The data presented in this website were collected through fieldwork carried out exclusively in rural and semi-urban communities. The data were collected between May 2018 and March 2020; a total of 2285 persons in 231 villages across 25 districts of Maharashtra were interviewed. All interviews were audio-recorded using Sony IC recorders.
The ‘district’ was used as a research heuristic to conduct data
collection for the project. The tehsil of the district headquarter and
two to three other details were selected depending on
considerations such as social demography, proximity to a
neighbouring district / state and our understanding of dialectal
differentiation within the region. Two villages were selected in each
tehsil: one close to a prominent city or town in the tehsil, and the
other located away from the town or city.
Example: Sampling in Kolhapur District.
The district is divided into twelve tehsils or administrative units. Of
these, the city of Kolhapur is situated in Karveer tehsil. Hence Karveer
tehsil was sampled in the survey. A village close to the urban centre
of Kolhapur (viz. Gadmudshingi) and a village away from the urban
centre (viz. Khupire) were selected for data collection. Further, the
tehsil close to the neighbouring (Kannada-speaking) state of
Karnataka, viz. Gadahinglaj; the tehsil close to the neighbouring
district of Sindhudurg as well as the state of Karnataka, viz.
Chandgad; the tehsil close to the neighbouring district of Ratnagiri
in the Konkan, viz. Shahuwadi were also included in the survey.
Kolhapur was the first district to be sampled for the survey. At this
early stage in the survey, two additional tehsils were sampled – Kagal
(situated at the Maharashtra –Karnataka inter-state border) and
Radhanagari, close to Sindhudurg district. Thus a total of six tehsils in
Kolhapur were sampled.
Details of data collection (until July 2020):
Total no. of Districts sampled | Tehsils | Villages Sampled | Total no. of Interviews |
---|---|---|---|
25 | 101 | 231 | 2285 |
Standard sociolinguistic criteria were used in the selection of persons for data collection:
Data were collected from male and female speakers of three age groups (18-30, 31-55, 55+ years), belonging to all major demographic groups in the village. Care was taken to include illiterate as well as literate speakers. There were instances when speakers reporting a mother tongue other than Marathi constituted a major demographic group in the village and reported Marathi to be their contact language in the village. Such speakers were also included in the survey. For example, Bhils in Nandurbar; Kannada speakers in Latur, Solapur, Miraj; Urdu speakers in Ratnagiri and elsewhere; Gondi speakers in Nagpur, etc.
A sociolinguistic questionnaire was designed to collect information
about language use within the village community as well as social
and economic linkages of the local community.
A set of pictures was used to elicit names for household items and
vegetables. Kinship terms and deictic terms were elicited
The Deccan College Stimulus Kit (consisting of about seventy videos)
was used to elicit information regarding the selected grammatical
features. This stimulus kit contains videos designed to elicit
particular grammatical categories and constructions: example –
gender system, case markers, aspectual markers and agreement
patterns.
Two kinds of narrations were recorded to overcome the observer’s
paradox (Labov 1972): the narration of a traditional story (Tortoise and
Rabbit; The Woodcutter; The Old Woman and Pumpkin) and the
narration of a personal experience, a childhood memory, etc.
Data elicited using the pictures and videos were transcribed using the IPA. Recordings of traditional stories and personal experiences collected in each village were fully transcribed manually by the research assistants. The narrative data were glossed using the Leipzig Glossing Rules. (See https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf)
District | Taluka | Village | Latitudes | Longitudes |
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