An Investigation into the Sociolinguistic Prehistory of Konkani

Descripción del proyecto

Investigación de la prehistoria sociolingüística de la lengua konkani

El konkani es una lengua indoaria del suroeste hablada en Goa, Karnataka, Kerala y Maharashtra. Históricamente, su estatus era inferior al de las lenguas regionales dominantes y carecía de registros escritos antes del siglo XVI. Investigaciones recientes revelan un importante contacto histórico entre el konkani y las lenguas dravídicas. El equipo del proyecto INSPIK, que cuenta con el apoyo de las Acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, explorará la prehistoria sociolingüística del konkani utilizando métodos innovadores. Se analizarán inscripciones en kannada, prakrit y sánscrito de zonas de habla konkani, se examinarán historias orales de migración extraídas de textos puránicos en sánscrito y se estudiarán dialectos modernos junto con datos lingüísticos comparativos. Interpretando estos datos con ayuda del modelo tipológico sociolingüístico, el proyecto también desarrollará una nueva metodología para estudiar lenguas con escasa documentación escrita.

Objetivo

INSPIK aims to investigate the sociolinguistic prehistory of a language called Konkani, which is spoken in scattered pockets across four states (Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala) on the western coast of India. As a southwestern Indo-Aryan language neighbouring Dravidian languages such as Kannada, Tulu, and Malayalam, Konkani is intriguing from a language-contact perspective. Konkani has, until recently, remained in a diglossic low relationship with other local and colonial literary, more powerful languages. In the absence of any written materials in Konkani prior to the 16th century, resources to undertake historically-oriented research on the language have been limited. INSPIK proposes an innovative use of Sanskrit/Kannada/Prakrit inscriptions discovered in todays Konkani-speaking regions, oral histories of migration recorded in Sanskrit Puranic texts, modern dialectological documentations of Konkani and other neighbouring languages, and comparative analysis of contemporary linguistic data to reconstruct a sociolinguistic prehistory of Konkani. Recent research has revealed that the Konkani language structure shows robust traces of prehistoric long-term, stable Dravidian and Indo-Aryan language contact. INSPIK will develop the idea further by examining previous language documentations complemented with new data collected for the project. Drawing on these linguistic data, and the insights gathered through inscriptions and ancient literary texts, INSPIK will then critically apply the sociolinguistic typological framework to identify the possible prehistoric sociolinguistic settings during the formation period of Konkani. At the end of the project, INSPIK will introduce an innovative methodology for undertaking historical research on languages with limited written materials, apply the sociolinguistic typology framework to a lesser-known language and test its limitations, and contribute data on Konkani to the Kiel South Asian Typological Database.