The Indo-Aryan Languages (review)

South Asia today is home to perhaps four to five hundred languages belonging to a number of different stocks, including Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Tai, and Andamanese, and at least one isolate, Burushaski (and possibly also Kusunda). Of these, the Indo-Aryan (IA) branch of Indo-European has the largest number of speakers in South Asia and is documented back to at least the early first millennium BC. We are thus in the enviable position of being able to follow the course of historical phonology, morphology, and syntax in the Indo-Aryan languages for about three thousand years, and their writing systems for over two thousand years. The South Asian literary traditions also afford a unique look into historical sociolinguistic issues (for example, through dramas in which characters speak different dialects according to their status or sex), in addition to modern sociolinguistic and areal issues.

Cardona and Jain’s volume (CJ) presents an overview of this extensive family which, as the introduction to the series (facing the cover page) states, ‘is designed to be the essential source of reference for a particular linguistic community, as well as for linguists working on typology and syntax’. It is in this spirit that I discuss the volume, especially with respect to general linguists, who may be unfamiliar with IA languages but whom the series also aims to reach.

CJ contains a table of contents, a preface, lists of general and language abbreviations, maps, figures and contributors, and twenty-three individual contributions, followed by a general index, an index for the individual languages, and an index of cited passages. The individual chapters in the book are the following: ‘General introduction’ (George Cardona and Dhanesh Jain, 1–45), ‘Sociolinguistics of the Indo-Aryan languages’ (Dhanesh Jain, 46–66), ‘Writing systems of the Indo-Aryan languages’ (Richard Salomon, 67–103), ‘Sanskrit’ (George Cardona, 104–60), ‘Aśokan Prakrit and Pāli’ (Thomas Oberlies, 161–203), ‘Prākrits and Apabhraṁśa’ (Vit Bubenik, 204–49), ‘Hindi’ (Michael C. Shapiro, 250–85), ‘Urdu’ (Ruth Laila Schmidt, 286–350), ‘Bangla’ (Probal Dasgupta, 351–90), ‘Asamiya’ (G. C. Goswami and ‘Hindi’ (Michael C. Shapiro, 250–85), ‘Urdu’ (Ruth Laila Schmidt, 286–350), ‘Bangla’ (Probal Dasgupta, 351–90), ‘Asamiya’ (G. C. (Manindra K. Verma, 515–37), ‘Nepali’ (Theodore Riccardi, 538–80), ‘Panjabi’ (Christopher Shackle, 581–621), ‘Sindhi’ (Lachman M. Khubchandani, 622–58), ‘Gujarati’ (George Cardona and Babu Suthar, 659–97), ‘Marathi’ (Rajeshwari Pandharipande, 698–728), ‘Konkani’ (Rocky V. Miranda, 729–65), ‘Sinhala’ (James W. Gair, 766–817), ‘Dardic’ (covering several languages, Elena Bashir, 818–94), and ‘Kashmiri’ (Omkar N. Koul, 895–952). With the exception of the first three chapters, which deal with more general topics, most of the contributions have the same basic structure, containing a general introduction and sections on phonology, script, morphology, and syntax, although the authors were allowed considerable freedom in the structure of their contributions. Only the chapter on Aśokan Prakrit and Pāli contains no discussion of syntax, while the chapter on Konkani provides some information on syntax under the section ‘Description of the language’.

In general, the volume is highly informative and a pleasure to read. In its well-written discussions on sociolinguistics and writing systems, detailed introductions to the chapters on Nepali and Konkani and to the volume as a whole, equally detailed discussions of the syntax of Prākrit/Apabhraṁśa, Sinhala, and Kashmiri, concise overview of the Dardic languages, clear presentation of verb agreement in Maithili, interesting discussion of Dakhanī Urdu and its relation to Standard Urdu, and much, much more, CJ is a highly practical introduction to these languages and is probably unequaled in terms of...