SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Alternating constructions in Indo-Aryan

Recent comparative research into the alignment structures of Indo-Aryan languages has shown that the variation of patterns is extensive (cf. Montaut 2009, Stronski 2010, Phillips 2011, Verbeke 2013); and moreover, some patterns seem to be semantically determined more than syntactically “accusative” or“ergative” (cf. Dixon 1994). In this presentation, I introduce two case studies of the Indo-Aryan languages which illustrate the variability of argument structures within one language, and the different motivating factors which determine this variability. The first case is Nepali. Most Indo-Aryan languages display ergative case marking in perfective constructions; whereas in imperfective constructions, the subject marking is nominative. The Nepali ergative marker le can mark A also in imperfective constructions, yet the marker is then optional. As with the dative alternation in English, the “ergative alternation” in Nepali seems to be determined by varying semantic constraints, which makes it an excellent example to study the interaction of these different factors by means of the probabilistic method advocated by Bresnan et al.(2007). 

The second case study is on the interaction between the referential hierarchies and the person and case marking in Kashmiri. I argue that Kashmiri is a language with “hierarchical alignment”, an alignment pattern which is not dependent on lexical meaning or grammatical roles but determined by hierarchies based on indexicality, animacy and definiteness (cf. Siewierska 2008), and is in this respect similar crosslinguistically unrelated languages such as Cree. I will illustrate the Kashmiri hierarchical pattern with examples from Standard Kashmiri, Old Kashmiri and the Kashmiri dialect Poguli.

References

• Bresnan, J. W., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayen, H. (2007). Predicting the Dative Alternation. In G. Bourne, I. Kraemer & J. Zwarts (Eds.), Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation (pp. 69-94). Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.
• Montaut, Annie. (2009). Ergativité et classification des langues indo-aryennes: évolutions internes ou contacts externes. In Jean-Marie Durand and Antoine Jacquet (eds.), Acte du colloque Centre et périphérie, 347-361. Paris: J. Maisonneuve.
• Phillips, Maxwell. (2011). Dialect continuum in the Bhil tribal belt: Grammatical aspects. Unpublished PhD thesis. London:SOAS.
• Siewierska, Anna. (2008). Alignment of Verbal Person Marking. In WALS. Munich: Max Planck.
• Stronski, Krzysztof. (2010). Non-nominative subjects in Rajasthani and Central Pahari. Lingua Posnaniensis LII(1). 81-97.
• Verbeke, Saartje. (2013). Alignment and ergativity in New Indo-Aryan languages. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter