A fresh look at grammatical relations in Indo-Aryan (original) (raw)
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A Lexical Semantic Explanation for 'Quirky' Case Marking in Hindi
Studia Linguistica, 1998
The case canonically assigned to subjects across languages is nominative or ergative case. In a number of languages including Tamil, Russian, Finnish, Icelandic, Malayalam, and Hindi, subjects can receive dative case marking. This phenomenon, labelled`quirky' or`lexical' case-marking, is generally accounted for in terms of the association of dative case with an argument bearing a particular thematic role in the lexical entries of individual verbs (Zaenen, Maling & Thrainsson 1985). Such an account does not account for all the data, neither does it explain why certain thematic roles should get dative case marking. In this paper, I show that the case-marking patterns in Hindi can be accounted for in a principled manner in terms of the interaction of the aspectual characteristics of the construction, its adicity, and the relative prominence of the arguments of the verb on the Thematic Hierarchy. My account of this phenomenon is formulated within the framework of Role and ± for comments and criticism. Thanks also to Vineet Seth and Jilani Warsi for native speaker judgements on many of the examples in the paper. The views presented here are my own, as are any errors.
The redevelopment of Indo-Aryan case systems from a lexical semantic perspective
Morphology, 2010
The original case system found in Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan) was lost in Middle Indo-Aryan and then reinvented in most of the modern New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages. This paper suggests that: (1) a large factor in the redevelopment of the NIA case systems is the expression of systematic semantic contrasts; (2) the precise distribution of the newly innovated case markers can only be understood by taking their original spatial semantics into account and how this originally spatial semantics came to be used primarily for marking the core participants of a sentence (e.g., agents, patients, experiencers, recipients). Furthermore, given that case markers were not innovated all at once, but successively, we suggest a model in which already existing case markers block or compete with newer ones, thus giving rise to differing particular instantiations of one and the same originally spatial postposition across closely related languages.
Typological Studies in Language, 2016
Hindi transitive verbs, contrary to Bengali verbs, require the ergative structure in the perfective aspect, an atypical feature for an Indo-European language, and considered to display only surface ergativity, since most syntactic and discursive properties are attached to the agent. However its affinities with other locational predications in the dative, as well as the historical parallel rise of both pre-ergative and modal future patterns in Western Indo-Aryan, The paper develops Montaut's earlier suggestions (1996, 2006), with an attempt to reconcile Benveniste's well-known theory of the "possessive perfect" (1952) with Kurylowicz's views on the parallel evolution of future and past in Romance and Persian languages (1960), and a study of ergative and dative new markers in various Indo-Aryan languages.
Case-linking : a theory of case and verb diathesis applied to classical Sanskrit
1979
In this work a proposal is made for the integration of Case into syntactic and semantic theory. Case is the province of three components of the grammar, each of whi6h has its own internal structure. These are: the domain of Case Incidence, whose rules govern the occurrence of relevant morphological categories, in particular the Formal Cases, on the basis of syntactic information; the domain of Functional Structure, which is the framework relating Participant Roles (similar to Fillmore's 'Deep Cases') to types of predicate; and the domain of Linking itself, which establishes systematic correspondences between the morphological categories and the participant roles. In Chapter 1, these three components are laid out. The rules of Case Incidence are a part of the syntax. They interact particularly closely with Phrase Structure, but evidence is presented (from Japanese) which suggests that the power of these rules goes beyond that of context-free PS rules. Previous attempts to formulate partial theories of functional structure are reviewed,and a new and more comprehensive attempt is made, which is localist in orientation: the concepts of Source, Goal, Theme and Path play key roles. A system of binary features is introduced, which is intended to map out the whole domain, and to provide intrinsic connexions between types of predicate and types of participant role. Linking principles are shown to be of two kinds, Semantic and Grammatical. Semantic linking rules make use of the feature system to establish intrinsic connexions between particular formal cases and particular classes of roles. Grammatical linking rules presuppose total orderings of the roles and cases respectively;, and establish links on the basis of priority determined by these orderings. Extensive illustrations of these various principles are given, from Japanese and other languages. And the whole system is integrated with
Case and agreement variation in Indo-Aryan
Considering the various subject/object case and agreement patterns in Indo-Aryan, it is obvious that case and agreement in general are not complementary; there is no principled case-agreement association. For instance, Nepali shows ERG-ABS with subject agreement, while Kutchi shows NOM-ACC with object-agreement. Therefore, the description of case should not take recourse on agreement, and the descrip¬tion of agreement should not take recourse on case. Only at the first glance does Hindi agreement depends on case. A more informed investigation reveals that both case and agreement are determined by the same underlying argument hierarchy (= ‘abstract case’), but also depend on aspect (perfect or not), as far as the subject is concerned, and on salience features (such as definiteness) for the object. The variation found in the Indo-Aryan case and agreement systems is best be captured by variable constraint rankings. Some constraints may overlap in one language, while they are clearly ranked in another one. Parametrization of purely syntactic features is unable to capture such a variation.
Ergative case assignment in Hindi-Urdu: Evidence from light verb compounds
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2017
Various accounts have been proposed for ergative/absolutive case-assignment in Hindi-Urdu (HU) within the Minimalist Program. (Ura 2006, Anand & Nevins 2006 etc.) Using facts about subject case-assignment in a particular type of light verb compound in HU as evidence, I propose a syntactic account for subject case-assignment in the language in general. This account relies on two claims: (i) absolutive case can be assigned by some I, V and v heads to the subject, or (in the case of v) to the object, and (ii) ergative case results from a special KP configuration, only grammatical when absolutive case cannot be assigned to the subject. I show that this proposal can also explain facts about verb agreement in the language.
2015
This article addresses the variable alignment properties of experiencer constructions in Indo-Aryan (IA) languages in the light of the available historical data from Vedic Sanskrit onwards. The first aimof the article is to shed light on the possible historical sources, emergence and expansion of constructions with non-canonically marked arguments in Old IA in general. The second aim is to gain a better understanding of the variation in case marking and agreement patterns that can be attested in New IA experiencer constructions, given that the interplay among morphological cases, semantic roles and additional semantic motivations poses many unsolved questions.