| Mundari | |
|---|---|
| मुंडारी, মুন্ডারি, ମୁଣ୍ଡାରୀ, 𞓧𞓟𞓨𞓜𞓕𞓣𞓚 | |
 'Mundari' in Mundari Bani script | |
| Native to | India,Bangladesh,Nepal |
| Ethnicity | Munda |
Native speakers | 1.6 million (2011 census)[a][2] |
Austroasiatic
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Mundari Bani Others:Odia,Devanagari,Bengali,Latin | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  India
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:unr – Mundariunx – Munda |
| Glottolog | mund1320 |
Mundari is aMunda language of theAustroasiatic language family spoken by theMunda tribes in eastern Indian states ofJharkhand,Odisha andWest Bengal and northernRangpur Division of Bangladesh.[3] It is closely related toHo andSantali.[4]Mundari Bani, a script specifically to write Mundari, was invented byRohidas Singh Nag.[5][6] It has also been written in theDevanagari,Odia,Bengali, andLatin writing systems.
The termMuɳɖa means "village headman" in Mundari.[7] Neighboring communities of the Mundas referred to their language asMuɳɖārī, and the Mundas themselves call ithoɽo dʒagar ("human language";hoɽo–"man",dʒagar–"to speak, speech") ormuɳɖa dʒagar ("Munda language").[7] Studies on Mundari started in the nineteenth century, pioneered by the works of Haldar (1871), Whitley (1873), and Nottrott (1882), though most of them were brief sketches and documentations. Then in 1903, German missionary/linguistJohn Hoffmann initiated two massive and influential projects on Mundari:Mundari Grammar (1903–1905) andEncyclopaedia Mundarica (1903–1978), the latter was completed long after his death and was published posthumously.[8]
| Census | Munda (±%) | Mundari (±%) | Total (±%) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | 309,293 | 771,253 | 1,080,546 | |||
| 1981 | 377,492 | (+22) | 742,739 | (-4) | 1,120,231 | (+3.6) |
| 1991 | 413,894 | (+9.6) | 861,378 | (+16) | 1,275,272 | (+13.8) |
| 2001 | 469,357 | (+13.5) | 1,061,352 | (+23) | 1,530,709 | (+20.0) |
| 2011 | 505,922 | (+7.8) | 1,128,228 | (+6) | 1,634,150 | (+6.7) |
| Source:Census of India[9] | ||||||
Mundari is spoken in theKhunti,Ranchi,Seraikela Kharsawan andWest Singhbhum,East Singhbhum district ofJharkhand, and in theMayurbhanj,Kendujhar,Sundargarh district ofOdisha by at least 1.1 million people.[10] Another 500,000, mainly in Odisha and Assam, are recorded in the census as speaking "Munda," potentially another name for Mundari.
Toshiki Osada (2008:99), citing theEncyclopaedia Mundarica (vol. 1, p. 6), lists the following dialects of Mundari, which are spoken mostly inJharkhand state.
The phonology of Mundari is similar to the surrounding closely related Austroasiatic languages but considerably different from either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian. Perhaps the most foreign phonological influence has been on the vowels. Whereas the branches of Austroasiatic in Southeast Asia are rich in vowelphonemes, Mundari has only five. The consonant inventory of Mundari is similar to other Austroasiatic languages with the exception of retroflex consonants, which seem to appear only in loanwords. (Osada 2008)
Mundari has five vowel phonemes. All vowels have long and short as well as nasalizedallophones, but neither length nor nasality are contrastive. All vowels in open monosyllables are quantitatively longer than those in closed syllables, and those following nasal consonants or/ɟ/ are nasalized. Vowels preceding or following/ɳ/ are also nasalized.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
Mundari's consonant inventory consists of 23 basic phonemes. The Naguri and Kera dialects include aspirated stops as additional phonemes, here enclosed in parentheses.
| Labial | Dental | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t̪ | ʈ | t͡ɕ | k | ʔ |
| aspirated | (pʰ) | (t̪ʰ) | (ʈʰ) | (t͡ɕʰ) | (kʰ) | ||
| voiced | b | d̪ | ɖ | d͡ʑ | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | s̪ | h | |||||
| Approximant | w | l | ɽ | j | |||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| S.No. | Mundari | Transliteration | Translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | मियद | Miyad | One |
| 2 | बारिया | Baria | Two |
| 3 | आपिया | Apia | Three |
| 4 | उपनिआ | Upnia | four |
| 5 | मोड़ेया | Modea | Five |
| 6 | तुरिया | Turia | Six |
| 7 | एया | Are | Seven |
| 8 | इरलिया | Erlia | Eight |
| 9 | आरेया | Area | Nine |
| 10 | गेलेया | Galea | Ten |
| 11 | Gel Miyad | Eleven | |
| 12 | Gel Bariya | Twelve | |
| 13 | Apiya | Thirteen | |
| 14 | Upuna | Fourteen | |
| 15 | Modeya | Fifteen | |
| 16 | Turiya | Sixteen | |
| 17 | Eya | Seventeen | |
| 18 | Iriliya | Eighteen | |
| 19 | Areya | Nineteen | |
| 20 | Mid Hisi | Twenty | |
| 21 | Hisi Miyad | Twenty-one | |
| 30 | Mid hisi Gel | Thirty | |
| 31 | Hisi Gel Miyad | Thirty-one | |
| 40 | Bar Hisi | Forty | |
| 41 | Bar Hisi Miyad | Forty-one | |
| 50 | Bar Hisi Gel | Fifty | |
| 60 | Aapi Hisi | Sixty | |
| 70 | Aapi Hisi Gel | Seventy | |
| 80 | Upun Hisi | Eighty | |
| 90 | Upun Hisi Gel | Ninety | |
| 100 | Mid Saaye | One hundred | |
| 200 | Bar Saaye | Two hundred | |
| 1000 | Mid Hazar | One thousand | |
| 1,00,000 | Mid Lak | Onelakh |
| Mundari | Transliteration | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| एङ्गा | Eṅga | Mother |
| आपु | Apu | Father |
| हागा | Haga | Brother |
| मिसि | Misi | Sister |
| गुया | Guya | Sister/brother of sister/brother in law |
| गति | Gati | Friend |
| Hon koṛa | Son | |
| Hon Kuṛi | Daughter |
| Mundari | Transliteration | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| रिकाएआ | Rikā'ē'ā | Does |
| ओलेआ | Ol'ē'ā | Write |
| जगरेआ | Jagor'ē'ā | Talk |
| पढ़वएआ | Padv'ē'ā | Read |
| लेलेआ | Lel'ē'ā | Look / see |
| सेनेआ | Sen'ē'ā | Come along with |
| नमेआ | Nem'ē'ā | Found |
| निरेआ | Nir'ē'ā | Run |
| सबेआ | Sab'ē'ā | Hold |
| लेका एआ | Leka'ē'ā | Count |
| मुकाएआ | Muka'ē'ā | Measure |
| रिका एआ | Rika'ē'ā | Cut |
| হেড়েম | Hedem | Sweet |
| Kete-e | Hard | |
| Lebe-e | Soft | |
| Singi | Sun | |
| Chandu-u | Moon | |
| Ipil | Stars | |
| Sirma | Sky | |
| Ote Dishum | Earth | |
| Rimil | cloud | |
| Hoyo | Air/Wind | |
| Gitil | Sands | |
| Dhudi | Dust | |
| Losod | Muddy | |
| Hodomo | Body | |
| Tasad | Grass | |
| Daru | Tree | |
| Sakam | Leaf | |
| Dayir | Branches of Tree |
Mandari is also written in nativeMundari Bani, invented in the 1980s byRohidas Singh Nag.
In 1903, Hoffmann noted something abnormal with the Mundari lexicon: the lack of discrete lexical distinction. Mundari lexemes are not inherently specified for lexical categories. He made several following impressions:[11]
Mundari words have such a great vagueness or functional elasticity that there can be no question of distinct parts of speech in that language
— Hoffmann (1903), repeated inEncyclopaedia Mundarica (1928)
[...]Thus the same unchanged form is at the same time a Conjunction, an Adjective, a Pronoun, an Adverb, a Verb, and a Noun, or, to speak more precisely, it may become a Conjunction, an Adjective, and so on, but by itself alone it is none of them. It is simply a vague elastic word, capable of signifying, in a vague manner, several distinct concepts, that is of assuming a variety of functions.
— Hoffmann (1903, p. xxi)
Similar issues with word class distinction have been also reported in otherMunda languages, especially North Munda (Santali (Bodding 1929, Ghosh 1994, Neukom 2001),Ho (Deeney 1978),Korku (Drake 1903, Zide (undated)),Kharia (Pinnow 1960, Peterson 2003),Juang.Grierson (1906) summarized the issue in hisLinguistic Survey of India:
[...]The various classes of words are not clearly distinguished. The same base can often be used as a noun, an adjective, or a verb. Spoken language, of course, is not composed of words but of sentences, and the meaning of each individual word is only apparent from the context. The Munda words simply denote some being, object, action, or the like, but they do not tell us how they are conceived. It is for instance only after inspection of the context that we can decide whether a word denoting the idea "to give" means "giving" or "given."
— Grierson (1906, p. 28)
Modern typologist interest in Mundari lexical categories was revitalized by Cook (1965), Langendoen (1967), Sinha (1975), Osada (1992), Bhat (1994), and most famously Evans & Osada (2005). Evans & Osada challenged the flexible analysis, contending instead that Mundari exhibits distinct yet exceptionally fluid grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, and adjectives). Their argument rests upon three specific criteria for assessing flexibility: (i) explicit semantic compositionality across both argument and predicate functions, (ii) bidirectionality, and (iii) exhaustiveness. This research prompted an extensive series of peer reviews and criticism within the same volume ofLinguistic Typology.[12] Notwithstanding these debates, Osada (1992), Badenoch & Osada (2019), and Badenoch et al. (2019) identifyexpressives as a further open lexical class in Mundari, encompassing a minimum of 1,500 lemmas.Mark Dingemanse comments: "yet the status of this considerable lexical stratum in the language has not featured in any word-class debates."[13]
This section will leave out the discussions on Mundari & North Munda flexibility and focus on the morphological differences between two main dialects, Hasadaʔ and Keraʔ, specifically in relation to their respective approaches to lexical flexibility.
In Hasadaʔ Mundari, entity-denoting lexemes and structures or "noun"-like, "noun phrase"-like, and "adjective"-like all can be used as semantic bases of predicates (i.e. "verbs") without derivation. The "verbal" constructions' semantic results are often compositional (predictable), but sometimes they can be idiosyncratic.
buru=ko bai-ke-d-a
mountain=3PL.SUBJ make-COMPL-TR-IND
'They made the mountain.'
saan=koburu-ke-d-a
firewood=3PL.SUBJmountain-COMPL-TR-IND
'They heaped up the firewood.' (Lit. 'They mountained the firewood.')
aɲ
I
hen-saʔ
that-side
aɲ hen-saʔne-saʔ-ken-a=ɲ
I that-sidethis-side-MID.PST-IND=1SG.SUBJ
'I moved to this side and that, walked back and forth.' (Lit. 'I that-side this-side-ed')
eŋga-oʔ-ta-n-a=eʔ
mother-PASS-PROG.OR-INTR-IND=3SG.SUBJ
'She isbecoming a mother.' (Lit. 'She's mothering')
In contrast, Keraʔ Mundari does not allow such blatant uses of "zero-derivation" (i.e.conversion) like in Hasadaʔ and other dialects. Nouns can only used as verbs with the sense of performing the semantical action with the presence of verbalizing suffix -o/-u.[14] For examples:
1. aɽandi "wedding"
aɽandi-u-a=le
wedding-VBLZR:do-IND=1PL.SUBJ
'We conduct wedding.'
1. sindri "vermillion"
sindri-u-a=le
vermillion-VBLZR:do-IND=1PL.SUBJ
'We put vermillion.'
Regarding the limit of flexibility, there is an infix-n- that can be inserted into certain Mundari lexemes, which "transforms the verb root into an abstract inanimate noun stem, which is no longer capable of verb inflection". Per Hengeveld & Rijkhoff (2005), citing Cook (1965)'s data:[15]
dal "strike" →da-n-al "a blow"
dub "sit" →du-n-ub "a meeting"
ol "to write" →o-n-ol "the writing"
| Official language | |
|---|---|
| Indo-European | |
| Sino-Tibetan | |
| Austroasiatic | |
| Dravidian | |
| Afro-Asiatic | |
| Sign | |
| Official language | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indigenous languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
