Koraga Grammar (Dravidian Linguistics Series- 1)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The speech of Koraga tribe, which was presumed to be a dialect of Tulu was evidently documented by Dr. Ramakrishna T. Shetty as an independent language. The present work in the Discription of the speech of Ande Koragas, a sub-sect found chiefly in Mangalore and Udupi District of Karnataka.

Dravidian University is happy to bring out the only full-fledged descriptive grammar of the Koraga Langaueg which is the first in the Dravidian Tribal Languages Descriptive Grammar Series.

That the foundations of Indian culture were deeply embedded in Dravidian culture is now an incontrovertible fact. Dravidian culture is one of the most ancient cultures of the world. Those cultures, slightly contemporaneous to one another, slowly started fading out. However, the primordial Dravidian culture continues to thrive without losing its quintessence despite the apparent changes in systems of dress and address.

Dravidian University is established through a Legislature Act by the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 1997 with the extended support of Southern States, at Kuppam, a tri-lingual junction in the south western part of Andhra Pradesh, 4 km. away from Karnataka, 8 km. from Tamil Nadu and about four hours of drive from Kerala, to promote a snirit of integration among the speakers of Dravidian languages, thus building a strong path of national integration and to advance research and studies in Dravidian languages which are about 27 both inside India and outside like Beluchistan and to create a strong awareness of the integrated character of Dravidian Studies, a major branch of Indology.

It is a well known fact that the tribal population in India is mostly under developed and their languages are subjected to enormous dominance of the major languages. Hence, many of the tribal languages . in India, particularly the Dravidian, are in the state of endangerment. There is imperative need for language documentation, new methods, new policy initiation and safeguarding strategies to enhance the vitality of these languages.

Understanding the gravity of the problem of language endangerment, the Dravidian University has established a "Centre for Preservation of Endangered Dravidian Languages" as a part of the Department of Dravidian and Computational Linguistics. The main objectives of the Centre are: description and publication of tribal languages, preparation of grammars, dictionaries, test samples, database and study materials. To fulfill one of the above objectives, the Dravidian University has started to publish the research works of senior scholars on Dravidian Linguistics and Dravidian Tribal Languages submitted even to other universities under a publication series entitled Dravidian Linguistics Series (DLS). These publications may help the scholars for furthering their research and develop material in the respective tribal language and the community to revitalize their language at some point in future.

The speech of Koraga tribe, which was presumed to be a dialect of Tulu was evidently documented by Dr. Ramakrishna T. Shetty as an independent language. The present work is the description of the speech of Ande Koragas, a sub-sect found chiefly in Mangalore and Udupi District of Karnataka, and it has been analyzed within the framework of Item and Process model. The sample texts and the Koraga vocabulary with English equivalents appended will be very much useful for Comparative Dravidian Linguistic studies. Dravidian University is happy to bring out the only full-fledged descriptive grammar of the Koraga language which is the first in the Dravidian Tribal Grammars Series. Dravidian University is grateful to Prof. Ramakrishna T. Shetty for giving us the manuscript for publication.