Dialect Contact and Change in Copular Forms in Bihar

Unlike most Western contexts, urbanization in Asian settings including India is not a unidirectional process (McGee, 1977). People continue to maintain close ties with the homelands through kinship and marriage practices thus impacting the outcomes of contact in ways that might run contrary to the larger expectations. Moreover, multilingual settings may not necessarily be centred on a single dominant centre of power or a prestige variety (Author, in press). In this paper, we report findings from our study of dialect contact in Bihar. Bihar is one of the eastern states of India which has been traditionally home to three closely related Indo-Aryan varieties, namely Magahi, Maithili and Bhojpuri occupying distinct regions as shown on the Map: Two additional varieties have emerged over time known as Angika and Bajjika. Increased internal mobility across the state due to urbanization has resulted in increased contact across the dialect regions. The focus of the study is on four present copular forms: h-, ch-, chik- and ba- and their distribution across five varieties. The findings suggest that contact over time has resulted in the redistribution of the copular forms across dialect regions resulting in newer variation and change in the use of be forms. There is evidence of an increase in the use of one of the copular forms in 4/5 varieties among the younger age group; this, however, has not eliminated the use of other forms thus maintaining the distinctness of each of the varieties.