Prof. Karumari V. Subbarao, representing the University of Delhi, rendered the keynote address in Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics, held in Mysore, during 1st to 4th January 2005. The paper authored in association with Dr. Harbir K.Arora of Galgotia Institute of Technology was titled “The Conjuctive Participle in Dakkhini Hindi-Urdu; Making the Best of Both Worlds”. In his paper Prof. Subbarao shows how the general changes (in conjunctive participle) took place in the syntax of Dakkhini as a result of contact. He pointed out the instances of lexical NPs being permitted to occur as the subject of a conjunctive participle violating the PRO Theorem. Such occurrences prove that contact overrides syntactic constraints/principles. Moreover, the phenomenon of Backward Control not found in Hindi-Urdu is salient feature of the grammar of Dakkhini. The negative morpheme occurring in the embedded adverbial clauses with no semantic borrowing just as in Telugu and the conjunctive participle occurring in the predicate position of a clause, unlike in Hindi-Urdu with stative and non-stative verb, was significant, he observed. He stated that Dakkhini retains the simpler Hindi-Urdu negative form and is not affected by the various ‘complex’ forms of Telugu inspite of prolonged contact. Prof. Subbarao asserted that Dakkhini does not allow a negative to occur in conjunctive participle to avoid syntactic harmony. An important point he made in his paper was that analogy plays a role in syntactic change. He concluded that Dakkhini optimally utilizes a borrowed syntactic construction from Telugu as far as the occurrence of affirmative and negative conjunctive participles in predicate position is concerned. In conclusion, Prof. Subbarao’s address highlighted the point that in contrast to past theories on Language Morphology, it was prone to changes because of contact. The session chaired by Prof. L. M. Khubchandani, was followed by active discussion amongst the delegates on various aspects of linguistics.