International meet on TAM opens at CIIL
The first ever international conference on Time, Aspect and Modality (TAM) began at the Central Institute of Indian Languages on Friday.
The conference, which would discuss the methods of time mapping in endangered languages through all the 50 papers that would be presented by experts, is being organised by CIIL in collaboration with North-Eastern Hill University, in Shillong.
Addressing participants on the occasion, former director of CIIL, Omkar Kaul said the conference would play a major role in bringing the scholars together and brainstorming to fill the void in the absence of detailed linguistic descriptions of tribal and minor languages. “Even partially tapped linguistic resources have provided innumerable new insights and challenges to linguists working in various areas. These limited resources are currently being used for testing theoretical assumptions made somewhere else,” he said.
Endangered languages
Referring to endangered languages, Kaul said unwritten languages spoken by less number of people have great variations in speech. “This is a challenge to research since one is tempted to find suitable examples and ignore the variations or exceptions to the norm.
Absence of adequate language development exercises in a particular speech, one is not sure about the authenticity of data,” he added.
Elaborating further, Kaul said: “Priority has to be given to provide detailed descriptive studies of these linguistic resources. This demands investment of manpower, financial resources, and time to accomplish this enormous task,” he added.
Delivering keynote address, Dr Nicholas Evans, ANU College of Asia Pacific- Canberra, Australia outlined the purpose of the conference and hoped this would go a long way in documenting endangered languages.
In his talk, he deliberated on a typological survey embedded in a model of social cognition which recognises the complex inter-subjective calibration that different social agents engage in, as they use TAM and related categories to modulate and coordinate their depictions of the world. Dr S N Barman, Director CIIL, Dr G Devi Prasad Sastry, conference secretary and also head of Centre for Tribal Languages, CIIL and Dr Uma Rani P of North Eastern Hill University were present on the occasion.
