Born on January 7, 1941 at Bugam, Kashmir, Omkar Nath Koul was educated at the Universities of Jammu and Kashmir, Agra and Illinois (USA). His areas of interest are General Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language Education, Communication, Computational Linguistics, South Asian Languages and Comparative Literature.
Dr. Koul has held academic and administrative positions in different Institutions. He has worked as a Faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne, (1969- 1971), Principal Northern Regional Language Center of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (1971-1987), Professor of Hindi and Regional Languages at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie (1987-1994), Professor-cum- Deputy Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages (1994-1999), Director In- Charge, CIIL (1999-2000).
A number of prestigious national and international fellowships have been conferred on him for his publications and for his contributions to Indian languages and linguistics. To cite a few, he was awarded a fellowship to Study Administration of Inservice Teacher Education in Australia and an award for his research publication in ‘Hindi by the International Society for Art and Culture. Bavath Cultural Society honored : him by bringing out a special issue of the Journal Bavath (1998) for his contribution to Kashmiri language, linguistics and literature.
He has been a member of various learned societies and boards. He is the chairman of Indian Institute of Language studies and editor of the Journal of South Asian Language Review. He was also elected as the President of Linguistic Society of India (1997-1999).
About 45 books and 150 research papers related to Linguistics and Literature have been authored/edited by him. These include both national and international publications. To mention a few: ‘Kashmiri: A Cognitive - Descriptive Grammar’, ‘A Study in Comparative Indo-Aryan’, ‘An Intensive Course in Kashmiri’.
In addition to research, Omkar Nath Koul has been engaged in creative literature in Kashmiri and Hindi. He has also translated literary works from Kashmiri into Hindi and Punjabi, and from Oriya into Punjabi.
When a scholar goes on super annuation, it is important for all colleagues to show their respect and admiration for someone, who, with them, toiled hard to see that the flag of their institution flies high. There is something in the energetics of some that can enthuse others to discover newer and newer horizons. Omkar Nath Koul is one such person, who, despite his many handicaps, has been able to generate so much good will and bonhomie among his colleagues that they have looked upon him as an icon of freedom and inspiration. Omkar has worked in a number of fields, on a large number of topics and collaborated with numerous scholars. He has been at ease in both hard-core theoretical linguistics as well as in frontier areas in applied linguistics and literary studies. But, in that, he has been a master of all.
Most importantly, there are some who can project themselves very prominently but there are others who like to promote the cause they stand for, and Omkar belongs to the latter type. To the younger colleagues, he leaves behind a model of an academic whose zeal of work they can emulate. To the senior colleagues, who have had the pleasure of spending many years with him, he leaves behind many happy moments. To those in the administration of this institution, he leaves behind the image of a sober person who could not be harsh to anyone. Soft-spoken and gentle, Omkar can hardly have enemies.
Some of us thought that a volume of research papers and ideas, howsoever tentative they may be, will be the best way to honour a scholar when he goes out of an institution. This, we thought, could be a new trend that we at the Central Institute of Indian Languages could set - a trend that binds scholars together, rather than allowing them to stray in different directions. This is something for which Omkar has worked hard. By presenting this volume in felicitation of an eventful career, we are telling him that we grow stronger together, and will rernember him for having cemented the base of this new and strong relationship.
This volume of papers in applied linguistics is a Festschrift for Professor O.N. Koul. The varied area of interests that characterizes the person is featured in this volume. The papers are drawn from different areas such as literature and translation, language and empowerment, language, society and education, language teaching, language and information and language analysis. The sub-categorizations of the contributions are accordingly divided into these themes as is evident from the contents.
The Papers on literature and translation look at literary and cultural texts. Singh takes a position that in terms of methodology, creative writing and translation are quite comparable in that all writings are like translation, twice removed from the logical text that lies in the author’s mind. For unpacking of a literary text, reading has to be brought to the centre-stage. He differentiates between the text and the work, and discusses the issue of successful translation. The discussion elaborates the losses and the gains in translation and takes a view that a translator is constantly under tension, trying to negotiate between under-translation and over-translation.
Narayan analyses narratives of Jenukuruba tribal community as cultural texts and shows that narratives are not merely for entertainment. But they are the result of realization of societal knowledge. It is a positioning of self power as an effect of the operation of social relationship. New power relationship leads to new knowledge which is reflected in cultural texts. Knowledge is not ‘true’ or ‘false’ but every narrative tries to see knowledge in its own perspective.
Rajyashree, drawing insights from theories of structuralists, Marxists and Neo- Marxists, analyses Marathi poetry to study the social changes, especially with reference to the process of Urbanization in Indian society as reflected in the poetry. She also explores the linguistic approach - a path which has not been traded on by many literary analysts.
Geetha Kumary analyses headlines of Malayalam Newspapers and categorizes them into different rhetoric expressions like personification, simile, metaphor, metonymy, euphemism, antithesis, irony, pun, transferred epithet, hyperbole, proverbial statement, idiomatic expression, imperative expression, interrogation and exclamation. She also shows that the use of these expressions make headlines more sensational and attractive. Further, these rhetoric expressions with choice of appropriate words give rhyme and poetic expression.
The lone paper on the second theme by Rangila discusses the role of language in the empowerment paradigm. The paper conceptualizes an empowerment paradigm in detail within the scope of semiotogy of civilization. He explores a general paradigm of power that explicates nature, structure, function and signification of language as it participates in life making. To understand the role of power in shaping of linguistic entities and categories, Rangila situates linguistic enquiry into a general process of life making wherein both linguistic structuralism and power configuration are local variants of what he terms as parastructures.
The five papers on the broad theme of language, society and education have multiple focus. They simultaneously look at multilingualism and language planning. Pattanayak, using the framework of modernity and contemporaneity makes a distinction between monolingualism, bilingualism and multilingualism. He then relates these concepts to polity in terms of unitary, federal and multi-tier states. In conclusion, he discusses three perspectives in language planning namely, the one, the two and the many.
Mallikarjun traces the evolution of language policy for education, both language as a subject and medium of instruction in Karnataka since independence of the country, and particularly after reorganization of the States. The policy as it is today is evolved in five stages.
Bayer presents current trends in research methodology in the context of globalization and its impact on multilingualism and multiculturalism. She also points out some of the limitations such as compartmentalization of research output. She argues that knowledge gained through research is not shared across social sciences and research results are not of immediate relevance to the people under study. She proposes that research results have to be combined with the main objective, 1.e. the total development of the community through its shared participation.
Kapfo reports on language situation in Nagaland with special emphasis on the role of Nagamese in interlingual communication among different linguistic groups of Nagas. He analyses reported language use and attitudes/opinions about Nagamese. He concludes that Nagamese is predominantly used in most situations except in official domain, irrespective of the interactions between educated and uneducated inter-ethnic groups, or between tribal or non-tribal groups. However, most language groups are not in favour of further developing Nagamese as a lingua-franca and introducing it in schools. He concludes that both positive and negative attitudes towards Nagamese are equally strong.
Sharma brings out the fluctuation in language identities and motives behind the shift in identities. He further argues that language identity in Indian context is not exclusive but one can maintain multiple identities where they do not interfere with one another. He shows with example of Haryana that there is no scope for reflecting multiple identities in census because of the faulty design of census questionnaire vis-a-vis language, as it does not permit the reporting of more than one mothertongues The section on language teaching deals with different perspectives. Using a sociolinguistic perspective, Sam Mohan Lal provides a framework for preparation of materials for language teaching after analyzing each factor involved, starting from content selection to the writing of exercises. He concludes that a proper co-ordination between the objectives of the syllabus, materials, teaching methodologies, language teacher and student will give confidence to the student not only about the structure of language but also about being more interactive and creative.
Nair highlights the theoretical developments in the field of linguistics vis-a-vis language teaching methods. He presents evolution of language teaching methods from Grammar Translation method to the latest methodology of language teaching, which emphasizes on notional/ functional syllabus corresponding to communicative needs.
The contribution of information sciences to linguistics is evident in the paper by Sharada. She presents an alternative to existing content organization in a Kannada monolingual dictionary. She further discusses problems involved in retrieving data and suggests possible solutions.
The section on language analysis deals with different aspects of linguistic structures using different analytical techniques. Giridhar gives empirical and theoretical arguments for a different taxonomy of Kannada compounds. The taxonomy is different from the traditional taxonomies as well as those given by other scholars like D.N:S. Bhat and Sridhar. He, however, does not take a position vis-a-vis the contentious issue of gamakasamasas.
Basu uses contrastive methodology to identify the problem areas in Bengali for Nepali speakers and in Nepali for Bengali speakers. Bengali and Nepali both belong to Indo-Aryan group and both speech communities have had close contacts. He discusses certain problem areas in context of language learning and teaching. The problem areas identified are that of plural formation, case markers and syntactic structures. Baruah discusses four unique morphological features of Assamese, a modern Indo-Aryan language. These features are neither found in the genetically related or cognate languages of Assamese nor in its contact non-cognate languages. He defines them as ‘developmental features’ of Assamese.
Acharya analyses and describes the causatives and passive constructions in Lotha, a Naga language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family.
In the life of a discipline, a time comes after a while when one needs to look back. Has the time come now for Applied Linguistics? I guess it has.
The term applied in the context of language sciences is accepted as a ‘fashion’ by those who are ‘purists’. And yet, there has not been a Pure Linguistics ever in our literature, unlike Pure Mathematics. Nevertheless, there have been other epithets such as ‘Green’ linguistics (thanks to Probal Dasgupta), ‘Fuzzy’ Linguistics (a la John Robert Ross) or ‘Functional’ Linguistics (Martinet or Halliday?), etc. Ihave often asked myself as to why has no one in our long tradition talked about Pure Linguistics. I think I can hazard a guess now. Language and purity do not go together. That is because pre-varication is an ingrained characteristic of our expression system. Consequently, all our productions and reproductions vis-‘-vis language are instances of ‘double articulation-—twice removed from what could have been ideal, real, deep or underlying—all four words being a part of our inherited semantics now.
It is this removal from reality that adds colour to what we say or do with language—even when we actually don’t say anything. Our fiction or drama, or our poetry cannot therefore be a mere mirror of reality. For that matter, even if there is a genre that is ideally expected to be reflecting our life and living - such as journalistic writing or mass media coverage, the way our cameras move, or the way the pen is tilted or the kind of paper we write in, or the diction a particular commentator resorts to - all show the same creative uncertainty, the same pre-varication. No wonder then that what we are expected to do linguistically under oath of honesty and truthfulness is not what we actually do whether we stand as witnesses or when we stand on judgment on others. There is this general uncertainty in all instances of speak, not only when there is double-speak. It is from this uncertainty, the removal from reality, and this double- articulation that all modern folklore flows and enriches our existence.
Be that as it may, we cannot escape this realization that our linguistics is bound by our languages. It cannot free itself from this chain of ‘impurity’ and uncertainty. It is not surprising, therefore, that ideal speaker-listeners are only a myth that we all like to believe in. All our calculations vis-‘-vis speed of learning and rate of retention are only approximations. The way a feature gets diffused through space and time can only be determined roughly. What was once thought to be more exact in linguistics, namely, Phonetics has also turned out to be only approximate and imprecise. Our parsers, built after decades of research, give so many parses that the choice of interpretation as to which one is intended is still left open to listeners or readers. (This is like saying, all our literary texts are open- ended, and that only their readers assign them meaning. In other words, a text ‘happens’ only when a reader reads it.) Our spell- checkers and grammar-checkers. once again show only certain percentage of accuracy. Our phonology has numerous loose ends and counter-examples and our ‘laws’ of sound change have many leakages. There have also been scholars who have gone to the extreme of writing rules for exceptions, too. Others have thrown up their hands in desperation, and talked about only aarSa- prayoga or nipaatane siddha to account for exceptions.
In short, in whatever we do in Linguistics now or have done earlier, we are far away from reality and purity. Does it mean that as a discipline, Linguistics can never hope to be pure, exact and screntific? (I can easily see a smile on the face of our detractors at this point.) But if we turn this question towards Physics or to what was once thought to be on a more. perfect ground, Chemistry, we find that this uncertainty and hypocrisies are inherent in these ‘pure’ and ‘hard’ sciences, too. To my mind, in the quest of knowledge, purity can only be an ever-elusive and never-available concept. And, hence, Applied Linguistics.
There are some who would skirt the question on purity and use the word core as an antonym to applied. But those who talk about the Core vs. Applied distinction in Linguistics often come up with situations where the core is nothing but a nebulous undifferentiated whole - a few rules of syntax or word formation or even phonology where the conditioning factors lie within grammar. The proponents of autonomy of syntax had very soon learnt that such attempts to raise fireballs within Linguistics would not pay. The boon of linguistics has been that greater number people knew and believed’ that most of what is Linguistics reside beyond the Core - that most of it reside in its edges. Here Linguistics is woven together with sister disciplines. Some edgy areas show the mark of needle-work clearly and disciplines that conjoined to form the pastiche have not so far arrived at a common understanding. They still remain, what we call in our jargon, ‘hyphenated linguistics’. Others have had a good mix - so much so that they have néw emerged as almost parallel disciplines - Sociolinguistics being by far the best example of this trend.
In its present incarnation, Applied Linguistics has emerged as a composite . endeavor where there have been a confluence of ideas from a number of disciplines such as Anthropology, Archaeology, Artificial Intelligence, Folklore, Geography, History, Information Sciences, Literary Studies, Mathematics, Neurology, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Sociology and Statistics in alphabetical order. The approaches that owe their birth to these disciplines have got enmeshed in language analyses of various kinds in such manner that it is very difficult now, for instance, to separate out as to how much of what we know about language and mind is purely linguistics and how much of itis psychology. Further, ever since these disciplines began taking interest in matters of language, each one of them has also changed beyond recognition. Of course, there have been greater interaction with some of these disciplines so that impact of Linguistics has not been the same everywhere, nor have their influences been equal on Linguistics.
If we look at the history of the term, there was a time when Applied Linguistics meant only or mainly Language Teaching. The Master’s programs in different institutions of higher learning which used the fashionable title of Applied Linguistics ended up offering ELT courses with a fair dose of testing and sampling techniques. Today there is hardly anyone outside the ‘empire’ who would agree with this narrow interpretation. language and mind, or for preparing a human atlas, or for application on There seems to have emerged a greater consensus that all applications of Linguistics - whether they be for understanding processing of language by intelligent machines, etc. must be brought under the general title of Applied Linguistics. This journey from a narrow space to a wider corridor has taken us the last fifty years.
If one were to write a Social History of Applied Linguistics today, a few names would come up immediately, as a part of the Indian chapter, as architects of this discipline in this part of the world. Sumitra Mangesh Katre and Prabodh Bechardas Pandit belong to this league, and they have both left a legacy for us to make best use of what they have done. The trinity is complete only with Debi Prasanna Pattanayak’s name. Debi babu who is still among us, and turns seventy today, has had seminal influence on almost all attempts to promote the discipline in India. He has been a part of almost all those institutions which have been primarily responsible for promotion of research and teaching of Indian languages and linguistics in the tradition I have outlined above. These include Deccan College, Viswabharati, American Institute of Indian Studies, Ford Foundation, and of course, Central Institute of Indian Languages. The last one of these has been founded by him, and promoted in trying circumstances. Any one who knows the internal folklore of this organization will know the level of involvement of DP with the well-being of this institution - so much so that we can both praise him for all positive things that have happened in the institute and blame him for all that has gone wrong. There are a very few scholars who are so much involved with the ways a given discipline develops in a country and the way a designated institution becomes instrumental in that activity. What P.C.Maholanobis has done to the discipline of Statistics and to the institution called ISI in India has been quietly achieved by Debi Prasanna Pattanayak here.
As someone who has watched this institution grow from outside since 1974, I can testify that each corner of this institution bears the mark of this extra-ordinary person. If we are now thinking about being different from what has so far happened to the Institution and step into the World of Language Sciences boldly - laying our own path and charting into newer territories - it is because our foundation has been strong. Time forgets him who forgets time. We shall never forget you, Debi babu.
The present volume ’Papers in Applied Linguistics IT is brought out in honour of Professor D.P. Pattanayak, the founder Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages on the occasion of his attaining the 70th year. The volume contains twenty-seven papers in the areas of language analysis, language teaching and various other applications of linguistics. Based on the content and broad area of coverage, these papers are categorised into - ReSearch Methodology, Sociolinguistics, Language. Planning,-Language and Culture, Language Teaching, Language Analysis and Language, Literature and Translation. These are also the areas of interests of Prof. Pattanayak.
Research Methodology
Five papers under the section on Research methodology discuss various issues in the research and analytical techniques. Their choice of areas and methodological issues show the variety or range of ideas covered in this section.
B.D. Jayaram’s paper stresses the need for a sample study to formulate and execute a project plan and assess its effectiveness in a given field of study. The important reasons for selecting a set of samples and the characteristics that distinguishes one set of samples with another are identified in the paper. The types of sampling dealt in here are mainly based on the manner of selection. They include judgment (purposive sampling), snowball sampling, multi-stage sampling and systematic sampling. The author discusses both advantages and disadvantages of these sampling procedures in sociolinguistic research.
Hans R. Dua discusses some issues from the point of view of sociolinguistic theory to find out the limitations and significant aspects in survey of language use. He opines that the data on actual usage is required to be supplemented while surveying the data based on self reports. The frequency scales such as validity, reliability and replicability are more helpful for the development and standardization of the quantitative measures of language use. He also points out that there is a need to identify and develop reliable measures to understand the relative significance of various parameters of language use for adopting domain analysis, network analysis or in giving importance to the participants rather than any other parameter.
Rekha Sharma in her paper reports her administration of the Stroop Test in the context of a study of colour naming and word reading to find out the differences in performance between males and females and between monolingual English and non-English bilingual speakers. The experiment is based on English texts.
Nair studies, listening comprehension skill by correlating aural cloze procedure with multiple choice test. He discusses various testing techniques in detail and compares the cloze test with multiple-choice test. Based on the results of these tests, he concludes that aural cloze procedure is a better choice to test the listening comprehension skill.
Srivastava and Ramaswamy investigate the effect of bilingual education on those situations where one has a language other than one’s mother tongue as a medium of instruction. They consider socio-economic status and sex of school-going students and assess their academic achievement and self concept of academic ability when they are a part of bilingual education programme. For this purpose, they administered a revised version of Kuppuswamy’s socio-economic status scale and the questionnaire of self-concept of academic ability. For administrating the first scale, they took the average marks of four previous examinations obtained by each student in each of the five curricular subjects. For the second scale, they took students from trilingual media school. The data analysis was done on the three-way ANOVA and the outcome of the analysis is discussed in detail and the results are presented in a tabular form. The authors stress the importance of medium of instruction and socio-economic status and suggest the need to study the important societal factors from different angles to reinforce bilingual education so that clearer and more positive results emerge.
Bayer and.Sam Mohan Lal present their papers on sociolinguistics aspects. Bayer discusses the use and spread of Hindi as a lingua franca of a minority group in a situation where Kannada is the dominant language. She clarifies conceptually on the notions of link language, lingua franca and language of wider communication, which are often used in the same sense. She discusses the patterns of Hindi use in different situations by the Tamil speakers (a minority group in Bangalore), for whom Hindi functions as a lingua franca and focuses Tamils’ attitude towards Hindi.
Sam Mohan Lal’s paper presents two different minority segments who represent the twin tendencies of convergence and shift in tribal and non-tribal situations. The two situations are represented by the Uralis,a tribal community living in Sathyamangalam hill tracts and Iyengars, a minority Tamil speaking group, living in Bangalore, respectively. The author compares these two communities, and finds that due to the strong forces of change the languages of the minorities are undergoing a systematic partial shift. He notices a remarkable difference between the speech pattern of the older generation and the younger generation both in the case of Iyengars and Uralis. Among the younger generation, the selection of their linguistic code generally depends on the socio-economic class they belong to and with whom they interact. Among the Uralis, the women and the old people show less influence of the dominant language of the area, Tamil, than the male and younger generation speakers exhibit. This differences between these two categories have correlation with their frequency of contact with the dominant language.
There is a greater scope of research on convergence and shift in the area as the author put forth some questions at the end of the paper.
Language Planning
Sound change in a language is a natural phenomenon. This feature enables Bakul C. Chowdhary to propose certain changes in the Bengali script by simplifying some of the graphemes that are redundant in their function so that the existing diglossia situation in the language and in the use of the script with regard to the spoken and written varieties, can be reduced to a large extent. This will facilitate, in the opinion of the author, the writing system which will then be more economical, scientific and less adhoc and it will also reduce the burden of both the first and the second language learners.
When a language becomes more complex and archaic then the need for simplification arises. Ideally, the ruling elites have to use the simplified language in their administration for better understanding of their order by the common men as they are the majority of the subjects in their territories. This strategy will not only lead to the emergence of common man’s language but will also reverse the position of many of our modern Indian languages. From this historical perspective, Yadurajan presents a case for Kannada language simplification describing its emergence in historical dimension.
Mallikarjun’s paper also deals with similar aspects of language of administration with reference to Kannada. He discusses both general and specific areas of use of language in administration by taking the contemporary language situation. He presents a linguistic study of language in administration by studying the basic structure of communication, its sub-domains and modes of communication. The role of technical terms, their characteristics and grammatical categories, phrases, sentence patterns and formats of correspondence and their properties with their statistics in administrative language are studied in detail.
Language and Culture
Rajyashree gives a vivid picture of a case of Mysore Marathi and its linguistic acculturation. Due to the acculturation phenomenon, according to her findings, there is achange in the structure of Marathi, which indicates a convergence between Marathi and Kannada at all linguistic levels.
Omkar N. Koul and Madhu Bala discuss various modes of greetings in Punjabi such as verbal and nonverbal greetings, fixed and alternative greetings. The correlation between modes of greetings and modes of address and their condition of occurrences are also presented in the paper with suitable examples.
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist