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Forty Years of Language Contact and Change in Kupwar: A Critical Assessment

of the Intertranslatability Model

Article  in  Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics · September 2016

DOI: 10.1515/jsall-2016-0008

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FORTY YEARS OF LANGUAGE CONTACT AND CHANGE IN KUPWAR:

A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE INTERTRANSLATABILITY MODEL

Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi

ABSTRACT

This paper revisits the language contact situation in the Indian border town-village of Kupwar
originally reported by Gumperz and Wilson (1971). The study presents evidence for morpho-
syntactic variation and complexification in the contact varieties of the local languages,
Marathi and Kannada. Similar patterns of variation are adduced from contact varieties of
Marathi and Kannada from historical data as well as present-day border villages which, like
Kupwar, have been traditionally bilingual. The synchronic and historical data point out
methodological and theoretical limitations of the original study. The variation and complexity
observed in the Kupwar varieties allow for a reconsideration of the notion of
intertranslatability or isomorphism in convergence areas. While suggesting a possible
geographically defined micro-linguistic area at the Marathi-Kannada frontier, the paper
indicates that the recent re-drawing of state boundaries along linguistic lines may have
initiated divergence in this convergence area.
Key words: Kupwar, convergence, language change, intertranslatability, Marathi, Kannada.

1. Introduction1
At a time when Emeneau (1956, 1974), Kuiper (1967) and Masica (1976) among others were
making claims for South Asia as a linguistic area on feature-distributional grounds, Gumperz
and Wilson (1971) proposed similar processes and outcomes of language contact and change
at a micro level in a more localised sub-area at the Indo-Aryan – Dravidian frontier. Gumperz
and Wilson (henceforth G&W)‟s retrospective study of linguistic convergence across two
language families (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) and three languages (Marathi, Hindi-Urdu and
Kannada) in the border village of Kupwar, Maharashtra, India has been significantly
influential in the field of theory building connected with language contact phenomena (see
for example Bynon (1977), Lehiste (1988), Thomason and Kaufman (1988), McMahon
(1994), Hock and Joseph (1996), Thomason (2001), Heine and Kuteva (2005), King (2005),
Campbell (2006)); the study has variously been described as a “prototypical case of
convergence” (Matras et al 2006: xvii), “a bundle of grammaticalisation areas” (Heine and
Kuteva, 2005: 212), etc. and has acquired the status of a classical study in the literature on
language contact and convergence. Of particular interest has been G&W‟s claim that all three
contact varieties in Kupwar have achieved morpheme-by-morpheme intertranslatability (e.g.
Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 86–88).

The construct of a „linguistic area‟ is ridden with definitional problems as is

demonstrated by Campbell (2006). Determining the number of languages, the number of
language families and co-territoriality of the languages in contact are some of these problems.
Such concerns have, however, been shunted to the periphery of area studies presumably with
the intention of focusing attention more closely on the processes by which linguistic features

1
This research was carried out under the Special Assistance Programme of the University
Grants Commission of India awarded to the Dept. of Linguistics, Deccan College (Deemed
University), Pune (India) for research on “Language Contact in India” (2011-16)
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diffuse across linguistic boundaries. The more recent view in linguistic area studies therefore
is that, in the wake of definitional and empirical issues surrounding the traditional notion of a
„linguistic area‟, a greater emphasis must be placed on investigating micro-linguistic areas
which make up the macro linguistic areas to give better insights (e.g. Masica 2001: 259,
Heine and Kuteva 2005: 177, Campbell 2006). This opinion is echoed in Hook (1988: 158)
who calls for detailed cross-dialect, fine-grain comparisons to “show a pattern of
convergence that will conclusively put to rest the two-headed bogey of coincidence and
typological harmonics and which will also distinguish contact phenomena from common
retentions associated with remote genetic relationships”. Campbell (2006: 21–22) states the
following as a more desirable goal for areal studies: “Instead of pursuing definitions of
linguistic areas, we should attempt to account for the history of individual borrowings and
diffusion, together with language change in general, in order to answer the question, „What
happened? […] If we succeed in determining what changes have taken place, and how, when
and why they took place, […].” The localistic focus in G&W‟s study becomes especially
significant given this more recent view in linguistic area studies. In spite of the interest
attracted by the G&W study internationally, surprisingly it received little critical attention
and generated little discussion among Indian linguists; no comparable follow-up study was
undertaken. My main aim in this paper will be to re-examine G&W‟s claim for structural
simplification and intertranslatability in this contact area at the Indo-Aryan – Dravidian
frontier.

The sections below are organised as follows: section 2 presents background

information which includes a summary of the original Kupwar study by G&W, the scope of
the present study and the theoretical framework used in this study. An outline of the
methodology used in the present study follows in section 3. We present the results of our
analysis of three morpho-syntactic features within the socio-historical framework in section
4. In section 5 we summarise the main findings of the present study and revisit G&W‟s claim
for simplification and intertranslatability in the border town of Kupwar. The conclusion is
presented in section 6.

2. Background
2.1 G&W’s Kupwar study
Kupwar is a town-village located in the Sangli district in southern Maharashtra. It is about
nine kilometres from the Maharashtra-Karnataka state border (see the map in Fig. 1).

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Figure 1. Map showing location of Kupwar in Sangli district and other research sites at the Maharashtra-
Karnataka border. (The shaded portion of the map shows the contiguous districts in south Maharashtra and
north Karnataka which were included in the larger study.)

G&W had found bi- or multilingualism in Kupwar to be correlated with religious identity and
separateness of home life (based on religion and caste). Kannada was the home language of
the land-owning Jains and elite Lingayats (the latter are a sub-sect of the Hindu religion);
Hindi-Urdu and Marathi were the home languages of the landless Muslims and low caste
Hindus respectively. Marathi was also the neutral village language used in public domains.
Caste-based professions, economic and social interdependence, and daily interaction among
the castes (especially among the menfolk) had presented opportunities for bilingual and code-
switched communication (G&W 1971: 153). As was reported by several old male Muslim
and Hindu informants to this author in 2006, they had picked up Kannada as young men
when they had worked as field hands or as assistants to Kannada-speaking brick-layers, well
diggers, etc. G&W ascribed the long-standing tradition of bilingualism in the village, which
had been maintained despite regular and frequent interaction among the local residents, and
which had not resulted in the “triumph” of one language to the importance of “ethnic
separateness of the home” (G&W 1971: 153–4).

G&W do not provide details of the social backgrounds of the speakers from whom data
were elicited. Further, they give only one example for every linguistic feature they have
described where either Kannada or Marathi has provided the model for the convergence. It is
therefore not clear whether they have described a tendency towards either Marathi or

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Kannada with scope for internal variation or a completely focussed linguistic feature where
the change in either direction is now complete.

The nature of the linguistic evidence cited by G&W is as follows: reduction in number of
positions in which a category is marked, reduction of number of categories marked,
generalisation of a surface form – changes that arguably are toward simpler, or more „natural‟
surface structure relationships. G&W reported that the three contact varieties had converged
on a common structure while still maintaining separate lexicons. Specifically, G&W 1971
claimed the following (pp. 165–166):
i. Kupwar varieties have processes of reduction and convergence suggestive of
pidginisation and creolisation
ii. If there is anything about the Kupwar linguistic situation that all speakers share it is
the common Kupwar syntax; i.e. structural convergence without lexical diffusion
iii. The various changes in the contact situation have created three parallel creole-like
local varieties – a situation in which speakers can speak distinct languages
corresponding to distinct ethnic groups.

Further, G&W made one observation and one prediction in their study:

i. The two languages of Indo-Aryan stock (Marathi and Hindi-Urdu) and the Dravidian
language (Kannada) in the village of Kupwar had achieved morpheme-to-morpheme
intertranslatability.
ii. The second observation was in the form of a prediction: multilingualism across
languages belonging to two different language families would be maintained as long
as the ethnic (i.e. religious) separateness of home life remained important for the
communities in the contact situation. (Here ethnic separateness referred to residential
segregation based on both religion and caste hierarchy.2)

2.2 The Present Study

The present study reports on data collected between 2006 and 2013. Early in the study, the
researcher met the 75 year old head of a Jain family (referred to here as P) with whom G&W
had stayed for 3 months in 1965, and a retired school teacher (referred to here as G) who, as a
seventeen year old college student, had helped G&W in the transcription of the data elicited
in Kupwar. As sufficient details of methodology were not available in G&W, the researcher
attempted a reconstruction of their methodology based on information received from P and G
and from Gumperz (1967). The present study of Kupwar focuses on the local varieties of
Marathi and Kannada3.
Today‟s Kupwar is characterised by a decline in caste-based professions, decreased
caste-based interdependence and the rise of economic competition. The caste-based social
structure which had contributed to stable bilingualism in the village with a clear demarcation
of the private and public domains is changing. Possession of agricultural land had been a
privilege of the local elites, i.e. the Jains and Lingayats, while the Muslims and low caste
Hindus had worked as field hands. In the course of local development (industry, educational
institutes, etc.), the local elites sold this land. Education has become the new avenue to
economic uplift and social mobility. Education is available locally in Marathi and also in
English (since Kupwar is now well connected to Sangli city). In the forty years intervening
between G&W and the present study, the state-imposed official language of the region has

2
See Kulkarni-Joshi (2015) for details.
3
Observations for the Kupwar variety of Hindi-Urdu (KuH-U) are mentioned in footnotes.

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increasingly been perceived as the language of opportunity, employment and socioeconomic

mobility across caste and religious lines (see details in Kulkarni-Joshi 2015). Children from
Kannada-speaking homes are encouraged to speak in Marathi. However, the religious
distinctions have not blurred: even the children in Kupwar are aware of the Jain, Lingayat,
Muslim, Hindu and neo-Buddhist distinctions.4 Marathi is used in interactions among
members from the different communities; only older members (especially women) of the Jain
and Lingayat families interact in Kannada. The domains of Marathi usage have increased
considerably; Marathi has even entered the home domain of the traditionally Kannada-
speaking families (but not of the Hindi-Urdu-speaking families). The number of active/fluent
bilinguals in Kannada in the village-town is negligible as compared to that reported by G&W.
There is a definite positive attitude towards Marathi, largely by virtue of being domiciled in
the state of Maharashtra.

2.3 The Theoretical Framework

In examining local varieties of Marathi and Kannada I will use the approach of socio-
historical linguistics which is a cross-fertilisation of traditional historical linguistics and the
variationist methods of sociolinguistics. A central assumption of the approach being used is
that the linguistic forces which operate today are not unlike those of the past (Romaine 1982)
i.e. there is no reason for assuming that language did not vary in the same patterned way in
the past as it does today (cf. the uniformitarian principle). Current variation and its correlation
with social structure and patterns of human interaction may be used in constructing a social
model. The data will be drawn from published material and the researcher‟s own field data on
non-standard, contact varieties from bilingual villages in south Maharashtra and north
Karnataka (cf. Joseph 2009 on the role of non-standard dialects in understanding
converegence as a local phenomenon). This paper examines the interplay of contact and
variation in the process of language change.

3. Methodology and data

The data used in the present study is a sub-set of the data collected for a larger study of
Marathi-Kannada contact in border districts. For the larger study data were collected from
Marathi-Kannada bilinguals in the Sangli, Solapur and Kolhapur districts in southern
Maharashtra and in Belgaum, Gulbarga and Bidar districts in northern Karnataka (see Fig.1).
The present study uses three main sources of data:
(i) The Kupwar data were collected from young (18–30 years), middle-aged (31–50 years)
and old (51+ years) men and women in traditionally Kannada- and Marathi-speaking
families in the course of interviews during fieldtrips between 2006 and 2013. (The data
sample is presented in Table 1.) Data were collected in the form of ethnographic
observations,5 responses to a questionnaire which included elicitations of background
information, vocabulary, sentence types6 and narratives (of varying length) from 87
informants. The three linguistic features reported in this paper were gleaned from the
narrative data. All the interviews were conducted by the researcher herself.7 The
narratives were recorded using a Sony IC recorder ICD-UX523.

4
In recent times, low caste Hindu Mahars have converted to Buddhism and low caste Hindu Mangs have
converted to Christianity.
5
Refer to Kulkarni-Joshi (2015) for details of the ethnographic observations.
6
While the elicited sentence types focused narrowly on the constructions identified in G&W, the researcher
used a word list of 100 items which were elicited from Kannada L1 speakers in Kupwar.
7
The researcher‟s family names revealed her Marathi Brahmin identity to her informants and her speech is
distinctly that of an educated woman from the city of Pune. Since the beginning of fieldwork, she had easy

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Table1. The Stratified Kupwar Sample

Jains & elite Muslims Hindu Ling yats Christian/M ng Neo Buddhists/
Hindu (traditionally (traditionally (traditionally Mah r
Ling yats Hindi-Urdu Marathi Marathi- (traditionally
(traditionally speaking) speaking) speaking) Marathi-
Kannada- speaking)
speaking)
Female Males Female Males Female Males Female Males Female Males
s s s s s
Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O Y M O
4 4 6 4 6 5 4 4 5 3 3 5 2 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 1
29 24 16 8 10
87
NOTE: Y=young; M=middle-aged and O= old. (Table reproduced from Kulkarni-Joshi 2015.)

(ii) The Kupwar data are supplemented with data on village varieties of Marathi spoken in
the Sangli, Solapur and Kolhapur districts of southern Maharashtra (data were collected
between 2008 and 2010) as well as data collected in 2015 from bilingual villages in the
northern Karnataka district of Belgaum where the Marathi-speakers had a relative
numerical majority over the Kannada-speakers locally. Table 2 gives details of the
bilingual villages sampled in the larger study. These data are in the form of responses to
a questionnaire and elicited narratives.

Table 2: Research sites in the larger Marathi-Kannada convergence study

State South Maharashtra North Karnataka

District Sangli Solapur Kolhapur Belgaum Gulbarga Bidar

Research Kupwar Akkalkot Kagal Hukkeri Alanga Bhosga

sites Begehalli Halga
Hittani
Kadoli

(iii) Older data for this contact area were gleaned from some published and unpublished
sources. These include: Grierson‟s LSI (volumes IV and VII) and descriptive grammars
of Marathi and Kannada dialects (Ghatage in the 1960s and PhD dissertations
submitted to the Deccan College, Pune). The older evidence includes both varieties
from the immediate contact belt under examination here as well as other, non-
contiguous Marathi-Dravidian contact varieties.

The questionnaires used to elicit social and linguistic information in Kupwar and the
surrounding districts were comparable across the research sites. The narratives were elicited
in the course of the interviews; the narratives included well-known stories and/or speakers‟
life experiences. The interview with each speaker was at least forty-five minutes long.

access to homes in the village as her primary introduction was that she was an acquaintance of the local doctor‟s
elderly wife who is involved in implementing a number of social and financial schemes for local women.

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The present study reports on three morpho-syntactic features reported by G&W for Kupwar:
(i) gender categorisation and (ii) verbal agreement in the transitive perfective clause in
Kupwar Marathi and other contact varieties of Marathi, and (iii) „reported speech‟ in Kupwar
Kannada and other contact varieties of Kannada.8,9 Speakers of Marathi outside the contact
area identify (i) and (ii) above as distinctive features of the local variety of Marathi. Tokens
of the three linguistic features were obtained only from narrative data (as the speaker was
least conscious of her/his speech when narrating stories/personal experiences). Both the focus
on morpho-syntactic variation and the decision to use narrative data had consequences for the
number of tokens available for analysis. The actual number of tokens available for analysis is
noted in the particular sub-sections below.

4. Results

My focus here will be on re-examining G&W‟s claim regarding inter-translatability, i.e.

contact varieties of Marathi and Kannada in Kupwar having converged on a common
grammar as a result of processes of reduction and simplification. To pre-empt the discussion
which follows, the data will reveal patterned variation in the contact area. The discussion of
each linguistic feature is organised as follows: first a brief recapitulation of G&W‟s 1971
account for each of the features, then examples for the same feature from data collected in
Kupwar between 2006 and 2013, followed by comparable synchronic/older data from other
regions in the contact area.

4.2.1 Gender classification in Kupwar Marathi

We will first discuss gender classification of nouns in Kupwar Marathi based on agreement in
various types of construction (see below). G&W claim that the largest number of changes,
and the only major case of two languages adapting to one, are of Kupwar Urdu and Kupwar
Marathi converging toward Kupwar Kannada (the latter two are henceforth referred to as
KuM and KuK respectively) in semantic determination of gender, and in surface structure
syntactic agreement (G&W 1971: 163). Standard Marathi (and Hindi-Urdu) has grammatical
gender with some correlation with sex if the referent is animate. Marathi nouns are
categorised as masculine, feminine and neuter while the neuter is the unmarked category.
Kannada too has three genders, however, noun categorisation in this language has a semantic
basis: male humans are assigned masculine gender, female humans are assigned feminine
gender and all other nouns receive the neuter gender. G&W report that KuM has converged
toward KuK in that its categorisation of nouns is semantically determined. All non-human
nouns in KuM are marked neuter (G&W 1971: 155–56).

A brief description of the constructions used in the present study to analyse gender
classification in KuM follows. Since nouns following the same agreement form one gender
(Corbett 1991: 45), the following tests were used to check for agreement in KuM: attribute +

8
The same features are noted by Grierson (1905, vol. VII, p.47) who observes that the chief result of the
influence of Kanarese [i.e. Kannada] on these „broken dialects of Dekhan‟ is a “weakening of the sense of
gender and a confusion between the active and passive constructions of transitive verbs. […] [A]ll these points
are relatively unimportant, that is there is no difficulty in understanding the variety.”
9
While the feature „gender classification‟ will involve an examination of constructions such as Det+N, Adj+N
and N+V to identify gender categories in the language variety, the second feature, „agreement in the transitive
perfective clause‟ will involve noting presence or absence of ergative marking on the subject NP and the nature
of verbal agreement in the clause.

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noun, noun + predicate, noun verb agreement in simple sentences, pronouns and gender
assignment to borrowings. In standard Marathi, both the attribute and the noun agree with the
modified noun. Some examples of agreement in standard Marathi follow in (1):

Standard Marathi:

1a to moʈhɑ pətəŋgə pəɖ-l-ɑ

that.3SM big.3SM kite fall-PERF-
3SM
That big kite fell.

1b ti moʈhi bhintə pəɖ-l-i

that.3SF big.3SF wall fall-PERF-3SF
That big wall fell.

1c te moʈhə dzhɑɖ pəɖ-l-ə

that.3SN big.3SN tree fall-PERF-3SN
That big tree fell.

Gender classification of nouns in KuK has a semantic basis, as in standard Kannada.

Examples of agreement patterns noted in the speech of KuM speakers born in the years
between 1926 and 1992 are given below (2–7).

Besides Kannada-like semantic gender categorisation as reported by G&W, we noted

at times neuter agreement for human nouns in KuM as in (2) below:

2. KuM
šarda bark-əy pušpa moʈ-əy
Sharada.SF young-SN.BE Pushpa.SF old-SN.BE
Sharada is (the) younger (child) and Pushpa is (the) older (child).

There were also a few examples in the KuM sample of „hybrid agreement‟ where the attribute
of the noun and the predicate following the noun showed difference in agreement. For
example, in (3) below, the prenominal possessive shows neuter agreement whereas the verb
shows feminine agreement.
3. KuM
tyats-ə ka:ɭji ghet-l-i
his-3SN care.3SF take-PERF.3SF
(Somebody) took care of him.

Such a hybrid pattern can be seen in Grierson‟s (1905) texts. One such example is cited
below:
4. Bijapur Marathi
madz-ə səmd-ə jindəgi tujh-i=ts hay
my-3SN all-3SN property.3SF your-3SF=EMPH be.PRST
All my property is yours.

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Contrary to G&W‟s observation, gender assignment in the KuM sample was very frequently
identical to that in standard Marathi (examples 5, 6 and 7):
5. KuM
amts-a malək əsl-a dhənda kərət hota
our owner (=husband). such-3SM business do.PTCPL AUX .PST.3SM
(HON.)- 3SM 3SM
3SM
Our (My) husband was doing such a business.

6. KuM
apla dhənday to
our.3SM business 3SM.BE.PRST. that.3SM
That is our business.

7. KuM
pəgaraci a ša mi kyeli nai
salary.OBL.POSS.3SF expectation.3FS I do.PST.3SF NEG
I did not expect a salary.

In Fig. 3 we have plotted the proportion of (i) tokens of standard-Marathi-like gender

assignment and (ii) tokens of variation in gender assignment in the speech of eleven speakers
of KuM born between 1923 and 1992. (Here non-standard agreement patterns including
„hybrid agreement‟ and Kannada-like gender assignment are treated as „variation‟.) Standard
sociolinguistic methods were used to calculate the frequencies of standard Marathi-like and
non-standard Marathi-like variants in the speech of each of the eleven KuM speakers. The
analysis presented in Fig. 3 is based on a total of 394 tokens gleaned from narrative data.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50% Variation

40% Std. Marathi

30%
20%
10%
0%
23 40 52 60 62 70 72 77 80 86 90 92

Figure 3: Variation in gender assignment in KuM speech of speakers born between 1923 and 1992 (birth years
are shown on the horizontal axis). The arrow marks the decade (1960) in which the state of Maharashtra was
carved out along linguistic lines.

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The graph in Fig. 3 shows both intra-speaker and inter-speaker variability in the use of the
particular linguistic feature. It can be seen that standard-Marathi-like gender categorisation is
predominant in KuM speakers of all ages. Further, variation represented in the graph reveals
age-grading: There is greater variation in the speech of those born between 1926 and 1952.
This variation decreases/disappears for speakers born post-1962; in the latter speakers we
observe accelerated change towards completely standard Marathi-like gender classification.10

4.2.1.1 Comparable data from other contact varieties of Marathi

We compared the feature „gender classification‟ in KuM with that in other varieties of
Marathi in contact with Kannada (Bijapur, Dharwad samples 1 and 2) and in varieties of
Marathi in contact with other Dravidian languages (Kasargod, Cochin, South Canara).11
Gender classification in narrative data from these published sources was compared with
KuM. The same types of construction (listed above) were analysed to draw inferences about
gender classification in these contact varieties. The number of tokens available for each
contact variety for quantification is noted in parentheses: Bijapur (52), Dharwar-1 (50),
Dharwar-2 (17), Kasargod (20), Cochin (50), South Canara (20). The results of the
comparison are plotted in graph form in Fig. 4.

120

100

80

60

Variation
40

20 Marathi-like

Figure 4. Variation observed in the use of the feature „Gender categorisation‟ in the speech of 12 young and 11
old speakers of KuM in comparison to variation in other Marathi-Dravidian contact varieties (data from early
1900s to 1980s). Old = older speakers, Young = younger speakers.

The comparison with data from other Marathi-Dravidian contact areas revealed that
variability existed in some of these varieties while some varieties had completely shifted to

10
Patterns of variation noted for Kupwar Urdu were similar to those in KuM.
11
Comparative data are drawn from Grierson (1905) LSI , Ghatage (1967; 1970; 1971), Survey of Marathi
Dialects and unpublished PhD theses submitted to the Deccan College, Poona University. In Kasargod and
Cochin, migrant varieties of Konkani (which was previously considered a dialect of Marathi) are in contact with
the Dravidian language, Malayalam.

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the gender categorisation of Dravidian languages.12 The Bijapur sample from the LSI (a story
narrated by a single speaker of Bijapur Marathi) shows variation between the Marathi-like
and other variants, though the proportion of non-standard variants is considerably higher than
that of standard variants (unlike KuM speech today). The Dharwad samples (also drawn from
the LSI) and the Kasargod sample (from Ghatage 1970) are almost entirely non-Marathi-like
in the use of the feature „Gender classification‟. The migrant Brahmin Marathi spoken in
Cochin and in South Canara show proportions of standard and non-standard variants similar
to those in KuM speech.

Next, we compared the KuM data to data from Marathi-Kannada bilingual villages in
northern Karnataka, contiguous with the Maharashtra border. (Recall that Marathi speakers
were demographically the larger group in the sampled villages.) Fig. 5 presents comparable
data from the variety of Marathi spoken in the Hukkeri village in Belgaum district, north
Karnataka (see map in Fig. 1 for the location of this village). The analysis of „Gender
classification‟ in Hukkeri Marathi is based on a total of 263 tokens drawn from narratives
elicited from old and young speakers. The Hukkeri data revealed proportions of standard and
non-standard variants which are very similar to those observed in KuM.

120

100

80

60 Variation
Marathi-like
40

20

0
Old Hukkeri Young-Hukkeri

Figure 5: Use of the feature ‘Gender Classification’ among old and young speakers of Marathi in the north
Karnataka village of Hukkeri

To sum up the analysis of the linguistic feature „Gender classification‟ in KuM:

Contrary to G&W‟s reported observation, there was variability in the use of the particular
linguistic feature in KuM. Both intra-speaker and inter-speaker variation were noted. The
pattern of variability in KuM for the particular linguistic feature was similar to that observed
in the Marathi spoken in the contiguous village of Hukkeri in the state of Karnataka.
However, the KuM pattern of variability was dissimilar to use of the linguistic feature in

12
Other Marathi-Dravidian contact varieties represented in this graph include non-contiguous as well as migrant
varieties of Marathi. Complete or near-complete replication of the Dravidian gender categorisation of nouns in
Dharwar Marathi and Kasargod Marathi can be correlated with social factors such as (i) relative social
dominance of the Dravidian language in the particular contact situation (ii) caste of the migrant group with
greater maintenance among high caste migrants (see Kulkarni-Joshi [2007, 2008]).

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some non-contiguous, migrant varieties of Marathi in contact with Dravidian languages. It

may be surmised that the nature of observed variability is a function of several non-linguistic
factors including distance from the Maharashtra-Karnataka border, border variety vs. migrant
variety, and caste status in case of migrant speakers. Importantly, contiguous border villages
(Kupwar and Hukkeri) showed an identical pattern of variation.

4.2.2 Subject marking and verbal agreement in transitive perfective clauses

In this sub-section of the paper will consider another type of agreement: verbal agreement
(with or without ergative marking) specifically in the transitive, perfective clause in KuM.
Agreement within this clause type is distinct in standard and contact varieties of Marathi.
Further, this feature has been noted separately by both Grierson (1905) and G&W as a feature
of Marathi in contact with Kannada or other Dravidian languages. Hence, we will discuss this
type of agreement separately from gender agreement, which was examined in 4.2.1 above.
Narrations of speakers‟ childhood experiences, life before marriage, Kupwar of fifty years
ago, etc. provided tokens of the target morpho-syntactic construction.

Aspectual split-ergativity, where the ergative case marking occurs only in the
perfective aspect, is reported for the western NIA (New Indo-Aryan) languages such as
Hindi-Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, but not for Bangla, Oriya, Bhojpuri, etc. In
Marathi, the third person subject NP of a finite transitive clause in the perfective aspect bears
ergative marker (i.e. the case marker -ne/-ni/-nə); direct objects and subjects of intransitive
clauses are nominative and the verb agrees with the non-case marked NP (8a); if both subject
and object NPs are case-marked, the verb shows default, neuter agreement (8b). Examples in
(8) below illustrate ergativity in standard Marathi:

Standard Marathi
8a. ti-nə/e/i kagəd phaɖ-l-a
she-ERG paper.3SM tear-PERF-3SM
She tore the paper.

8b. tyanə/e/i muli-la mar-l-e

he-ERG girl.3SF-DAT hit-PERF-3SN
He hit the girl.

Ergativity is absent in Kannada and in KuK.

9. KuK
aki ghəɖʃin kətha məgəɭ-gi heɭtaɭu
She.3SF happen.PST.PART. incident.3SN daughter-DAT tell.PST.3SF
She told (her) daughter about the incident that had occurred.

G&W (1971: 157) reported that, for „NP1 NP2 Verb‟ constructions, where the verb is
in the past tense, KuM shows agreement with the unmarked NP1. This, they described as an
instance of convergence between Marathi and Urdu, and Kannada where Kannada had
provided the model for the convergence. In the present study, variation was observed in KuM
(and KuH-U) as also in other dialects of Marathi (and Hindi-Urdu) in the contact region.

12
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Examples from KuM are given below (10–15). These examples illustrate the variation
(between the standard Marathi-like and Kannada-like agreement) observed in the KuM data.
(Examples 10–15 are from KuM).

10. madza mulga məla ʋicar-l-a

I S.GEN son.3SM 1 S.DAT ask-PERF-3SM
My son asked me.

11. tenə kam ke-l-a

3 SM.NOM work SN.NOM do-PERF-3SM
He did the work.

12. mula-nə khup šyeʋa kye-l-i

boy-ERG a lot service.3SF.NOM do-PERF-3SF
The boy did a lot of service.

13. šamnə kal məla bəghit-l-a

Sham.3SM.NOM. yesterday 1S.DAT see-PERF-3SM
Sham saw me yesterday.

14a. to gaɖi vik-l-a

3SM.NOM. vehicle.3SF sell-PERF-3SM
He sold the vehicle.

14b. teni/ə gaɖi vik-l-a

3SM.NOM. vehicle.3SF sell-PERF-3SM
He sold the vehicle

15. tinə atta=ts a-l-i-ya

3SF.NOM. now=EMPH come-PERF-3SF-BE
She has just arrived.

Examples 10–15 from the KuM data reveal that (i) ergative marking may be present or absent
on the subject NP of a perfective clause and (ii) the verb in such a clause may agree with the
subject NP which may or may not be case-marked or with the non-case marked object NP.13

Next, I compared the particular linguistic feature in KuM with other contact varieties
(Fig. 6). While the non-contiguous contact variety of Marathi in Dharwar showed a complete
shift towards a Kannada-like agreement pattern in transitive perfective clauses, some
variability was observed in the Bijapur sample; Kannada-like agreement was predominant in
the Bijapur sample. Data collected in the border village of Hittani (in the state of Karnataka)

13
Examples of this linguistic feature from the present data were informally checked for acceptability with KuM
speakers: the less educated speakers reported acceptability of all the elicited possibilities; the more educated
speakers tended to report the standard-like alternative as “more correct” though the non-standard-like variants
were not judged as being incorrect. This observation may suggest that the range of acceptability of variation in a
contact area is greater than that found outside the contact area.

13
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showed a cross-generational pattern of variation identical to that in KuM. In both KuM and in
Hittani Marathi, standard Marathi-like agreement dominated.

120

100

80

60
Variation
40
Marathi-like
20

Figure 6: Frequency of Marathi-like agreement in the transitive perfective clause in varieties

of Marathi spoken in Kupwar (south Maharashtra), Hittani (north Karnataka), Bijapur and
Dharwar (Karnataka).14

To summarise: The following points of interest emerged from the examination of

verbal agreement in the transitive perfective clause in KuM. Unlike G&W‟s observation that
the contact varieties of KuM and KuK had converged on a common agreement pattern
modelled on Kannada, the present study showed variation in KuM. In other words, KuM and
KuK had not reached complete intertranslatability as claimed by G&W. Further, Marathi-like
agreement was predominant in KuM across age groups. Younger speakers of KuM appeared
to have moved to a more standard Marathi-like usage. Cross-generational usage of the
particular linguistic feature in KuM was identical to that in the cross-border variety of
Marathi in Hittani village; KuM usage was, however, unlike that in contiguous Bijapur and in
non-contiguous Dharwar.

4.3 Reported speech marking in Kupwar Kannada (KuK)

Let us now move to a contact-induced linguistic feature of KuK reported by G&W.15 They
observed that speakers of KuK used the subordinating conjunction ki to mark off reported
speech (while standard Kannada uses ənt, a fossilised form of the verb endu „to say‟ as a
quotative). Further, the Dravidian non-finite participial constructions were reported to have
been replaced by the Indo-Aryan construction, conjunction + finite clause, under the
influence of Marathi. Thus, corresponding to the embedded clause + the main clause (=S2S1)

14
The analysis of agreement in the transitive perfective clause is based on the following number of tokens:
Kupwar 58 tokens from 8 speakers; Hittani 62 tokens from 9 speakers; Bijapur 13 tokens from one sample;
Dharwar sample 1–11 tokens; Dharwar sample 2–5 tokens. Of these, the Kupwar (District Sangli) and Hittani
(District. Belgaum) data were collected by the author. Bijapur and Dharwar data are from Grierson (1905).
15
Upadhye (1971) and Sridhar (1981) discuss other examples of Marathi/Indo-Aryan influence on contact
varieties of Kannada.

14
JSALL [Type text] Draft

order of clauses in standard Kannada, main clause + the embedded clause (= S1S2) was
reported for KuK.

On comparing the 1971 observations with those in the present study we find
considerable variation in the use of the syntactic strategy for marking reported speech in
KuK. Contrary to G&W‟s observation, no instance of the subordinating conjunction ki was
observed in the present data for KuK. Further, the data show variation in the sequence of the
main and embedded clauses (see examples 16-19 below).

16. KuK
ni nəna kərd yakə ənt makəɖ keɭitə
you-NOM. me.DAT. called why QUOT monkey asked
Why have you called me, the monkey asked.

17. KuK
aytə aki əntaɭu nim uʈək maɖidanu niw uʈa maɖi hogli
that she.NOM. said you- to (I) have you meal make go.HON.
over DAT. eat made HON.
After that, she said, (I) have made food for you, you eat and then go.

18. KuK
bək swamigoɭ heɭtaɭu məina ni dhyeir bid baɭ
then swami told Maina you courage leave not
HON.
Then the Swami said, Maina, you don't lose courage.

19. KuK
məina aintaɭu nənd nəʃibdag aintav ida aintav ʃikta
Maina says my fate.LOC. which is that find
Maina says, that which is in my fate, (I) will get.

While we see a Kannada-like S2S1 clause sequence in example 16, in 17–19 we see a
Marathi/Indo-Aryan (IA)-like S1S2 clause sequence in reported speech. The Marathi-like
S1S2 clause sequence was predominantly observed in KuK. However, there was complete
absence of overt ki in KuK. Next, we used sociolinguistic quantitative methods to calculate
the frequencies with which the S1S2 sequence occurred vis-à-vis the S2S1 sequence in KuK
(83 tokens from stories narrated by six speakers were available for analysis). The results of
this analysis are plotted in graph form in Fig. 7.

15
JSALL [Type text] Draft

120

100

80

60 S2S1
S1S2
40

20

0
KupOld KupYoung

Figure 7: Relative frequencies of use of S1S2/S2S1 clause sequences among old and young
KuK speakers in reported speech

We make the following observations based on this analysis: both old and young speakers of
KuK predominantly used the IA clause sequence S1S2 in reported speech. We observed a
slight increase in the frequency with which the S2S1 sequence was used among the younger
speakers. Significantly for this study, we noted variation between the two clause sequences
among all KuK speakers.

Next, we compared KuK data with narrative data available from six other contact
varieties of Kannada (source: Grierson‟s LSI, Vol. IV, 1906). Of the six contact varieties of
Kannada documented by Grierson (Table 3), three (Madras, Kurumwari and Badaga) are
deep in the Dravidian-speaking area while the remaining three varieties (Belgaum, Bijapur
and Bhandara) are in contact with IA languages. Let us first make a note of presence/absence
of IA/Dravidian complementisers in reported speech in contact varieties of Kannada. We
notice that, of the Kannada varieties in the proximity of IA languages, the conjunction ki
reported by G&W for KuK was present only in the Bhandara variety which is deep within the
IA-speaking region.

Table 3: Presence or absence of complementisers ənt (Drav.) and‘ki’ (IA) in contact varieties
of Kannada (data from Grierson 1906)
Madras Kurumvari Badaga Belgaum Bijapur Bhandara

Verbal
participle ənt √ √ √ X X X
Complementiser X X X X X √
ki
(√ indicates presence and X indicates absence)

Further, we quantified the relative frequencies of S1S2 and S2S1 in the eight varieties
documented by Grierson (1906). This quantitative analysis is based on the following number
of tokens (indicated in parentheses): Madras (7), Badaga (8), Kurumwari (12), Belgaum (7),
Bijapur (6), Golar-1 (4), Golar-2 (9), Golar-3 (7). We notice that the linguistic outcome for
these contact varieties is not the same. As in KuK, we observe variation in the sequence of

16
JSALL [Type text] Draft

main and embedded clauses in the Belgaum and Kurumwari samples from the early twentieth
century (see Figure 8). The Bijapur and Golar samples of contact Kannada (which are in
close proximity with IA languages), however, support G&W‟s 1971 description of complete
convergence towards the Marathi model. No instance of the IA S1S2 is observed in the
Madras and Badaga varieties of Kannada which are in contact with other Dravidian
languages.

Figure 8: Relative frequencies of S1S2 and S2S1 clause sequences in eight dialects of Kannada (Based on
Grierson 1906). S1 = main clause, S2 = embedded clause .

To sum up our observations in the analysis of the linguistic feature „reported speech‟
in KuK: unlike G&W‟s observation, we noted an absence of the IA complementiser ki; we
also noted variation in the sequence of the main and reported clauses. The IA-like S1S2
sequence dominated in KuK speech. Contact varieties of Kannada outside the immediate
contact situation showed linguistic outcomes which differ from KuK. Clause ordering in the
1906 sample of Belgaum Kannada, which adjoins the Sangli district, is identical to that in
KuK today. Significantly, these varieties of Kannada in contact with Marathi have not
completely converged on the Marathi model as was suggested by the G&W study.

5. Discussion
I first summarise my re-examination of G&W‟s observation regarding morpheme-by-
morpheme intertranslatability presented in Section 4 of the paper. With regard to the
linguistic feature „Gender categorisation‟, the survival of the feminine forms as well as
masculine and neuter forms of the adjectives indicates no simplification as far as the
inflectional system of adjectives and verbal agreement is concerned. Similarly, with regard to
agreement in transitive perfective clauses, we find in KuM (and in KuH-U) the ergative
construction as it occurs in the standard varieties of the language. In addition we find two
alternatives involving presence or absence of instrumental marking on the agent NP and
verbal agreement with the case-marked or case-unmarked NP. We observed variation in the
marking of the reported clause in KuK too. So, far from leading to reduction and
simplification as claimed by G&W, the contact situation has led to an expansion of morpho-
syntactic options and complexification within the grammatical system. Instances where
categories have been completely simplified/reduced (e.g. use of the copula and loss of
separate accusative marking suffix in KuK; not dealt with in the present paper) are fewer than
those where the contact has created parallelisms. This evidence suggests that, in areas where
Marathi-Kannada contact has occurred in the border areas, the overall tendency has been for

17
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expansion rather than reduction and simplification. It is therefore difficult to accept the
„convergence followed by creolisation‟ view for Kupwar as was proposed by G&W. (Though
contact situations involving diaspora revealed different outcomes.) Studies of contact
elsewhere have similarly observed that grammars are likely to become more complex as a
result of language contact (e.g. Aikhenvald 2002).

A possible reason for the difference in the patterns of variation observed in the present
study and the evidence for convergence-leading-to-reduction reported by G&W may be the
following. G&W may have reported in 1971 one end of the bilingual individual‟s complex
speech repertoire ignoring the alternatives which must have existed at the time. It appears that
the specific methodology used by G&W had failed to capture the variation evident in the
Kupwar data. There is reason to believe that Gumperz was aware of the variation (Kulkarni-
Joshi 2011). I refer here to his 1967 paper, which, as far as I am aware, is not quoted by
historical linguists writing about language convergence in Kupwar. While the 1971 article
excludes any discussion of the methodology used in conducting the study, we find useful
stretches on the methodology in the 1967 article (the procedure described below matches the
description given by one of my collaborators in 2010, a retired school-teacher who, as a
college-going student in the1960s, had assisted G&W in translating the tape-recorded
Kupwar data in the language laboratory at the Deccan College, Pune):

“In evaluating the significance of the above data, it must be kept in mind,
however, that our sample was somewhat biased when compared to what is
normally understood as bilingual behaviour. In attempting to see whether it is
possible for one speaker to speak two languages using the same set of
grammatical categories, we confined ourselves only to those speech varieties
which are regularly used in bilingual interaction. (p. 52).” […]

“The following data collection procedure was employed. Tape recorded

samples in two languages were collected from bilingual speakers interacting in
natural settings. Texts originally recorded in Language A were then retold
orally in Language B by other native speakers and texts recorded in Language
B were retold in Language A. Story retelling in a different language is
common in daily interaction, so that informants found it an easy and quite
natural task. Most sentences in the derived texts were in fact direct translation
equivalents of the originals. Since we were interested in determining the
minimum number of differences necessary for utterances to be perceived as
distinct languages by their speakers, translations were further edited to
substitute translation equivalents so as to minimize the language distance in
those instances where different expressions had been used. A third group of
bilinguals was asked to check each translated text individually to judge its
grammaticality.” (p. 54, emphasis added).

The implications of the Kupwar findings are significant for the intertranslatability
model which is commonly referred to in studies of linguistic convergence. In writings on the
products of language contact situations, convergence is distinguished from borrowing (e.g.
Thomason 2001). Convergence areas are said to be marked by high degrees of mutual
intertranslatability. The languages in contact are intertranslatable to the extent that the task of
the language learner is confined to inserting the appropriate lexical and grammatical forms to
move from one language to another (Heine and Kuteva 2005: 180). Such morpheme-by-

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morpheme intertranslatability in convergence areas presents exciting possibilities for theory

building in contact linguistics. Intertranslatability has been discussed under various rubrics
including „pattern transfer‟ (Heath 1978), metatypy (Ross 2001) and partial or selective
copies (Johanson 2002), translational equivalence and isomorphism (though
intertranslatability may not always lead to isomorphism, i.e. the tendency for languages in
multilingual areas to develop similar constructions). Among the documented cases of
intertranslatability may be mentioned the Vaupés region of north-west Amazonia involving
East Tucanoan languages and the Arawak language, Tariana (Aikhenvald 2002) and the
contact situation involving modern Srilankan Malay, modern Srilankan Portuguese and Tamil
where Tamil has provided the model (Bakker 2000).

G&W (154-155) observed that constant code-switching in daily interactions among

the local codes in Kupwar had led to an extraordinary degree of translatability from one
utterance to another. The local varieties had attained identical grammatical structure and
identical constituent structure (p. 154) making it possible to translate from one code into the
other by simple morph-by-morph substitution. They therefore concluded that codes used in
code-switching situations in Kupwar have a single syntactic surface structure (p. 155,
emphasis in original). Aikhenvald (2002: 240) compared the contact situation in Vaupés with
that in Kupwar and concluded that the end-result of diffusion in both cases seemed to be one
whereby almost full intertranslatability was achieved. However, as was suggested above, in
the Kupwar case, G&W‟s proposal for intertranslatability with each language retaining its
lexical material is not without problems; the proposal may in fact have been an artefact of the
particular methodology used in the study.16 The examples from KuM and KuK cited above
suggest that the structural reduction and simplification implicit in the intertranslatability
model had perhaps never been achieved in the Kupwar varieties.

Our final observation is of interest specifically to the case of Marathi-Kannada

contact. In the present study we compared patterns of diffusion in our Kupwar data with
those in other border villages and also with historical data from contact situations involving
Marathi and Dravidian languages. The comparison revealed patterns of variation in both
contemporary and historical data in the contact areas. The measurement of relative
frequencies of competing forms using standard sociolinguistic quantitative methods revealed
shared patterns of variation in border villages; these in turn pointed to the approximate extent
of a possible micro-linguistic area at the frontier of the Marathi- and Kannada-speaking
regions. Political contiguity, caste-based professions, and regular face-to-face interactions
emerging from caste-based economic interdependence at the village level may have been
some of the factors which had facilitated bilingualism and shared grammars in the past,
leading to the formation of the proposed micro-linguistic area. However, this traditionally
bilingual Marathi-Kannada-speaking region has in the recent past been subject to the
consequences of linguistic reorganisation. In 1960 the bilingual region was reorganised into
two distinct states each with a separate, officially sponsored language, each belonging to a
different language family. In spite of the reorganisation, patterns of variation and structural
parallels in the particular linguistic features have not been completely obscured; these
patterns or parallel structures must have been established at an earlier time in the history of

16
Convergence is usually defined as involving structural similarities among the languages in contact with little or no lexical
diffusion. In the present study, speakers of both KuK and KuU freely imported Marathi lexical items: Thus pəʈa pəʈa goɭa
maɖi (= gather (it) quickly) is an acceptable KuK sentence, where only the verb maɖi (= to do) is Kannada. Similarly, a
heavy incursion of Marathi words into KuU was observed. une əpne aʋɖi nusar kərtəi (= he does it according to his own
liking) is an acceptable KuU sentence in which the phrase aʋɖi nusar (= according to (one‟s) liking) is Marathi. This, again,
contrasts with G&W‟s observation that, while the three languages in contact remained distinct at the morpho-phonemic
(lexical) level, only structural rules were borrowed in Kupwar.

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the contact. This was evident from comparing present-day variation in villages (such as
Kupwar, Hittani and Hukkeri) which are adjacent to the inter-state boundary. The privileging
of Marathi in the state of Maharashtra may be accelerating the shift towards standard
Marathi-like linguistic features as was suggested in 4.2.1 by the age-graded data on KuM.
Putting these observations (i.e. (i) increased use of standard Marathi-like gender classification
and agreement in the transitive perfective clause in KuM of younger speakers on the one
hand and (ii) little or no difference in the strategies used for marking reported speech by
younger and older speakers of KuK) together, the picture that emerges for today‟s Kupwar is
one of divergence.

6. Conclusion
This study reported on a revisit of the language contact situation in the village of Kupwar
which has been a desideratum in Indian contact linguistics. The socio-historical approach was
used to present synchronic and historical data suggesting patterns of variation in three
convergence features, tokens of which were obtained from narrative data. We observed
variation, i.e. structural parallels leading to complexification in the Kupwar contact varieties.
This situation may not be unlike the transitional overlapping stage in language internal
change (in which a historically earlier structure occurs in combination with a historically later
structure). The present study pointed to problems in accepting for Kupwar a model based on
processes of reduction and simplification leading to intertranslatability. Further, it was
tentatively suggested that shared patterns of variation between contact varieties of Marathi
and Kannada at the local level may be indicative of a micro linguistic area at the Marathi-
Kannada frontier in south Maharashtra/north Karnataka. A dialectology of other border
dialects will confirm the geographical extent of this convergence area. Finally, linguistic
reorganisation of the region in 1960 was proposed as the prima facie cause of recent language
change and divergence in the region.

Abbreviations used

1 first person
2 second person
3 third person
AUX auxiliary
BE copula verb „be‟
DAT dative
EMPH emphasis
ERG ergative
F feminine
G&W Gumperz and Wilson
GEN genitive
HON honorific
KuK Kupwar Kannada
KuM Kupwar Marathi
LOC locative
M masculine
N neuter
NOM nominative
OBL oblique
PERF perfect
POSS possessive
PRST present
PST past

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PTCP participle
QUOT quotative
S singular

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