Page 610 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

In the domain of action continuity tense/aspect markers and participial clauses are
used as morphosyntactic devices in Bhojpuri. The narrative and procedural discourse

show the sequentiality of events. The thematic continuity is coded by sequential
participial clauses in Bhojpuri.

16.2 Conclusions
Bhojpuri is an SOV nominative-accusative New Indo-Aryan language. It
reveals a number of striking features that may be typologically interesting.

Phonologically it has six aspirate sonorant consonants; three of them are nasal, one is
retroflex, one is flap and the last one is lateral. Triphthongization in Bhojpuri is also

its own inventory. Stress is phonemic in Bhojpuri to obtain causative verb-roots. It
exhibits smaller-greater order of counting in general and the number higher than 100

is subjoined to the lower one with which it is compounded by means of -उ7र /-uttʌr/
'above' and this morphological process continues from 101 till 118. Likewise, a

connecting vowel -आ /-ɑ/ is interposed instead of -उ7र /-uttʌr/ from 119 to 168,

except in the case of 140, 150 and 160. In the rest below 200, the form used to express
160 remains the same, i.e., the lower numeral precedes 100. The present tense copula

बा /bɑ/ 'be' with its negative counterpart नइख /nʌikʰ/ 'not to be' is its uniqe property.
Besides, declension of adverbs for not only emphasis but also for derivation of other

word classes is also typologically significant in Bhojpuri. Besides these, Bhojpuri has
developed its own prefixes and infixes, peculiar in the NIA languages. Likewise, the

verbless utterances in relative clauses are also significant. The clause-final plural
marker particles सन /sʌn/, स /sʌ/ and जा /jɑ/ are uniqe in the language. Appearance of

allocutive agreement and absence of grammatical gender-marking eastwards are
interesting phenomena in Bhojpuri.

Besides these, an attempt to discuss noun phrases and word order, marked
topics and contrastive focus and reference coherence in Bhojpuri is some how

different from the grammars of Bhojpuri displayed earlier.
To conclude, the grammars of Bhojpuri previously look based upon Sanskrit,

English, Bengali and Hindi what Singh (2008) has very clearly questioned upon.
Thus, this study appears as a grammar of Bhojpuri on its own following the

theoretical framework of functional-typological and adaptive approaches to grammar
mainly developed by Givón (2001a, 2001b and 2009), though insights from others
have also been followed where necessary.

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