19 Garasia dialect to be intelligible with the Adiwasi and Rajput Garasia. The high standard
deviations in Dhabaavalivav and Bordiyala in regard to the AA text indicate the existence of factors that affect intelligibilty other than dialect distance. Such factors are not accounted for in
our data. Whatever the reason, the Rajput Garasia and the Adiwasi Garasia do not understand the Dungari Garasia dialect of Bhiloda.
In addition to the tests cited above, other dialect intelligibility testing was done on a more informal basis. The text from the Rajput Garasia of Dhabaavalivav was played for some
Rajput Garasia speakers as far north as Pali district of Rajasthan. One of those who listened was heard the next day recounting the story to a friend of his. Those who listened to the text
understood it without any difficulty. The same story GD was also used in Siyawa Sirohi district of Rajasthan, near Abu Road as a hometown test for a pilot bilingualism study among
the Rajput Garasia speakers there. Every person tested understood the Dhabaavalivav story without exception. No respondent missed any question. Such findings verify comments from
the Rajput Garasia speakers that all Rajput Garasias speak the same language.
4.2.3 Conclusions.
On the basis of the dialect intelligibility testing, we conclude the following: 1. The Adiwasi Garasia of Bordiyala understand the Rajput Garasia dialect to a great
extent. The Adiwasi of Danta taluk in Banaskantha district and Poshina taluk of Sabarkantha district should be able to use Rajput Garasia vernacular literature.
2. The Rajput Garasia do not understand the Adiwasi Garasia to the same extent as the latter do the former. That is to say, the Rajput Garasia speakers would not be able to use
Adiwasi Garasia literacy materials were those materials available. 3. The language spoken by the Dungari Garasia in the Bhiloda area of southern
Sabarkantha is considerably different from either Adiwasi Garasia or Rajput Garasia. The differences are so great, in fact, that the Dungari Garasia would not be able to use the Rajput
Garasia vernacular literature.
4.3 Integration of Dialect Area Conclusions.
On the basis of the lexical similarity percentages, we tentatively came up with 5 major groups. The five groups were actually groupings of the dialects that showed about 90 or more
lexical similarity. It was assummed that if two dialects were 90 or more in lexical similarity, they would have a high degree of inherent intelligibility. After dialect intelligibilty testing,
however, we found that such an assumption cannot be made in regard to the dialects of Garasia and Bhil in northern Gujarat. Now, it must be kept in mind that there are evidently some factors
that are skewing the results of the dialect intelligibility tests. Language attitudes of the Rajput
20 Garasia toward lower caste tribes certainly affect dialect intelligibility, for example. Whatever
those factors may be, we cannot hold to our assumption that those with over 90 lexical similarity with other dialects understand each other. If a dialect like the Dungari Garasia of
Bhiloda AA cannot understand the Rajput Garasia of Dhabaavalivav with the lexical similarity of the two groups being 91, it is somewhat doubtful that groups of much lower lexical
similarity will understand the Rajput Garasia. The Bhil of the Panch Mahals and the Mena Bhil Wagdi speakers of Banswara and Dungarpur, may find the Rajput Garasia even more difficult
to understand, being less lexically similar to Rajput Garasia.
4.4 Residue.
The results of the dialect intelligibility tests tell us plainly that the dialect area study for the Bhil-related groups of northern Gujarat and southern Rajasthan is far from over. Present
indications are that the Bhil-related groups in southern Sabarkantha and Panch Mahals districts of Gujarat, and Banswara and Dungarpur districts of Rajasthan will not be able to use the
vernacular literature of the Rajput Garasia due to dialect differences. In light of what we know now, it is imperative that a sociolinguistic survey of the Bhil groups in the areas mentioned above
be done. Attempts were made to include the places in the Garasia survey. However, distance, lack of contacts, and lack of cooperation, all combined to make the task very difficult. It is clear
now that these areas need to be the focus of a separate survey or surveys. One final note about the dialect area study, while we have established that the Adiwasi
communities of Banaskantha and presumably northern Sabarkantha understand the Rajput Garasia enough to use their material, we do not know very much about the Bhil and other
Adiwasi communities to the north of Banaskantha. There are many unanswered questions concerning other language communities in Sirohi, Pali, and Udaipur districts. Can the Bhil and
Rabaris understand Rajput Garasia? To what extent? The sociolinguistic questions go beyond simply the aboriginal communities. In fact, we can find the answers to our question concerning
the Bhil dialects only in the context of knowing more about the majority dialects, namely Marwari. Do the Bhil of Pali and Sirohi understand Marwari? If a vernacular literacy program
was developed for the Marwari communities, could it serve both the majority population and the Bhil minorities? These are some of the questions that come to mind as we look to those
language communities to the north that are related to the Rajput Garasia.
21
5 BILINGUALISM. 5.1
Procedures.
The first step in this study of bilingualism was to prepare demographic profiles of the Rajput Garasia community in Dhabaavalivav and the Adiwasi Garasia community of Bordiyala.
These profiles provided vital information in administering the bilingualism tests and analyzing the results. The demographic profiles were developed in order to find a representative sample of
the population of the community. Basic information was elicited about every adult 15+ years of age in the community. The questionnaire asked for information about age, sex, vocation,
education, marital status, languages used in the home, travel, etc. See Appendix D. Such information gives a clear picture of the community, and shows the distribution of factors which
may influence bilingualism. The bilingualism tests were to be given in such a way that every part of the community was represented in the test sample. Demographic profiles were developed for
two communities: the Adiwasi community of Bordiyala and the Rajput Garasia community of Dhabaavalivav.
Two methods were used to assess bilingualism. One method was recorded text testing. This method is similar to the dialect intelligibility method see section 4.2. The story or text in
this case was in Gujarati. The test was to be administered to a representative sample which consisted of considerably more than ten people. The test scores are averaged for the various
segments of the community as ascertained from the demographic profile. The obvious import of this method is that if the people cannot understand a simple narrative in the state language, it
is most probable they would not understand more difficult material in the state language. Of course, even if the people do understand the text, it does not mean that they would be able to
understand more complex literature. In this latter case, more bilingualism testing would need to be done that could measure higher levels of bilingualism.
The second method used for evaluating bilingualism was a bilingualism proficiency questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of some thirty questions. The questions asked the
repondent to evaluate his own proficiency in the state language in terms of what tasks he could accomplish in the state language. The tasks in question became increasingly difficult as the
questionnaire progressed. The first question, for example, asks, Can you speak a little bit of X language? The last question asks, When you speak X language do people know you are not a
native speaker of it? The questionnaire used in this survey was the one presented at the Indian Institute for Cross-cultural Communication IICCC course on Sociolinguistic Surveys in 1986.
This bilingualism proficiency questionnaire is also called the self-evaluation questionnaire and the Can You Do...? questionnaire. The questionnaire is based on earlier questionnaires as found in
the FSI self-evaluation test in Adams and Frith 1979, Grimes 1986: 24-26, and Quakenbush 1986: 269-71. All of these questionnaires attempt to elicit responses that reflect a persons
22 bilingual ability in terms of levels of bilingualism as developed by the Interagency Language
Roundtable Language Skill Level Descriptions Blair 1987: 142. A brief description of the levels is given in Appendix C. Although a debated topic, it is generally agreed that people need to be at
least at level 3 to use literature in the state language effectively Bergman 1986. Some argue that an even higher level is required. The level 3 description reads as follows: Able to speak the
language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social, and occupational topics. Language skill
descriptions 1987: 4-5. The results of the bilingualism proficiency questionnaire are reported in two ways. The
first way is simply to state the levels of proficiency indicated by the responses the interviewees have given. If, for example, a respondent answered all the questions under the level one
description in a way that indicated he could accomplish the tasks described, then that respondent was given a level one proficiency in the state language. A difficulty soon arises in assigning levels
of bilingualism, however. Answers are not always continuous. Ideally, a respondent should give positive responses to all the questions in level one before he could give positive responses to
level two questions, and so on. But, it does happen that some individuals answer negatively to some lower level questions and positively to some higher level questions. This happened to
some extent in this survey. It is difficult to assign a level of bilingualism proficiency to such individuals. In light of these difficulties, the bilingualism proficiency questionnaire responses are
also reported in terms of the total number of positive responses positive responses meaning answers that indicate bilingual ability. The higher the total, the more proficient the individual
reported himself to be. Along with the level of bilingualism and the total number of positive responses from the
questionnaire, the respondents scores on the recorded text test in the state language are also presented. By comparing the results of the recorded text testing and the bilingualism proficiency
questionnaire, interesting observations of the interrelationship of language posture what one claims to be able to do with a language and language ability can be made Blair 1987: 151.
In some situations, we wanted to investigate bilingualism in communities where our contacts were not very extensive. In such cases, we used the methods described in the second
paragraph of this section in pilot bilingualism studies. The test and the questionnaire were given to ten people that came from a cross section of the community. If the average on the recorded
text test was below 70 percent, we concluded that no further testing was necessary and that the people were not sufficiently bilingual. If the average was higher than 70 percent on the pilot test,
then a more extensive bilingualism investigation was recommended. We were particularly interested in the ability of the Rajput Garasia and the Mena Bhil in Rajasthan to speak Hindi.
5.2 Bilingualism Testing.
