Goa University scholar Madhavi Sardesai gets PhD for Konkani study

Panaji, Jan 22 (UNI) Goa University Department of Konkani Sr Lecturer Ms Madhavi Sardesai has been awarded the PhD degree in English for her thesis on 'A Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Study of Lexical Influences on Konkani'.

The study, carried out mainly within the framework of linguistics, is a comparative analysis of foreign as well as indigenous influences on Konkani vocabulary from a linguistic as well as a cultural point of view, varsity sources said.

Exploring influences of the Portuguese language with which Konkani was in contact for over four centuries, is one of the main concerns of this study.

It provides, both, a structural typology of Konkani and also explores their socio-cultural, historical and political determinants.

The study even finds the influences on the domain of Konkani kinship vocabulary by comparing the kinship terminology in the Hindu and the Christian Konkani dialects.

At the sametime, it examines the influences on literary Konkani through a scrutiny of select Konkani texts from the 16th to the present century. The impact-making approaches of the main pioneers of Konkani literature towards linguistic borrowing are also investigated.

The research was carried out under the joint guidance of Prof Anand Patil (retd) and Dr Kiran Budkuley of Dept of English, Goa University, sources added.

UNI