: Saartje Verbeke
: Alignment and Ergativity in New Indo-Aryan Languages
: De Gruyter Mouton
: 9783110292671
: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT]ISSN
: 1
: CHF 159.80
:
: Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
: English
: 331
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF
< >The book provides an overview of the alignment patterns found in modern Indo-Aryan languages. The analysis of the patterns of case marking and agreement leads to a balanced view on the concept of ergativity and evaluates its value for typological linguistics. The book offers an extensive discussion of previous approaches to ergativity. It analyzes four Indo-Aryan languages-Asamiya, Nepali, Rajasthani and Kashmiri-on the basis of text corpora. Examples from other Indo-Aryan languages are also adduced. The book is a thorough synchronic study of alignment patterns in Indo-Aryan languages.

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< >Saartje Verbeke, Ghent University, Belgium.
Acknowledgments9
List of Abbreviations10
Introduction13
1 Theoretical preliminaries20
1.1 Ergativity from a functional and typological perspective20
1.1.1 Ergativity: the standard functional-typological definition21
1.1.2 Core arguments and grammatical relations25
1.1.2.1 The subject issue26
1.1.2.2 Grammatical relations33
1.1.2.3 Case40
1.1.2.4 Verb agreement44
1.1.3 Alignment splits based on referential hierarchies46
1.1.3.1 Silverstein’s hierarchy47
1.1.3.2 Differential object marking: the markedness discussion48
1.1.3.3 Differential subject marking51
1.1.4 Tense/Aspect/Mood and head- vs. dependent-marking53
1.1.4.1 Tense/Aspect/Mood split53
1.1.4.2 Case marking and verb agreement54
1.2 Direct and indirect motivations of ergativity56
1.2.1 Ergativity in discourse-functional and cognitive linguistics58
1.2.1.1 Du Bois: “The discourse base of ergativity”58
1.2.1.2 Cognitive accounts60
1.2.2 Historical motivations66
1.2.3 Case and transitivity68
1.2.3.1 An alternative view of ergativity68
1.2.3.2 Transitivity: from Sapir to Hopper and Thompson72
1.3 Conclusions75
2 Indo-Aryan77
2.1 Geographical distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages77
2.2 Alignment in Hindi80
2.3 Origin of the ergative pattern in Indo-Aryan87
2.3.1 Historical overview87
2.3.1.1 Old Indo-Aryan87
2.3.1.2 Middle Indo-Aryan90