Tribes In Perspective

Linguistic Geography or Areal Linguistics, has, in recent decades, assumed an added significance all over the world, due to its historical and sociological importance. In this work, perhaps for the first time, the areal variants of the item in question have been organised into different areal groups in accordance with their converging and diverging points, along with explanatory notes on their salient phonological and morphophonemic features, besides the geographical distribution of their correlates. In addition to this preference of areal variants with regard to their syntactic usages and semantic connotations, too have, adequately, been pointed out. Similarly, Centro-eastern Pahari correlates, with their own areal variants, too, have been given to determine the position of the items in question and their inter-relationship with regard to these neighbouring languages, viz., Nepali and Garhawali. Moreover, this micro level presentation of bewildering areal variants of various phonological and morphological elements may be called a trend setter and model for the researchers in the field of dialectology and linguistic geography. As such, this work, besides serving as a guide to similar studies in other Indian Languages, can, profitably, be utilized for historical and comparative studies of the ?Dardo-Pahari? group of the Himalayan Languages, being spoken in the Sub-Himalayan regions from Nepal in the east to the J & K state in the west.