• Morphology & Syntax

    • Bhojpuri is an SOV language
    • Determiners and adjectives come before nouns
    • Indirect objects come before direct objects
    • Nouns inflect for gender and number
    • Verbs inflect for tense, aspect, number, gender, and person
    • Verbs agree with subject, but not object

    Examples
    1) Honorifics
    There are three tiers of polite language. Pronouns rauraa or rauaa indicate high honorific, used with elders and others in formal contexts. Pronoun tohaar is used for medium honorific. Pronouns tu and tor are non-honorific.
    Here are three examples to say the same thing, both high honorific. Note the different pronouns trigger different inflection on the verb.

    ham
    1.S
    aapan
    2.S.HON
    se
    to
    kahali
    say.PST
    ‘I said to you’ (high honorific)
    ham
    1.S
    rauraa
    2.S.HON
    se
    to
    kahlin
    say.PST
    ‘I said to you’ (high honorific)
    2) Negation
    khana
    meal
    na
    NEG
    ka-ilak
    do-3.S.M.NH.NOM
    ‘He didn’t eat‘ (non-honorific)
    (lit. ‘He did not do a meal’)
    3) Simultaneous verb construction
    tu
    2.S.NH.NOM
    ta
    EMP
    kharh-wa
    grass-MIN
    kha-t
    eat-SIM
    pani-a
    water-MIN
    pi-at
    drink-SIM
    cal-ela
    walk-2.NH.NPST
    ‘You walk very slowly’ (non-honorific)
    (lit. ‘You walk while eating grass and drinking water.’)
    (This example from Lohar, Gopal Thakur. 2012. Converbal constructions in Bhojpuri. Nepalese Linguistics. 27.217–22.)

    Glossing

    1, 2,3 first, second, third person
    EMP emphatic
    HON honorific
    M masculine
    NEG negation
    NH non-honorific
    NOM nominative
    NPST nonpast
    PST past
    S singular
    SIM simultaneous

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