Varli Phonology and Grammar Sketches

Abstract

Varli is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by some 600,000 people in India. The sketch of Varli phonology features the analysis of nasalised vowels and homorganic nasal-plosive sequences. The sketch of Varli grammar is followed by an illustrative text with interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme glosses. Varli is a split-ergative SOV language with inflectional suffixes. Clauses in the simple past and perfective tenses have ergative-absolutive morphosyntax, while those in other tenses have nominative-accusative. Constituents in the noun phrase agree with the head in gender and number. Finite verbs agree with the head of one noun phrase in person—and usually in gender and number.