Cover not available

In:Gender, Language and the Periphery: Grammatical and social gender from the margins
Edited by Julie Abbou and Fabienne H. Baider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 264] 2016
► pp. 165–194

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The representation of gender in Bajjika grammar and discourse

Published online: 16 December 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.264.07kum
In this article I present a description of grammatical gender in Bajjika, a minority language of the Eastern Indo-Aryan family spoken in a small region in the northern part of the north Indian state of Bihar. Grammatical gender in Bajjika is expressed in the nominal forms, definitive particles, and verbal agreement. Although the morphology of Bajjika verb-agreement is one of the most elaborate in Indo-Aryan languages, the formalization of gender in the verbal morphology is very simple; the gender of only the second person honorific and the third person honorific referents in the subject function is encoded. The definitive particle receives gender marking when it is added to an adjective. In this article, I identify and describe different areas of Bajjika grammar where gender is encoded. Based on the analyses of excerpts from natural discourse, I also observe an interesting tendency in terms of (written and spoken) modebased neutralization of gender in Bajjika discourse. While the masculine and feminine genders of the second and third person “honorific” referents are consistently encoded in the verb-agreement in the spoken mode, in the written mode it is neutralized. We may then witness a potential neutralization of gender in terms of a diachronic change in the Bajjika grammar.
References (53)
References
Arun, Awadheshwar. 1972. Bajjikā, Hindi aur Bhojpuri kā Tulnātmak Adhyayan [A comparative study of Bajjika, Hindi and Bhojpuri]. Muzaffarpur: Kumud Prakashan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Bajjika Ramāen. Chennai: Akhil Bhāratiy Bajjika Sahitya Sammelan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arun, Awadheshwar, and Ram Niwas Sharma (eds). 2008. Bhārti Bajjikā Hindi Koś [Bharati Bajjika Hindi dictionary]. New Delhi: Konark Prakashan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bergvall, Victorial. 1999. “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Language and Gender.” Language in Society 28(2): 273–293. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhatia, Tej K. 1993. Punjabi: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burghart, Richard. 1993. “A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila.” Modern Asian Studies 27(4): 761–804. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardona, George. 2003. “Sanskrit.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 104–160. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardona, George, and Dhanesh Jain (eds). 2003. Indo-Aryan Languages. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 2005. “Grammatical Gender and Personification.” In Perspectives on Language and Language Development: Essay in Honor of Ruth A. Berman, ed. by Dorit Diskin Ravid, and Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, 105–114. Dordrecht; London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard, Gerald Stone, and Maria Polinsky. 1996. The Russian Language in the 20th Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville G. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Gender.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Keith Brown, 749–756. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dasgupta, Probal. 2003. “Bangla.” In Indo-Aryan languages, ed. by George Cardona and Dhanesh Jain, 351–390. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Social Identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. “Think Practically and Look Locally: Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–490. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fisher, John. 1958. “Social Influences on the Choice of a Linguistic Variant.” Word 14: 47–56. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goswami, G.C., and Jyotiprakash Tamuli. 2003. “Asamiya.” In The Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by Georges Cardonaand, and Danesh Jain, 391–443. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Government of Nepal. 2012. National Population and Housing Census 2011. Kathmandu: National Planning Commission Secretariat, Central Bureau of Statistics. Online <[URL]> (Accessed: June 23, 2014).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grierson, George A. 1883–87. Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Sub-dialects of the Bihari Language, Parts I–VIII. Delhi: Bharatiya Publishing House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1968 [1903]. Linguistic Survey of India: Indo-Aryan Family: Eastern Group. Part II: Specimen of the Biharī and Oriyā Languages. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A.K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic: the Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kachru, Yamuna. 2006. Hindi. Amsterdam; Philadephia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kachru, Yamuna, Braj B. Kachru, and Tej K. Bhatia. 1976. “The Notion ‘Subject’: a Note on Hindi–Urdu, Kashmiri and Punjabi.” In The Notion of Subject in South Asian Languages, ed. by Manindra K. Verma, 79–108. Madison: University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kashyap, Abhishek Kumar. Forthcoming. A functional grammar of Bajjika: An SFL perspective. Leiden: Brill.
. In press. “On the Linguistic Resources of Bajjika”. In People’s Linguistic Survey of India: The Languages of Bihari, ed. by Vibha Chauhan. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
. 2012. “The Pragmatic Principles of Agreement in Bajjika Verbs.” Journal of Pragmatics 44(13): 1868–1887. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “The Bajjika Language and Speech Community.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 227: 209–224.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kashyap, Abhishek Kumar, and Foong Ha Yap. In press. “Epistemicity, Social Identity and Politeness Marking: A Pragmatic Analysis of Bajjika Verbal Inflections.” Linguistics.
Kashyap, Abhishek Kumar and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. Forthcoming. “The Representation of Motion in Discourse: variation across registers.” Language Sciences.
Kumar, Abhishek. 2003. “A Study in the Transitivity of Bajjika: Verbs and Verb-endings.” CIEFL Bulletin 13(2): 1–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Mood, Transitivity and Theme in Bajjika in Typological Perspective: A Text-Based Description. PhD dissertation. Sydney: Macquarie University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2013. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Seventeenth Edition. Dallas: SIL International. Online version: [URL]. Accessed: 31 March 2013.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Masica, Colin P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 1993. “Register in the Round: Diversity in a Unified Theory of Register Analysis.” In Register Analysis: Theory And Practice, ed. by Mohsen Ghadessy, 221–292. London; New York: Pinter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Register in the Round: Registerial Cartography.” Functional Linguistics 2(9): 1–48.
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M., and Abhishek Kumar Kashyap. 2014. “The Construal of Space in Different Registers: An Exploratory Study.” Language Sciences 45: 1–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miranda, Rocky V. 2003. “Konkani.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 729–766. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2016. “A poststructuralist approach to structural gender linguistics. Initial considerations.” In Gender, Language and the Periphery. Grammatical and social gender from the margins, ed. by Julie Abbou and Fabienne Baider, 65–88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muchnik, Malka. 2016. “Trying to change a gender-marked language Classical vs. Modern Hebrew.” In Gender, Language and the Periphery. Grammatical and social gender from the margins, ed. by Julie Abbou and Fabienne Baider, 25–46. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oberlies, Thomas. 2003. “Aśokan and Pāli.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 161–203. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pandharipande, Rajeshwari. 2003. “Marathi.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 698–728. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rojo, Martín L. 2006. “Gender and Political Discourse.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Keith Brown, 742–749. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shackle, Christopher. 2003. “Punjabi.” In Indo-Aryan languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 581–621. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael C. 2003. “Hindi.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 250–285. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tiwari, Siyaram. 1964. “Bajjikā Bhāśā aor Sāhitya [The Bajjika language and literature].” Paper presented in Bihār Rāśtr bhāśā pariśad kā trayodaś wārśikotsav held in Hyderabad , India.
Upadhyay, Shiv R. 2009. “The Sociolinguistic Variation of Grammatical Gender Agreement in Nepali.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 564–585. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verma, Manindra K. 2003. “Bhojpuri.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 515–537. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vilās, Rām. 1996. Satbhaiā. Muzaffarpur: Swastik Prakāśan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. Gharbās. Muzaffarpur: Swastik Prakāśan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yadav, Ramawatar. 1996. A Reference Grammar of Maithili. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. “Maithili.” In Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. by George Cardona, and Dhanesh Jain, 477–497. London; New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yadava, Yogendra Prasad. 2003. “Language.” In Population Monograph of Nepal. Kathmandu: Central Bureau of Statistics. Online <[URL]> (Accessed: March 28, 2013).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue