No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Voices from the Lost Horizon: Stories and Songs of the Great Adamanese, Anvita Abbi (2021)
Abstract
Voices from the Lost Horizon: Stories and Songs of the Great AdamaneseAnvita Abbi (2021)New Delhi: Niyogi Books. Pp. 176ISBN: 978-93-91125-06-6 (pbk)
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Historical Linguistics and Linguistic Typology have been used to demonstrate that PGA is an independent language family of India. Data from extra-linguistic sources such as anthropology, archaeology and genetics have been used as additional supportive evidence. This chapter will give a summary of the findings and will familiarise the audience with some distinct characteristics of the highly endangered language of the hunter-gatherer society of the Great Andamanese population.
Great Andamanese is a moribund language which is breathing its last. Language death is associated with a reduction of vocabulary, reduction of domains and reduced complexity of linguistic structures. It is prominently associated with a shift to the dominant language as well as change of attitudes of its speakers towards their heritage language. A moribund language is characterized by features such as very few terminal speakers with low competency in the heritage language, cessation of inter-generation transfer of the language and a drastic shift to the dominant language accompanied by feeling of the heritage language being "inferior" to the dominant language. The Great Andamanese demonstrate the typical tendencies of such a language community with one exception, i.e. the dying language is not considered inferior to other languages in any sense. This phenomenon is exemplified in their responses to our direct questions which were found to be contrary to the reality. The typical method of eliciting data through questionnaires obtained the "ideal" situations that the community wishes to be in. The present study illustrates the sociolinguistic profile of the Great Andamanese community, combining the real and ideal situations. Our observation of the speech behaviour confirms loss of several registers including the art of narration. Out of all the genres of language use, one alone remains. It is the singing of indigenous songs. It is observed that the life of songs in heritage language is longer than the language itself. Our observation and the analysis of the responses from the community members not only bring out the factors associated with language endangerment but also the uniqueness of Great Andamanese as a language on the verge of extinction.
The comparative method is a relatively well-defined tool that has been employed successfully in the classification of languages for two centuries. In recent years, there have been several proposals about the classification of the Austronesian languages that violate basic principles of method. Because some of these have been advanced by scholars who are well established in other branches of linguistics, they have acquired an influence that is out of proportion to their scientific merit. This paper addresses three of these proposals: the Austronesian-Ongan hypothesis of Juliette Blevins, the Quechua-Austronesian hypothesis of E. M. Kempler-Cohen, and the higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai by Laurent Sagart. By carefully delimiting the analytic operations that belong to the comparative method and those that do not, it is shown that each of these scholars makes use of illicit operations to justify inferences about the classification of Austronesian languages, whether this involves claims about relationships that are external to the family or internal to it.
India represents five language families: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman and Andamanese. The origin of Andamanese tribes and its relationship with Southeast population have been the subject of speculation for centuries. Latest research by geneticists [Thangaraj, K. et al. Reconstructing the origin of Andaman Islanders. Science 308, 996] of complete mitochondrial DNA sequences from two out of three accessible tribes, i.e. Onges and Great Andamanese populations, revealed two deeply branching clades that share their most recent common ancestor in founder haplogroup M, with lineages spread among India, Africa, East Asia, New Guinea, and Australia.
The origin of the Andaman "Negrito" and Nicobar "Mongoloid" populations has been ambiguous. Our analyses of complete mitochondrial DNA sequences from Onges and Great Andaman populations revealed two deeply branching clades that share their most recent common ancestor in founder haplogroup M, with lineages spread among India, Africa, East Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. This distribution suggests that these two clades have likely survived in genetic isolation since the initial settlement of the islands during an out-of-Africa migration by anatomically modern humans. In contrast, Nicobarese sequences illustrate a close genetic relationship with populations from Southeast Asia.
This paper applies the comparative method to two related languages of the southem Andaman Islands, Jarawa and Onge, leading to the reconstruction of a proto-language termed "Proto-Ongan" (PON). The same method is used to argue that Proto-Ongan may be related to Proto-Austronesian (PAN). Lexical and grammatical evidence suggests that Proto-Ongan and Proto-Austronesian are sisters, daughters of a Proto-Austronesian-Ongan (PAO). The implications of this discovery are wide-ranging, from potential solutions to problems in PAN grammar, to new hypotheses regarding ancient speaker migrations. While few of these implications are examined here, an extended Austronesian phylogeny is proposed in the hope that it will seed new avenues of research, and highlight the potential importance of Andamanese studies in understanding Austronesian prehistory.
Vanishing voices of the languages of the Andaman Islands. Paper presented at the Max Planck Institute
- A Abbi
Abbi, A. (2003) Vanishing voices of the languages of the Andaman Islands. Paper presented at the Max Planck Institute, Leipzig, 13 June 2003. [Published online in 2004
at: http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/originals/Abbi/art-abbi.htm].
Endangered languages of the Andaman Islands
- A Abbi
Abbi, A. (2006) Endangered languages of the Andaman Islands. Munich: Lincom.
A general note on the Andamanese languages
- D N Basu
Basu, D.N. (1955) A general note on the Andamanese languages. Indian Linguistics 16:
213-225.
Look to the mountain: An ecology of Indigenous education
- G Cajete
Cajete, G. (1994) Look to the mountain: An ecology of Indigenous education. Durango,
Co: Kivaki Press.
Internationalizing Canadian Higher Education through North-South Partnership: A critical case study of policy and programming practices in Tanzania
- A M Larkin
Larkin, A.M. (2013) Internationalizing Canadian Higher Education through North-South Partnership: A critical case study of policy and programming practices in
Tanzania. Ph.D. dissertation. London, Canada: The University of Western Ontario.