M.B. Emeneau: A Bibliography with Citation Index

Murray B Emeneau (1904-2005) (MBE) was a renowned: scholar in Dravidian Linguistics, Sanskrit and General Linguistics. Prof. B.H. Krishnamurti one of his students explained MBE as-—the longest living western Indologist of great distinction. His areas of research were Comparative Dravidian, Historical and Sociolinguistic Study of Indian languages, Areal Linguistics, Ethnography, etc. His publications include his extensive work on Sanskrit, Dravidian Linguistics, and India as a linguistic area, including the volumes Such as Toda Songs, Toda Grammar and Texts, Kota Texts, Kolami- a Dravidian Language, A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (with T. Burrow), and most recently, Sanskrit Studies: Selected Papers (edited by B.A. Van Nooten), and Language and. Linguistic Area (essays: selected by Anwar S. Dil). He is one of the editors of Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.) Current Trends in Linguistics, V: Linguistics in South Asia. The Hague: Mouton.

The CIIL during his hundredth year conducted an international conference on "Prof. M.B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics" from January 1-4, 2005, Mysore, India. To present an academic audit to his achievements, a bibliography and citation index was prepared.

The bibliography consists of 316 records covering his published and unpublished works such as: Manuscript, Cyclostyle / Mimeo, Ph.D / Dissertation, Books, Journals, Meetings,

Out of the books, the following pattern could be identified:

1. Independent books 21

2. Collection of only MBE’s articles in a book 33

3. Articles in other books 10

His major articles in books and journals have been reprinted and are mentioned in the bibliography. From books containing some of his collections, few chapters have been selected and reprinted in other book without any change and in some Cases condensed. For example: "Brahui Volumes" pp. 7-20 the second Chapter in the book "Brahui and Dravidian Comparative Grammar’ 1962, has been condensed to four page article and reprinted in "Language and Linguistic Area’, 1980 pp. 329-32. Out of 316 publications, 80 papers are reprinted out of which, 31 are reprinted in "Dravidian Linguistics, Ethnology and Folktales" 1967, 24 are reprinted in "Dravidian Studies" 1994, and 10 papers are reprinted in "Language and Linguistic Area" 1980, etc.

His variety of works include foreword for different books for example:

1. Comparative Dravidian Linguistics: Current Perspectives By: Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. Oxford, England: OUP. pp. 417

2. The Life of Language. Edited by Jane F. Hill. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 509

3. Sociolinguistic Attitudes in India: An Historical Reconstruction By: Deshpande, Madhav M. Ann Arbor: Karoma. pp.162

He has reviewed more than 90 documents that have been included in the bibliography. His works also have been reviewed by others. For example:

1. Zvelebil, Kamil V. Reviews the book ‘Dravidian Studies: Selected Papers’ by M.B. Emeneau. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Apr-Jun 96, Vol. 116 Issue 2, p362, 4p.

2. Annamalai, E. A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary: Supplement. By T. Burrow and M.B.Emeneau. Journal of Asian Studies, 1969; 28: 875-76.

Also his last contribution was the thanks letter written to American Philosophical Society for supporting his academics.

Citation Indexing

Eugene Garfield was the first to realize the presence of ‘a cognitive and moral connection’ between sources and their references. He showed the possibility of constructing an index on the basis of a structured list of all references in a given collection of articles, where each cited reference is followed by ail the citing documents. The output will be an organized list of cited articles identified by a source citation. Further in citation indexing, if both source and citing documents are linked, it yields meaningful collection of papers within a field and it is of great importance in computerized information retrieval and preparation of subject bibliographies. Hence citation indexing is also included as one of the varieties of indexing systems in information retrieval. Also citation indexing studies are done to find the influence and impact of an author. The idea behind is that, a research article makes an impact only if it is read and used by others for their research. It is thus an index of recognition too. The present study limits to a single author Prof. M.B. Emeneau. Compilation of both, Bibliography and Citation Index are done manually since the chronological dependence was as early as 1930s. This study mainly answers two questions such as:

How many times has each of Emeneau’s work been cited?

Who has cited and in which article?

As a preliminary step, a complete bibliography was compiled from many sources such as books, journals and internet. The data was entered in index cards and later keyed into MS Access file. In the second phase, citing articles were identified both in books and journals manually and noted on the overleaf of each card prepared for the bibliography and later keyed in. Each record in the bibliography was given a unique identification number preceded by the letter ‘E’ which helped as a primary key for creating relation code to the citing documents. Complete data was made to get the output in the web page:

The present bibliography based on the above webpage, consists of all the bibliographical details including Times cited. Times cited column gives the total number of citations to each item. The items that had citations were selected and submitted in the database. The retrieved documents were listed under respective cited documents. The bibliography is arranged yearwise.

Out of books, highly cited is the title A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary published in 1961, supplement in 1968 and revised and enlarged second edition in 1984. This book is jointly authored by T.Burrow and M.B.Emeneau and published by Oxford: Clarendon Press. Popularly known as DED, it is the outcome of 20 years monumental lexicographic work. This work for the first time brought together cognates from most of the Dravidian languages. The DED forms one of the basic works for the comparative study of the Dravidian languages after the publication of Caldwell’s Comparative Grammar of Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages about a century ago. This is the unique dictionary available on this topic and much referred to by all linguists and others. In the present study it has 133 citations. It could be considered as the master piece among his contributions.

Out of journal articles, the much referred to article is India as a linguistic area published in the journal Language 32, p. 3-16, in 1956, -getting 117 citations. This most cited article is considered by linguists as a classic paper. This paper played an important role not only in shaping the field of areal study of the Indian languages but areal linguistics also in general.

Hope that this bibliography with citation index will be helpful to researchers in linguistics and allied disciplines.

The idea of ‘linguistic area’ was afloat since the days of Franz Boas and Prince Trubetzkoy but it was during 1935-1938 when Emeneau visited India and conducted field work on a number of tribal languages like Toda, Kota, and Kolami, and contributed a large number of linguistic studies that the ideas were firmed up. In fact, Emeneau and his research have inspired many generations of South Asianists. His contribution to areal linguistics is difficult to surpass. The most important point is that he not only worked in many disciplines - Anthropology, Indology and Linguistics, but he was also a student of both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families of languages. A truly international man, Emeneau was born in Canada, educated at Oxford, Dalhousie and Yale universities, and taught for a tong time at the University of California, Berkeley (1940-1971). It is high time that an assessment of the scholar and the impact his research has had be detailed. It is for this reason that Or. B.A. Sharada was given this responsibility to create a bibliography cum citation index for Emeneau, and she and her team have done a fine job of it, which would be evident to anyone who may wish to consult this volume. The database would also be available in our e-book site for those who might like to use it electronically.

Emeneau’s studies such as Dravidian Kinship Terms (1953), Numerals in Comparative Linguistics (with special reference to Dravidian) (1958) and The South Dravidian Languages (1967) and his ideas on the Indian linguistic area took deeper roots as the time went by. His other major publications, namely, Dravidian Linguistics, Ethnology and Folktales (1967), Collected papers (1958), Kota Texts (1944-1946), Kolami: A Dravidian Language (1955), Toda Songs (1971), Toda Grammar and Texts (1984), Dravidian Borrowings from Indo-Aryan (1962) and Language and Linguistic Area (1980) have also had a lasting impact. However, the most monumental of his works was ‘A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary’ (known as DED), published in 1961, .jointly with his colleague and fellow scholar, Thomas Burrow (1909-1986).

I think the community of South Asian linguists as well as those interested in Areal Linguistics and typology will benefit a lot from this book, which is a tribute of the institute to this great mind.

**Contents and Sample Pages**