Korku (also known as Kurku) is a Munda language spoken by the Korku people of central India, in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. It is isolated in the midst of the Gondi people, who are Dravidian, while its closest relatives are in eastern India. It is the westernmost Austroasiatic language.
Korkus are also closely associated with the Nihali people, many of whom have traditionally lived in special quarters of Korku villages. Korku is spoken by around 700,000 people, mainly in four districts of southern Madhya Pradesh (Khandwa, Harda, Betul, Narmadapuram) and three districts of northern Maharashtra (Rajura and Korpana tahsils of Chandrapur district, Manikgarh pahad area near Gadchandur in Chandrapur district) (Amravati, Buldana, Akola).
The name Korku comes from Koro-ku (-ku is the animate plural), Koro 'person, member of the Korku community' (Zide 2008).
The Indian national census of 2011 reported 727,133 people claiming to speak Korku, which contributes to Korku being an unscheduled language according to the Indian system. However, Korku is classified as "vulnerable" by UNESCO, the least concerning of the levels of language endangerment nonetheless. Most adult men are bilingual in Hindi, or multilingual in Hindi and the local Dravidian languages (Zide 2008: 156). Literacy in the language is low.
Throughout recent history, the use of the Korku language has been heavily influenced by larger hegemonic languages, especially Hindi. A few Korku-speaking groups have had relative success in increasing the viability of their dialect, specifically the Potharia Korku from the Vindhya Mountains.
Zide (2008:256) lists two dialects for Korku, a Western and an Eastern one. The Western Dialect, which has a handful of subdialects is also called Korku. Among the Western varieties, the one spoken in Lahi is notable for its loss of the dual number.
Glottolog lists four dialects for Korku:
Korku is spoken in the following regions (Zide 2008:256):
Korku has 10 phonemic vowels, which can occur short or long (e.g. /aÃÂ/), plus one mid vowel that only occurs as a short segment /ÃÂ/.
Korku has a large consonant phoneme inventory, in which stops occur in several places of articulation. Like many languages of India, Korku stops distinguish between voiced, plain voiceless, and voiceless aspirated consonants.
Word-finally, all stops are unreleased.
Korku has two contrastive level tones: low and high. The high tone is unmarked. In many reduplicated verbs, the prefixed element takes the low tone. Only non-initial syllables exhibit tone distinction. In allegro speech, low tone can inject the whole noun phrase, as if there is a low tone in the phrase, every syllable after it will express with low tones. Example iò-ààsanì kẽá¶Âe siýi "my black small goat" â iòààsànì kẽá¶Âè sìýì.
Verb suffixes and demonstrative derivatives, particularly stems with a final vowel will trigger vowel harmony in morphology: in-èn > enèn ('here'). Initial vowel is harmonised to match with the stressed final syllable. Verb suffixes with -CV structure contract with and are reduced when preceding suffixes with initial vowels. E.g. kul-ki-èÃÂ-(n)ej (send-INTNS/TLOC-PST.TR-3.OBJ, 'sent him') becomes kulkhèÃÂnèj when is spelled.
Korku is a highly agglutinating, suffixing language. It has postpositions, a case system, a two-gender system, and three numbers. The verb phrase can be complex in Korku; functions that in English and other languages may be encoded in by the use of auxiliary verbs and of prepositions may be expressed in Korku through suffixation.
Korku, as all Munda languages, shows a strict SubjectâÂÂObjectâÂÂVerb (SOV) word order.
Adjectives are expressed verbally - as intransitive verbs - with the exception of a few cases in which a separate word occurs before the noun they are modifying.
Nouns in Korku are assigned one of two grammatical genders: animate, and inanimate, and inflect for several different grammatical cases.
Korku distinguishes three grammatical numbers: singular, dual (two of X), and plural (three or more of X) for nouns in the animate class. Nouns in the inanimate class are rarely marked for number. Final vowels are sometimes deleted before dual or plural endings (see the example at koþo).
In Korku, the function of participants in a sentence (e.g. agent, patient, etc.) is expressed through grammatical case markings on nouns. Additionally, ideas that are expressed via prepositions in English (e.g. towards, from, with, etc.) are also expressed via case markings in Korku. The table below illustrates the different cases and the suffixes used to express them.
Other directional and time markers include:
Additionally, Korku regularly marks direct object on the verb, as in other Munda languages. In the sentence below, the suffix /eÃÂ/ on the verb compound /senÃÂawkðen/ indicates that it was someone else who was given permission to go.
Another example,
Korku has evidence of subject marking in the past, but in modern-day subject indexation has been fossilized and restricted to third persons of locative copulas and nominal predicates in the locative case.
Table below lists pronominal markers in Korku that encode person/number for the object arguments.
Given that the general trend in Munda languages is the fusion of tenses with voices, Korku stems are subjected to complex stem alternations in tense/aspect marking in regards to transitivity, animacy, and augmentation. There are two tenses in Korku: Future/Present and Past. Depending on whether the verb is in active or middle voice, its structures may vary. In Future/Present forms, intransitive stems take intransitive marker -ùàexcept some few verbs such as sen ('go'), hej ('come'), and niý ('run, go away').
Korku utilizes partial reduplications of certain monosyllabic stems to create imperfective, habitual, and infinitive forms. In some instances, the reduplicated variant can convey effects and anticipations of an immediate about-to-happen action.
Verb stems can take other markers to express modality/mood/aspects/orientations. Note that many of those suffixes have overlapping functions/fused with other TAM/person categories or assimilated/harmonized with final stressed suffixes. For example, the continuous progressive -lakken that often occurs with reduplicated allomorph to describe unfolding actions contains two elements, the auxiliary -lab and the perfective/unaccomplishment -ken, itself a contracted form of translocative, intensive mode, recent past -ki and intransitive past -en, but are functionally different.
Sources:
Personal pronouns in Korku show different number and gender patterns depending on the person. The first person ("I, we") distinguishes not only the three numbers but also whether the hearer is included ("all of us") or excluded ("us, but not you") in the communicative context. The second person ("you, you all") only encodes number, whereas the third person ("s/he, they") distinguishes gender, and number for animate nouns.
In Korku, demonstratives (e.g. "this, that, those") encode not only distance (e.g. "here and there") but also gender and number. Unlike English, which only distinguishes between a single proximal (this) and distal (that) spatial references, Korku demonstratives encode four levels of proximity to the speaker (i.e. âÂÂvery closeâ vs. âÂÂcloseâ vs. âÂÂfarâ vs. âÂÂvery farâÂÂ), plus a fifth distinction, when one is pinpointing. The table below illustrates the forms used in Korku.
In Korku, the infix -nV- is sometimes injected into verbs to derive nouns. This method is no longer productive as compared to the Kherwarian languages and other Munda lects.
kaýub ('to cover') â kanuýub ('lid, cover')
jukh(V)rij ('to sweep') â junuà('broom')
The basic cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 (transcribed in IPA) are:
Numbers after 11 are mainly of Indo-Aryan origin.
As with many Austroasiatic languages, Korku has several words to refer to members of one's family, including the extended family and in-laws. There are often separate terms for people depending on their gender and seniority, for instance /bawan/ "wife's older brother" and /kosþeÃÂ/ "elder brother's son". In the tables below, words that include the suffix -/ÃÂe/ refer to someone else's family member, so that /kon/ means "my son", whereas /konÃÂe/ is used when talking about someone else's son, for instance /ÃÂukriaàkonÃÂe/ "the old woman's son".
Korku has words to refer to pairs or groups of people in the family.
The Korku language uses the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script, which is also used to write the Marathi language.
Korku folklore: Kolia - The Story of a Jackal