Kharia: A transparent language

Abstract

The transparency of the South-Munda language Kharia is measured by checking whether it exhibits the non-transparent properties listed in the introduction of this issue. It turns out that Kharia is transparent to a high degree. The most important non-transparent properties that are attested are apposition, discontinuity, some fusional morphology and phonological adaptations. Transparent properties of Kharia are the consistent use of clitics for phrase-marking (instead of head-marking by affixes) and the absence of functionally specialized lexeme classes.