Reviews Of Different Books

Page 31

REVIEWS 237 Although Kannada is the main language of Mysore state, Tulu is the principal mothertongue in South Kanara district; and the Barkur area, Acharya tells us in his preface, is something of a linguistic island. Data was collected during a two-month period, principally from a single educated Brahmin speaker. The data presumably reflect informal speech; but since the informant no doubt knows formal Literary Kannada too, we might wish that Acharya had given us a little sociolinguistic commentary. One wonders, too, what the non-Brahmin speech of Barkur may be like. However, Acharya's description is purely descriptive, and follows a classic pattern of taxonomic structuralist linguistics: the divisions are (1) Phonology, (2) Morphology, (3) Texts, and (4) Vocabulary. The focus is on the word, rather than the sentence, to such an extent that even the rules of external sandhi are given, not under Phonology, but as a section introducing the Texts; and there is no explicit analysis of syntax. It appears that more monographs on this same model may be forthcoming: nine titles are announced in the "Linguistic Survey of India series", including two others by Acharya himself (although the present work is no. 6 in the series, it is apparently the first one published). This is a little discouraging: Acharya is careful, systematic, and thoroughly competent within the framework of his model; but this is a model which was taught at Deccan College in the 1950's. Since then, linguistics has changed, in India and around the world. Considering the skill and energy of the authors in this series, it would be a pity if we were to receive from them only relatively superficial descriptions. A look at the Barkur vowels, as presented by Acharya (pp. 1-5) will illustrate what I mean. The system is said by him to have short and long vowels in eight qualities: ie a oui. Is this really an important departure from the five-vowel system of the Dravidian literary languages? An examination of Acharya's data suggests that it is not: thus, most of his occurrences of & occur before a syllable containing a low vowel (ele 'leaf', pe:te 'market), and e generally occurs elsewhere (eru 'ant', e:ti 'blow'). There are indeed some surface contrasts of ε with e, e.g. herge 'outside' vs. herge childbirth'; but the alternative form herige and the stem heri 'to give birth' (pp. 100-01) suggest underlying forms/herage/ 'outside' vs. /herige/ 'childbirth', with lowering of e to a when a low vowel follows. Similarly, o generally has a low vowel in the next syllable (@le oven', ko:te 'fort'), as compared with o (koai give', o:li 'palm leaf'). Of the exceptions, some are like toli 'to wash', cf. toli 'to step'; but it is noteworthy that although No Barkur verbs end in e, Literary Kannada has such verbs, including tole 'to wash'. It is evident that Barkur shows the same metaphony, lowering e o to respectively, as do many other Kannada dialects: first tole becomes tole, then a separate change of final e to i (only in verbs, for Barkur) results in toli 'wash'. Other surface occurrences of Barkur o in examples like ko]ke "third crop' vs. kolke 'a hook can be understood in the light of the corresponding Literary forms kolake and kolike, kolike respectively. And metaphony is not merely a historical explanation here: Literary Kannada, showing the underlying 5-vowel system, is undoubtedly in the active repertory of Acharya's educated informant, and in the passive repertory of even illiterate Barkureans.3 What of Barkur i ti, also absent in Literary Kannada? Acharya notes that i never 1 An example like etta 'where' (p. 1) evidently requires a special explanation; but it should not obscure the marginal nature of the e-e contrast in this dialect. 3 Cf. W. Bright, "Dravidian metaphony", Language 42 (1966), pp. 311-22, esp. pp. 317. 8 Cf. W. Bright, "Phonological rules in Literary and Colloquial Kannada", JAOS, 90 (1970), pp. 140-44. An example like Barkur koda 'he cannot give' (cf. koda "pot) requires a special explanation: I suspect that low vowels in the inflectional endings of verbs do not cause metaphony in this dialect.