Prof. Sisir Kumar Sinha is the Professor and Former Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Commerce, Tripura University . The paper presented by him in the Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics is titled "Change of Meaning of Words in Murshidabad Dialects".

       In his paper Dr. Sinha discusses the uniqueness of the dialect of the former Capital of Bengal. He brings to limelight many Bangla words (both tadbhava and tatsama and of Perso-Arabic origin) which have undergone semantic changes different in nature and degree in the Murshidabad dialects.

      In case of some words there is elevation of meaning while some degenerate in meaning .He puts 'darad'(< Persian 'dard'), 'aparuup' and 'saahas' in the first category. 'Kholiphaa' which originally meant ' a spiritual chief of Muslim community' now means 'dorji' meaning 'tailor'; bujruk' which means 'a saint' in Persian and Urdu is taken for 'an imposter' in the Murshidabad dialect. Again there are words which have extension of meaning like ' Khaapraa' or contraction of meaning as in 'aanchol' or both as in 'thaan'(<sthaan). ' Khaapraa' or skull means 'a piece of earthen pot' due to analogy; 'baachchaa' meaning 'young child of a bird or an animal' has the present meaning of 'any child even that humans'. Dr. Sinha in the end cites examples of words available in the Murshidabad dialects which exhibit signs of transfer of meaning as in 'aballa' (weak) to 'woman' ,its present meaning.

     Concluding his paper, Dr. Sinha made a statement that, those shifts in meaning of words points to socio-cultural background of the speakers of a particular community.

     In the discussion session, Dr. Rajendra Singh questioned whether he pre-supposed Aristotelian sense of meaning. He asked not to look for the meaning of words but for their use, saying that there are possibilities of metaphorical extension of meaning within a language. He added that since meaning is a flexible thing it can be misleading. In reply, Dr. Sisir said that circumstances of use are different for example 'Magi' quoting Pabitra Sarkar, may be used as an abusive in one context or otherwise in the other. Pabitra Sarkar strengthened Dr. Sinha's point by stating that meaning is non stable because even standard colloquial Bangla holds similar changes. Dr. Subbarao commented that in all Indian languages we have such abusive words.