Introduction

Most Tibeto-Burman languages have clause-chaining discourse structure (DeLancey 1991), where several clauses are chained together in a sequence with only one finite verb. Lhasa Tibetan (DeLancey 1991) and Lahu (Matisoff 2003) are examples of Tibeto-Burman languages with clause-chaining discourse structure. It has been well attested that clause-chaining discourse structure facilitates serial verb constructions, which, in turn, facilitates the development of grammaticalized verbs in such languages. In this process, grammaticalized verbs may even further develop into prefixes or suffixes. (DeLancey 1991). These grammaticalized verbs mostly develop from motion verbs like ‘go’ and ‘come,’ and postural verbs like ‘stand’ and ‘sit’ (Foley and Olson 1985).

Boro, a Tibeto-Burman language, has both a clause-chaining discourse structure and a serial verb construction. We will talk about these two constructions in detail below. The focus of this paper is a small set of verbs which can occur in the serial verb construction. Some of these verbs have developed a fair amount of grammatical meaning, while others still retain their lexical meaning. Some of them have undergone vowel change too. However, they are still identifiable with their non-serialized main verb counterparts. We will call these verbs ‘serialized verbs’ rather than grammaticalized verbs for obvious reasons. The paper has the following structure: §2 gives a brief background on the Boro language in general, and the dialect on which this work is based in particular.

Kerala, fondly known as the ‘God's Own Country’, has always been famous as the cradle of different religions since the ancient times. Islam, Christianity and Judaism have flourished side by side in this region for centuries. Kodungallur, in southern Kerala, is a living example of how a Hindu temple, a mosque and a church stand alongside each other as witnesses to the early arrival of Islam and Christianity to this land. The Jews arrived in Cochin as early as 68 ad and a small Jewish town exists even today in this region surrounding the oldest Jewish synagogue in the world.

Apart from the historical facts, Kerala is a land where all the different religious communities have coexisted in harmony over several centuries. It has therefore set an example to other regions in India. Having said that, the reader would certainly have a question in mind regarding the ‘Moplahs’ who have made history by boldly attacking the British colonial administration in Malabar. Eventually, they have acquired a scarred reputation in the historical records, books, among history students and the general public.

This book is an attempt to construct the social history of an Arab-Islamic community on the southwest coast of India. So far, students of history have only learnt about the ‘Moplah Peasant Rebellions’ in their classrooms. However, recent historical writings have made genuine attempts to correct the charred image of the ‘Moplah revolts’.

INTRODUCTION

The intertextuality built into the title of this paper might contribute to our understanding of the complex that Comparative Literature is. Since its entry into the academy, Comparative Literature has been a controversial site as regards its scope and definitive function; comparative literary scholars themselves have found it largely problematic to discuss the extent to which their ‘discipline’ can/must reach out. Yet, no one questions the effectiveness of the comparative method as a means of understanding the texts of literature and life. Given this ‘condition’, the deliberations we attempt to organize here cannot/need not be conclusive regarding the scope of our discipline, but these must vitally contribute to its present organisation. Faced with such a curious dialectic, a paper such as this that hazardously tries to correlate two problematic modes of knowing such as ‘translation’ and ‘comparison’ has a double-edged task. Primarily, it has to inquire, at least briefly, into the scope of Comparative Literature as a valid discipline with its own methodologies and perspectives, before considering if the area largely known as Translation Studies since James Holmes' pamphlet in 1975, or Translatology as it is designated here for reasons we will soon discuss, can become a directional component of Comparative Literature.

Comparative Literature: A ‘Relevant’ Interdisciplinary Site

The task of Comparative Literature has been a topic of academic discussion from the days of Meltzl and Possnet. Later, from Rene Wellek to Gayatri Spivak, academicians across the world have variously discussed the many crises faced by Comparative Literature as a discipline.

INTRODUCTION

Many attempts have been made to define folklore. Let us describe it here as ‘the world of people's imagination’. It comprises almost every aspect of our cultural life, including oral literature, material culture, customs and rituals, festivals, drama and so forth. Often we talk of how folklore has influenced literature. For example, we say: ‘The Old Testament contains stories of folk heroes’ (Leach 819). Indeed, oral literature precedes written literature, logically as well as chronologically. Scholars like Bishop Percy and Chadwicks saw folk literature as the precursor of written literary forms. A study of oral and written literatures together may reveal parallel content and themes, styles, forms and structures. The focus of this paper thus is on the ‘lore’ rather than on ‘folk’.

Folklore in Literature: The Varied Functions

Archer Taylor makes three observations about the different relationships between folklore and literature: (i) Folklore is, in many cultures, indistinguishable from literature. (ii) Literature contains elements borrowed from folklore. (iii) Writers have imitated folklore. (Taylor 37).

The correlation between folklore and literature is obvious. The story of Rama in the Indian context is a part of the oral tradition even as it is a literary text composed primarily in Sanskrit and later in all the major Indian languages. The Kalevala in Finland is a compilation of folk songs, but at the same time it is considered a classical work in Finnish Literature.

Armies in the Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent, bounded by mountains in the north and desert to the south gave birth to civilisations in Egypt and Syria, and Mesopotamia and Babylon in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley. Primitive nomadic tribes are known to have organised themselves into small groups for governance and mutual aid. When they fought, their methods depended on surprise and individual strength and bravery. The brave were considered to be champions and there were others who were followers of these champions. If one champion fell, his followers were also slaughtered or enslaved.

No military organisations existed at that time. Even in Egypt's Early Empire, around 3000 BC, there was hardly any military force except for the small militia which the kings maintained for defense against marauders. The Middle Empire of 2000 BC was engrossed in seeking knowledge and developing maritime commerce. The art of fortification was well developed, which was adequate for self protection. It also kept them isolated from outside contact.

Although the Egyptians were not known to be warlike, the Old and the Middle Empires had companies of archers, heavy infantry armed with spears and shields, and light infantry carrying smaller shields and battle axes. It was not until the New Empire in 1500 BC, in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, that there is any significant mention of a massed army or a battle.

Logistics – Meaning, Definitions, General Aspects

The word logistics as explained by Baron Antoine Henri Jomini (Jomini, 1838, p. 252) is derived from the title ‘major general’ or merchal des logis, an officer in eighteenth century France whose duty it was to lodge and camp the troops, to give directions to the marches of columns and to locate them on the ground. In an earlier period, logistics was limited only to details of marches and camps.

In the Prussian army, the term Quartermaster was given to the person in charge of encampments and troop quarters (logis). These functionaries became equivalent of chiefs of staff to the commanders of the day (Sarin, 2000, p. 678).

Logistics belongs to an area of non-combatant activity and is the practical art of moving armies. The archaic meaning of logistics is the science of computation. In Greek, logistikos means ‘skilled in calculating’; it is still used in mathematics as ‘logic’ or ‘logarithmic’– but seems unrelated to modern military application except in estimating requirements and planning in advance.

The objective of any and all logistics effort is to create support for combat forces. Functional and technical efficiency should not dominate what are called the ‘command perspectives’, although in the majority of instances, a functionally effective system will help increase combat effectiveness.

Introduction

The basis for the current research is our linguistic work among the Hajong community in 2004–2006. The language is spoken by approximately 80 to 100 thousand people (Hajong 2002: 9) in the North-East Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam.

Hajong is classified as an Indo-Aryan (IA) language. It has some degree of similarity with Assamese and Bengali, the two IA languages spoken in the region. At the same time, certain grammatical similarities such as case marking can be found between Hajong and some Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages spoken in the same geographic location (Phillips 2008).

The paper presents the distribution of the vowel and consonant segments, with contrastive pairs, syllable and stress patterns where applicable. At the end of each section we will compare the phonological features of Hajong with the corresponding ones in TB, represented by Garo and IA, represented by Assamese. The scope of the current study covers segments distribution patterns at the syllable level, with some comments on their position within the word.

Analysis of consonants

In this chapter, we will talk about consonant segments of Hajong. A segment is defined as “any discrete unit or phone, produced by the vocal apparatus, or a representation of such a unit” (Loos 1996: S). The next linguistic level above the segment is the syllable. Since our analysis is based mostly on syllable structures, it is important to establish the definition of this notion. A syllable typically consists of a central peak of sonority (usually a vowel) and optional less sonorant segments before and/or after the peak (Loos 1996: S), commonly called onset and coda.

Slums and squatter settlements are an essential facet of the urban landscape of most countries, more so that of the developing countries. They are also somewhat of a paradox in themselves. They are both: (i) a manifestation of urban poverty, and (ii) a reflection of the economic pull of urban areas. The definition of a slum varies from country to country, depending on the cultural mores and economic conditions. Slums are residential areas of least choice, characterized by dilapidated houses, poor ventilation, inadequate lighting, poor sanitation, lack of clean drinking water, overcrowding, convoluted street patterns, fire and flood hazards, poor facilities for education and health, unhygienic living conditions causing air and waterborne diseases. Socially, they are characterized by drug abuse, alcoholism, crime, vandalism, escapism, apathy and social isolation (Haggett et al., 1981; Census of India, 2001). In India, slums have been defined under Section 3 of the Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act, 1956, as areas where buildings are unfit for human habitation by reason of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangement and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of streets, lack of ventilation, light, sanitation facilities or any combination of these factors which are detrimental to safety, health and morals.

Introduction

Kudeng War is a dialect of Nongtalang-Nongbareh War, one of the three sub-groups of War, itself a nearly unknown, unwritten conservative Mon- Khmer (MK) language. War is spoken by approximately 65,000 speakers mostly in Meghalaya, North-eastern India. Wars are mostly betel nuts planters on slopes and small isolated groups remain in Bangladesh, in Assam and between Mizoram and Tripura states on the former space of an important pre-colonial Pnar kingdom. War belongs to a group comprising Pnar, Khasi, Lyngngam (PWKL) and many “composite varieties”. An overview with two linguistic maps of PWKL and War and also a glossed sample text in War can be found in Daladier (this volume).

War serial verb constructions (SVCs) share common features with SE Asian SVCs, like adversative constructions and serial lexicalization as a complementation strategy. They also exhibit features not yet described which might be shared by other Austroasiatic languages. War SVCs include values expressed differently in a language like English, in active and in passive verbal auxiliations and also in “light verb” constructions; they also include values expressed in English clausal dependencies without realis/ irrealis, finite/non finite or past participial/gerund morphology.

In addition to these values, grammaticalized in their own way, grammaticalized SVCs in War express productively values not grammaticalized in English. They express especially a gradience of active and passive values associated with subjectivity values referring to the speaker (or his subject).

Many geographies across the world are fast becoming sites of intermingling cultures and overlapping languages. In this scenario, no contemporary scholarship can limit itself to a single discipline. This is especially true of a plurisignificant site such as ‘literature’. Literary scholars have always been open to engaging themselves with fields other than literature in order to gain greater insights into their own pursuit. The Humanities in general today rely a great deal on a scholar's expertise in theorising and on her ability to consider different arts and sciences concurrently. Specialists in literature today have begun to take active interest in the areas of Translation Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Women's Studies, indigenous wisdom and other subjects under the broad scope of the Humanities and Social Sciences. This section seeks to privilege this intertextuality inherent to the rigorous pursuit of a literary scholar of our times. Here, experts like Julian Vigo and Meena T. Pillai argue that Comparative Literary Studies must engage far more robustly than it has ever done with various modes of representation available today. However, even as we open out our studies towards the full diversity of verbal, visual, and musical representations today, older comparative sites such as translation, folklore, performance et cetera continue to have an important place in our scheme of things. Today, Comparative Literature has devised a strategy of understanding literature in relation to various other epistemic and creative fields, thereby expanding its scope as never before.

INTRODUCTION

How do we address the issue of ‘curriculum development for Comparative Literature’ in India? The term ‘development’ in the title of the workshop would either suggest that the curriculum for Comparative Literature has not been developed yet or that there is a need for a revision of the current curriculum. If it is the former, it might mean that Comparative Literature has still not been offered as a ‘major’ discipline of study either at the postgraduate or undergraduate levels in many universities in India and therefore, there is a need to develop a curriculum for an emerging discipline. If it is the latter, it might mean that there is a crying need to address a revision of the discipline of Comparative Literature in such form as it exists now, mainly at the MPhil, and PhD, levels in Indian universities.

We would like to begin by addressing the pressing need to problematise the term ‘Comparative Literature’ in the Indian context. When literature worldwide is being studied in the context of various other disciplines like Gender Studies, Cultural Studies and Film Studies, can we talk any more of studying ‘literature’ in isolation? Also, how do we conceptualise Comparative Literature in a country that has a plethora of literatures preserved (orally or in the written form) in a multiplicity of languages?

Attempts to address the ‘crisis’ in the teaching of English Literature as a discipline some years ago resulted in expanding the scope of English Literature by admitting courses in Women's Studies, Cultural Studies, Film Studies etc. Consequently, we no longer refer to English Literature but to English Studies.

The boundaries of social planning are very elastic. In its broadest sense, social planning is concerned with collective action taken to create better living conditions and a brighter future for individuals and groups viewed from this perspective. It encompasses a vast range of activities that are difficult to examine in their totality. Thus, it becomes useful to adopt a specific focus to examine social planning and social planning issues. The focus adopted in this review is spatial or geographic. The intent is to analyze the spatial dimension of selected social planning initiatives within a specific social context – urban society.

Social Planning Issues

As stated earlier, the range of social planning concerns is vast and contains a multitude of sub-areas and issues. These include – (i) racism and sexism, (ii) ageing, (iii) child care and education, (iv) housing, economic opportunity and social justice, (v) public health, (vi) public safety and crime, and (vii) quality of life issues including access to cultural and leisure benefits.

Each of these sub-areas or issues has a spatial component. For example, racism and ethnicity are often reflected in segregation patterns. Economic opportunity may be limited in certain geographic areas. Public health indicators may vary by geographic regions and crime patterns frequently exhibit a particular spatial pattern.

Architectural or Physical Determinism

Addressing social planning concerns from a spatial perspective frequently involves the adoption of an architectural or physical determinism argument.

A temple often becomes the focal point of history, culture and political supremacy in India. The southern part of India is speckled with many such temples that have made a distinctive contribution not only to the religious life of the people but also have served as the core around which the social and cultural life of the people revolved. Madurai is one such old temple city of India, although it has also become a major industrial city of South India. For the last two thousand years it has been a remarkable centre of South Indian culture and civilization. It is located on the banks of river Vaigai and derived its name from ‘Mathura’ of North India. Madurai is a brilliant instance of town and country planning of ancient India and has also been mentioned by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy as ‘Modoura’. The Meenakshi temple in Madurai is one of the most significant centres of Hindu worship. Not only are pilgrims attracted to the site from all over India, but the temple also serves as a regional focus for worship and as a social centre for a large population. ‘Madurai’ in the local language means ‘sweet place’. Myths are also attached to the name of the city. For instance, it is said that Lord Shiva was immensely pleased with the building of the city and sprinkled nectar (madhu) over it, hence the name Madurai.