Doctoral Dissertation Research on Ho Morphophonology and Morphosyntax with Documentation

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

The project is a comprehensive analysis of the verbal system of Ho, a North Munda language spoken in Central Eastern India. The primary aims are to document authentic examples of connected fluent text and to provide an analyzed body of elicited verb forms, as well as simple and complex clauses, and to develop a typologically and theoretically-informed analysis of Ho verb forms. As the first detailed linguistic analysis of Ho verbs, this project contributes to Munda linguistics particularly, as well as to Austro-Asiatic and South Asian studies more generally. Ho verbal morphology is highly complex and agglutinating. Thus far, there is no complete description of the morphemes that appear in the verb. As well as describing the morphemes individually, the project addresses the nature of the apparent mismatch between phonological and grammatical words in Ho; transitivity in Ho verbs including valence-changing affixes and clause-level transitivity; and serial and compound verbs in Ho in order to understand how auxiliation works in this highly agglutinating language. The research is conducted collaboratively with native Ho speakers in Jharkhand, India. The project is based in Ranchi, working with Ho-speaking university students, but also involves travel to villages around Chaibasa to make recordings of older, specifically female, speakers. The single most important long-term benefit of this project is the documentation and preservation of the Ho language by the Ho people themselves. The Ho language is currently in daily use by its speakers; however, nearly all speakers are bilingual with Hindi and other regional languages, such as Oriya (Indo-Aryan). This project helps raise awareness among native speakers that the time to document the language is now, while it is still in daily use.