گرامر بالاتر کنکانی

Suitable at college level & for research purposes. Madras 1991. ― 540 p. Another grammar book on the Konkani language is P.B. Janardhan's Higher Konkani Grammar (1991). The author is a retired chemical engineer originally from Kerala, whose love for his native language, Konkani, is reflected in his extensive description of the language. However, the work is marred by the ignorance the author shows when dealing with linguistic matters: he is not a linguist. For example, Janardhan calls the study of language 'linguology' and he often uses the term 'poposition' instead of the conventional 'postposition'. These are just two examples of Janardhan's terminological confusion which pervades the more than 500 pages of the book. Needless to say, when it comes to analysing certain structures, Janardhan's descriptions lack the necessary linguistic sophistication. He notes the use of the instrumental case for what would be the subject of transitive verbs in the past and perfect tenses but the term 'ergative' is not known to him; instead, he talks of 'a hybrid of active and the passive voices' (p. 243).10 He then compares the Konkani structure with that found in Sanskrit ('the past tense syntax is of direct statement', p. 243). This type of comparison he constantly uses throughout the book, arguing for the close kinship between Konkani and Sanskrit, which assumes that the reader is familiar with the classical language. He does, however, insist on the Devanagari script for Konkani. [Kurzon Dennis. Where East Looks West: Success in English in Goa and on the Konkan Coast. Multilingual Matters, 2004]