queries related to ID card and Passport applications. UMAIR is able to answer user queries related to the domain through discourse with the user by leading the conversation using questions and offering appropriate advice with the intention of leading the discourse to a pre-determined goal. The research and development of UMAIR led to the creation of several novel CA components, namely a new rule based Urdu CA engine which combines pattern matching and sentence/string similarity techniques along with new algorithms to process user utterances. Furthermore, a CA evaluation framework has been researched and tested which addresses the gap in research to develop the evaluation of natural language systems in general. Empirical end user evaluation has validated the new algorithms and components implemented in UMAIR. The results show that UMAIR is effective as an Urdu CA, with the majority of conversations leading to the goal of the conversation. Moreover the results also revealed that the components of the framework work well to mitigate the challenges of free word order and inconsistent word segmentation.

The fall of the Eastern Block, the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent enlargement of the European Union to include former socialist countries contributed to an increase in the movement of people from Eastern to Western Europe which began about a decade earlier. Among them, the Roma are probably the most clearly recognizable group and surely the ones that received, and keep receiving, more media attention. While their presence in the media as subjects of discussion is a topic worth analyzing, the present work is about their presence in a particular medium, the Internet, as actors and producers of content. As a population of Indian origin spread across Europe over the past five centuries, Roma have often been regarded as a diaspora. Ethnographic studies about diasporas and their usage of the Internet have often described diasporic websites as discoursive spaces in which new, hydrid identities are negotiated and stereotyping and marginalizing discourses about diasporic subjects are challenged. The role of languages in these websites, however, has often been neglected. On the other hand, sociolinguistic studies have highlighted how the Internet provides a space for vernacular language usage in which the relaxation of language norms and users’ creativity play a crucial role in overcoming the limitations in text transmission imposed by the medium. A partial bridge between these two trends of studies has been provided by the analysis of code-switching in diasporic websites, which has shown how meaningful language alternation is used to flag users’ hybrid identities. The study of the relationship between diasporic languages and identities on the Internet clearly appears to be in its infancy and only few case studies have looked at the interactions between each diaspora’s specific cultural and sociolinguistic settings and the usage of the Internet. Furthermore, many diasporas, including the Roma, speak unwritten languages which have not been or are just starting to be standardized. Processes of language standardization have always involved both identity and language policies and have often been pivotal in struggles for nationhood or minority rights recognition. While so far such processes tended to be mostly centralized and top-down, the Internet is offering a space for the spontaneous transition from orality to literacy. Thus, analyzing the interaction between diasporic, non-standardized languages and the identities of their speakers as manifested on the Internet can provide new insights into the relations between diasporic languages and identities and into language standardization processes. The present work investigates these issues by analyzing the on-line usage of Romani, the Indic language spoken by many Roma. The study draws on data collected through an online ethnography from Radio Romani Mahala, a website created and used by the recently dispersed community of the Mitrovica Roma. The data are analyzed both qualitatively, using discourse analytic methods, and quantitatively, using traditional sociolinguistic approaches. Combining such approaches allows drawing a nuanced picture of the phenomena under observation accounting both for micro level, individual patterns of usage and macro level trends shared by all users involved. Particular attention is also paid to the emerging Romani spelling and the role played by individual users in the establishment of shared writing norms. The interdisciplinarity of this approach will show how the interplay between diasporic identities and attitudes, non-standard language ideologies and the possibilities offered by the Internet is leading to effective language codification without the intervention of a central authority and outside the frame of any nation-state policy. Such findings call for a re-thinking of current notions on linguistic human rights. Based on the viability of the Romani model, I thus propose a theory of linguistic pluralism in trans-national contexts centred around the notion of cosmopolitan sociabilities, non-utilitarian, everyday interactions creating open and inclusive relations across and even despite perceived cultural divides.

Building machine translation systems for many South Asian languages (such as Hindi, Gujarati, etc.) using statistical methods is problematic. The primary reason is insufficient parallel data to learn accurate word alignment. Additionally, these languages are morphologically rich and have free word order. When it is difficult to rely purely on statistical methods due to insufficient data, research shows that better performance can be obtained by building hybrid systems that rely on language specific resources, such as morphological analysers or dictionaries, as well as statistical methods. However, it is difficult to find such language specific resources for many South Asian languages. Since languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi are all very similar in structure and the main differences lie in the script and vocabulary used for these languages, we hypothesise that it is possible to develop resources for one of these languages and generalize the approach to allow rapid bootstrapping of similar resources for the other closely related languages -- with minimal effort and similar accuracies. To verify this, we develop a few resources for the Hindi language, including a sentence alignment algorithm, a morphological analyser and a transliteration similarity component and generalize the approach to allow rapid bootstrapping of similar resources for the Gujarati language. We show that the approach works on both the Hindi and Gujarati languages and achieves results that are comparable to similar state-of-the-art (SOA) resources available for these languages. We also hypothesise that it is possible to develop a high performance hybrid word alignment algorithm that relies on such language specific resources. To verify this, we design, implement and evaluate a novel English-Hindi hybrid word alignment system that uses the Hindi specific resources developed by us. Not only do we show our word alignment system outperforms other SOA English-Hindi word alignment systems, but also how simple it is to adapt it to the English-Gujarati language pair.

The functional and formative properties of speech sounds are usually referred to as acoustic-phonetics in linguistics. This research aims to demonstrate acoustic-phonetic features of the elemental sounds of Sindhi, which is a branch of the Indo-European family of languages mainly spoken in the Sindh province of Pakistan and in some parts of India. In addition to the available articulatory-phonetic knowledge; acoustic-phonetic knowledge has been classified for the identification and classification of Sindhi language sounds. Determining the acoustic features of the language sounds helps to bring together the sounds with similar acoustic characteristics under the name of one natural class of meaningful phonemes. The obtained acoustic features and corresponding statistical results for a particular natural class of phonemes provides a clear understanding of the meaningful phonemes of Sindhi and it also helps to eliminate redundant sounds present in the inventory. At present Sindhi includes nine redundant, three interchanging, three substituting, and three confused pairs of consonant sounds. Some of the unique acoustic-phonetic features of Sindhi highlighted in this study are determining the acoustic features of the large number of the contrastive voiced implosives of Sindhi and the acoustic impact of the language flexibility in terms of the insertion and digestion of the short vowels in the utterance. In addition to this the issue of the presence of the affricate class of sounds and the diphthongs in Sindhi is addressed. The compilation of the meaningful language phoneme set by learning their acoustic-phonetic features serves one of the major goals of this study; because twelve such sounds of Sindhi are studied that are not yet part of the language alphabet. The main acoustic features learned for the phonological structures of Sindhi are the fundamental frequency, formants, and the duration — along with the analysis of the obtained acoustic waveforms, the formant tracks and the computer generated spectrograms. The impetus for doing such research comes from the fact that detailed knowledge of the sound characteristics of the language-elements has a broad variety of applications — from developing accurate synthetic speech production systems to modeling robust speaker-independent speech recognizers. The major research achievements and contributions this study provides in the field include the compilation and classification of the elemental sounds of Sindhi. Comprehensive measurement of the acoustic features of the language sounds; suitable to be incorporated into the design of a Sindhi ASR system. Understanding of the dialect specific acoustic variation of the elemental sounds of Sindhi. A speech database comprising the voice samples of the native Sindhi speakers. Identification of the language‘s redundant, substituting and interchanging pairs of sounds. Identification of the language‘s sounds that can potentially lead to the segmentation and recognition errors for a Sindhi ASR system design. The research achievements of this study create the fundamental building blocks for future work to design a state-of-the-art prototype, which is: gender and environment independent, continuous and conversational ASR system for Sindhi.

The main aim of this thesis is to present an analysis of the serial verb construction in Gojri, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Jammu and Kashmir and in some parts of Pakistan and India.

The main focus of this thesis is the phenomenon of Siraiki language maintenance language shift in Multan. This is the first study of its kind carried out on any Pakistani language. The study examines the speech practices of rural and urban Siraiki Multanis in the home domain in the light of various demographic, social, political, and affective factors. It highlights the complex relationship of these factors with regard to change in the language use patterns of the Siraikis. The major sources of data for this study comprise of results from a matched-guise test, recorded speech of Siraikis in the home domain, and interviews. Triangulation of data and methods have been used in this research. The findings suggest that the phenomenon of Siraiki language maintenance/shift is differential in rural and urban Multan and no single factor can be held responsible for any changed or changing speech practices of the Siraikis. The conclusion argues that the attitude of the speakers towards their language is equally important in this process. It also brings to light the inadequacy of both the terminology and the so-called universal models that attempt to account for this complex sociolinguistic phenomenon. This research has educational and social implications and makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to the field of sociolinguistics. It is hoped that it will raise the awareness of Pakistanis in general and Siraikis in particular about the fate and the treatment of their mother tongues by themselves and by the general society. This study also hopes to broaden our understanding of the phenomenon of language maintenance/shift.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate some aspects of Urdu examinations in Britain. The changeover from GCE to GCSE has required Urdu teachers and students to develop a broader range of skills. The goals of the Urdu-using community do not necessarily accord with the demands of the GCSE, which requires Urdu to be examined according to criteria determined for French. Chapter 1 discusses factors which affect the examination and distinguish Urdu from French: the students' bilingual background, teachers and teaching provision, the implications of the change in the examination system, the introduction of the National Curriculum and the notion of parity of status with 'Modern Languages'. Chapter 2 analyses the GCSE criteria and the Urdu syllabuses derived from them. Certain aspects of the GCSE are given special consideration, including writing standards, the oral examination, discrete-skill testing and the use of dual language papers. In view of the social priority accorded to writing by the Urdu-using community it was thought appropriate to investigate examination candidates' written performance. Chapter 3 discusses the rationale for the collection and analysis of the corpus analysed. Chapter 4 demonstrates the types and range of verbs and verb forms used by the candidates and relates them to the GCSE vocabulary and structure lists. Chapter 5 analyses errors with particular reference to the influence of Panjabi and the relationship between phonemes and graphemes and considers them from the standpoint of the GCSE assessment criteria. Chapter 6 contains an analysis of English words used in the Urdu compositions and of those included in the GCSE vocabularies. The final chapter summarises the findings of the research and suggests areas worthy of further investigation. Alternative examination formats are also suggested which may be more appropriate for Urdu than those prescribed. These include graded assessment, the introduction of national attainment targets and the development of a new post 16+ examination.

The purpose of the thesis is to study Sinhalese verb forms in relation to slow and rapid styles. The theory used in the analysis is that of Prosodic Phonology. The thesis is presented in seven chapters and an appendix. Discussed in Chapter 1 are styles, speech situations, the theory used in the analysis, the choice of the theory as the theoretical background, the nature of the analysis, research procedure, data, informants, and new information arising from the research. Chapter 2 is divided into two parts. Part 1 is an outline description of vowel and consonant sounds. The physical characteristics of these sounds and their distribution are given here. Part 2 includes a discussion of the syllable: syllable structure, syllable quantity, syllable prominence and syllable division. Chapter 3 contains an analysis of simple verb stems. Structures and patterns of verb stems, and contrasts and functions of elements within patterns are given here. In the analysis of disyllabic structures, the relationship between the first and second syllables is also discussed. Included in chapter 4 is a phonological analysis of phrasal verb stems. Here, three types of stems, non-free morphemes, loan stems and onomatopoeic stems are described. At the end of each analysis, differences of the phonological structure of stems of the given three types are considered. In the analysis of the onomatopoeic stems, the relationship between the initial and non-initial syllables is also examined. Chapter 5 includes a phonological analysis of affixes which can be suffixes, infixes or prefixes. How phonological structures of affixes differ from those of stems is also discussed. Discussed in chapter 6 are the conjug. marker, conjug. classes, the relationship between non-past vol. and invol. stems and non-past and past vol. stems, junction prosodies, reduplication and the length relationship. The analysis of rapid verb forms is given in chapter 7. Here, stems and affixes are described separately. In the analysis, phonological structures of parallel slow forms of stems and affixes are also given for comparison with structures of rapid forms. This chapter is followed by a summary and conclusion. The appendix includes a grammatical analysis of verb forms and a list of simple verbs which are analyzed in the thesis. In the grammatical analysis, volitive and involitive forms, tenses, aspects, overlapping forms and the grammatical function of suffixes are discussed.

In this study an attempt is made to examine the evolution of the Sinhalese script from the sixth to the tenth century A.D. which period is considered the transitional period in the development of the Sinhalese script. A brief survey of the preceding period is essential to facilitate a proper understanding of the period under consideration. Hence the first chapter in this study is devoted to a description of how the Brahma script came to Ceylon and how it underwent a gradual evolution there. The second and the third chapters discuss the evolution of the Sinhalese script in the sixth and seventh centuries, and compare the similarities and differences that can be observed between it and the Indian scripts of this period. The fourth chapter examines the external influences that helped in the development of the Sinhalese script in the sixth and seventh centuries. We describe how the Brahmi script gradually changed, giving rise to Sinhalese letters, and in this respect the basic changes that took place during the fourth and fifth centuries are also taken into consideration. The fifth chapter describes the evolution of the Sinhalese script in the eighth century while the sixth chapter describes the same in the ninth and tenth centuries. The ninth and tenth centuries are treated in one chapter since no basic differences in features can be observed in the characters of these two centuries. The seventh chapter is devoted to the important features in the evolution of the Sinhalese script in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. A comparison is also made between the Sinhailese and the Pallava Grantha script which influenced the change from the old script to the modern Sinhalese script.

As the title indicates, the thesis is concerned with the establishment and cultivation of modern standard Hindi (KhB.) in Mauritius. It treats, by way of background, the history and nature of Indian immigration to Mauritius in the 19th century and the spread and development of the Indian community there. The linguistic and cultural position of the immigrants is considered in detail. Against this background the introduction and establishment of KhB. is investigated, initially up to 1935, having particular regard to educational and religious developments, especially the opening of schools, the visits of M.K.Gandhi and M.Doctor, the foundation of the Arya Samaj, its linguistic and missionary activity and the reaction it provoked among orthodox Hindus. Account is also taken of the various individuals in Mauritius who were instrumental in effecting its establishment. The period 1935-1950 is then examined in detail and attention paid to the personalities, institutions and processes which were responsible for the further cultivation of KhB. especially the Hindi Pracarint Sabha (H.P.S.), B. Bissoondoyal and the effect of Government policy towards oriental languages. A similar examination is made of the period 1950 to the present day where particular attention is paid to the Arya Samaj, the H.P.S., the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, the Hindi Lekhak Sangh, the Parisad, the Hindi film, the role of broadcasting, and Government educational policies. A substantial section of the thesis is devoted to a critical survey of the entire corpus of Mauritian Hindi literature treated by genre: drama, poetry, essay and general works, the short story and the novel. Finally some assessment is offered of the present position of Hindi in multilingual Mauritius. The thesis begins with an introduction which considers all previous work in the field, of which there is little, and concludes with a bibliography.

Since the thirteenth century, the Indo-Aryan language now known as Nepali has become the mother tongue of an increasingly large proportion of the population of the eastern Himalaya and is spoken throughout the highlands of Nepal and contiguous regions of India. After the political unification of Nepal in the late eighteenth century, the importance of Nepali as an integral part of Nepalese national identity grew considerably. Early in this century, it acquired the official status of the national language of Nepal. This study is concerned with the development of the Nepali language and its literature. The first part describes the linguistic diversity of Nepal in order to demonstrate the need for a lingua-franca in the region. Statistics provided by Government censuses are utilised to quantify the number of speakers of various languages and to evaluate their current status. The effect which the increasing dominance of Nepali has had upon the other languages of the country is also examined. The second part of this study describes the efforts which have been made by Nepali-speakers to standardise and promote their language as a major factor in favour of national integration, and assesses the adequacy of Nepali to perform the functions which have been prescribed for it as a national language. Particular attention is paid to the role of the language as the medium of education. The third part of the study traces the evolution of a Nepali "national literature", the existence of which is quite fundamental to the modern status of the language. The most important trends in the development of standard written Nepali are described, and illustrated by extracts ranging from the earliest known inscriptions to a variety of modern published works. Developments in Nepali literature which serve to distinguish it from the literature of other North Indian languages are identified and analysed.

The purpose of the thesis is to evaluate the three grammars of Bengali of Halhed, Carey and Haughton. Chapter I outlines the history of grammars of Sanskrit and Bengali written both in Sanskrit and European languages, up to 1821, with general observations on trends discernible throughout the period. Chapter II gives the life of Halhed. Chapter III attempts, with the help of his private papers and manuscripts preserved in the British Museum, to reconstruct Halhed's steps in learning Bengali and preparing his grammar, and traces the materials he used and the contribution to his Grammar of his two Bengali informants. The purpose of Chapter IV is to ascertain Halhed's competence in Bengali and Sanskrit. Chapter V shows how Halhed modelled his grammar on the Persian grammar of William Jones. Chapter VI assesses Halhed's grammar comparing it with an earlier Bengali grammar, the Vocabulario, and shows how he was biassed in favour of Sanskritic Bengali. Chapter VII considers Halhed's two aims in writing the grammar, assesses its usefulness and also shows how Halhed established the relationship between Sanskrit and Bengali, the first step towards Sanskritisation. Chapter VIII, with the help of letters mostly found in Baptist Mission Society London and Baptist Chapel, Northampton, traces Carey's activities, his method of learning Bengali, and the role of his informant- teachers up to 1801. Chapter IX analyses the influence of Halhed's grammar on the 1st edition of Carey's Bengali grammar and the impact of Halhed's Sanskritisation on him. The second part of the chapter demonstrates further Sanskritisation in Carey's revised 2nd edition, which was modelled on his Sanskrit grammar. Chapter X and XI attempts to reconstruct Carey's method of compiling grammars and to determine the authorship of Carey's 2nd edition. Chapter XII describes Haughton's life and, in assessing his grammar, shows how most of the materials in it were taken from Halhed and Carey, thus precipitating further Sanskritisation. The conclusion states the significance of Sanskritisation.

This is a study in synthesis and on polysystemic basis of a form of Indian speech used by the writer and which covers an area of about fifty thousand square miles comprising parts of two provinces, Bihar and the United Provinces and typical, in many respects, of the speech of about twenty million people. The subject is dealt with in two sections - A. Phonetics, B. Phonology. A third section contains some specimens of texts, demonstrating the several types of styles of speech, and features of pronunciation. We have kept before us the view of speech as a social instrument requiring objective and empirical treatment. The sentence has been taken as the primary datum from which both the phonematic sounds and the syntagmatic prosodies have been extracted by a process of abstraction. Some of the important features of phonetic and phonological interest, e.g., nasalization and retroflexion, have been investigated in greater detail than others. The study is purely synchronic with only occasional glimpses of historical or comparative aspects where these have been considered of some interest in connection with the points under discussion. A synthesis of the views, ancient and modern, has been, as far as practicable, attempted in interpreting the linguistic facts in the thesis. The statement of phonetic facts based on the events of utterances and studied by perception technique, have been as far as possible, corroborated by instrumental technique consisting of kymographic and palatographic abstractions according to the new method of palatographic investigation into articulations elucidated by Prof. Firth in one of his most important articles on the subject. It is for the first time that a detailed synchronic study of a form of living modern Indian speech has been attempted on such a comprehensive plan, in accordance with modern linguistic techniques. The research has yielded some results of practical value which may be profitably utilized for reforming the spelling and printing in Sanskritic Indian language like Hindi, which has been adopted as the national language of India.

The opening chapter of the thesis comprises a discussion on the name of the popular speech of India, the development of which has been traced in the following pages. Different names have been applied to the language from time to time both by Indians and foreigners. Tracing back the history of all these names and referring to the original sources for authority I have come to the conclusion that Hindustani is the most appropriate name for the language. Conflicting theories had been advanced on the origin of Hindustani. With the help of the latest investigation I have elucidated the fact that Hindustani by origin is a dialect of the language which had been spoken in Delhi and Meerut for centuries, before the settlement of the Muslims in Delhi. The development of Hindustani from the earliest time to 1700 in its birth-place, i.e., the Panjab, has been discussed in Chapter III, from the scanty sources available, with special reference to Khwaja Masud, Amir Khusrau, Fariduddin Ganj Shakar, Sheikh Usman, Sheikh Junaid, Vali Ram and Abdi. Translations and adaptations from Persian language and literature into Hindustani from the earliest time to 1700 form the subject of discussion in Chapter IV. In this connection I have discovered and studied some manuscipts , which have never been referred to before and have described others which have not been described. The lives of Hindustani authors have been compiled from original sources. Their works , which are mostly in the form of unpublished MSS. , have been discussed in chronological order to give an idea of the development of the literature and language. Persian phrases, idioms, etc., which have helped the development of old Hindustani and most of which are now obsolete have been also included. Characteristics of old Hindustani , which are a special feature of the old language have been discussed in Chapter V to point out the essential differences of the old and modern Hindustani. Copious examples in chronological order from the works discussed in the foregoing chapter have been collected for illustration. The development of language and marked changes in the language affected in different times have been discuseed in the last chapter. Dates with possible accuracy are assigned. A concise grammar of the old langauge is appended to further elucidate the marked development of the language.

This thesis is concerned with the syntactic relations between the noun-phrases and the main verb in Sinhalese sentences. The term 'Case' identifies these syntactic relations. The grammatical model which is utilized in this study is the case grammar proposed by Charles J. Fillmore, mainly in 'The Case for Case'. The Introduction outlines some general characteristics of the Sinhalese Language and specifies the particular stratum of language from which the data for the present study are abstracted. Chapter 2 presents a brief survey of the earlier approaches to the study of 'case'. At the end, it is proposed that a distinction between 'Case' and 'case-form' be maintained Chapter 5 describes the basic assumptions of Fillmore's case grammar. Chapter 4 starts with a discussion of the classification of verbs according to the number of arguments with which they occur and it describes the grammar of one-place verbs. Chapter 5 provides a grammatical description of two- place verbs and three-place verbs. Chapter 6 describes grammatical facts associated with a number of topics, namely: the Instrumental Case, the Locative, Source and Goal Cases. Extra-nuclear Locative and Time Cases are also described. Chapter 7 provides a grammatical description of causative sentences. These sentences are related to noncausative sentences by Causativization. Chapter 8 describes the grammar of non-volitional verbs. Chapter 9 analyses existential, locative and possessive constructions, and they are recognized as members of a single sentence type which can be identified as 'existential sentences'. The inalienable possessive constructions and the problems associated with the sentences containing nominal predicates are also described. Chapter 10 closes this grammatical description.

This thesis describes the morphology and lexicon of the dialect of Romany spoken in Kotel, Bulgaria. The introduction shows the position of the dialect within Bulgarian Romany and gives brief details of its speakers (pp 12-15). A phonological transcription is used for the morphology and lexicon. This reveals the relationship between Kotel and other dialects, a relationship normally concealed by its phonetic system. The paradigmatic affixes added to nominals are listed with their variants and specimen paradigms are given (pp 16-31) . Verbs are similarly treated, with special notes on medio-passives and impersonal verbs (pp 32-42). The affixes used in building compound-words are listed with their variants and numerous examples (pp 43-59) o A brief note is included on some non-productive methods of word-formation (p. 60). The changes undergone by loan-words from Turkish and Bulgarian are summarized, together with the paradigmatic affixes used with loans from these languages and Greek (pp 61-66). Two texts are given in phonological transcription with a translation and notes, to illustrate the morphology (pp 67-94). A Romany-English lexicon follows, together with some shorter word-lists(pp 95-202) . The lexicon excludes those loan-words which are freely formed by stated rules from Turkish and Bulgarian, languages with which the people are familiar. Finally phonological rules are given which conver the symbols used up to this point into a broad phonetic transcription (pp 203-211), and a text in parallel phonological and phonetic transcription illustrates the application of these rules (pp 212-219). A concise bibliography concludes the study.

This thesis discusses the syntax of complex sentences in Sinhalese within the framework of a generative transformational theory of grammar as outlined in Chomsky (1957), and since developed by him and others. The particular model for this study is the 'Standard Theory' of Chomsky (1965). The Introduction outlines the theoretical framework of the study, and gives a brief description of Sinhalese. The particular variety of Sinhalese discussed is specified, and an account of the linguistic investigation of Sinhalese given. Chapter 2 presents a phrase structure grammar capable of generating simple sentences in Sinhalese. Chapter 3 introduces one of the principal mechanisms of complex sentence formation, relativisation. It is demonstrated that the processes of relativisation suffice to derive several types of nominal modifiers. Chapter 4 introduces another major recursive mechanism, complementation. Several types of complement constructions are discussed, and the majority are shown to be NP complements. A few types appear to be VP complements, but conditions are suggested under which they could be considered NP complements. Chapters 5 to 8 examine a series of special constructions. All except one are shown to be derived from complex underlying structures, and it is demonstrated that the general principles of complementation can handle all these. It is argued that pseudo-cleft sentences however, are derived from underlying simple sentences. Chapter 5 deals with modal constructions. Chapter 6 with involitive sentences. Chapter 7 with causative sentences, and Chapter 8 with sentences of emphatic assertion and negation, and pseudo-cleft constructions. Chapter 9 examines a third major recursive mechanism, conjunction. Chapter 10 introduces adverbials, and examines tentatively the suggestion that few additional rules are required to account for such constructions. Finally, Chapter 11 discusses, again tentatively, a rather different type of complex sentence, comparative constructions.

The thesis is an attempt to explore and to explain the linguistic material available from an old Gujarati MS named Upadesamala-balavabodha (a prose commentary on the prakrta Jaina work named Upadeaamala) of the sixteenth century written at Cambay, Gujarat. It consists of three parts: Part I The Grammar, consisting of short chapters on the phonology of Vowels, Substantives, Adjectives, Pronouns, Numerals, Verbs, Participles, Post-positions and Indeclinable occurring in the MS. An attempt is made to explain the forms in the light of the old Indian and Middle Indian Languages, and some interesting developments of some of the Old Gujarati forms into the Modern Gujarati are noted. The last chapter is devoted to remarks on the Word-order in the sentences occurring in the MS. Part II The MS: The transliteration of the Gujarati part from the MS into the Roman script is given. Part III The Index: The Old Gujarati words and important Loan-words in the MS to-gether with the forms of the words occurring in the MS, with references to the MS, are given. An attempt is made to derive most of them.

The thesis deals with the Phonology of the Sinhalese Inscriptions from the earliest times up to the end of the 10th century A.D. The material for this study is culled from the Epigraphia Zeylanica and references are given to the various volumes, parts and pages in which the respective Inscriptions occur. The history of the Sanskrit sounds as recorded in these Inscriptions is traced throughout the centuries. Firstly that of the vowels - herein are given dates or probable dates of the shortening of original long vowels; of the first appearance in writing of contracted long vowels; of the secondary shortening of these vowels in certain cases; of vowel-modifications due to influence of other vowels in syllables immediately following; of the Influence of the Accent which ac- counts for many vowel-changes. Two important theories have been advanced: (1) compensatory lengthening due to shortening of original double consonants and consonant-groups and the fate of these compensatorily lengthened vowels is discussed. (2) criticiam of Geiger's theory of 'Vowel-levelling' and counter-arguments are adduced invalidating Geiger's theory. Secondly the fate of original single consonants is dealt with. It is shown when Sk. c- ,ch-> s- and Bk. j-> d- (the other initial consonants remain unchanged). Dates or probable dates are given of the voicing of intervocalic unvoiced stops > -y-, -v- and their final disappearance (and attention is drawn to the insertion of vocalic glides to avoid hiatus); of the change of original single intervocalic cerebrals to -1- and of original -c-, -j- to -d-. The fate of original -y-, -v-, -r-, -1-, -n-, -n-, -m- and the sibilants and h is shown and emphasis laid on the instability in the development of s and h in Sinhalese. The de-aspiration of the Sanskrit aspirates is stressed and 4- bh- is noted as a striking instance where aspiration is preserved. Thirdly the fate of the double consonants and consonant-groups of Sanskrit to considered and the date suggested for their shortening in Sinhalese; at the same time, the existence of double consonants and consonant-groups in Sinhalese due to elision of medial vowels is noted. Emphasis is laid on conservative spellings; on account of these the difficulty arises in deciding whether a word is a loan-word or not; consequently it is shown to be either. Finally, from the evidence of these Inscriptions it is shown that Sinhalese is fundamentally an Eastern language and wherever possible comparison is made with Modern Indian.

The thesis is an edition with a critical apparatus of a Rajasthani MS. Nala-ki bata by Bhangcanda Bhavasa, Royal Asiatic Society, Todd Collection No. 81. The work appears to have been written in the early part of the 19th century, as a date in Samvat corresponding to A.D. 1806 is found written at the end of another story (Dhola Maruji-ki bata) appended to the story of the MS. The thesis consists of four parts. A grammatical study of the language of the MS. Part II Text with critical footnotes. Part III Translation. Part IV Complete glossary of the text with notes on the derivation of most of the words.

In order to focus attention on correspondences between the grammatical and phonological levels of linguistic statement, the results of the present phonological analysis are presented within a grammatical framework set up in Part I, (Chapters 1-3). Part Two of the thesis includes Chapters 4-6. Chapter 4 gives relevant details about the Texts presented at different levels; Orthography, Roman transliteration and Phonetic transcription. Chapters 5 and 6 give a detailed description in general phonetic terras of the pronunciation of Bengali verbal forms. - Chapter 5 deals with the vowel articulations and Chapter 6 the consonantal articulations. Part Three includes Chapters 7 - 11. In Chapter 7 the elements of the Phonological analysis in terms of Phonematic units and Prosodic elements are stated. Two morphological abstractions are made for all verbal forms: viz. Stem and Ending, At the Phonological level syllables are named stem syllables and ending syllables. The structures of Endings are discussed in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 gives details about the V elements of structure. Chapter 10 gives a Phonological account of vowel harmony. Chapter 11 deals with the C elements of Phonological structure in the stem. Appendix 1 provides a list of verbal forms in Colloquial Bengali. Appendix 2 providesS4iext of recordings of the verbal forms listed in the end of Chapter 1, and those used for the Palatograms and the Kymograms. Appendix 3 gives a brief Bibliography. In making the phonetic abstractions Palatograms and Kymograms are provided in the thesis. More Palatograms and Kymograms are provided in the appendix 4. A grid and the records are provided in the pocket at the back of the thesis.

After acknowledgments and a general index, the thesis opens with an introductory chapter which gives a brief outline of the theory and model of grammatical description upon which this study is based, and reviews the previous work on Hindi verbal syntax. This is followed by the two main chapters of the work. In chapter 2 Hindi sentence structure and the sub-classes of verb which are relevant for the for the fornulatioa of the Constituent Structure rules are discussed, before the rules thenselves are set out. Chapter 5 first gives some of the singuiary transformations, the nominalization, adjectivalization and adverbialization rules follow, and the chapter ends with the singulary transformational rules. The Appendix following these three chapters comprises a lexicon which lives a list of Hindi verbs with their appropriate syntactic, selectional and semantic features, and lists of the other lexical categories with only their selectional features. The thesis ends with a bibliography of works on general linguistic theory and the model of Transformational - Generative Crammar on the one hand, and on Hindi language on the other.

The thesis is an edition of selections from Sadavasyaka vriti of Tarunaprabha. Tarunaprabha composed this Gujrati commentary in 1411 V.S. (1355 A.D.) at Patan. The earliest available ms. is written in 1412 V.S. and comes from Bikaner. In addition to this, I have used three other mss. from the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (Bh, not dated), the Limbdi (L. 1419 V.S.),and the Patan (P. 1508 V.S.) collection; The earliest specimens of the Gujrati language date from 1330 V.S. There are four fragmentary prose pieces (in all, less than 200 lines) from 1330 to 1369 V.S.,while this work is a detailed document containing popular narratives, written in 1411 V.S. This work is, not only the earliest detailed document of Gujrati, but one of the earliest in the New Indo-Aryan languages. The whole commentary is a large work of 308 folios, so I have edited narratives from it, omitting the Old Gujrati translation of the original Prakrit sadavasyaka and discussions about the ritual. These thirty popular stories are the nearest approximation to the then spoken Gujrati of the common man. The selections form more than one-third of the whole work. It is an important phenomenon that our best ms. is written just one year after the composition of the text. At the same time, the other two, the BORI and the Limbdi mss. are written between 1411-1419 V.S.; thus, of the four mss. available three are written during the first ten years succeeding the composition of the text, evidence which cannot be disregarded. in the restoration of the text. So I have edited the text eclectically. By presenting the internal evidence I have been able to show the probable course of text-transmission,which has helped me to judge the authenticity of various readings, and to fix the date of the BORI ms. The difficulties of editing a 'bhasa' text where the scribes do not trouble much about minor alterations are well known; but at the same time, these scribal variations in different mss. present material through which we get glimpses of the dialectal tendencies of Early Gujrati. In the treatment of the orthography I have analysed these scribal variations which have enabled me to present the text in a method hitherto unknown in Gujrati text-editing. The work is divided into three main parts: 1. Introduction; deals with the orthography and contains a grammatical analysis of the language of the text. 2. Text: contains thirty narratives from the mss. with complete collations of B, Bh, and P and partial collations of L. 3. Index ; contains a vocabulary of Gujrati words, omitting the Sk. and the Pk. loanwords,found in the text together with the Sk. equivalents explaining their etymology. The appendix contains the colophons, which give the date of the composition and the writing of the text, and the genealogical of the author and the patron of the scribe of the B.