Diachrony of linguistic features in South Asian Languages

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The main objective of the proposed project is to develop a historical account of areal trends with respect to (presently) 236 typological features in 18 modern and pre-modern varieties of New Indo-Aryan (NIA) and New South Dravidian (NSD) languages, including Kashmiri, Chambiyali, Garhwali, Kumaoni, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Braj, Awadhi, Nepali, Maithili, Assamese, Bengali, Ma-rathi, Konkani, Dakkhini (Indo-Aryan), and Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil (Dravidian). The pro-ject will make use of and contribute to existing typological platforms, above all the Kiel South Asian Typological Database. The combination of historical and modern data for individual languages from two different families from throughout the subcontinent will contribute to a better understand-ing of structural changes in these languages, in particular with respect to language contact, and will go beyond simply identifying features pertaining to a linguistic area. In doing so it will also serve as a basis for developing a typology of contact situations of general interest beyond just South Asian linguistics.