Colonialism and Grammatical Representation

Between 1787 and 1796, John Gilchrist, a surgeon in the service of the East India Company published the first really detailed analysis of the 'Hindustani' language for the use of his compatriots in India. The study of colonial linguistics has tended to follow one of two paths, characterising texts like Gilchrist's either as exercises in technical problem-solving or as reductively political examples of 'colonial discourse'. This study develops a method of reading colonial grammars that acknowledges both dimensions of the text - the technical and the political. It examines the particular technical problems that faced grammarians such as Gilchrist, the description of ergativity being a good example, and it analyses the resources available to them as they attempted to analyse these, to eighteenth-century westerners, 'new' phenomena. But it also explores the political consequences of the choices that they made, characterising features like ergativity as 'flash points' in the grammar - moments of difference that could easily elicit reactions of fear, confusion, and even contempt in colonial observers. After three chapters of contextual discussion dealing with the political, biographical, and intellectual contexts of his work, the book provides detailed readings of Gilchrist's grammatical praxis and, through them, presents a picture of the complex relationship between grammatical inquiry and the politics of colonial discourse in the early years of the Indian Empire.

Richard Steadman-Jones teaches in the School of English at the University of Sheffield.

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Contexts	p. 21
The Political Context	p. 23
Introduction	p. 23
Language and colonial power	p. 28
Language and anxiety	p. 41
Classifying languages in the later eighteenth century	p. 47
Conclusion	p. 58
The Personal Context	p. 61
Introduction	p. 61
Beginnings	p. 64
Rise	p. 74
Fan	p. 84
Conclusion	p. 88
The Intellectual Context	p. 92
Introduction	p. 92
The epistemology of language study	p. 94
Five areas of language study	p. 99
Conclusion	p. 125
Case Studies	p. 133
Noun Case	p. 135
Introduction	p. 135
The 'layering' of 'case-like elements'	p. 137
The possessive adjective	p. 149
Ergative case-marking	p. 151
Conclusion	p. 162
The Verbal System	p. 165
Introduction	p. 165
Conjugations - one or many?	p. 169
Explaining anomalies	p. 174
Cross-referencing and hypertext	p. 186
Conclusion	p. 189
Dialogues and Familiar Phrases	p. 192
Introduction	p. 192
Hadley's dialogues	p. 196
Gilchrist and the London language masters	p. 201
The later debate	p. 208
Conclusion	p. 214
Etymology	p. 218
Introduction	p. 218
Etymology in The British Indian Monitor	p. 222
Etymology and the origin of language	p. 225
South Asian traditions of language analysis	p. 233
Etymology as a pedagogical tool	p. 244
Conclusion	p. 250
Conclusion	p. 253
Bibliography	p. 264
Index	p. 276
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

FREE SHIPPING

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Colonialism and Grammatical Representation John Gilchrist and the Analysis of the 'Hindustani' Language in the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials