from daijiworld's special correspondent

Panaji, Jan 22: Madhavi Sardesai, senior lecturer, Department of Konkani, Goa University has been awarded the Ph. D. degree in English for her thesis submitted to Goa University on the topic, "A Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Study of Lexical Influences on Konkani."

This study, carried out mainly within the framework of Linguistics, is a comparative analysis of foreign as well as indigenous influences on Konkani vocabulary from a  linguistic as well as a cultural point of view. Exploring influences of the Portuguese language with which Konkani was in contact for over four centuries is one of the main concerns of this study.

It provides both a structural typology of Konkani loans and also explores their socio-cultural, historical and political determinants. It investigates the influences on the domain of Konkani kinship vocabulary by comparing the kinship terminology in the Hindu and the Christian Konkani dialects.

It also examines the influences on literary Konkani through a scrutiny of select Konkani texts from the 16th to the present century. The impact making approaches of the main pioneers of Konkani literature towards linguistic borrowing are also herein investigated.

The research was carried out under the joint guidance of Prof Anand Patil (retd.) and Dr Kiran Budkuley of Department of English, Goa University.