Sora Typological Characteristics: Towards a Re-Evaluation of South Asian Human History

该项目将对索拉语进行全面研究，该语言是印度奥里萨邦南部几个地区人口超过30万的土著“部落”人民所讲的语言。该项目侧重于索拉的语音系统、语法和词汇的特点，这些特点在相关语言和该地区其他语言中以各种重要的方式脱颖而出。这些分析将为南亚和东南亚地区语言接触和语言变化方面的当前辩论以及语言类型学方面的当前工作提供信息，并可能需要重新制定南亚的史前史。索拉提出了几个具有挑战性的特点，包括一个可能独特的形式，名词纳入已明确预测是不可能的。一旦对索拉的这些细节有了更好的理解，并分析了它随时间的变化，对南亚模糊的语言史前史的新见解就会出现。该项目还为土著科学家提供了独特的机会，使他们能够作为关键团队成员在研究中发挥重要作用，从而为一些服务最不足和代表性最低的科学家社区提供能力建设和STEM实地研究机会。它还有助于提高土著人民的知名度，他们的历史在南亚区域历史的主流叙述中一直缺失。该项目将出版《索拉语法》（包括各种索拉方言的文本、比较词汇和语法），并建立一个详尽的、附有注释的索拉方言材料存款。将通过自发的叙述性录音和有针对性的演讲者启发相结合的方式收集这些材料，并以音频和视频格式录制。探讨的主题包括“表达”词汇，这是一个高度发达的系统，在索拉与许多证明复杂的重叠模式，以及系统的语法协议中看到不同的动词类。我们还将研究可能伴随着达罗毗荼人和雅利安人迁移到南亚而使已经在那里的群体边缘化的类型学转变，例如原始蒙达人的祖先到索拉人，以及库辛达人的祖先语言到边缘。这些类型的变化可能已经淹没或取代了可能已经更广泛的旧功能。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This project will provide a comprehensive study of the Sora language, spoken by an indigenous 'tribal' people in India with a population of over 300,000, located in several districts of southern Odisha State. This project focuses on the features of Sora's sound system, grammar and vocabulary which stand out in various significant ways, both from related languages and other languages of the region. These analyses will inform (and be informed by) current debates in language contact and language change in the South Asian and Southeast Asian regions, as well as by current work in linguistic typology, and may necessitate a reformulation of the prehistory of South Asia. Sora presents several challenging features, including a possibly unique form of noun incorporation that has been explicitly predicted to be impossible. Once these details of Sora are better understood, and its changes over time have been analyzed, new insights into the murky linguistic pre-history of South Asia will emerge. The project also offers unique opportunities for indigenous scientists to play major roles in the research as key team members, thus offering capacity building and STEM field research opportunities to some of the most underserved and underrepresented communities of scientists. It also helps promote the visibility of indigenous peoples whose histories have been missing from mainstream accounts of regional South Asian history. The project will produce A Grammar of Sora (with texts, a comparative lexicon and grammar of the various Sora dialects) and create an exhaustive, annotated archival deposit of the Sora dialect materials. These are to be collected through a combination of spontaneous narrative recordings and targeted elicitation with speakers, recorded in audio and video format. Topics to be explored include the 'expressive' lexicon, which is a highly developed system in Sora with many attested complex reduplication patterns, as well as the systems of grammatical agreement seen in different verb classes. We will also examine the typological shifts that may have accompanied the Dravidian and Aryan migrations into South Asia that marginalized the groups already there, such as the Proto-Munda ancestors to the Sora, and the ancestral language to Kusunda to the periphery. These typological shifts may have submerged or replaced what may have been more widespread older features.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.