Alignment and Ergativity in New Indo-Aryan Languages (eBook)

Acknowledgments 9
List of Abbreviations 10
Introduction 13
1 Theoretical preliminaries 20
1.1 Ergativity from a functional and typological perspective 20
1.1.1 Ergativity: the standard functional-typological definition 21
1.1.2 Core arguments and grammatical relations 25
1.1.2.1 The subject issue 26
1.1.2.2 Grammatical relations 33
1.1.2.3 Case 40
1.1.2.4 Verb agreement 44
1.1.3 Alignment splits based on referential hierarchies 46
1.1.3.1 Silverstein’s hierarchy 47
1.1.3.2 Differential object marking: the markedness discussion 48
1.1.3.3 Differential subject marking 51
1.1.4 Tense/Aspect/Mood and head- vs. dependent-marking 53
1.1.4.1 Tense/Aspect/Mood split 53
1.1.4.2 Case marking and verb agreement 54
1.2 Direct and indirect motivations of ergativity 56
1.2.1 Ergativity in discourse-functional and cognitive linguistics 58
1.2.1.1 Du Bois: “The discourse base of ergativity” 58
1.2.1.2 Cognitive accounts 60
1.2.2 Historical motivations 66
1.2.3 Case and transitivity 68
1.2.3.1 An alternative view of ergativity 68
1.2.3.2 Transitivity: from Sapir to Hopper and Thompson 72
1.3 Conclusions 75
2 Indo-Aryan 77
2.1 Geographical distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages 77
2.2 Alignment in Hindi 80
2.3 Origin of the ergative pattern in Indo-Aryan 87
2.3.1 Historical overview 87
2.3.1.1 Old Indo-Aryan 87
2.3.1.2 Middle Indo-Aryan 90
2.3.1.3 New Indo-Aryan: Early Hindi 92
2.3.2 Passive reanalysis 92
2.3.3 Ergative remains ergative? 95
2.4 Some key concepts of the Indo-Aryan languages 101
2.4.1 Masica’s layer system 101
2.4.2 The verb system in Indo-Aryan 103
2.4.2.1 The participial base of the verb system in Indo-Aryan 103
2.4.2.2 Light verbs and lexical compound predicates 104
2.4.2.3 Perfect, perfective, and past 106
2.4.2.4 Passives 108
2.4.2.5 Causatives 109
2.4.3 Experiencer constructions 110
2.4.4 Unergatives 120
3 Eastern Indo-Aryan: Asamiya 123
3.1 Asamiya: description 125
3.1.1 Case marking in Asamiya 125
3.1.2 Case marking of the subject 127
3.1.3 Differential object marking and the dual marking of IO 131
3.1.3.1 O-marking 131
3.1.3.2 Dual marking of IO 133
3.1.3.3 Experiencer constructions 136
3.1.4 Verb agreement in Asamiya 138
3.2 The transitive verb 139
3.2.1 The transitive verb in Eastern Indo-Aryan 140
3.2.1.1 The transitive verb in the Bihari languages 143
3.2.1.2 Honorific agreement in Maithili 146
3.2.1.3 Honorific agreement in Magahi 149
3.2.2 The transitive verb in an Eastern Hindi variety 151
3.3 Ergative marking in Eastern Indo-Aryan 154
3.4 Conclusion 156
4 Northern Indo-Aryan: Nepali 158
4.1 Nepali: description 159
4.1.1 Case marking in Nepali 159
4.1.2 Case marking of the core arguments 160
4.1.3 Verb agreement in Nepali 164
4.2 Reanalysis and extension of the postposition le 168
4.2.1 Previous accounts 171
4.2.1.1 Focalization 171
4.2.1.2 Syntactic restrictions 173
4.2.1.3 Disambiguation hypothesis 173
4.2.1.4 Stage- vs. individual-level predicates 175
4.2.2 Perfective aspect expressed by le 177
4.3 Language contact 182
4.4 Conclusion: alignment in Nepali 185
5 Western Indo-Aryan: Kashmiri 187
5.1 Kashmiri: description 188
5.1.1 Case marking in Kashmiri 188
5.1.2 Verb agreement in Kashmiri 192
5.1.2.1 The verb system 192
5.1.2.2 Imperfective constructions 194
5.1.2.3 Ergative case marking in the perfective 197
5.2 Pronominal suffixes in Western Indo-Aryan 200
5.2.1 Bound pronouns or agreement markers? 200
5.2.2 Pronominal suffixes in Kashmiri 203
5.2.3 Pronominal suffixes in Poguli 211
5.2.4 Pronominal suffixes in Sindhi 213
5.2.5 Pronominal suffixes in Siraiki 216
5.3 Second person importance: hierarchical relations and Marathi 218
5.4 Conclusion 220
6 Central Indo-Aryan: Rajasthani 224
6.1 Description of Marwari 225
6.1.1 Case marking 225
6.1.2 Verb system and agreement in Marwari 226
6.2 Differential marking 230
6.2.1 Marwari subject marking: a historical perspective 230
6.2.2 Differential marking in Harauti 235
6.2.3 Object marking in Marwari and Gujarati 242
6.2.4 The marking of subjects and experiencers in Gujarati and Punjabi 246
6.2.5 Differential marking: summary 251
6.3 Central Indo-Aryan and Hindi: variation on a micro-scale 252
6.3.1 Hindi and Braj: O-marking and agreement 252
6.3.2 Bundeli and Bagheli 256
6.3.3 Varieties of Hindi: conclusion 258
6.4 Central Indo-Aryan: Conclusion 258
7 Conclusion 260
7.1 The definition of ergativity: summary 260
7.2 Splits 263
7.2.1 The influence of referential hierarchies 264
7.2.1.1 Referentiality of O 264
7.2.1.2 Referentiality of A 266
7.2.2 Tense/Aspect/Mood splits 268
7.2.3 Classifying the Indo-Aryan languages 271
7.2.4 Case marking versus verb agreement 272
7.3 Core arguments and grammatical relations 273
7.4 The motivation of the ergative pattern in Indo-Aryan 275
7.5 Final observations 278
8 Appendix 280
8.1 Appendix 1 280
8.2 Appendix 2 286
9 References 308
Index of subjects 328
Index of languages 332