The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) celebrates its Golden Jubilee this year after completing 50 years of excellence. The Institute was established on July 17, 1969 by the Government of India in Mysuru to help in evolving and implementing the language policy of the Government and to coordinate the development of Indian Languages by conducting research in the areas of language analysis, language pedagogy, language technology and language use in the society.
It began its journey with several units of research such as Tribal and Border Languages, Sociolinguistics, Phonetics, Psycholinguistics, Material Production and Training, Testing and Evaluation, Educational Technology, Lexicography and Translation, Cartography, Folklore and Computer Applications. In addition to this, seven Regional Language Centres were set up at Mysuru, Patiala, Bhubaneswar, Pune, Lucknow, Solan and Guwahati with a goal of implementing the three-language formula and thereby contribute to national integration. These Centres offer a 10-month Diploma in Language Education in second languages and teach 20 Indian languages to non-native speakers mainly to in-service teachers, prospective teachers, research scholars and general public. CIIL was one of the few institutions that initiated work on natural language processing in the early 1990s. It has interdisciplinary academic collaborations with various institutions at both national and international levels. The Institute is well-recognised by the academic fraternity across the globe for the quality of its wide-ranging linguistic research and language studies.
Over the years, the Institute has not only expanded its activities on language matters but also ventured into new areas. Several projects and schemes were undertaken to carry out research and development, for instance, Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages, National Translation Mission, Linguistic Data Consortium for Indian languages, National Testing Service, Centre of Excellence for Studies of Classical Languages, Bharatavani, North-East Language Development that add to the promotion of Indian languages. The Institute conducts research & organises orientation programmes and imparts training through its comprehensive schemes and projects, in order to develop and use both scheduled and non-scheduled languages of the country in education, administration and mass communication. In these five long decades CIIL has contributed immensely on various aspects of languages and linguistics. It serves as a nucleus to bring together all the research outputs of the various schemes and projects, and continues to serve as a clearing house of information on all language related matters of the nation.
The Institute publishes the instructional materials of the Regional Language Centres and the outcomes of the various projects, schemes, workshops and other research works in the form of books, dictionaries, glossaries, manuals, etc. since the early days. It has been continuing to publish manuscripts not just on and in scheduled languages but also on and in the non-scheduled & minority languages of the country.
To commemorate the Golden Jubilee Celebration, amongst many other things, the Institute brings out the 'Golden Jubilee Publication Series'. I congratulate the authors, editors, compilers and resource persons involved in this task. The present book is one of the volumes of the Series.
Many of the world's languages are disappearing at a faster rate than before. As per the UNESCO's report in 2010, India is home to 197 endangered languages which are spread across the country. Efforts are being made by nation-states, academicians, community people, language enthusiasts etc., to document these languages. The Government of India has initiated several schemes and projects in the nation to protect, preserve and promote these languages in all possible ways. One such initiative is the establishment of the Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL) in 2013 at the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) with a goal of documenting languages that are either not linguistically studied earlier or preferably spoken by less than 10,000 speakers spread across six geographical zones in its first phase. The deliverables of this project are production of dictionaries, grammar and ethnolinguistic sketches.
Karnataka is home to 50 tribes notified according to the Constitution of India (Scheduled Tribes). These tribes speak a variety of languages, for instance, Koraga, Jenukuruba, Soliga, Hakkipikki, Siddi, DungriGarasia, Yerava, Bettakuruba, Kammara etc. many of which are seriously endangered. Language is the cultural glue that binds communities together. Once a language is lost, humanity loses a part of our rich heritage. Each of these languages can unlock local knowledge about medicinal practices, ecological wisdom, mythological histories and many other invaluable knowledge. These indigenous languages must be preserved if not we will lose a significant part of the heritage of Karnataka.
SPPEL has taken up a few languages of Karnataka as part of its mission in language documentation and description. It has documented Soliga spoken in BiligiriRangana Hills of Chamarajanagara district of Karnataka over the last few years and is bringing out several of its publications including dictionaries and grammars. Soliga-English-Kannada dictionary is one such work which is the first-ever attempt to put the words, definitions and usages of Soliga into print. As is well-known, dictionaries are oftentimes seen as the most important lexical resources of endangered languages for they are not only the familiar linguistic genre to the general public but also because they have a symbolic value in providing an identity to the people and the society in description. Dictionaries of this kind, generally, depict the world-view of the people who speak these languages or mother-tongues. They bring out different kinds of knowledge packaged in the words and phrases of Soliga. Data-elicitation for Soliga has been done in a very systematic way over several semantic domains with the help of Language documentation handbook brought out by SPPEL and published by the Institute, and other resources such as FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEX) and Lexique Pro.
The dictionaries of endangered languages are different from those of the major languages of the world in many aspects the most important one being that they are oftentimes compiled by linguists who are not native-speakers of the language with limited resources of time, money and manpower. Sometimes, the linguist or the dictionary-maker may have to seek the help of an interpreter to elicit the desired information for compilation of the dictionary. Fortunately, in the case of this trilingual dictionary, though English was used as the link language, the investigator with his near-native proficiency in Kannada could do a systematic elicitation of Soliga headwords and provide acceptable definition or explanation of the lemmas, and other lexicographic data.
Language documentation and description in Soliga is part of the Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL), a special initiative of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru; Ministry of Education, Government of India for protecting, preserving and promoting endangered languages of India.
Soliga is a Dravidian language spoken mainly in Karnataka and Tamilnadu. Its basic word order is SOV. The speakers of Soliga community use this language while interacting among themselves and in their home domain. Whereas, while communicating with others they use Kannada in Karnataka and Tamil in Tamilnadu respectively. Soliga is one of the tribal languages spoken in Karnataka out of 50 Scheduled Tribes listed under the State and Government of India. According to the 2011 Census, the population of Soliga is about 33,871 in Karnataka and 5,965 in Tamilnadu.
As per the household survey data provided by the community, the number of Soliga community families residing in this area are 6,406.
The speakers of Soliga language are popularly known as Soliga or Sholiga or Soligaru or Sholaga. The Soliga population is mainly concentrated in and around the forest areas of Biligiri Rangana Hills popularly known as B.R. Hills (well known for its very rich biological diversity of flora and fauna) Yelanduru taluk, Male Mahadeshwara Hills, Kollegala taluk and Bandipur, Gundlupet taluk of Chamarajangara and Mysore districts in Karnataka. Few speakers of this community have recently migrated to other districts of Karnataka. Speakers of this language are also found in the neighboring areas that fall under the state of Tamilnadu.
There are three types of groups in Soliga community, namely: five clan (aidu kulada Soligaru/male Soligaru/beTTa Soligaru) living in B.R. hills region, seven clan (eeLu kulada Soligaru-Sholaga) in M. M. hills region who speak a variety of Soliga mixed with Tamil (being the neighboring regional language) and twelve clan (hanneraDu kulada Soligaru/burude Soligaru) in Gundlupet taluk of Chamarajanagara district who have mentioned their language as Kannada in our pilot field work. The focus of our language study is on five clan (aidu kulada soligaru) of B. R. Hills region.
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