Numeral System in Maithili

Abstract

This work entitled ‘Numeral system in Maithili’ attempts to describe the phonological, morphological, syntactical, and semantically analysis of numerals in Maithili. The whole study consists of four chapters whereby the first chapter presents the introduction of the Maithili language. Maithili is a New Indo-Aryan language with SOV word order. It is spoken by a total of about 30 million people in the eastern and north regions of the Bihar state of the north India and south eastern plains, known as the Tarai of Nepal. It is the second major language of Nepal. This first chapter consists of statement of the problem, objectives of the study, review of the literature, significance of the study, and the organization of the study. The second chapter presents the concept of conceptual background of the numeral system for Maithili. Normally, numeral is a symbol, a word or group of symbols, a word or a figure in a natural language that represents a number, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The third chapter deals with phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic analysis of numeral in Maithili. The Maithili cardinal numbers respond to the vowel-raising rule of generative phonology that raises a mid-low or a mid-high vowel one notch up (viz. E, O, e and o → e, o, i and u respectively) which is followed by a high vowel (viz. i or u) in the immediately following syllable. The permissible syllable cannon in Maithili numeral is CCVC. The Maithili morphology is classified into two categories-basic and derived. There are two classifiers: -tā and -got and two clitics: -e and -o in the Maithili language. The Maithili syntactic in/definiteness construction involving cardinal number classifiers, numerals and their order reversal in terms of three points in/definiteness scale, viz. definiteness, antidefiniteness, and indefiniteness have also been discussed in this chapter. In Maithili, the semantics of cardinal numbers expresses three types of concepts: exact quantification, approximate quantification, and non-quantification. This chapter also analyzes the regarding numbers; these can be classified according to their use in Maithili. The last chapter summarizes the whole thesis and presents a brief conclusion.