Page 188 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

'The wells are drying up following the earthquake.' (09.413)
In examples (62a-b), िगर /ɡir/ 'fall' in (62a) and सुख /sukʰ/ 'dry up' in (62b)

neither perform action nor involve mental activity.
b) Syntactic properties

Except Kashmiri, all Indo-Aryan languages are verb-final (Subbārāo 2012:40).
Consequently, Bhojpuri is a verb-final language as its close IA neighbours Chitoniya

Tharu (Paudyal 2013:188), Maithili (Yadav 1996:151), Awadhi (Saksena
1937/1971:247), Hindi (Koul 2008:95) and Nepali (Adhikari 2016:171), i.e., the most

common position of the finite verb is clause final. However, Bhojpuri verbs may take
any position in a sentence due to some discourse pragmatic factors like focus and
2
contrast. Regarding frequency distribution, the verbs normally occur clause-finally
and function as the main predicate of the clause, as shown in (63a-c).

(63) a. ऊ खुबसुरत िबआ ।
u kʰubsurʌt biɑ

u kʰubsurʌt biɑ
3SG.NOM beautiful be.3.SG.PRES.F
'She is beautiful.' (09.500)

b. भइआ खाए गइनी ।

b ̤ ʌiɑ kʰɑe ɡʌini
b ̤ ʌiɑ kʰɑ-e jɑ-ini
elder brother eat-PUR go-PST.H

'Elder brother went to eat.' (09.508)
c. िबआ उखाड़ ।

biɑ ukʰɑɽ
biɑ ukʰɑɽ

seedlings uproot
'Uproot the seedlings.' (09.511)

In examples (63a-c), the finite verbs verbs िबआ /biɑ/ 'is' in in (63a), गइनी /ɡʌini/

'went' in (63b) and उखाड़ /ukʰɑɽ/ 'uproot' in (63c) are all in clause-final position.
c) Morphological properties

TAM and pronominal agreement markers are commonly found in
grammatical-inflectional morphology of verb in Bhojpuri. These properties will be

2. We have discussed the discourse pragmatic features of Bhojpuri in Chapter 13.

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