Page 36 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

on contemporary Bhojpuri language and literature; two radio monologues on the
topics of Agriculture and Raxabandhan festival; and clauses expressing different

situations in neighbourhood along with procedural activities were selected and
analyzed. Moreover, a conversation between two villagers was extracted from
3
Grierson (1884a), analyzed and included in the texts.
1.4.2 Analysis and instances
Digital audio recorder, audio editor (Audacity 2.2.2), Praat and Toolbox

softwares were the tools utilized to obtain, process and analyze the data. The
computer softwares "Audacity 2.2.2" and “Praat” were used to analyze devoicing

sonorant consonants for phonological analysis. The oral texts were analyzed by using
the computer software "Toolbox". The data collected were cross-checked with other

native speakers of the language. As a native speaker of Bhojpuri, the researcher's
intuition about the language was also utilized.
In this study, abundance of instances have been provided at word and sentence

levels in descriptions of phonological, morpho-phonological, morphological and
morphosyntactic aspects of Bhojpuri. They are presented as following:

(a) The word or sentence is first presented in Devanagari script, so that, the
native speakers, especially literate in only Devanagari script, can also be

benefitted.
(b) Such words and sentences are transliterated in IPA (International Phonetic

Alphabet) below Devanagari presentation.
(c) The transliterated IPA presentation is broken into morphemes. If
morpheme-break is indifferent from its initial IPA presentation, this step is

probably omitted.
(d) The lexical items of the morphemes are translated into English and the

grammatical items are presented with their functional terminology in
abbreviated form according to Leipzig glossing rules as far as practicable.
(e) At last, the free translation of the word or sentence is presented below each

example.
As a model of grammatical description and analysis of the language, the

functional-typological grammar developed mainly by Givón (2001a and b) with

3. Please see Annex I for details of the informants.
10