Page 557 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

‘In the family, a widow had two sons.’ (10.003)
Besides, Bhojpuri has usage that neither take any indefinite or definite

particles for the referents, rather, they are semantically identified with context, as
shown in (26a-c).
In example (26a), the indefinite adjective कौनो /kɔno/ ‘some’ is employed to

code the nominal देश /des/ ‘country’ and numeral एगो /eɡo/ ‘one-CLF’ to code another

noun गाँव /ɡɑo/ ‘village’ as indefinite. In contrast, in example (26b), the nominal गाँव
̃
̃
/ɡɑo/ ‘village’ is neither coded by any indefinites nor by any demonstratives. But
contextually, it is obvious that its second entry in the discourse confirms its
definiteness. Similar is the case of the nominal प[रवार /pʌriwar/ ‘family’ in the

examples (26b-c).
In many other languages, the grammatical morphology marks just as distinctly
the contrast between referring and non-referring indefinites (Givón 2001a: 450). We

look at some of the more common grammaticalized patterns of marking referring-
indefinite nominals as follows:

Examples (25-26) clarify that the numeral एगो /eɡo/ ‘one-CLF’ is used to mark

indefiniteness and demonstratives to mark definiteness in Bhojpuri. Besides,
indefiniteness and definiteness are identified contextually, too.

14.4.2 Suffixes for definiteness
Similar to Maithili (Yadav, 1998), Bhojpuri has definiteness marker suffixes

-आ /-ɑ/, -वा /-wɑ/, -आवा /-ɑwɑ/ and -का /-kɑ/ attached with nominals as well as with
adjectives for definiteness, as shown in (27a-d):

(27) a. लइका एगो िप*ी तोड़के बु*ढ़आ के कहलक, ‘गे बु*ढ़आ दाई, िप,ठआ भुइआँ म1 िगरा दी ँ ?’

lʌikɑ eɡo piʈʈʰi toɽke buɽ ̊ iɑ ke kʌɦlʌk
lʌikɑ ek-ɡo piʈʈʰi toɽ-ke buɽ ̊ -i-ɑ ke kʌɦ-ʌl-ʌkʰ
boy one-CLF cake pluck-SEQ old-F-DEF ACC say-PP-3.PST

ɡe buɽ ̊ iɑ dɑi piʈʈʰiɑ b̤ uiɑ ̃ mẽ ɡirɑ
ɡe buɽ ̊ -i-ɑ dɑi piʈʈʰi-ɑ b ̤ uiɑ ̃ mẽ ɡir-ɑ
VOC.F old-F-DEF grandma cake-DEF ground LOC fall-CAUS

dĩ
de-ĩ

give-HORT

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