The Structure of Ganderbal Kohistani. From a Multilingual Perspective

This book is a study of a minority Dardic language Kohistani as spoken in Ganderbal in Jammu and Kashmir, India. The Kohistani speech community in Ganderbal is nested in a multilingual context, where it co-exists with Kashmiri, dominant language of the region, Gojri and Urdu. Urdu is used as a lingua franca among the diverse multilingual communities in Ganderbal. The Kohistanis in Ganderbal are multilinguals with varying degree of competence in Kashmiri, Gojri and Urdu. In this book, the structure of Ganderbal Kohistani is analysed from a multilingual perspective. The phonological and morpho-syntactic structure of Kohistani is discussed vis-à-vis the other languages that are used in the region. Ganderbal Kohistani reflects the typical linguistic features of Dardic languages, yet diverges from Kashmiri (Dardic) in many aspects. Ganderbal Kohistani has integrated lexicon from Urdu, along with some morpho-syntactic features.