Halbi has been characterized as a curious mixture of Oriya, Chattisgarhi and Marathi (Grierson, 1927:31). From the point of view of Eastern Hindi Grierson considered it to be a form of Marathi and from the Marathi point of view, Konow considered it to be a form of Eastern Hindi. It has been claimed to be dialects of Magahi (Chatterji 1926:14) Oriya (Hoyd, 1937): (103-107) and Chattisgarhi (Kantikumar, 1969: 74-76). Only recently Singh (1977:16) has claimed Halbi as an independent language geographically and linguistically. Whether or not Singh's findings provide solution to the problem of linguistic affiliation of Halbi, the fact remains that the grammar of Halbi contains grammatical components of three languages – Marathi, Chattisgarhi and Oriya. In this paper I will be primarily concerned with the examination of direction and extent of language mixture contained in the morphological and syntactical elements of the Halbi language. The term `language mixture' here refers to incorporation of features from more than one speech. Data for this analysis has been derived from very excellent works of Singh (1977) and Woods (1973).
Sociolinguistic
Setting
It must be remembered that Halbi as a lingua franca in the Bastar
district of Madhya Pradesh was not evolved as a language of communication out of
the mutually unintelligible languages of various tribes living in the area.
Whatever may be the origin of Halbi, it very much appears to be a
transplanted language. Halbas
(speakers of Halbi) were historically associated with Bhonsla kingdom.
They were employed in the Bhonsla army, held executive posts in their
kingdom and moved to all places where Bonsla Kings established administrative
centers, forts and jagirs. Because
of Halbas association with Bhonsla kingdom, their language Halbi enjoyed high
prestige and was till recently widely used as lingua franca.
Present day sociolinguistic setting of the Halbas is very complex, rather
confusing. Major concentration of
the Halbas is in the district of Bastar in Madhya Pradesh.
Outside Bastar they are mainly found in the districts of Durg and
Grammatical
Components
Halbi is in contact with three languages: Chattisgarhi (Hindi) in the
north of Bastar: Gondi and its dialects in the South: Bhatri form of Oriya in
the East and Marathi in the West. Careful
examination of Halbi grammar reveals that it has incorporated grammatical
components of all important contacting languages – Marathi, Chattisgarhi and
Bhatri. This can be seen in the
comparative chart below. This chart
has been reproduced from Singh (1977: 12-15) with slight modification from my
own data.
From
the foregoing chart it is apparent that Halbi converges with Marathi,
Chattisgarhi and Bhatri, either with one language or with combination of two or
more languages. We can thus posit
the following three directions of convergence of very complex nature; they are
unidirectional exhibit convergence (with one language at a time); bi-directional
(show simultaneous convergence with two languages); and multidirectional (show
simultaneous convergence with more than two languages).
I.
Unidirectional Convergence
In this type of convergence we find Halbi converging with (a) Marathi, (b)Chattisgarhi,
and (c) Bhatri. Halbi shows
convergence with Marathi in the use of the genetive suffix –co; amco bhai `our
brother'; teco nani boTa `his younger son'; tumco `your' etc.; and in the use of
reflexive pronoun aplo: aplo bap `one's own father.
It may be noted in passing that these are the only two elements of
Marathi language which are exclusively used in Halbi.
Considering Halbas historical association with Bhonsla kings, this meager
effect on the language is rather surprising.
Halbi shows unidirectional convergence with Chattisgarhi in the use of
the first person-singular pronoun mai `I', and with Bhatri in the use of
dative/accusative –ke: limhuke `lime accusative; locative me, ne; `pay nice in
the leg' rajne `in the country'; tui `you singular'.
II. Bidirectional convergence
Halbi shows bi-directional convergence with three sets of languages: (a) Chattisgarhi and Marathi; (b) Bhatri and Marathi, and (c) Bhatri and Chattisgarhi.
It shows convergence with Chattisgarhi and Marathi in the se of the
instrumental post position se: baRgi se `with stick'; with Bhatri and Marathi in
the use of instrumental ne: Tangiya ne `with the axe'; the use of the
conjunctive article –un: lekimanke chaDun paralo `he ran away leaving the
girls behind: the past tense suffix –l-. tui
sartis `you finished'. Grammatical
components of Bhatri and Chattisgarhi in Halbi arise the use of: man indicating
plurality; pilaman `children'; masculine – feminine gender opposition as
against masculine – feminine – neuter genders of Marathi; lack of inflection
for gender number and case, use of ablative be as in Khube din le `since many
days'; ghar le `from house'; use of the verb ra `be'; tu ralis you were'; use of
the present participle marker to: mae baghke jate dakhle `I saw the tigar
going', and the use of the relative pronoun je: je dine kasa dila ale, hun dine
hag deuat whatever day they will give the Kasa purification ceremony, what day
they will call the village people (Woods, 1973: 106).
Here it is important to note that the past tense suffix –l- found in
Marathi, Halbi, Bhatri is also shared by Sadri spoken in Bihar, Orissa, Madhya
Pradesh and West Bengal (alo I came; alak `he came), Kupia: aa:wa dekilayi `I
saw' (Christmas 1973: 180) spoken in Andhra Pradesh, and Kotia Oriya gola `he
went' (Gustafeson, 1973:111) spoken in Orissa – all of whom function as
contact languages in sociopolitical settings of their respective regions.
It is however open to debate whether the use of the past suffix –l- in
such wide spread geographical areas of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
The use of the post position man as plural marker is found in Sadri,
besides Chattisgarhi, Halbi and Bhatri. Its
use in these contact languages spread over very vast area would probably suggest
the existence of linguistic `sub-area' within a linguistic area if I (am
permitted to) use this notion to include languages belonging to one family
showing traits in common which are found not to belong to the other members of
the same family.
III. Multidirectional Convergence
We observe multidirectional convergence of Halbi with a set of three languages. Marathi, Chattisgarhi and Bhatri in the use of interrogative pronoun Kon `who': It is somewhat doubtful if this is due to the result of convergence with these three languages. As we do not yet know the original language of Halbas there is however a benefit of doubt, if Halbas spoke a non-Aryan language prior to adopting Halbi, the use of the interrogative pronoun is certainly due to convergence.
The extent of convergence in Halbi is larger with Bhatri and Chattisgarhi.
In bi-directional convergence Halbi with Chattisgarhi and Marathi on the
one hand, and with Bhatri and Marathi on the other, one would possibly argue
that Halbi converges with Marathi through Chattisgarhi and Bhatri.
In this complex language contact situation it is difficult to say whether
Chattisgarhi first converged with Marathi and later Halbi converged with
Chattisgarhi.
There are in the chart a few grammatical forms of Halbi which are not
shared by other contiguous languages discussed above.
For example, the Halbi future tense marker –d- is not found in Marathi,
Chattisgarhi and Bhatri. This
however occurs in Kupia gecinde `I will go;' nemunde `we will take' (Christmas,
1973: 176). At the moment it is
however difficult to say whether Halbi –d- is the result of its convergence
with Kupia, or vice versa. The third
person pronoun hum and te seem to be free variants, and this phenomenon of free
variation is not shared by other languages.
To conclude, I have attempted to examine very complex nature of convergence of Halbi with Marathi, Chattisgarhi and Bhatri. Since the direction of convergence is not confined to one particular language, Halbi perhaps presents a koine-like situation which incorporates features from several varieties of one language family. It will be useful to compare phonological and lexical components of these languages to substantiate the findings presented in this paper.
REFERENCES
