Figures
1.1 The place of Magadhan within Indo-Aryan, adapted and simplified from the classification in Eberhard et al. (2019), updated Paudyal and Peterson (2020) 8
1.2 The genealogical relationship of various “Magadhan” languages and dialects with respect to selected Indo-Aryan varieties – Phonetic similarity, UPGMA (Paudyal and Peterson 2020) 8
Maps
1.1 The shaded region with in the map of India represents the state of Jharkhand, where the Khortha language is spoken. This map is the modified version of the map given at https://d-maps/carte/india (accessed in April 22, 2024) 4
Tables
1.1 Selected lexical differences between Sikhari and Parnadiya dialects 6
1.2 Comparison of Khortha, Magahi and Bhojpuri lexical items 13
1.3 /l/ change in the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages 15
2.1 Khortha consonants 20
2.2 Khortha vowels 28
2.3 Distribution of Khortha consonants 33
3.1 Parts of speech 44
3.2 Different forms of numeral in Khortha 48
4.1 Summary of derivational affixes 56
6.1 Khortha cases 93
6.2 Personal pronouns in Khortha 105
6.3 Selected nouns with definiteness markings 118
6.4 Khortha classifiers and their occurrences 135
6.5 Postpositions in Khortha 139
6.6 Deriving adverbs from various pronouns 170
7.1 Overview of the verbal (inflectional) markers 177
7.2 Agreement markers in Khortha 179
7.3 Type I and type II causative forms 186
7.4 Identificational/locational copula in present tense 189
7.5 Summary of the existential copula with tense and agreement markers 191
7.6 v2s in Khortha 196
7.7 Common conjunct verb forms 206
7.8 Tense/Aspect marking copulas in Khortha 210
7.9 The markers for the past tense 211
7.10 The markers for the future tense 212
7.11 The present tense auxiliary 214
7.12 Subjunctive markers 227
7.13 Non-finite markers in Khortha 228
8.1 Maximal structure of NP s in Khortha 250
8.2 Question markers in Khortha 257
9.1 Common relative and correlative pro-forms 304
10.1 Overview of discourse particles 315
10.2 Common lexemes with the focus marker ⸗e 318
10.3 The focus marker ⸗e with personal pronouns 320
A1.1 sut- ‘sleep’, in present (prs) and past (pst) tenses 331
A1.2 ja- ‘go’, in present (prs) and past (pst) tenses 331
A1.3 di ‘give’, in the present tense 332
A1.4 di- ‘give’, in the past tense 332