Abstract
This paper provides a social-dialectological slant on variation and change in language. The particular analytical framework used here brings together language synchrony and diachrony for examining dialect change in the Marathi region. First a brief overview of the central theoretical and methodological tenets of this approach to variation and change in language is presented. Drawing on data collected in an on-going dialectological survey of Marathi, the paper provides a description of synchronic variation in case marking and agreement in the transitive-perfective clause in regional varieties of Marathi. It is suggested that the variation is the result of both language-internal and language-external factors. The contemporary dialectal data are compared with data from historical sources (Grierson, G. (1905). Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. 7. Indo-Aran family. Southern group. Specimens of the Marathi Language. Calcutta. Reprinted 1968. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.). An expansion in the pool of linguistic feature variants and a broad tendency towards dialect levelling (i.e. reduction in inter-dialectal differences) through standardization are noted for the regional varieties. However, the rates of standardization across linguistic features and across social groups and regions are shown to vary. The paper concludes by highlighting the benefits of a dialect survey/database for examining language variation and change.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Dialect’ here refers to a language variety which is used in a geographically limited part of a language area in which it is ‘roofed’ by a structurally related standard variety; a dialect typically displays structural peculiarities in several language components (cf. Chambers & Trudgill, 1998: 5; Auer et al. (2005)). Usually dialects have relatively little overt prestige and are mainly used orally.
- 2.
The project is funded by the Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha, Govt. of Maharashtra (2017-).
- 3.
The videos (‘The Deccan College Stimulus Kit’) can be accessed be accessed on the project website www.sdml.ac.in.
- 4.
Grierson makes a difference between the Konkan standard (which includes varieties such Agri, Bankoti and Sangameshwari in the coastal stretch from Thane to north Ratnagiri) and Konkani spoken in the region extending from Rajapur in Ratnagiri district up till Sindhudurg district.
- 5.
Kokni (Konkani) here refers to the speech variety of the coastal region of Maharashtra, i.e. the Konkan. This is not to be confused with Konkani, the official language in the state of Goa.
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Kulkarni-Joshi, S. (2023). Variation and Change in Dialects of Marathi: A Social-Dialectological Approach. In: Chandra, P. (eds) Variation in South Asian Languages. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1149-3_9
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