Page 579 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

CHAPTER 15
TYPOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

15.0 Outline
The main goal of this chapter is to explore the typological implications of the
study. A natural language in general is structured according to different patterns at the

level of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, revealing a number of
structural features (Finegan, 1989:224). No matter how different structural features a

particular language exhibits, the basic principles known as language universals that
regulate the structure of a language, underscore the unity underlying the diversity

across the languages of the world. In order to explore such typological implications of
the study, in this chapter, we first make an attempt to compare the structural features

in the Bhojpuri language to the common characteristic features of the New Indo-
Aryan languages proposed mainly in Masica (1976[2005]), Masica (1991), Zograph
(1982), Abbi (2001) and Cardona and Jain (2003) then we highlight some striking

features of the language.
This chapter consists of two sections. Section 15.1 presents phonological

implications and section 15.2 discusses morphosyntactic implications.
15.1 Phonological implications

In this section we try to compare the structural features of Bhojpuri with the
common Indo-Aryan features in the domains of phonology. Bhojpuri shares a number

of phonological feature characteristics to the Indo-Aryan languages in general,
however, exhibits some phonological features that cut across the language family.
Such features have been referred to as the South Asian features rather than Indian

areal features in this study (cf. Masica 1976 and Abbi 2001). As far as possible, we
explore the language universals which underscore the unity.

15.1.1 Consonants
(a) Stop positions
"There are five basic tongue positions for Indo-Aryan stops as have also been

noted in Sanskrit: labial, dental, retroflex, palatal and velar: प /p/, त /t/, ट /ʈ/, च /c/ and क

/k/" (Masica, 1991:94). Bhojpuri attests bilabial, dental and velar stops as Masica
(1991:94) displays but it has apico-alveolar stops in place of retroflex ones and alveo-

palatal affricates in place of palatal stops. It can be regarded as functional adaptation as
we observe its close neighbours in a greater extent, already discussed in Chapter 3.1.

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