Syntax and etymology of Avestan bā and bōit

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

The purposes of this study are to investigate and describe the varying functions of the comitative preposition ábə̀ with Throughout this paper the preposition ábə̀ will be glossed in small caps with in order to reflect the fact that its meaning has extended beyond ‘with’ to a variety of other grammatical functions. in Gavar, compare these functions with cross-linguistic observations and propose an explanation for their diachronic development. This particle has a wide variety of functions. Firstly, it is used as a preposition marking phrases with a wide range of semantic roles. Secondly, its use has extended to Noun Phrase coordination, a common occurrence cross-linguistically. Its clause linking functions include its use as a temporal/sequential marker and elaboration. Of special interest to typologists is its predicative/complementizer use. This function is not observed in nearby languages and appears to be unusual cross-linguistically. Informed by previous research on the behavior...

This paper argues for the bound character of Old English -bora and explains it as a grammaticalization of the free lexeme bora 'bearer'. The grammaticalization bora > -bora is explained as a process of meaning weakening and generalization whereby a transitive clausal correlate has yielded way to an intransitive clausal correlate of the copulative type (transitive > possessive > locative /copulative). In Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology the loss of lexical status with the corresponding gain of grammatical status is described as a feature switch requiring a transposition verb: noun and leading to a functional derivation with overt subjective and objective function.

2009

I would like to thank my two advisors Michal Starke and Klaus Abels for the many hours spent discussing data and analyses. I couldn't have gotten this far without their help. Thanks also to the university of Tromsø for the four year scholarship, and CASTL for a great study environment. Thanks to Gillian Ramchand for the meetings we had trying to figure out the working of aspect in Kîîtharaka. I couldn't have known about the university of Tromsø if it were not for Luisa Martí. Thanks Luisa for pied-piping me to Tromsø. Thanks to Kaori, Monika and Yulia for lunch times together. I would also like to thank other friends at CASTL: Björn, Pavel, Marina, Naoyuki, Marleen, Kristina, Kristine, Antonio and Madeleine for having been such good company. While visiting Leiden, I presented my work on affix ordering in the Bantu reading group. Thanks to the participants of the Bantu reading group in the University of Leiden namely Thilo Schadeberg, Lisa Cheng, Leston Buell, Kristina Riedel, and Jenneke Van der Wal for their comments. A lot of thanks to my late Mother Ruth Karimi who always reminded me to study hard whenever I called her. I will forever remember you mum. Thanks to my father Muriungi too for all the support. Finally, many thanks to my wife Colomba and my two sons Victor and Vincent for allowing me to be away to study. vi CONTENTS noun classes see Lindblom (1914), wa Mberia (1993). A numeral on subject agreement, a pronoun or a nominal modifier gloss indicates agreement with a noun of a particular class.ô n vowels indicates tense vowels, not tone. Thusû is used for phonetic o, andî for phonetic e. This is the orthographic style used in the Kîîtharaka bible and will be used here. The judgments reported in this thesis are mainly those of the author who is a native speaker of Kîîtharaka. These judgments have been checked with another speaker of Kîîtharaka Kaburi Kwenga.

Indian Linguistics, 1980

This paper attempts to show that bol-e-morphologically, a frozen conjunctive form of the verb bOI-'to' say, speak' -has, in course of time, assumed various syntactic roles, To this date, it remains an unsolved problem as to how, since when and why did it take up to many duties which included, among other things, being used as a complementizer / quotative, non-lexical head-noun(?), reason, manner and other (= 'almost') adverbials, disjunct, (also a post-position,) and a designation-marker. The differences between je and bo/-e complements in Bengali are discussed in detail, and a parallel is drawn from Ki-bena-a Ba-ntu language in this respect. Although this paper identifies this particular puzzle in Bengali Syntax, it does not attempt to go into the language history, to suggest as to how] and why bol-e assumed multiple responsibilities,

Indogermanische Forschungen, 102: 179-198., 1997

Lingua, 110:343-373, 2000

Typological studies in language, 1995

Initial verbs are a rather popular topic in word order studies, as shown by the titles of the papers in this volume. My paper, while approaching the same topic as others, does not fit in the main stream of studies on inital verbs, in that it is not devoted to any verb-initial language. The languages that I will discuss all have a possible verb-initial word order pattern, which, however, does not represent either the basic or the most frequent word order.

Linguistics, 2014

Baṅgāṇī, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the so-called Baṅgāṇ area, a land enclosed by the Pabar and the Tons rivers (Uttarkāśī district, Uttarākhaṇḍ state), shows in its grammar and lexicon some peculiar features still rather controversial. The debate is still in course, due to the lack of enough documentation available, as the majority of scholars complains about. Moreover Baṅgāṇī, among the Western Pahāṛī languages of New Indo-Ayan, is now esteemed as a critically endangered language by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The paper presents the preliminary results of a fieldwork research with Baṅgāṇī mother-tongue speakers and the unique elicited text available. In particular a description of Baṅgāṇī pronominal and nominal declension, focusing on the case marking and agreement system of the Subject-like and Object-like arguments of intransitive and transitive clauses (in perfective and non-perfective tenses), is offered. The comparison between the data that I collected enabled me to offer a good amount of Baṅgāṇī sentences exemplifying the function of the different forms, and thus to understand their use in depth, that is to shed light on the peculiarities of Baṅgāṇī case marking system.

Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1983

I. In 1901 CC Uhlenbeck concluded from the identity of the nominative and the accusative of the neuter in the Indo-Euro-pean languages that the differentiation of these cases is second-ary. For an early period of the proto-language he assumes the existence of an agentive ...

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.

Alzahra University, 2024

This article investigates the comitative constructions in Persian. These constructions consist of three members named accompanion, accompanee and accompanying setting. Previously, studies considered ‘bā’ (WITH) as a preposition in traditional grammar. All traditional grammarians introduced ‘bā’ as a preposition except those who pointed to ‘bā’ (WITH) in accompanying situations. One of the aims of the present research is to answer this question: Is ‘bā’(WITH) a preposition in all sentences or is it a conjunction or both? So, this study attempts to show its syntactic and functional features in Persian. Another goal is to compare coordinated and comitative constructions. The hypothesis is that ‘bā’(WITH) can be considered as a conjunctor and a preposition as well. Thus comitative constructions are divided into two groups: 1) symmetrical constructions in which [ with + DP2 ] is not an adjunct (an argument). The type of the verbs in this group are as follows: collectives, combining, relational predicates and similar comparison. 2) asymmetrical constructions in which [ with + DP2 ] is an adjunct. The second type does not depend on the type of the verbs. It consists some members named non-collective verbs, instrumental, body organ, transportation. The instrumental type are of mediatory and facilitating. The findings of the present article can be used in the teaching of Persian grammar as well as syntactic analyses.