Page 555 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

properties, which would then indicate their potential topical/thematic importance in
the subsequent discourse. In English, for instance, 'a pen' in the clause “My son

bought a pen.” is an indefinite but a referential noun phrase. In Bhojpuri, such noun
phrases code the most discontinuous topics, as in (24a-b).

(24) a. राजु गाय दुही ।
rɑju ɡɑe duɦi

rɑju ɡɑe duɦ-i
Raju cow milk-3SG.FUT

'Raju will milk a cow.' (06.013)
b. हम ओके *कताब देनी ।

ɦʌm oke kitɑb deni
ɦʌm u-e kitɑb de-ni

1SG 3SG-DAT book give-PST.H
'I gave him a book.' (06.008)

In (24a) गाय /ɡɑe/ 'a cow' and in (24b) *कताब /kitɑb/ 'a book' are indefinite and
referential noun phrases in Bhojpuri in most dicontinuous topics.

14.4 Reference and definiteness
"The grammatical coding of reference in human language turns out to be

highly sensitive to the discourse-pragmatic – extra-clausal – context, especially when
communicative pragmatics conflicts with propositional semantics, snf as the

antecedence of definite NPs in naturally-produced text is almost always to be found
outside the atomic clause and one must invoke various hearer-anchored systems that

transcend the speaker’s propositional meaning, definiteness turns out to be a
pragmatic rather than semantic entity textually or cognitively" (Givón 2001a:437).
The correlation between reference and definiteness in Bhojpuri is discussed

as follows:
14.4.1 Grammatical marking of indefinite and definite reference

As Khatiwada (2016:173) describes Dhimal, there is no separate set of definite
and indefinite articles, in Bhojpuri unlike in English, however, some strategies are

employed to indicate whether a referent is definite or indefinite. The indefinite
pronominal adjective कौनो /kɔno/ ‘any/some’ and the numeral with classifier एगो /ek-

ɡo/ 'one-CLF' function as indefinite reference marker in Bhojpuri. The definite

527