Colin Masica
Colin P. Masica (1931-) is professor emeritus in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizationsand the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. He is a renowned authority in the linguistics of Indo-Aryan languages. At the University of Chicago, he taught Hindi at all levels for three decades and published on both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. His magna opera are Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia and The Indo-Aryan Languages. The latter surveyed more than a century of linguistic research on the many Indo-Aryan languages and dialects of North India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. It was written as part of the University of Cambridge's surveys of the language families of the world. The former has had a profound influence on the study of India as a linguistic area.
In his research, Masica freely draws on studies published in French, Russian, German as well as Indian languages. He also has studied grammars of dozens of other languages and used this facility in his seminal Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia which demonstrates the typological parallels between the Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda, Tibeto-Burman languages of South Asia with the Altaic (including Korean and Japanese) of Central and Northeast Asia.
Publications
- Postverbal subjects in Telugu and other languages [comparisons with Hindi, Turkish, Gujarati, Russian, Chinese, Spanish]. In Masica, Colin P., Ed. Old and New Perspectives on South Asian Languages: Grammar and Semantics. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Pp.246-73.
- The definition and significance of linguistic areas. In Bhaskararao, P., and K.V. Subbarao, Eds. South Asia yearbook 2001: Papers from the symposium on South Asian languages: contact, convergence and typology. Delhi: SAGE Publications. Pp. 205-67.
- Alternative embedding strategy in Gujarati. In P.J. Mistry and Bharati Modi, Eds. Vidyopāsanā: Studies in honor of Harivallabh C. Bhayāni. Mumbai-Ahmedabad: Image Publications. 1999. Pp. 135-56.
- Masica, Colin P. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-52129-944-6
- Definiteness marking in South Asian languages. In Krishnamurti, B., Colin P. Masica, Anjani K. Sinha. South Asian Languages: Structure, Convergence and Diglossia Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1986. Pp. 123-46.
- Aryan and Non-Aryan elements in North Indian agriculture. In Deshpande, M. M., and P. E. Hook, Eds. Aryan and Non-Aryan in India. Ann Arbor: Karoma. 1979. Pp. 55-151.
- Masica, Colin P. Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. ISBN 0-22650-944-3
- Zide, Norman H., Colin P. Masica, K. C. Bahl, A. C. Chandola. A Premchand Reader. Honolulu: Published for the South Asia Language and Area Center, University of Chicago, by East-West Center Press, 1965.