| Home |
Book Announcements
Modern Kashmiri Grammar
by Omkar N. Koul & Kashi Wali Published by Dunwoody Press, Springfield, VA, USA, 2006. US$ 40About the book
Modern Kashmiri Grammar aims at providing basic yet extensive information on various aspects of Kashmiri phonology, morphology, and syntax along with its unique features and historical background. It is pedagogically oriented. The need for such a grammar is imminent at present. First and foremost it will fulfill the need of a large number of Kashmiris that have taken refuge in different parts of India and abroad as a result of continued disturbance in the Kashmir valley in the last fifteen years. They are fast losing contact with their mother tongue in the absence of its use in various domains of day-to-day life. They are looking for suitable language learning materials, including pedagogically oriented grammars, for maintaining the language amongst their children.Note that some of the existing grammars are either too old, too sketchy, or too detailed and scholarly and do not fulfill the need of the second language learners or those native speakers who want to maintain the language in an alien atmosphere.
This grammar will be of value to linguists and general readers also. There is an increased interest among linguists and general readers due to certain special characteristics of Kashmiri, such as its place in the Indo-Aryan family, its unique verb second word order, and many other grammatical peculiarities. This grammar will be helpful in satisfying their interest to a certain extent.
In Modern Kashmiri Grammar the authors have utilized simple terminology, and provided suitable description with tables for grammatical categories, phrases, and sentence types. The Introduction gives a survey of the dialectal variations in the language, history of literature and grammar, and more crucially, the status of Kashmiri in the home state itself.
The Phonology section describes segmental phonemes, suprasegmentals, and morphophonology. The Morphology provides a description of the nominal and pronominal system, their inflection, gender, number, case, and special agreement features including pronominal clitics. Special attention is paid to the intricate conjugation of verbs. The Syntax describes the structure of phrases, sentence types, complex and compound constructions, special word order variations, and other intricate syntactic features. The Lexicon presents a list of classified vocabulary which is useful for students and teachers of Kashmiri as well as general readers.
This grammar emphasizes special features of Kashmiri that sets it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. In short, it will fulfill the need of the basic language learner as well as provide useful information for the linguist and general reader.
About the Authors
Prof Omkar N Koul is former director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages. His other publications related to Kashmiri include Linguistic Studies in Kashmiri (1977), Aspects of Kashmiri Linguistics (co-editor, 1984), Intensive Course in Kashmiri (1987), Spoken Kashmiri: A Language Course (1987), An Intermediate Course in Kashmiri (1995), Kashmiri: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar (co-author 1997), Topics in Kashmiri Linguistics (co-editor, 2002), Studies in Kashmiri Linguistics (2005) and a large number of papers. Prof Kashi Wali is a visiting professor at Cornell and Syracuse universities. She has worked extensively on Marathi and Kashmiri languages. Her publications in Kashmiri include Kashmiri: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar (co-author 1997), Topics in Kashmiri Linguistics (co-editor, 2002) and quite a few papers.