Marwari
Lakhan Gusain
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Marwari, a standard dialect of Rajasthani language of Indo-Aryan family, is spoken by about thirteen million speakers in western Rajasthan comprising Churu, Bikaner, Nagaur, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Pali, Jalore, Jaisalmer, and Barmer districts of Rajasthan. It is also spoken in eastern parts of upper Sindh province of Pakistan. Having several dialects, Marwari is very rich in literary style known as Dingal and has a literary history of over one thousand years.
This grammar includes chapters on its phonology, morphology, syntax, and a sample text. Introductory section includes geographical and sociolinguistic sketch of Marwari and its speakers. The chapter on phonology includes vowels, consonants, diphthongs, and suprasegmentals. Glottalized sounds, murmur vowels, tones, and retroflexives are very prominent. The chapter on morphology describes nominal and verbal morphology. There are two numbers, two genders, and three cases. The nouns are declined according to their final segments. Case marking is partly inflectional and partly inflectional. The third person pronouns are distinguished on the proximity/remoteness dimension in each gender. Intransitive verbs can be passivised. There are three tenses and four moods. Cardinals up to ten are inflected. The chapter on syntax describes sentence types, word order, coordination, subordination, negation and participles. The chapter on sample texts presents free and interlinear translations of some samples.
ISBN 9783895864407. Languages of the World/Materials 427. 60pp. 2004.
