A Framework for Learning and Understanding Santali in Ol Chiki Script. ᱚᱞ ᱪᱤᱠᱤ ᱛᱮ ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲ ᱪᱮᱫᱚᱜ ᱟᱨ ᱵᱩᱡᱷᱟᱹᱣ ᱞᱟᱹᱜᱤᱫ ᱢᱤᱫ ᱨᱩᱯᱼᱨᱮᱠᱷᱟ

Description

Indian Institute of Science; Tribology Group CMERI, 2005. — 111 p.Abstract – This report aims to achieve the following objectives. Firstly, a non-Santali speaker should be able to get a good overview of Santali language after going through it. Secondly, the presentation in this report should provide a good reference material for analyzing Santali language. Thirdly, it should provide a versatile framework for translating Santali into English, and vice versa. This would greatly help in writing good technical articles in Santali, and thereby, help to enrich Santal society with knowledge. Towards achieving these goals, we have identified those features of Santali language which are very much central to understanding its syntax and semantics. The first of these features is that Santali has built-in mechanisms to emphasize parts of a sentence. The second such feature is that it has two broad classes of verb structures which do not really correspond to active and passive voice of English, and therefore, they need to be understood independent of these concepts. The third point is that it is essential to identify the principal and auxiliary verb component of each and every verb structure so that their semantics can be properly understood. To identify the principal and auxiliary verb component of verb structures, we have provided a general verb structure source, which is more general than that exists currently, and from which almost all verb structures that are spoken can be derived. Using this verb structure source, we have identified the source of most verb structures, defined their syntax, interpreted them with the most probable semantics, and divided each of them into principal and auxiliary verb component. This analysis has also enabled us to identify verb structures which, in our opinion, should be translated as passive voice while translating them into English. While translating an English verb structure into Santali, the same concepts may be applied to identify the corresponding Santali verb structure. Finally, we have also presented a brief overview of how to construct more complex sentences in Santali.