Tanmoy Bhattacharya | University of Delhi (original) (raw)
Books by Tanmoy Bhattacharya
Trends in South Asian Linguistics, 2021
Optionality in participial agreement in Hindi was noted in Kachru (2006: 163), where an adverbial... more Optionality in participial agreement in Hindi was noted in Kachru (2006: 163), where an adverbial participle may optionally agree with the subject NP in number and gender if the NP is in the direct case. For the present paper, I expand this observation further and demonstrate the existence of extensive (syntactic) variation in participial agreement in Hindi with data that has not been reported or analyzed in the literature. In the case of relative participles, where Kachru did not report any variation, the range of judgments indicates a general reluctance of the number feature to be available too low in the structure; this becomes apparent if we use an object relative in these constructions; the optionality in participial subject agreement that Kachru captured seems to take place in the case of participial object agreement as well. For the complex adjectival/ adverbial adjuncts, though Kachru (2006) reported variation by one factor, the extent of variation is found to be much wider. The judgments on these variants indicate that the feature of person seems to be available high up in the clause and gender lower down but it is number that hovers in between. This is in line with the general observation that participle agreement is with number and gender and never with person, unlike subject agreement in general-another reason why this type of agreement should be seen as different from (subject) argument agreement on verbs. Theoretically, the findings indicate that the trigger for the number agreement cannot be lower than at least the main clause aspectual head. The paper proposes three distinct syntactic operations-valuation, relaying, and copying which, together with standard Agree applying top-down, derive the full range of the results obtained.
Papers by Tanmoy Bhattacharya
Modern Transformations and the Challenges of Inequalities in Education in India, 2021
There is something wrong with homogeneity; the fact that difference is the norm is socio-politica... more There is something wrong with homogeneity; the fact that difference is
the norm is socio-politically suppressed by brandishing the weapon of
homogeneity. We are made to think that we are all alike. I start this
paper by questioning our incessant celebration of homogeneity and show
further that normativity is the unifying and underlying force working for
homogeneity. This overwhelming presence of the normative demands an
examination of the system of knowledge, since, in spite of its oppressive
presence, normativity is rarely questioned, more so, in the sphere of
education. I will take up the case of education for marginalised groups
in order to demonstrate the above. In the field of education, whether
it is through the curriculum, the delivery, or the material, normativity
conspires to construe a bias in the mind of the learner. Within a strategy
based on reforms, the question of whether or not to address such an issue
as a ‘special’ case arises, in turn, compelling us to reopen the discussion on
the much-abused issue of inclusion. I will suggest three ways of achieving
inclusion: through empathy, as a right, and through a Dalit/disabilitycentric
knowledge system. I will show that both the empathy and the
right perspectives fail, primarily because the first leads to compassion
and charity and the second to merely structural changes due to its lack
of connection with development and life-value criteria. I will elaborate a
third way, based on the philosophy of Integrative Difference—Integrative-
Difference Based Inclusive Education—which requires us to shift our
ontologies from the disability/Dalit model to that of the ‘normate’,
to shift our gaze to the production, operation and maintenance of
normateism and to study the ‘pathologies of the normate’.
Disability in South Asia: Knowledge & Experience, 2018
The spirit of Disability Studies (DS) is often misunderstood in the excitement associated with th... more The spirit of Disability Studies (DS) is often misunderstood in the excitement associated with the birth of a new field and in the context of an uncertain dissociation from the zeal of activism; I will make a strong point here with respect to the latter. In earlier work, following on the tradition of sounding the alert of leaving activism behind and of reasonable advice on embracing the mutually inter-flowing character of activism and theory-building, I have advocated the necessity of the two-way traffic between the two. However, I now believe that for a specific context like India, the time has come to objectively re-take the shot. Disability related activities in India, with its overemphasis on services, is alarmingly close to creating a hegemonic discourse that shrinks the space for the emergence of a DS discourse, even further. In fact, I am quite certain now to state that what feeds each other within the Indian context is not DS and activism but activism and service, the former accentuating the latter; this is evident from mission statements of various agencies and their policies. In fact, I believe that this association is showing signs of crystallizing into a nexus that will steadfastly keep DS out forever. All the signs are in place and the lesson from other aspects of life around us, will reinforce and maintain this exclusionary character of the nexus as a matter of strategy. Therefore, it is time, in fact, to sound a caution from the other end – it is time now to move away for a while from the excitement of sloganeering, and to build a tradition of true scholarship in DS. A diplomatic compromise is the easy way out, it is difficult to engage in true scholarship. It is futile to pretend an activists’ posturing in an academic discourse – often by ever too willingly stretching the notion of activism at the cost of the necessary politics associated with it – and completely unnecessary. Having said this, it is necessary to also point out that DS cannot be built on the ashes of activism, and I am certainly not suggesting an either/or existential frame. My words ‘move away for a while’ clearly construct an imagery that keeps activism at bay but also in view. The formality of this estrangement is best attempted, I suggest, by looking at existing practices through the lens of ableism and by engaging in a disability-centric understanding of various themes within the academia.
Dynamics of Asian Development, 2016
There is a potential conflict between the value of diversity at workplace—a concept touted and en... more There is a potential conflict between the value of diversity at workplace—a concept touted and encouraged since the mid-1990s in America among private business/corporates—and the findings of the rights-based disability movement, namely (i) a person with disability (PwD) does not need charity, and (ii) disability is not a spectacle. A PwD represents in some sense the “spectacle of diversity” to an extreme in the mainstream unconscious imagination: if a prospective employer encourages hiring an employee with disability solely for the reason of diversity, then there is a problem. However, there ought to be some value to a practical implementation of a policy; i.e., if an organization wishes to implement a policy that encourages diversity in the workplace/institution, it ought to be considered an affirmative action. This is equally true of any possible future attempt at designing an instrument to ‘implement’ a theoretical perspective, be it from within the humanities or the social sciences; that is, actually hiring/admitting people as per a policy requirement may eventually lead to designing of an “instrument” or a set of algorithms, or a programme, to follow in cases of any such implementations. Nonetheless, designing instruments can address some of the issues which are often projected as problems which differentiate the social sciences from the humanities, since it has been argued that “designing” or “instrumentation” per se leads to a mechanistic world where human values are neglected—a bone of contention between the humanities and social sciences. A return to humanistic studies seems to be the only sure way of arriving at the truth. This is true in education as well as in employment, where the mere reportage of managers’/teachers’ or employees’/students’ satisfaction over employing PwDs and ignoring the axis of domination to investigate such status of employment, i.e. whether the person was employed/admitted “only” because of his/her disability to add to the so-called spectacle for the institute or whether because the organization truly believed in doing a good thing like diversity, does not constitute an analysis. This chapter thus critically examines the construction of diversity at workplace and in education with a view to comprehending the underlying notions.
Many natural language quantifiers (like many, most, few, etc.) were shown in a groundbreaking pap... more Many natural language quantifiers (like many, most, few, etc.) were shown in a groundbreaking paper by Barwise and Cooper in 1981 to be not definable through FOPC quantifiers like and . Furthermore, they showed that these quantifiers combine with a set expression and produce a quantifier, they thus correspond to the structure of determiners, hence the term, ‘universal determiners’. For the purpose of this paper, we investigate the universal determiners each, every and all; prottek ‘each/ every’, SOb/ SOkol/ puro/ goTa/ Sara in Bangla, respectively, and show that, a series of language specific factors influence the behaviours of these strong determiners. In particular, due to classifiers inducing specificity and the emphasiser –i inducing exclusivity, the results of a potential ‘test’ to distinguish between the uses of each of these determiners (the ‘exceptionality test’) turns out to be predictable on independent grounds. In addition, indefinites, which correspond to the weak determiners, are investigated across four properties as discussed in Farkas (2002), namely, Dependent reading (>), Existential Binding (>), Genericity (GENi [xi]) and scope of the existential over negation (). The indefinites discussed are Ek ‘one’, keu/ kono/ kichu ‘some’, and keu-na-keu/ kono-na-kono/ kichu-na-kichu ‘someone or other’. For ‘some’, it is shown that readings are only apparent as they involve contexts that otherwise license negative polarity items as in (1). (1) ami kichu khaini I some eatNEG ‘I haven’t eaten anything’ The generic reading for Ek ‘one’, furthermore, introduces a complexity not seen in Farkas (and perhaps not in Hungarian); its use is felicitous with a specific modality reading as in (2) where the use of the human classifier (CLA) need not be responsible for this particular reading as shown by an equivalent Hindi/ Urdu example in (3). (2) Ek-jon manus jOkhon nijer kOpal-ke doS dEy … one-CLA human when selfGEN forehead-DAT fault gives ‘When a (hu)man faults his/ her own luck …’ (3) Ek aadmi jab apne-aap-ko kostaa hai … one human when selfGEN-self-DAT blames be Furthermore, the Bangla reduplicated indefinite (Ek-Ek) differs from its Hungarian counterpart in being felicitous without being dependent on the scope of a universal quantifier: (4) Sonia Ek-Ek-joner SOnge dEkha korbe one-one-CALGEN with meet do.will ‘Sonia will meet each and every person.’ Some readjustments, therefore, are suggested in the model of Farkas (2002) with the view that morphological reduplication may not signal semantic dependence.
The Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics (1999), 1999
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2007
1. Acknowledgements 2. Introduction (by Bayer, Josef) 3. Clause Structure 4. What is 'Argumen... more 1. Acknowledgements 2. Introduction (by Bayer, Josef) 3. Clause Structure 4. What is 'Argument Sharing'?: A Case Study on Argument Sharing under VP-Serialization in Oriya (by Beermann, Dorothee) 5. Pseudoclefts: a Fully Derivational Account (by Boeckx, Cedric) 6. The Cleft Question and the Question of Cleft (by Madhavan, P.) 7. Clausal Pied-piping and Subjacency (by Srikumar, K.) 8. Modification in DP 9. On the Syntax of Quantity in English (by Kayne, Richard S.) 10. Binding 11. Coreference Violations 'Beyond Principle B' (by Gueron, Jacqueline) 12. Perspectives on Binding (by Reuland, Eric J.) 13. Raising from a Tensed Clause and Linguistic Theory: Evidence from Maithili (by Yadava, Yogendra P.) 14. Complementizers and Complementation 15. The Ubiquitous Complementizer (by Dasgupta, Probal) 16. Word Order, Parameters, and the Extended COMP Projection (by Davison, Alice) 17. The Particle ne in Direct yes-no Questions (by Barbora, Madhumita) 18. Phonology 19. Underspecification and the Phonology of *NC -Effects in Malayalam (by Das, Shyamal) 20. The Disyllabic Word Minimum: Variations on a Theme in Bangla, Punjabi and Tamil (by Vijayakrishnan, K.G.) 21. Writing Systems and Phonological Awareness (by Sailaja, Pingali) 22. List of contributors 23. Bibliography of K.A. Jayaseelan 24. Index of names 25. Index of languages 26. Index of topics
Sluicing: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, 2012
"This chapter establishes a profile of sluicing constructions in two widely-spoken Indo-Arya... more "This chapter establishes a profile of sluicing constructions in two widely-spoken Indo-Aryan languages of South Asia: Bangla and Hindi. Although traditionally described as being wh-in-situ languages, both Bangla and Hindi have a distribution of wh elements that suggests that they are actually languages with overt whmovement (Simpson and Bhattacharya 2003) and so might be expected to permit sluicing formed by wh-movement and PF clausal deletion, as hypothesized for languages such as English (Ross 1969,Merchant 2001, Fox and Lasnik 2003). The chapter consequently attempts to determine the degree to which sluicing in Bangla/Hindi may parallel or differ from the production of sluicing in English-type languages, and also how it may relate to sluicing patterns in typologically closer Japanese, where sluicing is often assumed to have a rather different syntactic derivation from that in English (Nishiyama et al. 1996, Fukaya and Hoji 1999, Hiraiwa and Ishihara 2001). The structure of the chapter is as follows. Section 9.2 first outlines basic properties of Bangla/Hindi and the formation of wh-questions in these languages. Section 9.3 then introduces sluicing proper, and examines what kind of analysis would seem to be supported by the patterning observed in Bangla/Hindi, considering with some care whether a form of the reduced cleft/copula analyses of sluicing in Japanese and Chinese might be appropriate for Bangla/Hindi. Arriving at the conclusion that it is wh-movement rather than copula deletion or cleft reduction that underlies Bangla/Hindi sluicing, Section 9.4 proceeds to investigate the potential effect of movement-associated constraints on sluicing in Bangla/Hindi, in particular Superiority and Subjacency/the CED. This leads to the observation of an unexpected difference in patterning in Bangla and Hindi, and an interesting challenge for the construction of theories on cross-linguistic variation in island-sensitivity in sluices. After someconsideration of the potential causes of the variation, Section 9.5concludes the chapter with an outline of the further comparative research into Indo-Aryan (and other) languages that seems to be required as a result of the present investigation of Bangla and Hindi."
Recent developments in the generative tradition have created new interest in matters of argument ... more Recent developments in the generative tradition have created new interest in matters of argument structure and argument projection, giving prominence to the discussion on the role of lexical entries. Particularly, the more traditional lexicalist view that encodes argument structure information on lexical entries is now challenged by a syntactic view under which all properties of argument structure are taken up by syntactic structure. In the light of these new developments, the contributions in this volume provide detailed empirical investigations of ...
Trends in South Asian Linguistics, 2021
Optionality in participial agreement in Hindi was noted in Kachru (2006: 163), where an adverbial... more Optionality in participial agreement in Hindi was noted in Kachru (2006: 163), where an adverbial participle may optionally agree with the subject NP in number and gender if the NP is in the direct case. For the present paper, I expand this observation further and demonstrate the existence of extensive (syntactic) variation in participial agreement in Hindi with data that has not been reported or analyzed in the literature. In the case of relative participles, where Kachru did not report any variation, the range of judgments indicates a general reluctance of the number feature to be available too low in the structure; this becomes apparent if we use an object relative in these constructions; the optionality in participial subject agreement that Kachru captured seems to take place in the case of participial object agreement as well. For the complex adjectival/ adverbial adjuncts, though Kachru (2006) reported variation by one factor, the extent of variation is found to be much wider. The judgments on these variants indicate that the feature of person seems to be available high up in the clause and gender lower down but it is number that hovers in between. This is in line with the general observation that participle agreement is with number and gender and never with person, unlike subject agreement in general-another reason why this type of agreement should be seen as different from (subject) argument agreement on verbs. Theoretically, the findings indicate that the trigger for the number agreement cannot be lower than at least the main clause aspectual head. The paper proposes three distinct syntactic operations-valuation, relaying, and copying which, together with standard Agree applying top-down, derive the full range of the results obtained.
Modern Transformations and the Challenges of Inequalities in Education in India, 2021
There is something wrong with homogeneity; the fact that difference is the norm is socio-politica... more There is something wrong with homogeneity; the fact that difference is
the norm is socio-politically suppressed by brandishing the weapon of
homogeneity. We are made to think that we are all alike. I start this
paper by questioning our incessant celebration of homogeneity and show
further that normativity is the unifying and underlying force working for
homogeneity. This overwhelming presence of the normative demands an
examination of the system of knowledge, since, in spite of its oppressive
presence, normativity is rarely questioned, more so, in the sphere of
education. I will take up the case of education for marginalised groups
in order to demonstrate the above. In the field of education, whether
it is through the curriculum, the delivery, or the material, normativity
conspires to construe a bias in the mind of the learner. Within a strategy
based on reforms, the question of whether or not to address such an issue
as a ‘special’ case arises, in turn, compelling us to reopen the discussion on
the much-abused issue of inclusion. I will suggest three ways of achieving
inclusion: through empathy, as a right, and through a Dalit/disabilitycentric
knowledge system. I will show that both the empathy and the
right perspectives fail, primarily because the first leads to compassion
and charity and the second to merely structural changes due to its lack
of connection with development and life-value criteria. I will elaborate a
third way, based on the philosophy of Integrative Difference—Integrative-
Difference Based Inclusive Education—which requires us to shift our
ontologies from the disability/Dalit model to that of the ‘normate’,
to shift our gaze to the production, operation and maintenance of
normateism and to study the ‘pathologies of the normate’.
Disability in South Asia: Knowledge & Experience, 2018
The spirit of Disability Studies (DS) is often misunderstood in the excitement associated with th... more The spirit of Disability Studies (DS) is often misunderstood in the excitement associated with the birth of a new field and in the context of an uncertain dissociation from the zeal of activism; I will make a strong point here with respect to the latter. In earlier work, following on the tradition of sounding the alert of leaving activism behind and of reasonable advice on embracing the mutually inter-flowing character of activism and theory-building, I have advocated the necessity of the two-way traffic between the two. However, I now believe that for a specific context like India, the time has come to objectively re-take the shot. Disability related activities in India, with its overemphasis on services, is alarmingly close to creating a hegemonic discourse that shrinks the space for the emergence of a DS discourse, even further. In fact, I am quite certain now to state that what feeds each other within the Indian context is not DS and activism but activism and service, the former accentuating the latter; this is evident from mission statements of various agencies and their policies. In fact, I believe that this association is showing signs of crystallizing into a nexus that will steadfastly keep DS out forever. All the signs are in place and the lesson from other aspects of life around us, will reinforce and maintain this exclusionary character of the nexus as a matter of strategy. Therefore, it is time, in fact, to sound a caution from the other end – it is time now to move away for a while from the excitement of sloganeering, and to build a tradition of true scholarship in DS. A diplomatic compromise is the easy way out, it is difficult to engage in true scholarship. It is futile to pretend an activists’ posturing in an academic discourse – often by ever too willingly stretching the notion of activism at the cost of the necessary politics associated with it – and completely unnecessary. Having said this, it is necessary to also point out that DS cannot be built on the ashes of activism, and I am certainly not suggesting an either/or existential frame. My words ‘move away for a while’ clearly construct an imagery that keeps activism at bay but also in view. The formality of this estrangement is best attempted, I suggest, by looking at existing practices through the lens of ableism and by engaging in a disability-centric understanding of various themes within the academia.
Dynamics of Asian Development, 2016
There is a potential conflict between the value of diversity at workplace—a concept touted and en... more There is a potential conflict between the value of diversity at workplace—a concept touted and encouraged since the mid-1990s in America among private business/corporates—and the findings of the rights-based disability movement, namely (i) a person with disability (PwD) does not need charity, and (ii) disability is not a spectacle. A PwD represents in some sense the “spectacle of diversity” to an extreme in the mainstream unconscious imagination: if a prospective employer encourages hiring an employee with disability solely for the reason of diversity, then there is a problem. However, there ought to be some value to a practical implementation of a policy; i.e., if an organization wishes to implement a policy that encourages diversity in the workplace/institution, it ought to be considered an affirmative action. This is equally true of any possible future attempt at designing an instrument to ‘implement’ a theoretical perspective, be it from within the humanities or the social sciences; that is, actually hiring/admitting people as per a policy requirement may eventually lead to designing of an “instrument” or a set of algorithms, or a programme, to follow in cases of any such implementations. Nonetheless, designing instruments can address some of the issues which are often projected as problems which differentiate the social sciences from the humanities, since it has been argued that “designing” or “instrumentation” per se leads to a mechanistic world where human values are neglected—a bone of contention between the humanities and social sciences. A return to humanistic studies seems to be the only sure way of arriving at the truth. This is true in education as well as in employment, where the mere reportage of managers’/teachers’ or employees’/students’ satisfaction over employing PwDs and ignoring the axis of domination to investigate such status of employment, i.e. whether the person was employed/admitted “only” because of his/her disability to add to the so-called spectacle for the institute or whether because the organization truly believed in doing a good thing like diversity, does not constitute an analysis. This chapter thus critically examines the construction of diversity at workplace and in education with a view to comprehending the underlying notions.
Many natural language quantifiers (like many, most, few, etc.) were shown in a groundbreaking pap... more Many natural language quantifiers (like many, most, few, etc.) were shown in a groundbreaking paper by Barwise and Cooper in 1981 to be not definable through FOPC quantifiers like and . Furthermore, they showed that these quantifiers combine with a set expression and produce a quantifier, they thus correspond to the structure of determiners, hence the term, ‘universal determiners’. For the purpose of this paper, we investigate the universal determiners each, every and all; prottek ‘each/ every’, SOb/ SOkol/ puro/ goTa/ Sara in Bangla, respectively, and show that, a series of language specific factors influence the behaviours of these strong determiners. In particular, due to classifiers inducing specificity and the emphasiser –i inducing exclusivity, the results of a potential ‘test’ to distinguish between the uses of each of these determiners (the ‘exceptionality test’) turns out to be predictable on independent grounds. In addition, indefinites, which correspond to the weak determiners, are investigated across four properties as discussed in Farkas (2002), namely, Dependent reading (>), Existential Binding (>), Genericity (GENi [xi]) and scope of the existential over negation (). The indefinites discussed are Ek ‘one’, keu/ kono/ kichu ‘some’, and keu-na-keu/ kono-na-kono/ kichu-na-kichu ‘someone or other’. For ‘some’, it is shown that readings are only apparent as they involve contexts that otherwise license negative polarity items as in (1). (1) ami kichu khaini I some eatNEG ‘I haven’t eaten anything’ The generic reading for Ek ‘one’, furthermore, introduces a complexity not seen in Farkas (and perhaps not in Hungarian); its use is felicitous with a specific modality reading as in (2) where the use of the human classifier (CLA) need not be responsible for this particular reading as shown by an equivalent Hindi/ Urdu example in (3). (2) Ek-jon manus jOkhon nijer kOpal-ke doS dEy … one-CLA human when selfGEN forehead-DAT fault gives ‘When a (hu)man faults his/ her own luck …’ (3) Ek aadmi jab apne-aap-ko kostaa hai … one human when selfGEN-self-DAT blames be Furthermore, the Bangla reduplicated indefinite (Ek-Ek) differs from its Hungarian counterpart in being felicitous without being dependent on the scope of a universal quantifier: (4) Sonia Ek-Ek-joner SOnge dEkha korbe one-one-CALGEN with meet do.will ‘Sonia will meet each and every person.’ Some readjustments, therefore, are suggested in the model of Farkas (2002) with the view that morphological reduplication may not signal semantic dependence.
The Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics (1999), 1999
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2007
1. Acknowledgements 2. Introduction (by Bayer, Josef) 3. Clause Structure 4. What is 'Argumen... more 1. Acknowledgements 2. Introduction (by Bayer, Josef) 3. Clause Structure 4. What is 'Argument Sharing'?: A Case Study on Argument Sharing under VP-Serialization in Oriya (by Beermann, Dorothee) 5. Pseudoclefts: a Fully Derivational Account (by Boeckx, Cedric) 6. The Cleft Question and the Question of Cleft (by Madhavan, P.) 7. Clausal Pied-piping and Subjacency (by Srikumar, K.) 8. Modification in DP 9. On the Syntax of Quantity in English (by Kayne, Richard S.) 10. Binding 11. Coreference Violations 'Beyond Principle B' (by Gueron, Jacqueline) 12. Perspectives on Binding (by Reuland, Eric J.) 13. Raising from a Tensed Clause and Linguistic Theory: Evidence from Maithili (by Yadava, Yogendra P.) 14. Complementizers and Complementation 15. The Ubiquitous Complementizer (by Dasgupta, Probal) 16. Word Order, Parameters, and the Extended COMP Projection (by Davison, Alice) 17. The Particle ne in Direct yes-no Questions (by Barbora, Madhumita) 18. Phonology 19. Underspecification and the Phonology of *NC -Effects in Malayalam (by Das, Shyamal) 20. The Disyllabic Word Minimum: Variations on a Theme in Bangla, Punjabi and Tamil (by Vijayakrishnan, K.G.) 21. Writing Systems and Phonological Awareness (by Sailaja, Pingali) 22. List of contributors 23. Bibliography of K.A. Jayaseelan 24. Index of names 25. Index of languages 26. Index of topics
Sluicing: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, 2012
"This chapter establishes a profile of sluicing constructions in two widely-spoken Indo-Arya... more "This chapter establishes a profile of sluicing constructions in two widely-spoken Indo-Aryan languages of South Asia: Bangla and Hindi. Although traditionally described as being wh-in-situ languages, both Bangla and Hindi have a distribution of wh elements that suggests that they are actually languages with overt whmovement (Simpson and Bhattacharya 2003) and so might be expected to permit sluicing formed by wh-movement and PF clausal deletion, as hypothesized for languages such as English (Ross 1969,Merchant 2001, Fox and Lasnik 2003). The chapter consequently attempts to determine the degree to which sluicing in Bangla/Hindi may parallel or differ from the production of sluicing in English-type languages, and also how it may relate to sluicing patterns in typologically closer Japanese, where sluicing is often assumed to have a rather different syntactic derivation from that in English (Nishiyama et al. 1996, Fukaya and Hoji 1999, Hiraiwa and Ishihara 2001). The structure of the chapter is as follows. Section 9.2 first outlines basic properties of Bangla/Hindi and the formation of wh-questions in these languages. Section 9.3 then introduces sluicing proper, and examines what kind of analysis would seem to be supported by the patterning observed in Bangla/Hindi, considering with some care whether a form of the reduced cleft/copula analyses of sluicing in Japanese and Chinese might be appropriate for Bangla/Hindi. Arriving at the conclusion that it is wh-movement rather than copula deletion or cleft reduction that underlies Bangla/Hindi sluicing, Section 9.4 proceeds to investigate the potential effect of movement-associated constraints on sluicing in Bangla/Hindi, in particular Superiority and Subjacency/the CED. This leads to the observation of an unexpected difference in patterning in Bangla and Hindi, and an interesting challenge for the construction of theories on cross-linguistic variation in island-sensitivity in sluices. After someconsideration of the potential causes of the variation, Section 9.5concludes the chapter with an outline of the further comparative research into Indo-Aryan (and other) languages that seems to be required as a result of the present investigation of Bangla and Hindi."
Recent developments in the generative tradition have created new interest in matters of argument ... more Recent developments in the generative tradition have created new interest in matters of argument structure and argument projection, giving prominence to the discussion on the role of lexical entries. Particularly, the more traditional lexicalist view that encodes argument structure information on lexical entries is now challenged by a syntactic view under which all properties of argument structure are taken up by syntactic structure. In the light of these new developments, the contributions in this volume provide detailed empirical investigations of ...
Economic and Political Weekly, Apr 17, 2010
... Tanmoy Bhattacharya Children with disability were included as early as 1968 in the National P... more ... Tanmoy Bhattacharya Children with disability were included as early as 1968 in the National Policy on Education, but the rhetoric of integrated education has been ambivalently used to keep at bay the broader concept of inclusion. ... Tanmoy Bhattacharya (tanmoy@linguistics. ...
In this part of the story of peopling of the northeast of India, I zoom into exploring the cultur... more In this part of the story of peopling of the northeast of India, I zoom into exploring the cultural and linguistic dynamics within a particular state in the region, namely, Manipur. As before in many of the little stories in the last 4 parts, I show that the dynamics of a dichotomy inside this state is but a reflection of a bigger dynamics outside it, and in fact, in Southeast Asia, especially, Myanmar. In particular, I take up the dichotomy of valley versus mountain, and locate it in Myanmar in terms of the dichotomy between the Shans and the Kachins. In exploring these and other dichotomies, I identify a very significant character of the Manipuri or Meitei/ Meetei society, namely, their deep association with the land that they have been a part of for millenia.
The spirit of Disability Studies (DS) is often misunderstood in the excitement associated with th... more The spirit of Disability Studies (DS) is often misunderstood in the excitement associated with the birth of a new field and in the context of an uncertain dissociation from the zeal of activism; I will make a strong point here with respect to the latter.
In earlier work, following on the tradition of sounding the alert of leaving activism behind and of reasonable advice on embracing the mutually inter-flowing character of activism and theory-building, I have advocated the necessity of the two-way traffic between the two. However, I now believe that for a specific context like India, the time has come to objectively re-take the shot. Disability related activities in India, with its overemphasis on services, is alarmingly close to creating a hegemonic discourse that shrinks the space for the emergence of a DS discourse, even further.
In fact, I am quite certain now to state that what feeds each other within the Indian context is not DS and activism but activism and service, the former accentuating the latter; this is evident from mission statements of various agencies and their policies. In fact, I believe that this association is showing signs of crystallizing into a nexus that will steadfastly keep DS out forever. All the signs are in place and the lesson from other aspects of life around us, will reinforce and maintain this exclusionary character of the nexus as a matter of strategy. Therefore, it is time, in fact, to sound a caution from the other end – it is time now to move away for a while from the excitement of sloganeering, and to build a tradition of true scholarship in DS. A diplomatic compromise is the easy way out, it is difficult to engage in true scholarship. It is futile to pretend an activists’ posturing in an academic discourse – often by ever too willingly stretching the notion of activism at the cost of the necessary politics associated with it – and completely unnecessary.
Having said this, it is necessary to also point out that DS cannot be built on the ashes of activism, and I am certainly not suggesting an either/or existential frame. My words ‘move away for a while’ clearly construct an imagery that keeps activism at bay but also in view. The formality of this estrangement is best attempted, I suggest, by looking at existing practices through the lens of ableism and by engaging in a disability-centric understanding of various themes within the academia.
The talk outlines the various policies and acts that trace the inclusive educational practices in... more The talk outlines the various policies and acts that trace the inclusive educational practices in India. It was delivered in absentia on the ocassion of the 25th Foundationa day celebration at the NCERT, Delhi, 1st September, 2013.
The thesis offers a description and analysis of the DP in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language Bangla ... more The thesis offers a description and analysis of the DP in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language Bangla (Bengali). In particular, it re-establishes the dominant theme in the DP literature of showing the syntactic equivalence between the structure of the clause and that of the DP. This is done on the one hand by investigating various clause-like syntactic phenomena like specificity, deixis and aspect inside the DP and on the other by working out NP movement inside the DP -- the common theme across chapters 2-4. Chapter 1 provides an outline of the thesis and introduces relevant parts of the minimalist and the antisymmetry framework adopted for this study. In addition, it suggests a trigger for Merge and proposes that a condition governing XP movements to multiple specifiers in clauses is operative in DPs as well. The second chapter discusses a three layered structure of the DP structure for Bangla where the layer intermediate between DP and NP is the Quantifier Phrase. The proposed structure accounts for the DP-internal specificity in Bangla and suggests that specific NPs move out of the deepest NP-shell by LF. This is identified as the DP-internal ‘Object’ Shift and constitutes the first instance of DP-internal NP movement. In the following chapter, the three-layered DP structure is re-examined on the basis of data from kinship terms. Specifically, it is shown that the possessive is generated in the nP shell of the DP but moves up to its derived position of [Spec,DP] for reasons of feature checking. It is proposed that the demonstrative is an XP and is the specifier of a ‘focus-related’ head F, located between the D and the Q heads. NP movement proposed in this chapter is identified as Kinship Inversion and is shown to be triggered by the same feature of specificity explored in chapter 2. The analysis exploits two different types of NP movement within the DP which accounts for DP-internal deixis. The last chapter discusses the structure of the gerund phrase and proposes that it too has the structure of a DP. Both the external and the internal distribution of the gerund is investigated which show that they exhibit both nominal and verbal properties. This is reflected in the proposed derivation of gerunds which involve leftward NP movement out of a VP embedded inside an Aspect Phrase. The presence of aspectual features like [±PERFECT] and [±DELIMITED] drive this movement. This final evidence for DP-internal NP movement leads us towards the conclusion that NP movement inside the DP is a pervasive phenomenon in Bangla