The Indo-Aryan Languages

Front Cover
Routledge, 2007 M07 26 - 1332 pages

The Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by at least 700 million people throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. With texts in Old Indo-Aryan, Middle Indo-Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan, this language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European.

This volume is divided into two main sections dealing with general matters and individual languages. Each chapter on the individual language covers the phonology and grammar (morphology and syntax) of the language and its writing system, and gives the historical background and information concerning the geography of the language and the number of its speakers.

 

Contents

2 Sociolinguistics of the IndoAryan languages
46
3 Writing systems of the IndoAryan languages
67
4 Sanskrit
104
5 Aśokan Prakrit and Pāli
161
6 Prākrits and Apabhraṁśa
204
7 Hindi
250
8 Urdu
286
9 Bangla
351
15 Nepali
538
16 Panjabi
581
17 Sindhi
622
18 Gujarati
659
19 Marathi
698
20 Konkani
729
21 Sinhala
766
22 Dardic
818

10 Asamiya
391
11 Oriya
444
12 Maithili
477
13 Magahi
498
14 Bhojpuri
515
23 Kashmiri
895
General index
953
Language index
976
Index of cited passages
1056
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