Kapil Muni Tiwary

Kapil Muni Tiwary (1932 – 26 April 2021) was an Indian professor and head of the department of Linguistics and Literature at Patna University and a professor of English in Yemen.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 with a dissertation on grammar and phonology, Comparative reconstruction of Indo-Iranian sounds: On the basis of 'An Avesta grammar in comparison with Sanskrit, part 1' by A. V. Williams Jackson.

Tiwary was a scholar of South Asian languages.

He has published on such topics as echo words in Bhojpuri and has argued that echo-word constructions (in which "a word is repeated without its initial consonant, sometimes with a vowel change") can function as a kind of secret language.

He coined the term "institutionalized weeping" in a study of weeping among Tamil women.

Tiwary died on 26 April 2021.

Tiwary's first book, Panini's description of Sanskrit nominal compounds, was published by Janaki Prakashan, Patna in 1984.

Tiwary also edited an anthology of English prose, Aspects of English prose: an anthology, with R.C. Prasad in 1986.

His articles and books on various branches of linguists have been of special interest for the scholars in India and abroad.

Tiwary was one of the editors of a bi-annual journal of social sciences and humanities, Explorations in 1987–88. His article, Caste-Conflict: A View from Bhojpur, was published in Volume I, No. I of Exploration in 1987.

Another book, Language Deprivation and the socially disadvantaged: with special reference to Bihar, was published by Janaki Prakashan in 1994.

This book was an outcome of a project of Indian Council of Social Science Research on which he was working in the eighties.

Tiwary published many articles in Yemen Times Newspaper during the period 2000/2004.

His articles were about Indian loan words into Arabic and vice versa.

Kapil Muni Tiwary was born in Nainijor village in the Bhojpur District of Bihar, India.