ELAP PhD graduate -
Dr Chaithra Puttaswamy

Chaithra Puttaswamy recently completed all the requirements for the PhD at SOAS to become the third student in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme to achieve the PhD. Chaithra came to SOAS on a prestigious Felix Scholarship after completing her MPhil in computational linguistics at Hyderabad University and an MA in linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her dissertation “A Descriptive Analysis of Verbs in Malto” is a detailed analysis of the morphosyntax of verb constructions in Sauria Paharia Malto, an endangered North Dravidian language spoken in north-east India. It includes a sketch grammar of the language, and a chapter on language contact (Malto is in contact with Indo-Aryan languages and the Munda language Santali). Chaithra carried out extensive fieldwork in India and prepared a transcribed, translated and annotated corpus of materials recorded on audio and video that covers a range of genres - the grammatical analysis draws on the corpus, as well as elicitation with a number of consultants. The thesis is the first documentation of Malto.

Congratulations Chaithra!

For more information on Chaithra's research see her profile page