Remarks from the

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(No Transcript)
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Valedictory Session Jan 4, 2005
Science of language signs of despair

• Remarks from the
• Organizers Desk

Emeneau CentenaryInternational Conference
CIIL, Mysore
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Organizing Emeneau Centenary Event

• The Conference was a truly great experience for
  us, and
• A tribute to the scholarship of Emeneau because
  of his contribution to Indo-Aryan and Dravidian
  as well as to the other linguistic families also
  for his work in Linguistics, Lexicography,
  Folklore, and Literature.

• We had, in different sessions, 112 to 160
  observers, local scholars and participants
• 73 Registered Scholars taking part from India and
  abroad
• 40 papers, including 6 papers taken as read

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More about the Papers
Thematically, here are the details

• India as a Linguistics Area 11
• India as a Sociolinguistic Area 5
• Experience from Other Speech Areas 5
• India as a Literary/Cultural Area 7
• Dravidian Studies 6
• Folklore 6

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Where do we go from here?

• Emeneaus work has been done 50 years ago,
  although as citation index shows, it is still
  relevant more in the 90s than earlier.
• The deliberations have brought out this point
  succinctly.
• Now that some of the best minds in South Asian
  Linguistics have gathered here, does this event
  leave any messages for the generation of
  researchers currently engaged in the study of
  human languages from numerous angles?
• Which way should South Asian Linguistics go?
• We would need to take a stock of these matters.
• The seven lessons that we have learnt are these

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BEWARE OF ANY ENTERPRISE THAT LOOKS DANGEROUSLY
NEAT
Lesson 1

• Modern Linguistics had been founded on the belief
  that theory should explain all.
• The enterprise argued that any science, like the
  Science of Language must depend on descriptions
  that were based on either of these
• (i) a methodology,
• (ii) a tool, or
• (iii) a set of formulae.

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HUMANITIES SCIENTICISM
Lesson 2

• Although there are good reasons to bring in
  rigor to do humanities, watch out for the
  pseudo-scienticism.
• We are aware that a large part of our language
  studies would subscribe to a more mathematical
  and more rigorous point of view, but modern
  linguistics is full of blank fires of
  universals that were true only of your locality.
• As more and more language data came in, mighty
  universals tumbled down easily to become a mere
  statistical universal.

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Prognosis Predictions
Lesson 3

• This subscription to scienticism which lied at
  the core of the agenda of modern linguistics,
  perhaps need to be relooked into.
• In our enthusiasm to take our discipline further
  and faster, we even fore-grounded the power of
  prognosis and prediction in both historical
  linguistics in sociolinguistics.
• Human societies show that language attitudes and
  use are related in many unpredictable ways.

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HISTORY AS A TEACHER
Lesson 4

• Throughout the modernist enterprise in Linguistic
  science, all our analytical tools were built on
  principles of categorization classification.
• The tools, in turn, depended on their declared
  faith in dichotomies (Saussurean, Jakobsonian or
  Chomskyan) or trichotomies.
• Somehow, we have been unable to break this jinx
  and think about more complicated configurations
• It appears that some Hamelin has blinded our
  vision and blurred our thought to a meak
  submission to neat categorization of entities.
• We forget that history need not repeat itself,
  only historians do.

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The Progress
Lesson 5

• There was a point of time when the demand was for
  uncovering the real structure of a given
  language but based on all and only things that
  were observable and describable.
• The Chomskyan revolution provided a great leap
  from this staticity to enter into the unknown
  territories of human mind.
• A new discourse in linguistics arose based on
  analysis of mental phenomenon like intuitions.
• Possible world of language became as important
  as the real world.

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Language as a site of human struggle
Lesson 6

• The modernist position could not care less to
  ensure that Linguistics must also move to create
  a more rational space.
• Linguistics could not be used as a mere tool to
  document what must disappear.
• To repeat Jayant Lels words in this conference,
  we must agree that each language offers a site
  for human struggle potentially offering a rich
  narrative of tensions.

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MODERNIST POSITIONS
Lesson 7

• I would like to call the phase of last 50 years
  the period of defining amnesia that denies the
  past and forecloses the possibilities of the
  future. It is marked by a declared lack of
  confidence in knowledge and tradition

• It is not surprising, therefore, that modernism
  also had this agenda - of carrying forward a
  banner of revolt resulting in a consistent
  unlearning . It was clear even in its anarchic
  pretensions and positions.
• Linguistics was used as a passive eye of the
  camera to arrest the rapidly fading linguistic
  landscape -only on paper or celluloid.

To my mind, it is important to free linguistics
from this passivity and be used as an instrument
of change as a tool of social engineering.
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The Post-modern turn

• Today, we cannot avoid interrogating the "is" in
  terms of the "ought."
• Further, there must be scope for both utopia
  and normative criticism for both dreams and
  deconstruction of linguistic constructs.
• The knowledge tradition in Linguistics has taken
  a Post-historical turn in the 21st Cent.
• With this turn, we leave highways n expressways
  that typically define a modern space.

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UNWRITTEN GRAMMAR OF THE POST-MODERN

• Instead, one walks through the alleys, bye-lanes,
  and rural pathways full of surprises, breakdowns,
  uncertainties, and of course, through twists n
  turns.
• We realize that we are entering a new conceptual
  and social field, which the discourse of the
  postmodern is attempting to articulate
• Its grammar is yet unwritten.

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Characterizing the New Agenda

• We are no more cutting the temporal continuum
  mechanistically into the meaningless trichotomy
  of past, present and future, because the
  post-historical encourages us to write the
  "history of the present" (Foucault)
• It challenges us to develop "a theory of
  contemporary society" (Horkheimer) in terms of a
  parameter that will evolve neither from the
  given deductive nor from the mere observable
  inductive but from the point of departure
  between the two.
• New codification will emerge from the sandhi, or
  the coalescence, because the language is a fuzzy
  object more we thought we knew more we are
  bewildered.

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Sprachbünde

• Ever since Trubetzkoy (1928) talks of
  Sprachgruppe which he defined based on a number
  of systematic agreements and sub-divided it into
  families of genetically related languages and
  Sprachbünde, the interest in Linguistic area
  was kindled.
• Sprachbünde, as we know identifies a group of
  languages which show a high degree of similarity.
• Emeneau described India as one such potential
  area.
• Similarities can be seen in syntax, in the
  principles of word formation, common culture
  words, and even in the phonological inventories.

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New Models

• It is perhaps necessary to conceptualize new
  models and methods of identifying Linguistic
  area today.
• We could probably think of models that are more
  complicated than neat classifications.
• Linguists should not be hesitant to admit spatial
  configurations of language that are both fuzzy,
  overlapping and complicated.
• In order to do that, we need to access and
  explore data from many hitherto unknown languages
  of our space.

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What have we done at CIIL?

• Archived data of 118 languages
• Studied 80 Tribal and Border languages
• Published 520 books another 60 books in print.
• Cassette Courses Assamese Urdu, Bengali
  Marathi
• Radio courses in Hindi through Kannada other
  Dravidian languages

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Major Publications - 520

• 22 Grammars
• 8 Intermediate, 9 Advance 13 Intensive Courses
• 24 Second Lg. Textbooks
• 5 Common Vocab.
• 18 Dictionary/Recall Voc
• 49 Apni Boli (for KVS)
• 15 Pictorial Glossaries
• 16 Literacy 12 Folklore
• 12 Rhymes/Lang. Games
• 18 Proceedings 9 Biblio

60 more books in the pipeline
In addition, there is this e-book-site
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Special focus on Tribal languages

• Published grammars of Abujh Maria, Balti, Purki,
  Bhumij, Brokskat, Kurux, Kuvi, Malto, Mundari,
  Shina in Central India
• ALSO PUBLISHED
• Northern tribal languages - Gojri, Ladakhi,
  Wagdi
• In South, Jenu Nudi, Koliga, Soliga Nudi, and
  Yerava
• Jarwa, Onge Ro Tarik in the Andamans
• Dictionaries, folklore, readers and grammars in
  numerous North-eastern languages, such as Angami,
  Ao, Apatani, Boro, Hmar, Karbi, Khasi, Konyak,
  Lotha, Mao Naga, Mishmi, Mising, Rabha, Sema,
  Tangkhul, Thadou, Kokborok, and Naga Pidgin.

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New Endeavors

• LISindia Program
• Anukruti A Translation Program
• ILA On-line for Bangla, tamil Kannada
• Live Tutoring
• Lipika Project
• Bhasha Bharati Xth Plan
• Clinical Linguistics
• National language Testing Service

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Language Technology Further Goals

• Enlargement of 3-m word Corpora in all Indian lgs
• Creation of a 100 m word corpora for Hindi
• A large new Corpus for Maithili already done
• Plans for other new 8th Schedule languages
  Dogri and Santali corpora forthcoming
• Setting up of LDC-IL
• Electronic Dictionaries linking all Indian lgs
• On-line Administrative Glossaries
• Tagging Corpus Tools
• Launching of E-Zines and E-Journals
• Language Information Services on the Web
• Minor languages of Andaman Nicobar described.

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Do we know the Road Map?
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I think, we do.
We have undertaken a series of steps that would
usher in changes in the way we ought to do
linguistics.
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i Promote Interlingual Harmony Allow
Pluralism
Over 8,000 teachers trained in our seven Regional
language Centers in 15 Indian languages taught
1100 hrs of contact course since the last 33
years.
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ii Promote Indian Languages through
Senior Fellowships Doctoral scholarships Tribal
Scholarships Bhasha Bharati Samman
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iii LIPIKA
Already held an Exhibition in IIC, Delhi and at
Wardha
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• To achieve this goal, we have already begun
  working on so many minor languages in
  collaboration with many universities.
• CIILs grammar site will host this work at
  www.ciil.grammars.org

ivPromote further Research into South Asia as a
linguistic area
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v Move into new and challenging areas such as
Clinical Linguistics Corpus Linguistics
Web-site in Corpus Lx LDC-IL Emille-CIIL 90m
Corpora CIIL-Uppsala Project
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6.Engage in Collaborations

• vi Create a National Resource for Translation
  together with NBT Sahitya Akademi.

Anukriti Web-site is the result of this work.
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vii Work on literacy
Children to bring them back to schools
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viii Introduce India Studies Program For
International students At CIIL
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ix Set up Bhasha-Bharati an archive of
contemporary Indian Manuscripts Library
Automation
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x Launch independent TV channel Bhasha and
Document Indian languages folklores
To begin with Tamil Bangla Marathi Nannada
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However, we still need to ward off the
ill-effects of the Global gobbling up the local
The Threat Indian languages face from English
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CIIL still has miles to go before the Indian
languages are empowered enough to take on the
challenges faced from outside.