Diachrony of linguistic features in South Asian Languages (DiaSAL)

Cooperative project by

Prof. Dr. John Peterson (Kiel) and Prof. Dr. Krzysztof Stroński (Poznań)

Funded by the

German Research Council (DFG)

under the cross-border cooperation in a WEAVE lead-agency process with the

Polish National Science Centre (NCN)

In this project we are developing a historical account of areal trends with respect to some 230 typological features in 18 modern and pre-modern varieties of New Indo-Aryan (NIA) and New South Dravidian (NSD) languages. The project will make use of and expand the Kiel South Asian Typological Database that includes data from 42 modern languages. The combination of historical and modern data for individual languages from two different families from throughout the subcontinent will contribute to a better understanding of structural changes in these languages, in particular with respect to language contact, and will go beyond simply identifying features pertaining to a linguistic area. In doing so, it will also serve as a basis for developing a typology of contact situations of general interest beyond just South Asian linguistics.

The team in Poznań is focusing on the Indo-Aryan languages Kashmiri, Chambiyali, Garhwali, Kumaoni, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Braj, Awadhi, Nepali, Maithili, Assamese, Bengali of northern and eastern India as well as the Dravidian language Tamil in southeast India, while the team in Kiel is concentrating on the west coast of India, focusing on the Indo-Aryan languages Marathi, Konkani and Gujarati and the Dravidian languages Kannada, Tulu and Malayalam. Above all, our work is in the states of Karnataka and Goa, both of which lie on the west coast of India.

By comparing pre-modern stages of these languages with their corresponding modern structures and interpreting this data in light of the known history of these regions the teams hope to be able to determine which changes are due to purely language-internal developments and which are most likely attributed to language contact—one such example of contact-induced change between Kannada and Goan Konkani is negation (Peterson & Chevallier 2022).

We will provide an overview of the Kiel South Asian Typological Database which was developed in the earlier Kiel DFG-funded project (“Towards a linguistic prehistory of eastern-central South Asia (and beyond)”), and discuss our work in the current project “Diachrony of linguistic features in South Asian Languages” (DiaSAL), especially with focus on the Goa-Karnataka border region.

The Kiel Team: Prof. Dr. John Peterson, Dr. Ruta Paradkar, Lennart Chevallier, MA, Shane Arzbach, Shristi Panna, and Bo Muhlack.

References:

Peterson, John & Lennart Chevallier. 2022. Towards a Typology of Negation in South Asian Languages. Bhāṣā, Journal of South Asian Linguistics, Philology and Grammatical Traditions. 1(1), 17–62. DOI: 10.30687/bhasha/8409-3769/2022/01/005.

International Booker Prize-winning Indian author Geetanjali Shree will give a reading of her novel Our City That Year (hin. Hamārā śahar us baras, ger. Unsere Stadt in jenem Jahr) followed by a Conversation with the audience.
 

When? November 25th 2025, 16:15 – 17:45
Where? Room Hörsaal 3, Philosophiegebäude, Am Hubland
 

Geetanjali Shree is the author of five novels, including Tomb of Sand for which she was awarded the 2022 International Booker Prize, making her the first Indian writer to win the prize.

No registration needed.
Event in English.

Tiṟuḷgannaḍaṁ – The Heart of Early Kannaḍa

The earliest available text in Kannada, the Ways of High Poetry (Kavirājamārgaṁ, ca. 850 CE) identifies the territory of the best kind of Kannada (Tiṟuḷgannaḍaṁ). Predictably, the boundaries of this area lie very close to the Rāṣṭrakūṭa capital at Malkhed. Using this provocative if transparent formulation as a vantage point, we would like to delineate the habitat and habitus of early Kannaḍa (pre-1200 CE). 

In this workshop we will examine a diverse range of textual and inscriptional materials to understand the intersections of place, polity, poetry and piety that undergird the cultural and literary idioms of early Kannada.

The workshop will be held in the hybrid mode (in person plus online) on 8 and 9 May 2025 at the University of Würzburg. To participate in person or online please contact Anna Aurelia Esposito (anna.esposito@uni-wuerzburg.de).

Programm des Workshops.