Structural Changes as a Result of Dialect Contact

It is commonly believed that “morph-syntactic structures are faithfully transmitted across generations, and are not transferred from language to language in normal linguistic development” (Labov 2007). The present paper focuses on two morpho-syntactic changes that Bajjika, traditionally considered a dialect of Maithili is undergoing due to dialect contact with Bhojpuri, a western Bihari Language. The study focuses on the new present tense marker –la and the new auxiliary hawe. These two forms in Bajjika are not attested in literary texts and nor in the first Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson, 1903). The strong hypothesis of the paper is that these forms are a comparatively recent arrival in the language in terms of diffusion from the West where Bhojpuri is spoken.