Bidirectional Transfer in the Emergence of Contact Varieties in Nagpur India
Abstract
Long-term contact between Hindi and Marathi in Nagpur, India has
led to
extensive transfer of linguistic features in both directions
(Hindi to Marathi and
Marathi to Hindi), leading to the formation of two contact
varieties, Nagpuri
Hindi and Nagpuri Marathi. This thesis investigates the emergence
of these varieties by determining the agents of change and
direction of transfer involved in the emergence process. For this
purpose, the framework proposed by Van Coetsem (1988; 1995; 2000)
is used. This model is speaker-focused, emphasising the role
linguistic dominance plays in the mechanisms of contact-induced
changed. While the model provides a clear, principled approach to
decipher the processes of contact-induced change, these processes
must also be contextualised within the larger sociohistorical
circumstances of Nagpur. This thesis, thus, examines historical
sources and combines it with a Van Coetsem based analysis of
linguistic data to propose plausible scenarios that could have
led to the emergence of these contact varieties. Additionally,
this thesis also investigates present-day use of these varieties
by using data collected through YouTube. In the absence of access
to real speakers, videos provide speech data that can be examined
to understand the current speech of people from Nagpur.