On secondary predicates in Vedic Sanskrit Syntax and semantics

The Diachrony of Ditransitives, 2020

This chapter explores the diachronic behavior of ditransitive predicates in Vedic Sanskrit, the language of the so-called Vedas and their ancillary texts, the Brāhmaṇas. Vedic Sanskrit has a relatively consistent nominative-accusative alignment system, allowing for a broad range of object (P) alternation patterns but being more restrictive as regards subject (A/S) realization (cf. e.g. Dahl , 2014aDahl , 2014b. Ditransitive predicates show three morphosyntactically distinct argument realization patterns. Certain verbs have an indirective pattern, where P selects accusative case and R dative case, a secundative pattern, where P has locative case marking and R accusative, and a neutral pattern, where both P and R receive accusative case marking. Among these, the indirective pattern is predominant, because it attracts a larger number of verbs than the other two patterns. Diachronically, ditransitive predicates remain stable in their argument realization options throughout the history of Vedic Sanskrit. This fact may suggest that lexical semantic factors play a more important role than general linking rules in argument realization in Vedic Sanskrit, at least as regards ditransitive constructions.

]:431 states that "Vedic. . . exhibts an extremely rich and quite intricate system of reduplicated verbal formations" in opening his overview of those categories. The object of the present study is to delineate better the lines of diachronic development that the reduplicated Vedic verbal categories have undergone. In particular, this paper will discuss five topics:

Approaches to Complex Predicates

Verbo-nominal complex predicates, the bulk of the Hindi predicate lexicon, a highly heterogeneous category, regarding compositionality and idiomaticity, can however be sub-classified in three types regarding agreement, internal and external syntax, separability, omissibility, extraction, and acceptable modifiers. However, in spite of the highly heterogeneous nature of the category, they behave similarly in widening the scope of Aktionsart, aspect and voice specifications in comparison to the grammatical markers of TAM in simplex predicates. The most important fact deals with the diachronic evolution of the language: all sub-types of CPs, massively introduced during the renewal of the verbal lexicon by means of borrowing, have contributed to a general shift towards semantic alignments by licensing non-canonical subjects, mainly dative and genitive subject constructions.

Verbo-nominal complex predicates, the bulk of the Hindi predicate lexicon, a highly heterogeneous category, regarding compositionality and idiomaticity, can however be sub-classified in three types regarding agreement, internal and external syntax, separability, omissibility, extraction, and acceptable modifiers. However, in spite of the highly heterogeneous nature of the category, they behave similarly in widening the scope of Aktionsart, aspect and voice specifications in comparison to the grammatical markers of TAM in simplex predicates. The most important fact deals with the diachronic evolution of the language: all sub-types of CPs, massively introduced during the renewal of the verbal lexicon by means of borrowing, have contributed to a general shift towards semantic alignments by licensing non-canonical subjects, mainly dative and genitive subject constructions.

Festschrift M. Jezic, 2023

Word and major constituent order in Vedic and classical Sanskrit have been an important area of research since at least Bergaigne 1878 and Delbrück 1878. To name just a few important studies, one may cite the foundational overview by Delbrück 1888, Bloomfield's investigation of the mantra variants under this angle (Bloomfield 1913), Lahiri's very useful wide-ranging study, which also deals with material from the Aitareyabrāhmaṇa (Lahiri 1933), Gonda's general observations (Gonda 1952), and Klein's two rich articles devoted to the Rigveda (Klein 1991; Klein 1994). The temporal dimension, which is of special interest for the present paper, has recently been addressed by Reinöhl 2016, who adduces evidence for a diachronically increasing degree of configurationality in Indo-Aryan languages that comes along with a more regulated word order. A more in-depth survey of related studies can be found in Holland 1980, pp. 1-32. Deshpande and Hock 1991, Hock 2013a and Hock 2013b provide a detailed bibliography with further pointers into the relevant literature. This contribution in honor of Prof. Mislav Ježić addresses one peculiar subproblem from the area just sketched: Is there any relevant diachronic development to be observed in the placement of direct objects? Any study dealing with the question of language change in Vedic is confronted with serious methodological problems caused by the structure of its textual corpus. The oldest parts of the Vedic corpus consist almost exclusively of poetry, whereas most texts of the younger strata are in prose. As a consequence, temporal and register boundaries coincide with each other, which makes it difficult to disentangle the mutual influence of these factors. A radical solution to overcome this obstacle has been chosen by those researchers who-like already Delbrück 1888-assumed that poetry should be neglected in general studies concerning word order, as it is incomparable to prose texts due to the freedom offered by 'poetic licence'. Hock 2000, however, has pointed out that this line of thought is neither convincing nor fruitful as it factually excludes large parts of the Vedic corpus from our investigations. On the other hand, the difference in register should not be ignored either, as is in fact done by those who take the strongly differing word order in Vedic poetry and prose on their face value and directly construct a development from a free word order in Rigvedic times to a rigid subject-objectverb (SOV) schema in later Brāhmaṇa prose. 1 By preparing statistics that compare Ṛgvedic word order with that in prose passages of Kālidāsa's Śakuntalā as well as with Aśoka's Rock

Syntactical questions, generally, are not the major area of concern of Sanskrit grammarians and it is well known that Pāṇini has not given even a formal definition of a sentence. There have indeed been ingenious attempts by several scholars to explore the syntactical predilections of Pāṇini Mahavir 1984;. However, there can be no denying of the fact that Pāṇinian grammar is prominently focused on word formation. H. Kern states that Indian grammar which is virtually the same as saying Pāṇini's grammar, superior as it is in many respects to anything of the kind produced among other civilized nations of antiquity, is professedly deficient in its treatment of syntax (Kern 1886: v). Among syntactical problems treated by Pāṇini, word order regulations are mainly confined to compound structures, as sūtras like upasarjanam pūrvam (2.2.30) and te prāgdhātoḥ (1.4.80) would indicate. Otherwise, Pāṇinian (and other) grammars do not have anything particular to enjoin in syntactical issues like word order in a sentence, or selection between a compound and a semantically equivalent cluster of regular inflected words. We have to look into the writings of Mīmāmsaka philosophers and poeticians to find out the valuable traditional insights in relation to Sanskrit syntax.

Chinese Semiotic Studies, 2024

In this study, we apply the methodology of semiotic or interpretive grammar, based on the Peircean ontological Categories and developed in previous work with respect to Mandarin Chinese, to Vedic Sanskrit, a language whose grammar we have previously shown to be constrained by Peircean Thirdness or [+3]. We show the Peircean Category of Thirdness, with all of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic configurations implied thereby, to be richly exemplified throughout Sanskrit grammar, at the morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological levels. In particular, the Peircean Triad implied by [+3] is found to permeate the syntagmatic structuring not only of clauses, but also of the morphology within both nouns and finite verbs, and even the ordering of phonemes. We also describe the operation of the constraint [+3] paradigmatically in noun declension, verb conjugation, lexical variation, and consonant classification. We conclude that, while "interpretive grammar," as with all other forms of grammatical description, can never be framed in a way that excludes all exceptions and "messiness," a semiotic approach to a systematic description has a significant advantage over conventional "descriptive" grammars in furnishing a unified account of different levels of language, from morphosyntax all the way down to phonology, and of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures.

Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics

Complex predicates are an areal feature of the South Asian region. Cross-linguistic literature has discussed these grammatical features under the name of serial verbs, compound verbs and conjunct verbs. In modern South Asian linguistics, early investigations into complex predicates focused on the formal structure and functions of complex predicates from the morphosyntactic perspective (Hook 1974; Bhat 1979; Kachru 1982; Steever 1988; and Verma 1993; among others). The late 1980s saw growing interest in the semantic aspects of complex predicates (Abbi and Gopalakrishnan 1991) and cross-linguistic comparisons across language families of South Asia (Kachru 1980; Anderson 2007; Subbarao 2012). There have been some very insightful works on explaining complex predicates through theoretical frameworks in the 1990s (Butt 1994-1995, Vaidya 2015), followed by corpus based computational studies focused on extracting complex predicates from electronic corpuses (Bhattacharyya et al. 2006; Soni et al. 2006; Rao et al. 2010). In the new millennium, focus on language documentation has led to several accounts of the complex predicate phenomenon in the lesser known languages of South Asia. In the present set of papers, we bring together investigations on languages as varied as Bengali, Betta Kurumba, Hindi and Malto. The aim is to arrive at a typological perspective on complex predicates in the context of the South Asian language families/sub groups such as Dravidian and Indo-Aryan, and supplementing the existing studies on complex predicates on South Asian languages. While the studies on Bangla and Hindi provide newer perspectives to the existing studies on complex predicates, Betta Kurumba and Malto are sparsely documented lesser known Dravidian languages for which the present set of papers provides first time information on complex predication. Of particular interest will be the structural and semantic properties of complex predicates in relation to notions such as semantic composition, grammaticalisation, transitivity, valency, aspectual and modal modification, and semantic restructuring involving causation, precursion, manner etc.

An inflectional langllage like Sanskrit, in common reskoning need not pose any problem in word ordet. To illustrate, the following expressions are all grammatically valid and unobjectionable.