Expressives in the South Asian Linguistic Area

Expressives in the South Asian Linguistic Area offers the first comprehensive account of this important understudied word class from synchronic, diachronic, literary, and descriptive perspectives. The work contains studies from the four major language families of South Asia (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman) and covers domains in semantics, morphosyntax, and phonotactics. It also includes studies from literature and film that show how expressive form and function are embedded in performative contexts. Finally, the volume also contains first of its kind data from several small endangered languages from the region. Proposing an innovative methodology that combines structural and semiotic analysis, the volume advances a more holistic understanding of areal phenomena that departs from previous studies of the South Asian linguistic area.

Nathan Badenoch, Ph.D. (2006), is Associate Professor at the Department of Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University. He has worked extensively on Austroasiatic languages in Southeast Asia and South Asia and most recently has co-edited A Dictionary of Mundari Expressives (2019, ILCAA, Tokyo).

Nishaant Choksi, Ph.D. (2014), University of Michigan, is Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar, Gujarat India. His recent publications have focused on expressives and script systems in the Austroasiatic languages of eastern India.