Rabakavi Kannada: Phonology and Morphology (An Old and Rare Book)

It was in the year 1964 that the Deccan College had established a unit namely Language Survey Project and started conducting a preliminary survey of South India with financial assistance by the Ministry of Education, Government of India. It was intended then that in addition to making linguistics a principal subject of study at universities, a new Linguistic Survey of India should be undertaken. The objectives of the preliminary survey were strictly of a limited character: to extend the survey to the southern areas of the country which had been left out of the original Linguistic Survey of India by Grierson and to collect additional material on a somewhat different plan.

The work had been in progress for a period of three years. During this period, nearly a dozen monographs were under preparation of which nine had been published by the Deccan College between 1967 and 1971. The present monograph prepared by Dr. A. S. Acharya comes from the same series. It is hoped that the Deccan College will be able to publish the remaining monographs also in due course.

It is in the interest of the growth of our regional languages with manifold dialectal variations and also in bridging the gap between languages and actual speech forms of the people that such a survey is essential in India. Only a modern scientific survey of our linguistic heritage can bring to light the untold wealth hidden in socially and geographically variant forms of speech which can then serve as feeders to the great national languages of India.

Rabakavi Kannada is the name given to a form of Kannada language as spoken at Rabakavi a small town in Jamkhandi Taluk of Bijapur district in Karnataka state. It is at the distance of about 25 kilometers in the east from Kudchi station on the Miraj Bangalore line. The present analysis is based on the material collected from an informant at the above place in the year 1967 ith the financial assistance of the Languge Survey Project at the Deccan College.

The informant, Shri Gurubasappa Mahadevappa Gunaki, aged 45 belonged to Lingayat (banagara) community which covers roughly 70 percent of the total population of the district. He passed the Matriculation examination in 1940 from the Sardar’s High School, Belgaum. He was an agriculturist by profession and a very popular social worker in the surrounding areas such as Miraj, Sangli, Kolhapur, Jamkhandi, Bijapur and Belgaum. He acquired working knowledge of English and Marathi.

I am highly thankful to Professor S. B. Deo, Director, Deccan College, without whose encouragement I could not have completed this monograph. My thanks are due to Professor Peri Bhaskararao, Head of the Department of Linguistics, Deccan College, for his constant help and inspiration. During the collection of material and at the initial stage of analysis the valuable guidance was extended to me by Dr. A. M. Ghatage, Dr. H. S. Biligiri and Dr. D. N. Shankar Bhat. Dr. S. M. Katre, former Director of the Deccan College, was the sole inspiration behind this project. I am extremely thankful to them. Finally I wish to express my since gratitude to my informant Shri. G. M. Gunaki whose patience and intelligence were of great value.