This chapter presents a corpus-based study of the segmental and tonal accents in the iGeneration’s Taiwanese Southern Min (iTSM). Segmentally, iTSM speakers exhibit several distinctive phonological processes. Stop codas in checked syllables are elided, followed by resyllabification rather than gemination. Labial nasal codas are coronalized, while coronal nasal codas are velarized. Velarized nasal codas undergo gemination, while coronalized codas resist it. Labial nasal codas resyllabify to the following onsets. Voiced velar stop onsets, the most marked in the voiced stop series, are often elided or nasalized before nasal vowels, while less marked voiced labial stops and laterals are preserved. Nasalization in iTSM, both intra- and inter-syllabic, shows non-crisp edge phenomena, contrasting with TSM’s crisp edge phenomenon.

Tonally, stop coda elision results in the loss of checked tones, shifting to smooth tones with compensatory vowel lengthening. The study also shows that iTSM speakers prefer parsing longer expressions into tetrasyllabic or shorter fragments, which function as phonological phrases and constrain the application of tone sandhi. This phrasing process is sensitive to syntactic adjuncthood and syllable count.

This study aligns with Hsiao’s (1991, 1995b) prosodic parameters. In common speech, the tone group (TG) is a phonological phrase marked at the right edge of a non-adjunct XP. Following the Prosodic Hierarchy, an intonational phrase is a sense unit ending with a boundary tone and a pause, typically realized as a complete sentence but subject to restructuring with parentheticals, tag questions, or lists.

To explain tone sandhi, Chinese phonology employs a “prosodic foot” distinct from standard hierarchies. This study proposes two Metrical Hierarchies: Tonal and Rhythmic. The “prosodic foot” is redefined as the metrical tone phrase within the Tonal Metrical Hierarchy. While it governs tone sandhi in metrical reading, it does not dictate verse rhythm. Instead, the phrase is constructed from metrical beats, as a syllable-based approach fails to explain rhythmic tone patterns. A revised Beat Addition assigns initial beats to lexical syllables, while function words, suffixes, and internal syntactic ICs receive or share beats.

Syntactic c-command is dispensable, as it may yield illicit tone patterns and overlook tonal variation. Adjuncthood, rather than c-command, often determines the absence of tone sandhi.

This chapter explores the rhythmic structures present in two linguistic forms within Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM): traditional verse and everyday speech. It analyzes oracle poems, puppet theater entrance verses, and idiomatic expressions through a proposed metrical hierarchy that demonstrates significant flexibility. This framework can be partially adapted, fully implemented, or combined in various ways to produce diverse rhythmic patterns in verse.

Everyday speech demonstrates robust correspondence between prosodic architecture and syntactic organization. This rhythmic variation arises primarily through two interdependent mechanisms: prosodic phrasing constraints governing hierarchical groupings, and metrical beat-sharing patterns regulating temporal coordination. Crucially, prosodic phrasing – particularly intonational phrasing – incorporates silent beat insertion to maintain rhythmic integrity. Function words systematically undergo prosodic subordination, sharing metrical beats with adjacent syllables, while tetrasyllabic configurations enforce beat-sharing behavior

This chapter examines the vowel system of the Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) language, which is notable for its extensive array of nasal vowels. Each oral vowel in TSM typically has a corresponding nasal vowel, and these pairs are considered distinct phonemes.

The vowel inventory of TSM includes unmarked rounded back vowels and unrounded front vowels; however, it lacks a central vowel. The back vowels [o] and [ɤ] display regional variation: [o] is a northern accent, while [ɤ] is southern.

A glide is introduced before a vowel to generate a rising diphthong. This process occurs irrespective of the vowel’s height. Analogous to the behavior of vowels, these rising diphthongs can also be succeeded by a consonant coda within the language’s syllabic structure. Conversely, falling diphthongs cannot be succeeded by a consonant coda.

Vowel length in TSM is predictable: vowels in open syllables are long, those in closed syllables ending with a nasal consonant are short, and vowels in checked syllables are extra short. Additionally, TSM features two syllabic nasal consonants, [ŋ̩] and [m̩]. These have evolved both synchronically and diachronically from the consonantalization of nasal vowels and the vocalization of consonant onsets.

The British Raj had favoured open trade and a small state. Economic development was not a major priority. This changed after independence. State expenditure as share of GDP increased in both India and Pakistan, with the goal of reducing poverty and inequality. Still, the trajectories of India and Pakistan and then Bangladesh varied. Especially in India, policymakers favoured inward-looking economic policies, and were sceptical of trade and foreign investment. The private sector was constrained by regulation. After 1991 Indian economic policy shifted sharply, deregulating and becoming more open to the global economy. Bangladesh and Pakistan moved in the same direction, but less sharply, partly because they were less statist to begin with. Other factors mattered besides government policy: the Internet boom and the service exports it facilitated; substantial remittances by migrants to the Middle East; and the protests of workers, women and other marginalized groups. In this chapter we highlight key elements of these narratives and flag the chapters that discuss them.

This chapter focuses on two major axes of social identity in India: caste and tribe. It provides an overview of the two categories, in particular focusing on how the categories are identified and measured in national-level macro data. It summarizes key features of contemporary economic disparities along these two dimensions. The chapter discusses the overlap between caste/tribal status and religion and provides a summary overview of the racial theory of caste. Tribe as a category has specific dimensions that are distinct from the caste system. The chapter reviews these and moves on to a discussion of the intersection of caste/tribe category with sex. The evidence in the chapter suggests that caste and tribe continue to define socio-economic status in contemporary India. India’s affirmative-action policies addressing caste, tribe and gender disparities are necessary, but not sufficient, to lower the influence of the lottery of birth on individual outcomes.

This chapter describes the history of the industrial labour force as it emerged in South Asia, mostly in current India, since the middle of the nineteenth century. New export-oriented industries created employment for many workers, mostly migrants from often remote rural areas, and mostly men. Despite this growth, the labour force structure did not ‘transform’. Industry never employed more than 10% of the labour force, only a small proportion of that was employed in large-scale enterprises, and many workers remained circulatory migrants. The chapter shows that it is imperative to understand this industrial labour force and forms of worker organization that emerged in the interaction of the nature of capitalist production with a large agrarian and impoverished economy, and of ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ social relations and identities.

Irrigation development in British India is widely cited as a main achievement of the Raj. The hydraulic projects, which built upon indigenous practice and evolved through ‘learning by doing’, were impressive engineering constructs that brought water to extensive areas of the subcontinent. They permitted expanded agricultural production and exports, bolstered public finances and protected the population from famine. However, the colonial context of the developments has produced contention among historians as to their role and value. This chapter discusses the different forms of irrigation in operation, and the impact of the increasingly large and integrated new systems in changing the pattern of investment and benefits between geographical regions from 1800 to 1947. Taking account of the changing technological and management aspects of the systems over time, and the way cultivators reacted to them, a broad assessment is made of the irrigation inheritance at independence.

With a study of the Punjab, which experienced phenomenal agricultural growth from the late nineteenth century thanks to the vast canal colonies, the chapter cautions against reading Indian economic history through averages. Even within regions, patterns of economic change were often a mixture of expansion and contraction. The emergence of the largest canal irrigation system in the world sharpened inequality between areas reliant on irrigated versus rain-fed agriculture. Based on its pattern of exports and imports, Punjab was a colony of Britain until the First World War and then of the rest of India. As the province exported grain to food-deficit zones in the rest of India and cotton to western India, major industrial centres such as Bombay partly deindustrialized the region. The capacity of the provincial government to redress inequalities and promote growth fell as inflation eroded the value of the land revenue. Yet standards of living and consumption rose and interdependence developed between the transport business and agriculture. The chapter suggests parallels between Punjab and other areas of northern India where commercial agriculture advanced in the colonial period.

This chapter notes that British law was hybrid in character, and also novel, standardized and sometimes ill-matched with India, but nonetheless adopted by many Indians as well as for official policy and purposes. The discussion mostly excludes criminal law but gives accounts of how civil law was applied. First described are codifications of Hindu and Muslim law, the evolving civil court system and laws on landed property and agrarian debt – with impact on production as well as social norms, alongside continuing sociopolitical dominance. Next considered are labour, contract and company laws, with limited range and effect, applying mostly to Western-style enterprises rather than to more substantial indigenous practice. Banks and currency were similarly regulated, with direct Indian influence only in the last decades of British rule. Such comprehensive, uniform law impinged more on some aspects of society and economy than on others, but did gradually and permanently reshape Indian practice.

Internal migration in India since 1850 was greatly facilitated by the revolutions in transport and communications and led to a widening of labour markets; the growth of large cities, canal colonies, mines and plantations; social and national movements; and the creation of remittance economies. This chapter describes the data and ways in which internal migration is measured and understood in the Indian subcontinent and analyses the migration trends over space and time. It also provides an outline of the broader historiography and research themes on internal migration, including periodization, economic theories of migration, causes and consequences of work-related migration, contractors and migration networks, caste, and nativism and anti-migration rhetoric and policies. A central theme of internal migration in India has been that of ‘circular migration’ and the remarkable persistence of the migration hotspots that developed in the colonial period and continue even today.

After the installation of a liberal constitution, the socialist tilt in the aftermath of independence challenged some of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, particularly the right to property, culminating in the removal of the right in the 1970s. Apart from noting the consequences of this, the chapter explores the effects of judicial hyperactivity manifest in public-interest litigation, as well as instances of overt judicial deference to the state. The other theme of the chapter follows the market orientation accompanying the 1991 economic liberalization, with the prominent challenge residing in the incapacity of the law and legal structures to govern long-term investment contracts. It is argued that the response – the creation of multiple regulatory bodies – resulted not only in fragmenting the law but also in raising generic social costs. The conclusion reinforces the narratives highlighted over the chapter by looking at arbitral awards imposed on India on account of international investment disputes.