Morphologically, both North and South Munda subgroups mainly focus on the head or the verb, thus they are primarily
head-marking, in contrast to the
Indo-European and
Dravidian languages, which are mainly
dependent-marking. As a result, nominal morphology is less complex than is verbal morphology.
Case markers on nominals to show
syntactic alignments (
nominative-accusative or
ergative-absolutive) are largely absent or not systematically developed in the Munda languages except Korku. The relation between subject and object in clause is conveyed mainly through verbal referent indexation and
word order. At the clause/sentence level, Munda languages are
head-final but internally
head-first in referent indexation, compounds, and
noun incorporation verb complexes. Munda head-first, bimoraic constraint-free noun incorporation is also found in
Khasian,
Nicobaric, and other Mon-Khmer languages. In
word derivation, besides their own innovative methods, the Munda languages maintain Austroasiatic methods in forms of reduplication, compounding, and derivational
infixation and
prefixation. One unusual characteristic that appears to be pervasive among the Munda languages is lexical flexibility, that is, a large number to almost entire their lexicons are
precategorial, i.e.
lexically underspecified for categories such as
noun,
verb,
adjectives etc. Thus, these languages may rely more on syntax and affixes/clitics to distinguish
parts of speech. Pinnow summarised the issue back in the 1960s, The following elicited examples from
Simdega Kharia illustrate the problem: The degree of lexical flexibility are extremely prominent in North Munda and
Kharia, where the lexicons may only contain an open class of contentives; whereas in other South Munda languages this phenomenon however tends to be much weaker.
North Munda The North Munda subgroup is split between Korku and the 14 Kherwarian languages.
Kherwarian languages Kherwarian is a large language continuum with speakers extending west to east from the Indian states of
Uttar Pradesh to
Assam, north to south from
Nepal to
Odisha. They include fourteen languages:
Asuri,
Birhor,
Bhumij,
Koda,
Ho,
Korwa (Korowa),
Mundari,
Mahali,
Santali,
Turi,
Agariya,
Bijori,
Koraku, and
Karmali, with the total number of speakers surpassing ten million (2011 census). The Kherwarian languages are often highlighted because their elaborate and complex templatic and pronominalised predicate structures are so pervasive that it is obligatory for the verb to encode
tense–aspect–mood,
voices,
transitivity, and indexation of two arguments, including outside arguments like possessors.
Noun incorporation is often described as an ancestral Munda morphological feature and is essential to the grammar of other South Munda languages such as
Sora, but the Kherwarian languages appear to have lost noun incorporation altogether. Nevertheless, rare instances of noun incorporation may be found in some archaic Kherwarian registers and
oral literature.
Korku Unlike the Kherwarian languages, with their complex verbal morphology, Korku verbs are moderately simple, with a modest amount of synthesis. Korku lacks person/number indexing of subject(s)/actor (except third persons of locative copulas and nominal predicates in the locative case) and independent present/future tense markers. Korku present/future tenses rely on the finitising suffix
-bà. Present or future tense negation can be located in preverbal or postverbal positions, but past tense negation is marked by the suffix
-ᶑùn. Many Korku
auxiliary verbs are borrowed from Indo-Aryan. The auxiliary verb takes tense–aspect–mood, voice, and finite suffixes for the lexical verb. An example is
ghaʈa-, which means 'to manage to, to find a way to' and serves as the acquisitive.
South Munda Compared to North Munda languages languages, South Munda languages are even more divergent and have fewer shared morphological traits. Even the classification of Munda languages is controversial, and South Munda does not seem to exist as a valid taxon. However, South Munda languages retain many notable characteristics of the original Proto-Munda such as prefix slots and scope-ordering of referent indexation and so they represent the less restructured morphology of Munda and reflect the older Proto-Munda and Proto-Austroasiatic structures.
Kharia In
Kharia, subject markers index not only dual/plural
exclusive/inclusive but also
honorific status. Objects are not marked in the predicate but instead by the oblique case:
-te. There is a reduplicated free-standing form of finite predicates that behaves differently from the simple predicative base. In the predicate, reduplicated free-standing form never marks tense–aspect–mood and person. That causes the free-standing form to be used in subordination, an attributive function corresponding more or less to relative clauses. Kharia is perhaps the only Munda language that has a infinitive on predicates,
=na. The infinitive can serve also as a nominaliser:
jib=na=te ‘touching’. Like in
Hindi and
Sadani, Kharia has made a calque to form sequential converbs (conjunctive participles)
kon (derived from
ikon, ‘do’). They denote the completion of an action before another begins. The negation particle
um attaches or fuses person/number/honorific of the subject argument.
Juang Juang exhibits
nominative-accusative alignment with unmarked subject/agents and marked objects or patients. In Juang, a
pro-drop language, verbs can index both two core arguments in a transitive predicate, but not frequently. If the arguments are not omitted, referent indexation is largely optional. Juang has a fairly complex tense–aspect–mood system, which is often divided into two sets: I for
transitive verbs and II for
intransitive verbs. The verb "be" is usually omitted in the present tense and with a predicate adjective in sentences. There are two types of negation markers. Pronominal negation markers are specific for person/number of subject or object arguments. General negation markers such as
-jena make up for the lack of a first-person singular negative. Negatives are ambifixative but usually precede the verb stem. There are
double negations: combinations of two negatives. The negated verb may reduplicate itself.
Noun incorporation is fossilised in lexical compounds and words like body parts being combined with the verb "wash". Note that the head precedes the incorporated object, as opposed to the
head-final position in normal clauses.
Gtaʔ-Remo-Gutob The southernmost
Gtaʔ and
Remo-
Gutob subgroups of South Munda exhibit significant morphological convergence towards
Dravidian languages.
Auxiliary verb constructions are heavily employed. Doubly-inflected auxiliary verb constructions are common in Gutob and Gorum, which reflects Dravidian influence. Gtaʔ-Remo-Gutob apparently have either altogether lost or not developed object indexation. Thus, they can only employ the
dependent-marking strategy in
differential argument marking. Examples of each languages: 1.
Remo (Anderson, field notes) 2.
Gutob 3. Hill
Gtaʔ (Anderson, field notes) Negation in Gutob is the most complex among the Munda languages. Like for other Munda languages, Gtaʔ-Remo-Gutob have lexical noun incorporation. Gtaʔ retains some instances of unproductive incorporation of body parts to the verb "wash" like Juang, which may fit Mithun (1984)'s type II of incorporation.
Sora-Gorum in 2019 speaker discussing the issues with native language education due to lack of books and teachers The Sora-Gorum languages consist of
Sora,
Gorum, and the lesser-known
Juray.They display many features that are considered to be archaic that can be dated to
Proto-Munda. For mainstream South Asian languages like
Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian, the latter are exclusively suffixing, prefixes and infixes are unusual but quite common in
Austroasiatic languages, and Sora-Gorum has a prefix domain that can host several pre-stem markers. The indexation paradigm in Sora and Gorum renders the fullest form of Proto-Munda predicate structure and syntax. In practice, Sora is inclined to index only one argument. Within a transitive predicate, the object argument is ranked higher than subject, and pronouns are required.
Gorum:
Sora: In Sora, noun incorporation is a
valency-reducing effort, close to what described by
Mithun's type III incorporation. Every noun has a combining form (CF), which is a compact, compressed monosyllabic form of free-standing noun, having been stripped of its functional morphology, and does not adhere to bimoraic constraint. Only CFs are allowed to form compounds with verbs. The resulted verb-noun incorporated compound is syntactically distinct from phrases. Unlike in North Munda where it is restricted to
oral literature, noun incorporation in Sora is in fact pervasive in daily conversations, with every noun except loanwords having a possible CF, which allows the creation of sequences of complex verb phrases. While the most salient effect of object noun incorporation in most polysynthetic languages is the lowering of the scope of the verb and the converting of
transitive verbs to
intransitive, incorporation of transitive subject/agent is considered atypical and occupies at the lowest position of the hierarchy. That made the incorporation of transitive subjects to have once been considered theoretically impossible by some linguists. Among all languages, there are few exceptional attested cases that permit such type of incorporation including some
Athabaskan languages like
Koyukon and
South Slavey, and indeed, Sora. ==Munda lexicon and lexical relation with other Indian language families==