Konda-Dora, also known simply as Konda or Kubi, is a
Dravidian language
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant i ...
spoken in India. It is spoken by the
scheduled tribe
The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are officially designated groups of people and among the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups in India. The terms are recognized in the Constitution of India and the groups are designa ...
of the Konda-Dora, who mostly live in the districts of
Vizianagaram
Vizianagaram is a city and the headquarters of Vizianagaram district in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is central Eastern Ghats, about west of the Bay of Bengal and north-northeast of Visakhapatnam. The city has a population of 228,02 ...
,
Srikakulam
Srikakulam is a city and the headquarters of Srikakulam district in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. census,. it has a population of 165,735. There are many other places of Buddhist Tourism such as Salihundam, Kalinga Patnam, Dabbaka Vaa ...
, and
East Godavari
East Godavari is a district in the Coastal Andhra region of Andhra Pradesh, India. Its district headquarters is at Rajahmundry. As of 2011 Census of India, census 2011, it became the most populous district of the state with a population of 5,151,54 ...
in
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
, and the
Koraput
Koraput is a town and a Municipality in Koraput district in the Indian state of Odisha. Koraput town is the district headquarter of Koraput district.
History
The district of Koraput derives its name from its headquarters the present town of K ...
district in
Odisha
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...
.
[
Konda-Dora is sometimes written in the ]Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
and Odia
Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to:
* Odia people in Odisha, India
* Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family
* Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...
scripts. A unique writing system was developed by Sathupati Prasanna Sree
Sathupati Prasanna Sree (born 2 September 1964) is an Indian linguist.
Career
Sree is Professor of English language, English and Chairperson of the Board of Studies at Andhra University.
Throughout her career Sree has worked in preserving Minor ...
for use with the language. Most speakers of Konda have also learned Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
because of economic pressures to be able to integrate into the larger economy and region.[
]
Classification
Konda is classified as a Dravidian language, in the same family as Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nati ...
, Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
, Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
, and Telugu, to name a few. Konda is classified as a member of the South-Central branch of the Dravidian language family, in the same grouping as its much larger neighbor Telugu, as well as neighboring minority languages, namely Gondi, Kui, Kuvi
Kuvi is a South-Central Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Odisha. The language is one of two spoken by the Kandhas, with the other being the closely related and more dominant Kui language. According to the 2011 Indian census, the ...
, Pengo, and Manda
Manda may refer to:
Places
* Kafr Manda, Arab town in the Lower Galilee
* Manda Upazila, an upazila in the Division of Rajshahi, Bangladesh
* Manda, Kale, a village in Burma
* Manda, Guinea, a town in the Labé Region
* Manda, Jammu, India, a vil ...
. All South-Central Dravidian languages are believed to have diverged from the Southern branch of Proto-Dravidian
Proto-Dravidian is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Dravidian languages. It is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian, although the date of diversi ...
several centuries BCE. South-Central Dravidian and South Dravidian share innovations that distinguish them from the other branches of Dravidian, however at some point, the differences between South and South-Central Dravidian languages became enough to classify the branches separately. Konda is considered to be among the most conservative of the South-Central Dravidian languages because it maintains a distinction between a tapped /ɾ/ versus a stop /ṟ/ that existed in the Proto-South-Central Dravidian language.
Phonology
Vowels
In Konda, there exist five vowel sounds, each with a long and short form, therefore having ten total vowel sounds, which is the standard for most Dravidian languages. Konda only distinguishes between long and short vowels when the sound is in the word-initial position. There exist no diphthongs in Konda, but there are instances where two vowels will be in sequence of one another; in this case, the vowels are pronounced separately and this marks the separation between words.
Consonants
Consonants in Konda are roughly in line with those of other Dravidian languages like Telugu, albeit with some small differences.
* In Konda, unlike in Telugu, there exists a phonemic glottal stop, /ʔ/.
* The glottal stop present in Konda is not present in other Dravidian languages, and alongside /r̥/, /ɳ/, and /ŋ/, cannot occur in the initial position. All consonants can occur intervocalically, meaning between vowels, and in clusters.
* Stop consonants present in Konda, when they follow a short vowel, are equivalent to double consonants in Telugu (e.g. p = pp, b = bb, etc.).
In Konda, consonants fall into two main categories: obstruents
An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well a ...
and sonorants
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
. Obstruents are characterized by voiced-voiceless distinctions, and include all stops (except /ʔ/), fricatives, and trills. Sonorants, in contrast to obstruents, are all voiced, except for /ʔ/ (which is always voiceless), and include nasals, liquids, semi-consonants, and flaps.
Consonant Clusters
Consonant clusters in Konda, consisting of either two or three consonants, follow a general rule of occurring between vowels, and rarely fall in the initial position. For consonant clusters consisting of two consonants, there are four classes: Obstruent+Obstruent, Sonorant+Sonorant, Obstruent+Sonorant, and Sonorant+Obstruent. Within consonant clusters, /ʔ/ cannot occur in the first position, and /r̥/ cannot occur in the second position. Within the class containing two obstruents, which is the most infrequent, there is a general tendency to have two voiced obstruents paired with each other, rather than a voiced-voiceless pair. Also within dual consonant clusters, when obstruents are final, a voiceless obstruent is more common than its voiced counterparts.
Konda also exhibits triple consonant clusters, almost all of which follow the pattern of sonorant+obstruent+sonorant (SOS).
Grammar
Nouns
Gender
There exist two grammatical genders
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
: masculine and neuter. Most nouns do not exhibit clear markers of gender, rather, the gender of a noun can be determined from its meaning. Male persons, both singular and plural, belong to the masculine gender; female persons and non-person objects (i.e birds, plants, animals, objects, etc.) belong to the neuter gender.
Number
In Konda, there are two grammatical numbers: singular, denoting one, and plural, denoting more than one. The singular, in all cases, goes unmarked. The plural, however, has two groups of suffixes; one suffix only used for masculine nouns, and another suffix mainly used for non-masculine nouns.
Case
Konda, as in other Dravidian languages, exhibits a number of cases, each with separate endings used to denote certain situations. These cases are:
* Nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
* Accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
-Dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
* Instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
-Ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. T ...
* Genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
* Locative
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
= Nominative
=
All noun stems in the singular and plural, which occur without any suffixes, are said to be in the nominative case. Nouns in the nominative case, if they are marked for number and gender as well, are the subjects of the sentences they are in. Nouns that are not quantifiable are ineligible for becoming the subject of the sentence. For example, the noun "anasi", meaning elder brother, is the nominative singular form, whereas in the plural, the only modification to the original nominative singular form is to add an "-r" suffix to indicate this plural.
= Accusative-Dative
=
In Konda, as happens in the Pengo and Manda
Manda may refer to:
Places
* Kafr Manda, Arab town in the Lower Galilee
* Manda Upazila, an upazila in the Division of Rajshahi, Bangladesh
* Manda, Kale, a village in Burma
* Manda, Guinea, a town in the Labé Region
* Manda, Jammu, India, a vil ...
languages, the accusative and dative cases in each language are marked by the same ending(s), romanized for Konda as -ŋ/-ŋi. In Konda, these endings are obligated to follow human nouns. In the case of Konda, the common ending for the accusative and dative cases is thought to have originated via a combination of the two endings; the accusative -n combined with the dative -k, and these sounds merged to form the dorsal nasal /ŋ/, rather than a consonant cluster /-nk/.
= Instrumental-Ablative
=
In Konda, the instrumental-ablative case is formed by the addition of the suffixes (-aṇḍ or ŋ). These endings (-aṇḍ or ŋ) are used when the noun ends in -ti, -di, or -r̥i, in the singular, and the instrumental-ablative causes singular oblique stems ending in -i to lose this before the vowel-marker for the instrumental-ablative case. The instrumental-ablative case is used as a replacement for the English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
prepositions "with","by", or "by means of". When used in phrases denoting time and place, the instrumental-ablative case takes the meaning of "from/ since". In the plural, use of the instrumental-ablative case is quite rare.
= Genitive
=
Konda exhibits the genitive case with its stem system, with there being two uses for the genitive case. There exists the oblique stem, which is added onto the noun when it is in its genitive form to indicate possession. In Konda, the oblique stem is identical to a noun in its genitive form, with the genitive indicated by the addition of a suffix -di to singular neuter stems, and -a added to plural neuter stems. For masculine stems, all masculine nouns lack markers in the oblique, in the singular. In the plural, masculine nouns ending in -r, add the suffix, -i, to mark the oblique.
= Locative
=
The locative case suffixes (-d, -du, -t, -tu, -r̥, -r̥u, -do, -to, -ṟo, -ṭo, -i) are attached to the nominative ending, when singular, whereas in the plural, the locative and accusative-dative are identical. In Konda, the locative case is used to indicate "in, on, into, onto".
Example
The following example is taken from Bh. Krishnamurti's 1969 book ''Koṇḍa or Kūbi: A Dravidian Language'' (Note*- This example does not include the instrumental-ablative case)
Description of the table
* One may notice that in the locative case, there are several different endings, which are used depending on the final letter in the word and replace that final letter with the case ending. In regards to the locative example of the word "house", the Konda word "in-ṟo", meaning "into the house", is unique in comparison to the other forms of the word because it is an exemption to the general rules of Konda.
* The oblique stems cannot stand on their own. Rather, the oblique stem is used to further inflect the noun to add more meaning to the noun.
* The suffix -ti- that exists on the word "sālam-", meaning "cave", is different, but this is in line with grammatical rules in Konda.
Verbs
In Konda, verbs are only inflected for tense and/or mood. Verb stems form the nucleus of a verb, have several forms: simple, complex, or compound.
Simple verb stems
Simple verb stems can take one of many forms, although the most common verb stems are:
* (C)VC
* (C)VCC
* (C)V̄C
* (C)V̄CC
In these forms, consonants (C) are the most common way to end a verb stem, although forms exist with vowels in the final position. It should also be noted that there are two forms for each of the most common forms; one uses a short vowel (V), and the other uses a long vowel (V̄). Consonants are optional in the initial position. All of these verb forms are generally monosyllabic and as previously noted, typically end in consonants.
Complex verb stems
Complex stems are normally constructed from two main parts: a simple verb stem with a derivative suffix. The derivative suffixes are either transitive/causative or reflexive stems that are added to the simple stem to form a complex stem.
Compound verb stems
Compound stems are formed by the merger of two different verb stems into one compound stem. There are iterative and non-iterative compound stems, each of which has subdivisions within them to indicate further meaning.
References
External links
Konda basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Agglutinative languages
Dravidian languages
Endangered languages of India
{{india-culture-stub