Under the supervision of Dr. Anthony Woodbury, Ms. Malavika Shetty will work towards documenting the Tulu language spoken in South India for her doctoral dissertation. Tulu is a Dravidian language largely spoken in the South Kannara region in the state of Karnataka in India. There are an estimated 1.5 million speakers of Tulu located in and around the South Kannara region. The main research methodologies that will be used for this project are (i) the analysis of texts based on audio and video recordings of historical, mythological, and religious narratives and folk songs that have been collected and archived at the Regional Resources Center for Folk Performing Arts in Karnataka (RRC) located in South Kannara; (ii) the analysis of audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring speech events; (iii) consultation with other native speakers. The product of the project will be a text-based grammar of the common dialect of Tulu.
The dissertation will provide a description of the more widespread and relatively- unstudied common dialect of the language by using a textual and discourse-centered approach for data collection. The grammar produced by this project will provide valuable linguistic data to assess Tulu's place in the South Dravidian language family and will be useful for the reconstruction of Proto-Dravidian. The grammar will be accessible to native speakers, linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, educators, and curriculum planners and will provide a foundation on which to base future pedagogical materials that will aid in the preservation of the Tulu language. Since language is a central aspect of culture, documenting minority languages like Tulu and providing a basis for creating pedagogical materials are crucial for language maintenance.
