Papers by Karumuri V. Subbarao
Lingua Posnaniensis (De Gruyter) , 2021
Control structures in Kokborok: A case of syntactic convergence. This paper presents a descriptiv... more Control structures in Kokborok: A case of syntactic convergence. This paper presents a descriptive study of the control structures in Kokborok, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Tripura (one of the northeastern states in India) and demonstrates the contact-induced changes in the phenomenon of control in Kokborok which resulted due to the long-term contact with Bangla (Indo-Aryan), a genetically different language spoken in the state. the instances of genitive subject and the phenomenon of overt controllee in the embedded subject position in Kokborok are the cases in point. the instance of overt controllee described in this paper points to the deviation from the classic concept of PRO thereby demonstrating a property unique to the study of South Asian languages.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
Syntactic strategies such äs the use of honorifics, causatives, intransitive verbs, and embedding... more Syntactic strategies such äs the use of honorifics, causatives, intransitive verbs, and embedding, and the use of the past tense, elliptical constructions, and passives to achieve politeness effects are discussed in this paper;. The three Indo-Aryan languages chosen are Hindi (H), Bengali (B), and Punjabi (P), and the two Dravidian languages are Telugu (T) and Malayalam (M). are chosen on the basis of our experience äs members of Speech communities using these languages. All three authors are fluent Speakers of Hindi and regularly interact with the Hindi speech Community. The first author is a native Speaker of Telugu, the second of Punjabi, and the third of Bengali. Thus, except for Malayalam, we have a fairly good idea of the syntactic strategies used for politeness effects.
the poznań Society for the advancement of arts and Sciences, pL ISSn 0079-4740, pp. 21-52
Control structures in Kokborok: A case of syntactic convergence. the poznań Society for the advan... more Control structures in Kokborok: A case of syntactic convergence. the poznań Society for the advancement of arts and Sciences, pL ISSn 0079-4740, pp. 21-52 this paper presents a descriptive study of the control structures in Kokborok, a tibeto-Burman language spoken in tripura (one of the northeastern states in India) and demonstrates the contact-induced changes in the phenomenon of control in Kokborok which resulted due to the long-term contact with Bangla (Indo-aryan), a genetically different language spoken in the state. the instances of genitive subject and the phenomenon of overt controllee in the embedded subject position in Kokborok are the cases in point. the instance of overt controllee described in this paper points to the deviation from the classic concept of pRo thereby demonstrating a property unique to the study of South asian languages.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge, 2021
Munda languages (Santali, Ho, and Mundari) in which the Subject Agreement Marker (SAM) in oblique... more Munda languages (Santali, Ho, and Mundari) in which the Subject Agreement Marker (SAM) in oblique object constructions occurs not in its canonical position, rather it occurs in the position earmarked for object agreement, in spite of the fact that the predicate may be [-transitive]. We label this phenomenon as Agreement Reversal.
We argue that, with one exception, such reversal takes place not due to syntactic principles governing agreement alone, but due to thematic/ functional criteria because of which the nature of the predicate in a non-nominative subject construction triggers such reversal.
Reduplication and case copying: the case of lexical anaphors in Manipuri and Telegu
Linguistics of the TIbeto-Burman Area, 2002
48 Devi and Sitbbarao Both Manipuri and Telugu are nominative-accusative languages, though Manipu... more 48 Devi and Sitbbarao Both Manipuri and Telugu are nominative-accusative languages, though Manipuri has a nominative lexical case marker -na and Telugu lacks one. Both have postpositions, with the genitive preceding the governing noun and the comparative ...
Lingua Posnaniensis, 2013
This paper discusses some aspects of the behavior of anaphors and pronouns in Liangmai, belonging... more This paper discusses some aspects of the behavior of anaphors and pronouns in Liangmai, belonging to the Tibeto-Burman language family. W e show that Liangmai offers a unique combination of “reflexivization strategies”. Like other languages it exhibits the strategy of reflexivizing the predicate by reduplication of an anaphoric element, but it simultaneously marks the predicate with a self-element. Two more properties of anaphoric properties of Liangmai are interesting from a cross-linguistic perspective. It shows cases of “swapping” - reordering of differently case-marked elements within the complex anaphor - and long-distance binding - allowing an anaphoric element to refer to an element that is not a co-argument.
A Tamil-Telugu Machine Translation System
caltslab.uohyd.ernet.in
... For instance, (27) Ta. eṉ-akku nīccal teriyum. Eng. I know to swim. 'me-DAT swimming kno... more ... For instance, (27) Ta. eṉ-akku nīccal teriyum. Eng. I know to swim. 'me-DAT swimming know-fut-3p.sg.n'. Te. ... A Grammar of Modern Tamil. Pondicherry: Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and culture. Subbarao, KV 2010. South Asian Languages : A syntactic Typology. ...
Studies in Language, 2020
This paper presents an in-depth investigation of the binding strategies in Kokborok and we will l... more This paper presents an in-depth investigation of the binding strategies in Kokborok and we will look more specifically how this sheds light on the theories of reflexivization. Kokborok, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Tripura, a state in the NorthEast of India, has two reflexives: sak sak 'self self ' and sak baithaŋ 'self self '. The form sak sak 'self self ' conforms to Principle A of classic Binding Theory, blocking long-distance binding, but this does not hold true for sak baithaŋ allowing non-local binding. It is a well-established fact that some reflexives allow non-local binding, but it is generally assumed that this phenomenon is limited to a certain type of reflexive, morpho-syntactically 'simple reflexives. ' The so-called 'complex reflexives' generally bar non-local binding, and the Kokborok reflexive sak baithaŋ seems an exception to that. This paper explores the uniqueness involved in the nature of anaphoric binding in Kokborok.
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area (LTBA), 2002
Some languages in which lexical anaphors have a bipartite structure exhibit the phenomenon of cas... more Some languages in which lexical anaphors have a bipartite structure exhibit the phenomenon of case copying of their antecedent and structural case marker. Tibeto-Burman languages such as Mising, Liangmai, Ao (Mongsen), and the major Dravidian languages except Malayalam are some examples. This paper deals with the case of reduplication and Case Copying in Meithei (Manipuri-Tibeto-Burman) and Telugu (Dravidian).
International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 2020
Though languages belonging to genetically different language families may borrow features due to ... more Though languages belonging to genetically different language families may borrow features due to intense language contact with each other for a long time they may still retain their own unique identities despite such intense contact. In this paper, we consider the contact situation of two genetically different languages: Kokborok (Tibeto-Burman) and Bangla (Indo-Aryan) spoken in Tripura, a North-Eastern state of India, to demonstrate how novel strategies are adopted in Kokborok to form relative clauses. Our study shows how a non-indigenous construction such as the relative-correlative clause of the Indo-Aryan family is nativized in Kokborok employing innovative techniques to achieve specific syntactic results. Kokborok violates the Thematic Eligibility Condition (TEC), a principle proposed in Subbarao (2012a) to account for the formation of the Comitative PP as Head in Gap relative clauses. It innovates a novel strategy to form the IHRC with the Comitative PP as Head in Kokborok by forming a hybrid relative pronoun that is a combination of the borrowed Bangla relative pronoun combined with a conjunction of Kokborok. Our paper demonstrates how in spite of prolonged contact with a language from a different language family, a language retains its native patterns to exhibit its individual identity.
In this paper we wish to demonstrate that PRO is Case-marked. Chomsky and Lasnik (1995) argue tha... more In this paper we wish to demonstrate that PRO is Case-marked. Chomsky and Lasnik (1995) argue that PRO is null Case-marked and such Case is checked by a non-finite T. Based on evidence from Icelandic, Sigurdsson (1991) argues that PRO is Case-marked. Martin (2001) argues that theories proposed in terms of Binding and Government to account for the distribution of PRO are inadequate and he attempts to account for it in terms of minimalist assumptions keeping in view the temporal properties of non-finite T. Lalitha Murthy (1994) argues that PRO is Case-marked and provides evidence from selected Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Based primarily on evidence from experiencer subjects in Rabha, 1 a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Assam, genitive and dative subjects in Manipuri (a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Manipur), from long-distance agreement in Hindi-Urdu (Indo-Aryan), and from the dative-subject construction in Telugu (Dravidian), in this paper we argue that PRO is Case-marked. We shall present evidence from Rabha and Manipuri to show that PRO is Case-marked as dative; genitive lexical NPs can occur as subjects of nonfinite conjunctive participles (CPs). We shall also show that when lexical subjects occur in such positions, Conditions B and C are violated. Based on evidence from long-distance agreement, we shall argue that unless PRO is Case-marked, facts of long-distance agreement in Hindi-Urdu cannot be explained. Section 1 deals with evidence mainly from Rabha, section 2 with evidence from Manipuri, section 3 with evidence from Hindi-Urdu and section 4 with evidence from Telugu. 1. Rabha 1.1. Conjunctive participles Rabha, like most other South Asian languages, has a conjunctive participial construction. The conjunctive participle is a nonfinite form of the verb in Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Kashmiri. Coordinating conjunction signaling sequential action: The conjunctive participle connects sentences which denote sequential actions in Rabha and functions like a conjunction. Rabha: (1) [PROi nuk-ina reng-e] [PROi nen-kan home to go cpm clothes tray-e][PROi tase-thatheng gˆn-e] change cpm hands, feet wash cpm daphengi-be caha rˆng-ngata Dapheng nom tea drink-pst perf 'Dapheng went home, changed his clothes,
Lexical Anaphors and Pronouns in Liangmai
Lingua Posnaniensis, 2013
This handout discusses the various strategies, and a typology of reciprocalization in general. It... more This handout discusses the various strategies, and a typology of reciprocalization in general. It presents an overview of the languages of India and some case Studies. A Typology of the reciprocal construction in South Asian languages is presented. We discuss cases of Case Copying in Dravidian and present evidence for case copying in Dravidian from the dative subject construction.
martin Everaert, Kārumūri V. Subbārāo, Wichamdinbo mataina. Lexical Anaphors and Pronouns in Lian... more martin Everaert, Kārumūri V. Subbārāo, Wichamdinbo mataina. Lexical Anaphors and Pronouns in Liangmai. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. LV (2)/2013. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL iSSN 0079-4740, iSbN 978-83-7654-274-4, pp. 41-47.
Telugu Computational Tools by Karumuri V. Subbarao
The development of Machine Translation (MT) is one of the most challenging tasks of Natural Langu... more The development of Machine Translation (MT) is one of the most challenging tasks of Natural Language Processing Applications. In MT there are a number of approaches that are being practiced all over the world, chiefly, they are Direct translations, Interlingual translations, Transfer based translations and a combination of these beside the statistical and corpus based methods. It is a known fact that Indian languages exhibit a considerable amount of diversity between them at every level viz. morphological, syntactic, semantic and lexical levels. In the Transfer Based approach a representation of source language (SL) at certain level is transferred to the corresponding target language (TL) representation. Keeping these in mind, building a Machine Translation System for these languages using Transfer based Method can be non-trivial and challenging. The present paper discusses the successful implementation of the Transfer based Approach to the Machine Translation (MT) System for Hindi<->Telugu. Different resources for this system come from eleven different institutions across India.
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Papers by Karumuri V. Subbarao
We argue that, with one exception, such reversal takes place not due to syntactic principles governing agreement alone, but due to thematic/ functional criteria because of which the nature of the predicate in a non-nominative subject construction triggers such reversal.
Telugu Computational Tools by Karumuri V. Subbarao