PATTERNS OF VARIATION IN GRAMMATICAL GENDER INDEXICALITY IN THIRD PERSON PLURAL FORMS – A CASE STUDY OF WOMEN’S SPEECH IN KURUKH

The research investigates an unusual typological feature of Kurukh, an endangered North Dravidian language spoken by the Oraon tribe in India and its neighbouring countries. The research studies an atypical system of grammatical gender marking in Kurukh.

Conventionally, in the case of third person forms, languages mark grammatical gender based on the gender of the referent. However, Kurukh departs from this pattern: in third-person plural forms, the language does not mark the gender of the referent. Instead, it marks the gender of speech participants, i.e., the speaker and the addressee – the interlocutors involved in the conversation. In the existing literature, this grammatical instance is referred to as grammatical gender indexicality. A pragmatic configuration determines the grammatical gender agreement (as well as the person and number features in the case of Kurukh).

Interestingly, the gender indexical markers, pragmatically and morphosyntactically, vary across languages. In the case of Kurukh, there are two distinct physical representations of the grammatical gender indexical marker based on four social contextual combinations of speaker and addressee - man-to-man, man-to-woman, woman-to-man, and woman-to-woman. The short forms FF and MM are used for the purpose of glossing and easy presentation of the Kurukh examples.

ɪsən tʃhəu dʒhəna metəe hənni ropa ɪdnae
ɪsən tʃhəu dʒhəna met.ae hənni ropa ɪdnae
Here six CLF men.3PL.FF filler crop sow-Pres.3PL.FF
Here, six men are sowing crops (FF = Woman to woman)

ɪsən tʃhəu dʒhəna metar hənni ropa ɪdnar
ɪsən tʃhəu dʒhəna met.ar hənni ropa ɪdnar
Here. six CLF men.3PL.MM filler crop sow-Pres.3PL.MM
Here, six men are sowing crops (MM = man to man, man to woman, woman to man).

As presented in the above examples, there are two third-person plural markers, /-ar/ and /-ae/, both of which encode person, number, and gender agreement features, as well as distinctly marking the pragmatic context (FF and MM). On the surface level, they have the same meaning, but the socio-pragmatic information is embedded in these forms. Notably, variation between these two markers is observed specifically in women's speech, who can use both the markers depending on the gender of the addressee. Female Kurukh speakers amongst themselves, i.e., within a female speaker and addressee combination, are expected to use /-ae/; instead, the speakers were found using /-ar/. Alternate occurrences of /-ar/ and /-ae/ occurred simultaneously in the female-to-female context and are not yet systematically understood. This raises the central research question guiding the current investigation: Do the mutually exclusive, socio-context-driven third-person plural indexical gender markers used in all female context exhibit deviation from the conventional norm of Kurukh?

Therefore, the current study is an attempt to provide the first systematic documentation of the variation in the usage of the gender indexical markers by the female speakers. It follows a traditional PhD thesis format, comprising an introduction, research methodology, theoretical background, three main chapters presenting the variation results, and a final chapter discussing the possible socio-pragmatic and linguistic reasons behind the deviation in the gender-indexical markers.