Procedure Wordlist sites silesr2015 012.

network when it is multidirectional. The languages spoken by different Bhil groups of western India comprise a dialect network, where the isolation of Noiri from the entire continuum is not so easy to accomplish. Nevertheless, attempts were made during previous research to this end. Maggard et al. 1998 cluster Noiri, Barutiya and Dungra Bhili in one group, and Watters 2013 groups Barutiya 13 and Noiri together. These works would at least help us to draw an outline boundary of Noiri in the vast Bhili ocean. The following is a report of the effort by the present researchers to gauge the relationship of Noiri with other varieties.

2.1 Procedure

One method that has been developed for measuring the relationships among speech varieties is to compare the phonetic similarity of their vocabularies. This is referred to as lexical similarity. Speakers of varieties that have a higher degree of lexical similarity are generally more likely to understand one another better than do speakers of varieties that have fewer terms in common. Only elicited words and simple verb constructions are used in this comparison. This procedure cannot directly indicate how well various communities understand one another; it can, however, assist in obtaining a broad perspective of the relationships among the speech varieties and give support for further research. A standardised 210-item wordlist, arranged in semantic categories, was used in this survey’s lexical similarity study. The wordlists were elicited in Hindi and transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA. Lexical similarity analysis was then carried out on each pair of wordlists; those words that were judged similar were grouped together. Once all the wordlists were evaluated, the total number of word pair similarities was tallied, using the procedures outlined by Blair 1990:31–32. Calculations were made using the WordSurv computer program Wimbish 1989. The results were expressed as a percentage of phonetically similar lexical items. 14

2.2 Wordlist sites

According to the information available at the time of background research, the population of Noiri speakers was only five thousand. But a scouting trip prior to the survey made it clear that the estimated population is more than 100,000 spread over different tahsils. The wordlists utilised in the survey are listed in table 4. Three Noiri wordlists were elicited during this survey, each of which is the representation of one tahsil. Based on the standard procedure, each wordlist needs to be checked with a second mother tongue speaker. Two wordlists from a previous survey, 15 a Bhilori and a Noiri from Dhadgaon tahsil, were checked during the course of the survey. The rest of the wordlists remain unchecked. The Noiri wordlist from Shirpur tahsil was collected during the scouting trip itself and was used to elicit synonyms from other sites. As mentioned in section 1.7, an additional purpose of the survey was to find out the extensibility of Dungra Bhili language development to the Noiri speaking area. Hence, two Dungra Bhili wordlists were also included, one of which was elicited during the present survey and the other was taken from the previous Dungra Bhili survey. Other wordlists have also been collected to gauge lexical relationship. Two wordlists were elicited from Kotli, a reported dialect of Noiri. It was reported that Kotli has two dialects; one wordlist represents each of these dialects. Due to various reasons, the survey team had to be content with less accurate Kotli wordlists. The wordlist from Nahali of Toranmal, elicited by the Dhule survey team, has gone through 13 Both these reports refer to Bhilori rather than Barutiya. 14 For example, if a total of 207 items were compared and 151 of these word pairs were deemed phonetically similar, then the lexical similarity percentage would be 151 divided by 207 and multiplied by 100. In this example, the lexical similarity would be 73 percent. 15 Both of the wordlists are from Dhadgaon tahsil of present Nandurbar district and were elicited during the survey conducted in the northern Dhule district of Maharashtra in 1988. the checking process. Three more wordlists, two Nihali and one Korku, were collected from the eastern part of the survey area. Table 4. Source of wordlists utilised in this survey Language Village TahsilBlock District State Elicitation team Noiri Chillare Shirpur Dhule Maharashtra Noiri team Noiri Pannali Pansemal Badwani Madhya Pradesh Noiri team Noiri Astambha Dhadgaon Nandurbar Maharashtra Dhule team Noiri Gomon Akkalkua Nandurbar Maharashtra Noiri team Bhilori Barutiya Mundalwad Dhadgaon Nandurbar Maharashtra Dhule team Dhungra Bhili Mathwad Jhabua Alirajpur Madhya Pradesh Noiri team Dhungra Bhili Ambadungar Kawant Vadodara Gujarat Dungra Bhili team Kotli Papiner Narayanpur Nandurbar Nandurbar Maharashtra Noiri team Kotli Adivasi Bhili Taradi Shahada Nandurbar Maharashtra Noiri team Gujari Taradi Shahada Nandurbar Maharashtra Noiri team Nahali Toranmal Dhadgaon Nandurbar Maharashtra Dhule team Nihali Jamod Jamod- Jalgaon Buldana Maharashtra Noiri team Nihali Tembhi Khaknar Khandwa Madhya Pradesh Noiri team Korku Tukaithad Khaknar Khandwa Madhya Pradesh Noiri team Tembhi is also called Temi. Map 3. Wordlist and RTT sites

2.3 Results and analysis