Dissertation Research: The "Revival" of Spoken Sanskrit in Modern India: An Ethnographic and Linguistic Study

论文研究：现代印度梵语口语的“复兴”：民族志和语言学研究

• 批准号: 9807454
• 负责人: Michael Silverstein
• 金额: $ 1.16万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-01-01 至 2001-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9807454&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Revival; Spoken; Sanskrit

This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropology student at the University of Chicago will examine recent attempts in India to promote and broaden the use of spoken `Simple` Sanskrit. While the classical Sanskrit language has been supported by authorities as a medium of scholarly and literary discourse, it recently has been promoted by political groups as a future lingua franca and emblem of a specifically Hindu nation. Through careful ethnographic and linguistic study of two such projects in Karnataka, an organization in Bangalore which gives classes and promotes simple Sanskrit, and a model `Sanskrit-speaking village` in the central part of the state, the project will contribute to the literature on language death and revival. Methods include a formal linguistic analysis of the relation of spoken Sanskrit to Classical literary Sanskrit; an ethnographic study of how people in different speech communities gain competence in this new language, and an examination of the production of textual materials on the language's structure and use. This project will provide information on a case of language revival for political goals that will be valuable for theory building when compared to other attempts such as Hebrew and Latin. In addition the project will contribute to training a professional social scientist and add to our knowledge of this important region of the world.

芝加哥大学文化人类学学生的这篇论文研究项目将研究印度最近为促进和扩大口语“简单”梵语的使用所做的尝试。 虽然古典梵文语言一直受到当局支持作为学术和文学话语的媒介，但最近它被政治团体宣传为未来的通用语言和特定印度教国家的象征。 通过对卡纳塔克邦的两个这样的项目进行仔细的人种学和语言学研究，班加罗尔的一个提供课程和推广简单梵语的组织，以及该邦中部的一个示范性“梵语村”，该项目将为有关语言消亡和复兴的文献做出贡献。方法包括对口语梵语与古典文学梵语之间的关系进行正式的语言分析；对不同语言社区的人们如何获得这种新语言的能力进行民族志研究，并对有关该语言的结构和使用的文本材料的制作进行检查。 该项目将提供有关为政治目标而复兴语言的案例的信息，与希伯来语和拉丁语等其他尝试相比，这对于理论建设很有价值。 此外，该项目将有助于培训专业社会科学家，并增加我们对世界这一重要地区的了解。