Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-161).
1. Linguistic Change in Some Indian Caste Dialects; 2. Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Change with A.K. Ramanujan; 3. Dravidian Metaphony; 4. Language, Social Stratification, and Cognitive Orientation; 5. Complex Verb Forms in Colloquial Tamil with J. Lindenfeld; 6. Phonological Rules in Literary and Colloquial Kannada; 7. Hindi Numerals; 8. The Dravidian Enunciative Vowel; 9. How Not to Decipher the Indus Valley Inscriptions; 10. Archaeology, Linguistics, and Ancient Dravidian; 11. Written and Spoken Language in South Asia; Bibliography; Index.
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South Asia presents the linguist with a bewildering variety of regional dialects, social dialects, formal and informal registers, literary standards, languages, writing systems, and language families. Written over a period of more than twenty years, these essays by a leading authority on South Asian language cover a broad range of topics in South Asian linguistics. The essays address social dialect, structural borrowing, areal linguistics, the relation between literary and colloquial standards, and the role of written language in South Asian culture from the times of the ancient Indus Valley c.