ABSTRACT
In dealing with language matters in the famously complex South Asian context, it is always difficult to strike an appropriate balance between doing justice to the sheer complexity of the data and undertaking the degree of simplification necessary for concise exposition, even where simplification is not imposed by intrinsic gaps in the current state of knowledge. While aiming for clarity, this chapter also attempts to survey a wider than usual range of regional and historical data from the Panjabi area in order to establish a reasoned basis for comparisons with other Indo-Aryan languages. A general context is first established in this introductory section, before the chapter proceeds to deal with phonology, script, morphology and syntax.
