Kharia
खड़िया,ଖଡ଼ିଆ
Region	India (Jharkhand,Chhattisgarh,Odisha).
Ethnicity	Kharia
Native speakers	297,614; 69% of ethnic population (2011 census)[1]
Language family	Austroasiatic Munda South Kharia
Writing system	Devanagari,Odia,Latin
Official status
Official language in	India Jharkhand (additional)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	khr
Glottolog	khar1287
ELP	Kharia

TheKharia language (Kharia pronunciation:[kʰaɽija] or[kʰeɽija]^[2]) is aMunda language of theAustroasiatic language family, that is primarily spoken by theKharia people of eastern India.

The first systematic description of the Kharia language is Banerjee (1894)'sKharia grammar, followed byTea Districts Labour Association (1929) and Floor et al. (1934), which resulted in a Kharia-English Dictionary. An ethnological study on the tribe was published in 1937 by Roy & Roy.^[3]

The first major academic approach to Kharia were taken by linguistHeinz-Jürgen Pinnow in the 1950s and 1960s with studies published in both German and English. Other works include Biligiri (1965)'s full study and lexicon; Mahapatra (1976) on Kharia and Juang verbs, Malhotra (1982) Ph.D. dissertation attempting a comprehensive grammar of Kharia; Abbi (1993; 1997) on language change and contact; Rehberg (2003) on Kharia phonology (in German).^[4]

Kharia belongs to the Kharia–Juang branch of theMunda language family. Its closest extant relative is theJuang language, but the relationship between Kharia and Juang is remote.

Kharia is in contact withSadri (the local lingua franca),Mundari,Kurukh,Hindi, andOdia (inOdisha).^[2]

Kharia speakers are located in the followingdistricts of India.^[2]

• Jharkhand
  • Simdega district
  • Gumla district
• Odisha
  • Sundargarh district
  • Jharsuguda district

• [ɽ, ɽʱ] are only marginally phonemic and are normally intervocalic allophones of /ɖ, ɖʱ/.
• /f/ came from earlier */pʰ/ and can also be pronounced among some speakers as an affricate [p͡f], which was most likely an intermediate stage between the /pʰ > f/ shift.
• /v/ came from earlier */bʱ/ and can also be pronounced among some speakers as an affricate [b͡v], which was most likely an intermediate stage between the /bʱ > v/ shift.
• /c, cʰ, ɟ, ɟʱ/ are often realized as affricate sounds [t͡ʃ, t͡ʃʰ, d͡ʒ, d͡ʒʱ], especially in loanwords.
• [ʔ] is an allophone of /ɡ/ when in coda position.^[5]

• /i, e, o, u/ have lax allophones of [ɪ, ɛ, ɔ, ʊ].
• /a/ can have allophones of [ɑ, ä, ə, ʌ].^[5]

Gemination only occur in morpheme boundaries of words. Consonant length can be phonemic. Eg. /oton=na/ realized as [ɔtɔnːɑ] (press=INF). /ʔ/, /s/, and /h/ may not be geminated.^[6]

Kharia NPs has three cases:

• Nominative: unmarked
• Oblique:=te
• Genitive:=aʔ

Grammatical gender is not a morphosyntactical feature of Kharia, but the language has independent words to identify whether a male or female of a lexical word is intended. Eg.kokro siŋkoy 'rooster' andkitur siŋkoy 'hen'.^[7]

Inalienable nominals are cross-referenced with possessive markers showed in the table below.

Kharia has two numeral systems. The one native to Kharia is no longer in common productive use, therefore having great disparities and disagreements. The other, which was borrowed fromSadri, is used in daily life.

The Sadri derived numerals often go with numeral classifiers. Classifiers occur very seldom with native numerals, at least by modern speakers, perhaps due to the unfamiliarity of the modern speakers with the Kharia numerals.^[8]

Similar toRemo,Gutob,Gtaʔ, and recentlyJuang, Kharia predicate only marks person/number of the subject argument.^[9] Distinction between animate and inanimate agents is not so profound in Kharia as they are both marked, although Biligiri (1965) stated that "there is a stronger tendency to observe number agreement with an animate subject than with an inanimate subject."^[10]

Kharia, like many Munda languages, merges TAM categories with active and middle voices.^[11]

The causative derivation increases the valency of a verb stem by introducing a higher or superordinate agent who causes the lower agent to act or a non-agentive event to happen. In Kharia, the signature marker of the Austroasiatic family-(o)(ʔ)b- (including allomorphs) is used as the causative prefix or infix.^[12] Double causative constructions are also allowed.^[13]

Thepassive voice/reflexive in Kharia is realized as standalone wordɖom, itself has no lexical meaning.^[14] Historically, it might have stemmed from the verbdʒom ('to eat'), as it appears to cognate withSantali passive-jɔn (<jɔm 'to eat') andSora-Juray reflexive/low transitive denoting marker-dəm-.^[15]

There are two telic markers in Kharia which serve the narrative structure:^[16]

• ɖoˀɖ (allomorph ɖoɽ) indicates that another event follows directly upon the event denoted by the predicate that it marks;
• goˀɖ (allomorph goɽ) denotes a turning point or culmination in a narrative.^[17]

In Kharia, incorporation of nouns and adjuncts is possible but mostly limited to certain stems and under a lexicalized (non-productive) degree. Polysyllabic nominals are subtracted from their final syllable(s) while there are no phonological adjustments occurring on monosyllabic items. The incorporatedcompounds may obscure or alter the original meaning of the nominal or the verbal element.^[18]

1. (<tiʔ ('hand'))

2. (<soreŋ ('stone'))

• Gagan Chandra Banerjee (1894).Introduction to the Khariā Language. Bengal Secretariat Press.ISBN 9788120617728. Retrieved25 August 2012.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
• Peterson, John (2008). "Kharia". In Anderson, Gregory D. S' (ed.).The Munda languages. Routledge Language Family Series. Vol. 3. New York: Routledge. pp. 434–507.ISBN 0-415-32890-X.
• Peterson, John M. (2011).A Grammar of Kharia: A South Munda Language. Brill.ISBN 978-9-00418-720-7.OCLC 31045692.

• Online Kharia DictionaryArchived 2016-03-03 at theWayback Machine

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