G. Kesava Panikkar's Ph.D. dissertation is the first thesis submitted through the Department of Linguistics, University of Kerala. Though the three examiners S.M. Katre, Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai and M. B. Emeneau who have commented highly on the thesis and have urged for its immediate publication, its printing has been delayed due to want of funds. When recently a token grant was available from the University of Kerala it was sufficient to cover only the grammar part of the thesis. The texts and vocabulary, I hope will appear soon so that the whole dissertation will be available to the world of scholarship for further work. Since the thesis breaks new grounds we take this opportunity to spell out some of the theoretical implications of dialect study.
Position of dialects
The position of dialects in the study of a language is now better understood than ever before. A language is realized in its dialects. A dialect is realized in its idiolects. The study of a language is impossible without the study of the dialects. Without the study of idiolects the study of dialects will be equally impossible. Language is abstracted out of dialects. Dialects are abstracted out of idiolects. The standard dialect commonly used for formal communication is also a dialect, though it might be widely understood by the speakers of the language. Even though the standard dialect has a wider spread than all the other dialects, it is not a summation or representation of all dialects. Idiolect, dialect and language represent different stages of realizations. One is implied in the other. Without the facts of the idiolect, higher generalizations for establishing dialects and language are not possible.
Regularity in Dialects
Study of dialects received impetus when the Neo-grammarian controversy was dominant in Europe. 'Sound laws have no exception' as declared by the Neo-grammarians and contested vehemently by their opponents prompted their testing in dialects in which a language functions. Soon it was found that dialects have exceptions and were cited as proof positive for confirming the stand of the opponents of the Neo-grammarian hypothesis. By further analysis, it was found that within a limited area, sound laws have no exception in dialects and the Neo-grammarian hypothesis was maintained to that extent. They restated that every dialect exemplifies without exception the sound laws. What appeared to be exceptions were due to analogy. Thus Neo-grammarians accepted regularity of sound change and analogy in a dialect. With the advent of the Transformational theory, an inner regularity of languages was conceived of and proved initially, for the formal structure and later, for the semantic structure. This regularity is different from the patterns observed in expression and content, formulated by Hjelmslev who indicated a series of relationships between linguistic units (a and b, a in b, a against b, if a then b etc.). Among the American Linguists it was Sapir who insistently advocated for the discovery of patterns in the formal code. In the distributional analysis of Bloomfield, Pike and others such inner regularities in the language code have been occasionally stated or emphasized. Historical and Comparative reconstructions are based on regularities of a high order. of the proto-stage of a family or the pre-stage through internal regularity is neglected, reconstruction reconstruction within a single language will not be possible. Wherever regularity is not noticed in a language it may be due to inadequacy of the data, poverty in positing missing links in a regular chain or due to borrowing from other dialects or languages. Bloomfield's discovery of Swampy Cree will illustrate how additional data confirms his prediction. Hyman as quoted by R. N. Srivastava has a telling example for establishing the regularity, if the analyser is a bit fertile in positation. Before back vowels in Nupe, g will be labialized as gw. Before front vowels, g will be palatalized as gy. But in e:gwa. 'stranger' and e:gya: 'blood' an irregularity is noticed. They have been reconstructed by Hyman as e:gwo: and e:gye: respectively. The above stated rule now has been made regular because of the fertility in his positation. The apparent exception to a rule is due to submerged changes which if posited can regularize them. The residuary exceptions after this may be due to borrowing.
Regularity as the outlook of science
Another piece of information supplied by Brain Specialists is that regularity will not tax the memory where as irregularity will. A Railway time table is more difficult for an ordinary man to memorize than a musical hit or a theorem in algebra, because the former is irregular. When language is spoken and preserved predominantly by uneducated folks it should be regular.
0.1 The Dialect of Mappilas
The Muslim dialect of Ernad is believed to be the most divergent among the Malayalam dialects spoken in the plains (i.e., barring the dialect of Lakshadweep islands and the dialects of the Hill Tribes). The Calicut District Gazetteer states: "The colloquial Malayalam spoken by the illiterate sections among the Hill Tribes and the M Mappilas of the district differs considerably from literary Malayalam. This popular belief stimulated the present author to undertake a detailed study of this dialect. The present analysis is based on the speech of the Mappilas (Muslims) of former Ernad and Tirur Taluks where the population is predominantly Mappilas. Since this region is considered to be the culture centre for the Muslims of Kerala, many of the characteristics of this dialect may be found in the speech of the Muslims living in other parts of the state, especially of Malabar region.
0.2 Dialect area
This dialect area lies in the southern part of the former Calicut District (now in the Malappuram district). Out of the six Taluks of the former Calicut District, this dialect area includes the whole of two Taluks-Ernad (873.3 Sq. M.) and Tirur (278.4 Sq. M.).
Tirur Taluk a later one is constituted with the following Firkas: (1) Tirurangadi and Vengara Firkas transferred from Ernad Taluk (2) Tanur, Tirur and Kuttippuram Firkas transferred from Ponnani Taluk. The western and eastern boundaries of this dialect area are the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats (Nilgiris) respectively. Continuous natural boundary cannot be fixed as far as the northern and southern boundaries are concerned. However in the coastal region, a geographical boundary can be roughly drawn - Beypore river on the northern border and Ponnani river (Bharathapuzha) on the southern border.
0.3 Population and Religion
According to the 1961 census, the total population of Ernad and Tirur is 1,085,506 (Ernad 524, 294; Tirur 561, 212). The religion-wise table of the population in rural areas is as follows.
Among the total population of the Ernad and Tirur all except three persons belong to the three dominant religious groups viz, Muslims, Hindus and Christians. The remaining three people are the adherents of Buddhism. A religion-wise statement is appended below:
It may be of interest to note that the Muslims constitute only 17.91% of the total population of Kerala, being the third largest religious community, the first being Hindus (60. 83%) and the second being Christians (21.22%). The Hindus form a sizable percentage of the population in all the geographical areas of Kerala and Muslims in SouthMalabar.
It can be seen from the religion-wise statement of the population that the Muslims out tops the Hindus and Christians in Ernad and Tirur Taluks. It may also be noted here that roughly 1/3 of the Hindus in this area are members of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
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