A new survey of the Indo-Aryan languages.

• Author: Masica, Colin P.
• Position: Book review

In terms of the number of languages involved as well as in the length and quality of its historical documentation, the Indo-Aryan subfamily arguably constitutes the largest subfield in Indo-European studies. It is blessed in addition with an ancient indigenous tradition of sophisticated linguistic analysis. It accordingly merits a work of this encyclopedic size and scope. The approach of this volume complements that of the Cambridge volume of the same title by this reviewer. Whereas the latter work, like other volumes in the Cambridge series, presents an overview of the field by topic, this volume is a language-by-language compendium of in-depth studies by scholars specializing in each language, a number of whom are also native speakers.

Sixteen major modern ("New") Indo-Aryan languages are thus described, plus briefer accounts of a number of minor Northwestern languages under the rubric of "Dardic." In addition, there are three chapters treating earlier stages ("Old," "Middle") of Indo-Aryan, namely Sanskrit, Asokan [= early] Prakrit and Pali, and later ["Literary"] Prakrit and Apabhramsa, as well as a chapter on writing systems (a complicated matter with at least eight scripts in contemporary use, not to mention earlier varieties) and one on sociolinguistics. All are substantial, ranging from seventeen pages on Magahi to sixty-five pages on Urdu--and seventy-seven pages on the "Dardic" languages. Some of these (e.g., on Assamese, Oriya, Maithili, Magahi, Bhojpuri, Sindhi, Konkani, and Kashmiri) are especially valuable because, until recently at least, comprehensive modern descriptions of these languages have not been available. There is also a lengthy (45 pp.) general introduction.

It is impossible for any one individual to possess the collective breadth and depth of expertise of all these specialists and native speakers; in any case, this reviewer certainly does not. Hence, there is no question of being able to critique the accuracy of all the data presented. One can only assume that, given the qualifications of the writers and the seriousness with which they have approached their task, it is generally sound. I will confine myself to pointing out those inconsistencies and typographical mistakes that have attracted my attention and escaped the editors' scrutiny--and which also may be misleading in a work of reference as this is intended to be--where unfortunately nothing short of perfection will do. There are remarkably few such errors in a work of such complexity.

The ideal of comprehensiveness was perhaps impossible to meet, and there are important lacunae in coverage. As the editors themselves point out with regret, explaining that no scholars could be found who were competent to write about them, these include the languages of Rajasthan (e.g., Marwari) and the Pahari group (e.g., Kumauni, Garhwali). Perhaps that is true, but it is not true of an important case (not least for historical-comparative purposes) that goes unmentioned, namely that of Romani, a subject to which several competent scholars now devote themselves (although to be fair, this may not have been so clear at the initiation of the project in 1997). It may be argued that the volume is already too long at 1,061+ pages. Some of this is unnecessary, however: there is considerable overlap and repetition among some of the chapters. (For example, in many chapters there is the labored repetition of the principles on which Indic scripts work--that the consonants have an inherent vowel, modified by various other vowel signs, that initial vowels have independent symbols, etc.) This may have been unavoidable, but judicious pruning might have left room for some of the omitted material.

The task of the editors was an unenviable if not impossible one, for the same reasons that make that of the reviewer difficult. One therefore wonders whether, beyond a basic perusal, each author was made basically responsible for his or her own chapter, as is frequently the case in works of this kind. The editors hint at this in their Preface: "... we felt we could not impose on individual scholars our judgements of data with which they might not agree. Nor could we require that they deal with their subjects all in the same manner.... Consequently, the reader will notice considerable variation both in the scope of treatment ... and in the manner of treating and presenting them." (A major difference between this work and Grierson's monumental Linguistic Survey of India, with which it is implicitly compared, lies in the lack of a single unifying authorial hand and descriptive viewpoint such as Grierson provided.)

A reviewer may be permitted more critical latitude. There is indeed considerable variation, both in coverage and in manner and clarity of presentation, among the chapters. I will attempt to highlight some aspects of this, without being exhaustive.

One area of variation is the attention given to syntax, varying from none at all (in the chapter on Asokan Prakrits and Pali), and less than a page in the chapters on Konkani and Magahi, to twenty-six pages in Gair's chapter on Sinhala and twenty-three pages in Koul's chapter on Kashmiri. This may be partly a function of the greater departure of the latter two languages from what may be called the pan-Indic norm, hence greater need for explanation and exemplification, whereas in the case of Magahi (and Bhojpuri), the Vermas refrain from rehearsing the familiar patterns once again, and in fact announce their intention to focus on what is less familiar (in the case of Magahi, primarily on its complex patterns of multiple verbal agreements). The Konkani chapter also discusses, disappointingly, mainly agreement phenomena, but some other syntactic information is also found under other headings, such as "Negation" and "Influence of other languages [i.e., Kannada, Portuguese] on Konkani."

The chapter by Oberlies on Asokan Prakrits and Pali has no discussion of syntax, and the chapter on Sanskrit itself, the work of one of the editors, has less than two pages on syntax (although they are a model of information-laden succinctness and may be sufficient). Perhaps Sanskritists as well as Pali scholars have already more than enough to do in spelling out for us the intricacies of morphological paradigms and morphophonemic rules. In any case the presentation in these chapters is supplemented by a useful summary (p. 231) of scholarly investigations of Sanskrit syntax in Bubenik's article on the later Prakrits, prefatory to his twelve pages of discussion of the syntax of later Middle Indo-Aryan.

To be sure, it is not always clear what should be discussed under "morphology" and what under "syntax." Logically, the forms of case-markers, non-finite verbs, etc., might be discussed under the former, and their functions under the latter, but for reasons of economy and exposition, among others, this logic is not always followed, and indeed the boundaries are not always clear, so the choice becomes somewhat arbitrary. So while, e.g., relative clauses are clearly in the province of syntax, in most of the chapters of this volume the phenomenon of so-called explicator-compound verbs (in Pandharipande's terminology, "serial" verbs) is discussed under "morphology," although combination of distinct words (= "phrasal syntax") is involved. (Dasgupta [p. 372] highlights the problem when he observes that "the number of combinations is large enough that compound verb use is at the borderline between choosing a word from the lexicon and freely constructing a syntax phrase." He discusses the compound verb phenomenon in two places, under "compounds" [p. 372] and under "syntax" [p. 377].)

On the other hand, definiteness-marking, which is at least partly suffixal in the languages concerned, is discussed under syntax for Bangla and under morphology for Asamiya. The user of this work can thus only be advised to keep looking if a particular category is not found where it might be expected: the presentations are not precisely parallel, although they seem to some extent to strive to be. On the one hand, there has developed a certain common tradition of describing Indo-Aryan languages--we are used to talking to each other about causatives, dative subjects, compound and conjunct verbs, correlative constructions, and so forth. On the other hand, there is the structuralist tradition that every language should be described in its own terms. Writers on each language are also often influenced by terminology and analysis that have become part of the tradition of description of that language (where such a tradition exists); some are simply idiosyncratic. The would-be comparativist will therefore need to look behind superficial differences of terminology and even of analysis in order to discern common patterns.

This is especially true of verbal categories such as aspect...