Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (E-Journal)
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Portmanteau Honorificity Agreement in Maithili
Full text linkThe Darbhanga dialect of Maithili shows multiple agreement that results in a portmanteau morpheme. However, multiple agreement is also restricted by two factors –1st person and 3rd person non-honorific objects fail to trigger agreement on the verb. Object agreement is also not allowed in the presence of allocutive agreement. This paper accounts for these facts by proposing that honorificity agreement is a result of the operator-variable binding by the context (c) head in the left periphery. Honorificity licensing also interacts with honorificity-based differential object agreement. Additionally, the c head can encode the honorificity values of only two elements at any given point in time
Sinhala Involitive Verbs from a Cross-linguistic perspective: Distinguishing Involuntary Agents from Involuntary Causers
Full text linkThis paper distinguishes between two types of constructions with involitive verbs in Sinhala: involitive sentences with dative marked subjects dubbed ‘Dative Involitives’ and involitive sentences with postpositional subjects dubbed ‘PP involitives’. Dative involitives involve activity verbs while PP involitives involve causative verbs. The flavors variously dubbed \u27involuntary\u27, \u27accidental\u27, \u27out-of-control’, \u27could-not- help\u27, or \u27inevitable\u27 associated with these involitive constructions derive from the presence of a modal element in them. The paper defends a compositional analysis of the two types of involitives according to which the modal in each construction displays a different argument structure. Dative involitives exhibit a universal circumstantial modal in a monadic structure with VoiceP as argument. This results in a subject- centered modality with Dative in an applicative counting as a \u27quirky subject\u27 interpreted as an \u27involuntary agent/actor/doer\u27. By contrast PP-involitives are shown to mirror causative interpretations. They contain a universal circumstantial modal relating a causal sub-event to a result sub-event in a bi-eventive causative structure. Here PP as \u27quirky subject\u27 in an Applicative is interpreted as an \u27involuntary causer/effector\u27. The paper sheds light on the considerable cross-linguistic variation regarding the presence/absence of \u27involuntary agents/actors/doers\u27 and \u27involuntary causers/effectors\u27 across several unrelated languages including Polish and Spanish
Deferred imperatives across Indo-Aryan
Full text linkExploring the morphosyntax of deferred imperatives in three Indo-Aryan/IA languages: Hindi- Urdu, Punjabi and Bangla, this paper makes two claims. First, Bangla allows negation only in deferred imperatives but not immediate imperatives, and hence seems to pattern with ‘surrogate negative imperative’ languages. Crucially however, there is no alignment between morphological uniqueness of the directive’s verbal form and its negative (in)effability in the language. Secondly, since the morphology based true-surrogate divide is not instructive in determining the status of imperatives in IA, we employ two syntactic-semantic diagnostics: (a) performativity and (b) addressee-restriction on the subject, to claim that deferred commands in all IA languages are real imperatives on par with immediate imperatives. The paper also notes variation in the distribution of negated deferred imperatives, subject to factors like immediacy and plannability
Anaphoric variability in Kannada bare nominals
Full text linkThough Kannada bare nominals are commonly used in contexts where they behave like definite descriptions, the definite reading of the bare noun is unavailable (or highly dispreferred) in certain anaphoric environments despite the presence of a suitable antecedent. In this paper, we observe that these are usually contexts where it is unclear whether the sentence topic contains the intended referent. We formalize this characterization within a situational-uniqueness based account for definiteness, and explain the limited uses of anaphoric bare definites as an interaction between this view of definiteness and an ambiguity analysis of the Kannada bare noun wherein they are capable of denoting kinds/indefinite entities as well, in addition to definites
Phonation differences in the stop laryngeal contrasts of Jangli (Indo-Aryan)
Full text linkJangli is an under-studied Indo-Aryan language spoken in Punjab, Pakistan. Thepresent study investigates phonation differences in Jangli’s four-way stop laryngealcontrast (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced unaspirated, andvoiced aspirated). A wide range of acoustic correlates were measured includingH1*-H2*, H1*-A1*, H1*-A2*, and H1*-A3*. The findings indicated that voicelessaspirated and voiced aspirated stops are characterized by higher H1*-H2*, H1*-A1*,H1*-A2*, and H1*-A3*, compared to voiceless unaspirated and voiced unaspiratedstops. These results suggest that Jangli is among those languages which have araising effect of aspiration on the spectral tilt onsets of the following vowels. Theclassification results showed that H1*-H2* is the most important acoustic correlatefor distinguishing the four laryngeal categories of Jangli. The findings of this studywill contribute to the phonetic and phonological typology of the rich laryngealcontrasts of Indo-Aryan languages
Oblique Case and Concord in Hindi Noun Phrases: Evidence from Language Acquisition
Full text linkThis paper argues that oblique inections on a noun in the context of an overt case marker or Layer II postposition is the outcome of a distinct phenomenon than oblique concord, which manifests on modifying constituents on a Complex Noun Phrase (CNP). The paper argues that oblique morphology on a head noun (N0) of a CNP is triggered by the presence of a postposition, whereas oblique morphology on modifying constituents are a result of concord with this N0. Empirical evidence from adult grammar shows that only after CNP internal agreement has taken place, does oblique appear on modifying constituents only if they belong to the in declension class. In addition, empirical evidence from a corpus of Hindi acquisition data suggests that children take the overt appearance of oblique on N0 as a clue for oblique concord on CNP internal constituents
A Unified Analysis of the Hindi & Bangla discourse particle -to
Full text linkDiscourse particles are commonly found in a variety of languages. These particles often mark topichood, focus, contrastivity and other discourse sensitive features. Indic languages have a discourse particle -to, which has been analyzed in the existing literature as a marker of topichood (Bayer et. al. 2014) or contrast (Montaut 2015). In this paper, we examine the properties of -to in Hindi and Bangla. Based on our observations about the necessary pragmatic conditions that license the use of -to we conclude that -to is neither a topic marker nor a contrast marker. It is rather a particle that plays a particular role in common ground management. By the use of -to in a sentence a speaker indicates that the sentence fails to resolve the Issue at hand, i.e., the Issue raised by its prejacent in the given discourse (following the Table Model of discourse structure, Farkas and Bruce 2010). This establishes -to as an independent discourse category, thereby also broadening the range of functions discourse particles are known to perform cross-linguistically
Functions of Bangla Classifier \u27-ra\u27 in Forming Generic Sentences
Full text linkAlthough the plural classifier -ra is expected to be present with all [+human] NPs and optional with the non-human animate NPs in generic statements, it behaves irregularly. It is absent in human denoting nominals manuS/lok `man\u27. But when the same noun is headed by an adjective, its presence is mandatory. Similar irregularities are observed in case of non-human animates also. The paper takes an interesting turn when it is observed that the function of the classifier is actually dependent on the concepts of kind and subkind terms, as used in the language. The classifier which is mandatory with subkind terms, is absent in case of superkind terms. We arrive to an intriguing conclusion about the perception of \u27concepts\u27 and \u27kinds\u27 in Bangla as opposed to the standard scientific taxonomic categorisation of species
Focus Anti-Pied-Piping in Bangla and Hindi-Urdu
Full text linkLanguages attest mismatches between the domain of focus and the constituent that bears a morphosyntactic focus particle. This paper studies cases where the focus particle attaches to a sub-constituent of the domain of focus in Bangla and Hindi-Urdu and examines the relation between focus particle placement and scrambling within and outside the domain of logical focus. In certain cases, scrambling appears to feed the process of particle-placement, and in certain other cases, scrambling seems to follow particleplacement. Given that clause-internal scrambling has semantic effects and has been argued to be syntactic, this creates a paradox regarding the relative timing of scrambling and particle-placement. We claim that the paradox is only apparent and such a pattern is explained with a multi-dominance theory of movement, wherein movement creates multiple occurrences of a syntactic object and a post-syntactic operation performed on any one of them is reflected on both the occurrences
The Urdu Active Impersonal
Full text linkIt has been reported in several works that Urdu can optionally preserve accusative case in passives. In this paper, I show that the accusative-preserving passive construction is different from canonical passives, and reanalyse it as an active construction with a silent pro subject. I also compare it to similar constructions in Polish, Ukrainian, Icelandic and Viennese German