Page 156 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

'What (all) will the government do now?
d. तू कथी-कथी िखअइबऽ ?

tu kʌtʰi kʌtʰi kʰiʌibʌ
tu kʌtʰi kʌtʰi kʰiɑ-i bʌ

2.NOM what what feed-FUT be.2FUT.MH
'What (all) will you have me eat?'

In examples (12a-d) the reduplicated question words encode the sense of
plurality.

(ii) Gender
Like its number system, Bhojpuri has two genders: masculine and feminine

(Grierson 1884a:1-7, Ojha 1915[1982]:7-10, Tiwari 1954:413 and 1960:105,
Shrivastava 1999:44, Sharma and Ashk 2007:29, Singh 2009:80 and 2013:80 and
Thakur 2011:56) as exhibited in Chitoniya Tharu (Paudyal 2013:102), Maithili

(Yadav 1996:63), Awadhi (Saksena 1937/1971:112), Hindi (Koul 2008:33) and
Nepali (Adhikari 2016:33). They are morphological, lexical and grammatical though

dropped eastwards as in Maithili (Yadav 1996:63). Regarding morphological change,
feminine is suffixed by -इ /-i/ and -इन /-in/ as shown in (13a-g).

(13) Masculine Feminine

a. घोड़ा घोड़ी
ɡ ̈ oɽɑ ɡ ̈ oɽi

ɡ ̈ oɽ-ɑ ɡ ̈ oɽ-i
horse-M horse-F
'horse' 'mare'

b. भइँसा भइँसी

b ̤ ʌĩsɑ b ̤ ʌĩsi
b ̤ ʌĩs-ɑ b ̤ ʌĩs-i

buffalo-M buffalo-F
'he-buffalo' 'she-bufallo'

c. बेटा बेटी
beʈɑ beʈi

beʈ-ɑ beʈ-i
issue-M issue-F

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