This volume is the first one on the grammatical studies of the languages of the Himalayan group. Moreover, it occuples a unique position in the history of Indian linguistics, because no scholar, Indian or foreigner, has undertaken, seriously, an exhaustive and comprehensive comparative study off all the phonological and morphological features of all the speeches belonging to Himalayan regions of India, Nepal and Butan. As such the present work containing a complete comparative analysis of 15 languages of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand may claim to be the pioneer attempt and fulfill the requirement of linguistic studies in this sub-continent and also to fill the vacuum of grammatical studies in the 4 major linguistic families. The author, after many years’ intensive and extensive exploration of the speeches from the inaccessible Himalayan regions, has, in a comprehensive manner brought to light all the converging and diverging features, not only of the languages belonging to Tibetan and Himalayan families, but also has taken into account many phonological and morphological features of Indo-Aryan, Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian families of languages, attesting close affinity with these features of the Himalayan languages. Thus the present work, as that of Mr. Beam,s and of Rev. Caldwell’s has a prominent place not only in the domain of Comparative linguistics, but in the domain of historical and descriptive linguistics as well. As such it is surely to be cherished by all interested, not only in comparative, contrastive, descriptive and historical aspects of the Himalayan languages, but also of the languages spoken at the length and breath of the Indian sub-Continent.
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