Grammatical Relations in Pali and the Emergence of Ergativity in Indo-Aryan

John M. Peterson
University of Munich

This book is a detailed study of the grammatical relations of Pali, a Middle Indo-Aryan language which is also the canonical language of the therava-da-Buddhists of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. On the basis of this data, the author takes a new look at the concept of 'subject' in Pali, as well as the emergence of ergativity in Indo-Aryan. The book includes a summary of much of the previous literature on the syntax of Old and Middle Indo-Aryan, as well as that of a number of works dealing with the origin of ergativity in Indo-Aryan and the concept of 'subject' in general.

Following this is a detailed look at the treatment of various grammatical operations in the major verbal constructions of Pali - i.e., the finite categories, the periphrastic perfect and the gerundival construction. These include coordination and subordination, the control of reflexivization and pronominalization, as well as a description of the coding properties and the dispensability of the various arguments in each construction.

Unlike most previous studies, the author comes to the conclusion that the present-day ergative constructions of most Indo-Aryan languages do not result from an earlier passive construction. Instead, he proposes a model for the periphrastic perfect which in many ways resembles that of the more familiar development of the perfect in west European languages.

ISBN 9783895860874. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 01. 240pp.1998.

A Grammar of Hindi

Annie Montaut
INALCO/CNRS

Hindi, the official language of India, is an Indo-Aryan language widely spoken in North India between Punjab, Bengal and Maharashtra, with more than 400 millions speakers in the world.

The grammar is aimed at giving a functional description of the language in a typological perspective, using diachronical explanation as well as areal contact, whenever it provides a better understanding of synchronic facts. Modern Standard Hindi is a verb final language very weakly flexional inherited from Sanskrit, a typically flexional language with relatively free word order. The first section consists in a brief phonological outline, including a description of the writing system and stress. The second section deals with morphology, typical of head final languages (postpositions, postponed auxiliaries) with strong agglutinative tendancy (specially in the verb phrase) although a few remnants of casual flexions and a two gender opposition are still preserved. Parts of speech are clearly distinct although verbo-nominal compounds raise a number of problems in this respect. The development and gramm-aticalization of postposition or postpositive locutions, verb series, causative and factitive alternations, aspectual, aktionsart and modal auxiliaries are analysed, as well as derivational morphology, both prefixing and suffixing (although mainly productive in technical neology). Reduplication and synonymous pairs also form an important device in developing the lexicon.

The analysis of the simple clause (third section) shows the high sensitivity of morpho-syntactic structures to semantic roles (specific case marking for the main argument of subjective predicates, of possessive predicates) and to aspect (ergative marking for agents of accomplished processes). The latter appears to form a paradigm with the other types of predications of localization, exhibiting clear analogies with the formation of Indo-European perfect in its early stages. Given the fact that such notions as subject and object fail to adequately account for a large number of elementary statements, the various types of clauses are better described within a frame of case-marking (taking into account semantic and discursive parameters) than of purely syntactical relations.

The complex sentence (section four) shows the prevalence of the typically Indo-Aryan system of correlation on subordination in the restricted meaning, as well as of non finite verbal forms, a typically Dravidian device. The last section is devoted to a presentation, within a historical and typological frame, of the most representative features of the various dialects of Hindi, showing the continuity between Standard Hindi with its Western dialects and the Eastern dialects closer to Magadhean languages such as Bengali.

ISBN 9783895869044. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 02. 240 pp. 2005.

Negation, Referentiality and Boundedness in Gwenedeg Breton

A Case Study in Markedness and Asymmetry

Nathalie Schapansky
Simon Fraser University

Negative sentences are considered to be marked vis-a-vis their positive counterparts. However, the markedness of sentence negation cannot be solely defined in terms of the presence or absence of a polarity particle, as shown for Gwenedeg, a Breton dialect spoken in south central Brittany, in the area known as Morbihan. Gwenedeg Breton has been ignored in theoretical works because of its low prestige and its phonological differences, which are reflected in its own spelling system respected in this work.

Breton, a verb-second language (V2), displays both negative and positive sentence particles. The markedness of sentence negation is realized rather by structural and semantic/pragmatic asymmetries.

Structural asymmetries (chapter two) are associated with Breton V2. They relate to the notion of Predicate Domain, which must be bound. Whereas the negative particle binds the predicate domain, its positive counterparts do not. Hence preverbal noun phrases (NPs) serve to bind the predicate domain in affirmative but not in negative sentences. Two of the three preverbal positions available in affirmative sentences remain accessible in negative sentences. Semantic/pragmatic asymmetries (chapter three) pertaining to the V2 order relate to referentiality. In Breton, referential NPs can bind the predicate domain and appear preverbally while non-referential NPs marked by the preposition ag 'of' cannot. Potential binders for the predicate domain depend also on auxiliary selection. The auxiliary 'to be' associated with states shows, in the present tense, four forms demanding subject or non-subject binders. They are sensitive to the position and definiteness of their subjects and two of them do not occur in negative sentences. The auxiliary 'to have', associated with events, demands a referential subject and has no preferred binders. However, this auxiliaryis used with eventive readings of state predicates obtained obtained only with referential subject. In negative sentences (chapter four), semantic asymmetries relate to aspect--event predicates are interpreted as stative--, and to the irrealis modality,-- indefinite NPs are interpreted as non-referential under the scope of negation. In Breton, this rule applies to the universal quantifier with a wide scope reading and to the existential quantifier with a narrow scope reading, being replaced in negative sentences by negative polarity items.

Non-referential NPs marked by ag, which represent undefined substes of entities, must occur in postverbal position. Pragmatic asymmetries relate to the distinction presupposition versus assertion, and to metalinguistic negation, a marked kind of negation, which does not affect the aspect of event predicates nor the referentiality of NPs under its scope. Hence the universal quantifier with a wide scope reading, the existential quantifier with a narrow scope reading, and the eventive reading of state predicates can occur under the scope of metalinguistic negation. This analysis is extended to other languages.

ISBN 9783895869181. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 05. 200pp. 2000.

Introduzione alla linguistica latina

Moreno Morani
Università degli Studi di Genova

Il volume Introduzione alla linguistica latina si propone di collocare la lingua latina nel panorama delle lingue indeuropee e di seguirne lo sviluppo storico, dall'indeuropeo ricostruito fino al passaggio dal latino alle lingue romanze. La trattazione discute i principali problemi che lo studio della lingua latina in prospettiva diacronica presenta: per ogni problema trattato viene esposta la storia dela discussione, trattati criticamente i principali tentativi di soluzione proposti, con ampio riferimento alle fonti bibliografiche. Il volume può essere utilizzato anche come manuale per lo studio universitario, grazie a note, osservazioni e tabelle che forniscono un quadro sistematico della materia trattata. Il volume tiene conto sia dei risultati raggiunti dalle trattazioni "classiche" della linguistica indeuropea sia delle riflessione e delle proposte delle moderne scuole di linguistica.

Indice :
INTRODUZIONE. Il latino tra le lingue indeuropee
I. Lingue indeuropee e ricostruzione linguistica. 1. Le lingue indeuropee. 2. Metodo, obiettivi e limiti della ricostruzione.
II. Il latino fra le lingue indeuropee. 1. La marginalità del latino. 2. L'ipotesi italo-celtica. 3. Latino e venetico. 4. La "questione italica". 5. Elementi non indeuropei nel latino. 6. Conclusioni
III. Un latino e tanti latini.
1. Varietà latine. 2. Varietà diacroniche. (a. Latino preletterario. b. Latino arcaico. c. Latino classico. d. Latino tardo. e. Latino medievale). 3. Varietà diatopiche. (a. Varietà antiche. b. Varietà dell'età arcaica e classica. c. Varietà dell'età imperiale). 4. Varietà diastratiche (a. La lingua dell'uso. b. Il latino volgare. c. Le lingue speciali. d. Il latino dei cristiani).
IV. Dal latino alle lingue romanze.
1. Unità latina e varietà romanza. 2. Classifi-cazione delle lingue romanze.

PROBLEMI DI FONOLOGIA E MORFOLOGIA LATINA
Parte prima: Fonetica e fonologia
A. Origini indeuropee del sistema fonologico latino
I. Il sistema fonologico dell'indeuropeo.
II. Dall'indeuropeo al latino.
1. Esito latino dei fonemi indeuropei. 2. Ulteriori sviluppi.
B. Fonetica e fonologia del latino.
I. Vocalismo. 1. Vocali lunghe e brevi. 2. Sono esistite vocali nasali in latino? 3. Il cosiddetto "suono intermedio" tra ì e ù.
II. Consonantismo
1. Le occlusive. 2. Le semivocali /j/ e /w/. 3. Le nasali. 4. Le liquide. 5. Le fricative.
III. Fonemi di origine greca
1. y. 2. z. 3. Le occlusive aspirate.
IV. L'accento.
V. Dal latino alle lingue romanze.
1. Il vocalismo. 2. Il consonantismo.
Parte seconda: Problemi di morfologia latina
A. Il nome
I. Flessione nominale dell'indeuropeo.
II. La flessione nominale del latino.
1. L'organizzazione generale. (a. Resti di apofonia. b. Riduzione delle classi flessionali. c. Quante sono le declinazioni latine? d. Il suppletivismo). 2. Il numero. 3. I casi. 4. Le desinenze.
III. Dal latino alle lingue romanze.
1. La flessione nominale in latino volgare. (a. Declino e scomparsa del neutro. b. Riduzione delle classi tematiche. c. Le desinenze). 2. Il crollo della flessione nelle lingue romanze. (a. Ragioni semantiche. b. Ragioni strutturali). IV. L'articolo.
V. I pronomi
B. Il verbo
I. Il verbo indeuropeo.
II. Dall'indeuropeo al latino.
1. Le quattro coniugazioni. 2. Perfectum e infectum. L'aspetto nel verbo latino. 3. I modi e i tempi. (a. Resti di ottativo. b. La formazione dei congiuntivi in latino. c. I preteriti. d. Il futuro). 4. La diatesi. 5. Le desinenze. 6. Le forme nominali del verbo.
III. Dal latino alle lingue romanze.
1. Il verbo nel latino volgare. 2. Il verbo romanzo.
Parte terza: Il lessico latino
I. Il fondo indeuropeo.
1. Il lessico comune. 2. Il lessico nordoccidentale. 3. Ulteriori vicende del lessico indeuropeo in latino. 4. Il latino lingua di contadini.
II. Nuove acquisizioni.
1. Elementi di sostrato. 2. Elementi etruschi. 3. L'influsso greco. 4. Elementi di altra provenienza.
III. Il lessico del latino volgare 1. Tendenze generali. 2. Dal latino volgare alle lingue romanze.

ISBN 9783895869488. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 08. 342pp. 2000.

Introduzione alla linguistica greca

Moreno Morani
Università degli Studi di Genova

L’Introduzione alla linguistica greca intende offrire una breve guida per lo studio della lingua greca in una prospettiva di linguistica storica. La lingua greca presenta due singolari caratteristiche: la durata della sua attestazione (tre millenni e mezzo di storia) e la presenza di numerose varietà dialettali. Tenendo conto di questa premessa, il volume fornisce una panoramica generale delle problematiche fonda-mentali attinenti alla formazione e allo sviluppo storico della lingua, a partire dalla documentazione micenea: la lingua greca è esaminata nel quadro della famiglia linguistica indeuropea, e vengono analizzati, alla luce delle principali teorie proposte dagli studiosi, i rapporti tra la lingua greca e l’indeuropeo ricostruito, le relazioni con le altre lingue indeuropee, la presenza di elementi non indeuropei nel greco. Per il secondo aspetto, si presentano le principali questioni relative alla classificazione dei dialetti greci, dei quali si fornisce anche una sommaria descrizione.

Per quanto l’interesse fondamentale della trattazione riguardi il greco antico nelle sue principali manifestazioni letterarie, lo sviluppo della lingua è seguito dalla documentazione micenea fino al periodo bizantino e moderno. Il manuale è destinato agli studenti universitari e agli insegnanti di lingue e letterature classiche, e contiene quelle nozioni fondamentali di grammatica comparata e di storia della lingua che lo possono rendere utile per un primo orientamento in problematiche complesse che formano oggetto di discussioni complesse e talvolta secolari.

Indice:

PREMESSA - ABBREVIAZIONI

CAPITOLO PRIMO: Il greco e le lingue indeuropee I. Le lingue indeuropee. II. Metodo, obiettivi e limiti della ricostruzione. III. Cenni di fonetica indeuropea. IV. Dall’indeuropeo al greco.

CAPITOLO SECONDO : I dialetti greci e il miceneo
I. I dialetti greci. II. Il miceneo.

CAPITOLO TERZO: La formazione del greco
I. Teorie a confronto. II. Greco e altre lingue indeuropee. III. Elementi non indeuropei nel greco.

CAPITOLO QUARTO: Lineamenti di cronologia del greco I. Omero. II. La lingua della lirica. III. Il dramma attico. IV. La lingua della prosa. V. La koiné. VI. Verso il greco moderno.

Bibliografia, Indice

ISBN 9783895869495. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 09. 260 pp. 2000.

Hindi Phonology

Shaligram Shukla
Georgetown University

Hindi is the world's third most commonly used language after Chinese and English. It is a modern Indo-European language spoken as a first or second language by almost a half billion people in India, as well as other parts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.

This book's primary aim is to describe Hindi sounds and their pattern. Little previous knowledge of phonology is assumed. The book is comprehensive and detailed. Traditional and current concepts and technical terms are explained. The various chapters discusse the historical and sociological background of Hindi, the nature of Hindi lexicon both native and borrowed, the conventions of the Devanagari symbols (since in the text examples are also transcribed in the Devanagari), the articulation of Hindi sounds and their characterization in terms of distinctive features, the concept of phonemes, the significant allophones of Hindi, the natural classes of Hindi sounds, Hindi syllables and their structure, and Hindi stress.

The author, a native speaker of Hindi, is professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. He has published extensively in the areas of anthropology, linguistics, and literature.

ISBN 9783895869747. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 12. 180pp. 2000.

Morphological and Syntactic Change in Medieval Greek and South Slavic Languages

Vit Bubenik
University of New Foundland

This monograph explores the converging and diverging development of nominal, pronominal and verbal morphology and syntax of Byzantine Greek and South Slavic languages (Church Slavonic, Medieval Bulgarian and Macedonian). Its argumentation is based on primary data culled from medieval literary documents (11-15th c.). In nominal morphology several intermediate paradigmatic sets between Hellenistic and Modern Greek are reconstructed; the realignment of morphology and semantics in di- and triptotic nouns in archaic dialects is brought into discussion. The putative causal nexus between the reduction of the synthetic morphology of case and the emergence of the postpositive article in Bulgaro-Macedonian is re-evaluated. In pronominal morphology Medieval Greek and Macedonian converged in favoring the strategy of proclisis with finite verb forms (but only Macedonian went as far as reducing the pronominal clitics to quasi-affixes).

A special attention is paid to the nature of innovations in their aspectual systems (the emancipation of the future tense from an aspect-dominated system; the reanalysis of the old 'be'-perfect as the inferential mode in Bulgaro Macedonian; and the rise of the 'have'-perfect in Macedonian). New alignments in the Greek diathetic system and the issues in the placement of the reflexive clitics in Slavic (Wackernagel's vs. Behagel's Law) are examined. In syntax the non-finite and finite expressions of deontic modality, and hypotactic and paratactic realizations of the causative are studied in the framework of the gradual finitization of the infinitival clause.

CONTENTS

Medieval Greek and Slavic literary corpus.
1.Nominal inflection in Greek.
2.Nominal inflection in South Slavic languages.
3.Pronominal system.
4.Object doubling constructions.
5.Tense/aspect system.
6.Diathetic system.
7. Consequences of the loss of the infinitive.

ISBN 9783895866616. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 14. 160pp. 2001.

Hindi Morphology

Shaligram Shukla
Georgetown University

Hindi is a modern Indo-European language spoken as either a first or second language by almost a half billion people in India, as well as other parts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.

This book on Hindi morphology complements the author's earlier book, Hindi Phonology (Lincom Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 12). It describes one of the most fundamental units of Hindi structure: the word, its internal structure, and the interrelationship among words. Like the book on phonology, this book on morphology is also comprehensive and detailed. The author has sought simplicity in the presentation, and, for the sake of clarity, facts and their analyses are often repeated with abundant examples. Concepts and technical terms, traditional and current alike are explained for the reader. For the convenience of those familiar with the Devanagari script, the examples are transcribed both in a modified IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and in the Devanagari.

Starting with the introductory chapter, which briefly introduces the language and the principles of morphology, the book continues with chapters focusing on Hindi inflection, derivation, compounding, reduplication, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, particles, postpositions, and idioms.

ISBN 9783895866807. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 15. 448pp. 2001.

La palabra "mujer" en indoeuropeo

Francisco José Ledo-Lemos
Universidad de Salamanca

Las investigaciones de los neogramáticos, y muy especialmente de Karl Brugmann, reconstruyeron para el indoeuropeo dos protoformas cuyo significado debía haber sido “mujer”. Una de estas protoformas, a la que Brugmann formulaba como *gwena- y que hoy suele formularse como *gw(e)n(e)H2-está amplísimamente atestiguada en la práctica totalidad de las ramas indo-europeas. Pero, pese a tan amplio testimonio, la reconstrucción sigue siendo objeto de continuas polémicas entre los estudiosos. Se discute así si en reali-dad hay que reconstruir para la última época de la lengua común una única protoforma, o dos, o incluso tres, correspondientes todas a una misma raíz, pero con diferencia en la sufijación (la protoforma sin sufijación, * gwen-, habría convivido con dos formas derivadas de ella: la forma ya citada con sufijo larin-gal, *gw(e)n(e)H2-, y una tercera forma con sufijo *-i: * gwen-i-). Los estudiosos discuten también los detalles del sistema apofónico que podría tener esta forma (o formas), y no hay acuerdo tampoco en si el sufijo que presenta *gw(e)n(e)H2- es o no el mismo que el presentado por los tradicionalmente llamados “temas en *- a”.



Para la segunda de estas protoformas, que Brugmann formuló como *s(o)r- los testimonios son mucho menos rotundos, y su reconstrucción se hace a partir de una serie de inferencias más o menos indirectas. Muchos estudiosos niegan sin más la validez de los testimonios a favor de dicha protoforma. Y, entre quienes aceptan su existencia, hay numerosas discrepancias en la reconstrucción del detalle.

En el presente trabajo se intenta exponer el estado de la cuestión respecto a estas dos protoformas. Aparte de su importancia intrínseca, su estudio resulta ser de primerísima importancia en relación con el problema del origen del género gramatical femenino: desde Brugmann se viene considerando a la protoforma *gw(e)n(e)H2- como la responsable directa de que el sufijo *-(e)H2- se transformara en la marca de femenino.

El autor de este trabajo, Francisco José Ledo-Lemos, fue becario de investigación de la Universidad de Salamanca, bajo la dirección del profesor Francisco Villar, y en dicha universidad obtuvo el grado de doctor en Filología Clásica. En la actualidad es profesor titular de enseñanza secundaria y profesor conferenciante de la Universidad de Vigo.

ISBN 9783895864667. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 20. 160pp. 2002.

Welsh Dictionaries in the twentieth century: a critical analysis

Sabine Heinz
Humboldt-Universität Berlin

The book presents the first investigation of modern Welsh dictionaries in their socio-historic context. It is based on the latest lexicographical and grammatical research. It focuses pre-dominantly on the analysis of the grammatical information contained in modern Welsh general-purpose dictionaries. In the light of a rich lexicographical production in contemporary Wales, this aspect is of highest priority, since such grammatical information provides the basic knowledge of how to use lexical items in context and how to apply them in speech. An adequate linguistic description of a given language will thereby support its maintenance and the identity of its speakers, a problem area also discussed here.

In view of this, Welsh nouns and verbs are presented in a new classification which aims to reflect their properties more clearly and make them more easily reflectable in dictionary entries. A plea has been made for the inclusion of comprehensive morphological information into dictionary entries, but also phonetic transcription in order to promote language acquisition and maintenance.

The works pays respect to the lexicographical work which has been thus far in Wales produced under intricate socio-historical conditions. It is meant to encourage further linguistic research and thereby to contribute to the stabilisation of the language.

The author of the book is a lecturer on Celtic. She has published widely on various aspects of Celtic matters.

ISBN 9783895867507. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 21. 540pp. 2003.