Sociolinguistics in South Asia

That formal grammar as an enterprise began in South Asia, and reached the height of its early excellence in the work of Panini, is likely to be familiar to all readers. But the need to contextualize formal grammar in a social and philosophical matrix was seen at the very inception of the formal grammar enterprise. This is a less familiar fact and deserves attention. In order to focus on issues of such generality, this exposition develops a few key moments in South Asian sociolinguistic inquiry at length. The option of mentioning all major sociolinguists of the region and providing an annotated bibliography for each of them – the only alternative that suggests itself – would amount to allowing unmentioned exogenous…