The Indo-Aryan Languages

The Indo-Aryan Languages

Author: Danesh Jain

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-07-26

Total Pages: 1039

ISBN-13: 1135797102

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The Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by at least 700 million people throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. With texts in Old Indo-Aryan, Middle Indo-Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan, this language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European. This volume is divided into two main sections dealing with general matters and individual languages. Each chapter on the individual language covers the phonology and grammar (morphology and syntax) of the language and its writing system, and gives the historical background and information concerning the geography of the language and the number of its speakers.


The Indo-Aryan Languages

The Indo-Aryan Languages

Author: Colin P. Masica

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-09-09

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9780521299442

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In his ambitious survey of the Indo-Aryan languages, Colin Masica has provided a fundamental introduction which will interest not only general and theoretical linguists but also students of one or more of these languages who want to acquaint themselves with the broader linguistic context. Generally synchronic in approach, concentrating on the phonology, morphology and syntax of the modern representatives of the group, the volume also covers their historical development, areal context, writing systems and aspects of sociolinguistics. The survey is organised not on a language-by-language basis but by topic, so that salient theoretical issues may be discussed in a comparative context.


A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhram??a)

A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhram??a)

Author: Vit Bubenik

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1998-10-15

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 902727567X

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This monograph aims to close the gap in our knowledge of the nature and pace of grammatical change during the formative period of today’s Indo-Aryan languages. During the 6th-12th c. the gradual erosion of the synthetic morphology of Old Indo-Aryan resulted ultimately in the remodelling of its syntax in the direction of the New Indo-Aryan analytic type. This study concentrates on the emergence and development of the ergative construction in terms of the passive-to-ergative reanalysis and the co-existence of the ergative construction with the old and new analytic passive constructions. Special attention is paid to the actuation problem seen as the tug of war between conservative and eliminative forces during their development. Other chapters deal with the evolution of grammatical and lexical aspect, causativization, modality, absolute constructions and subordination. This study is based on a wealth of new data gleaned from original poetic works in Apabhraṃśa (by Svayaṃbhādeva, Puṣpadanta, Haribhadra, Somaprabha et al.). It contains sections dealing with descriptive techniques of Medieval Indian grammarians (esp. Hemacandra). All the Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhraṃśa examples are consistently parsed and translated. The opus is cast in the theoretical framework of Functional Grammar of the Prague and Amsterdam Schools. It should be of particular interest to scholars and students of Indo-Aryan and general historical linguistics, especially those interested in the issues of morphosyntactic change and typology in their sociohistorical setting.


The Indo-Aryan Languages

The Indo-Aryan Languages

Author: Danesh Jain

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-07-26

Total Pages: 1086

ISBN-13: 1135797110

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The Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by at least 700 million people throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. With texts in Old Indo-Aryan, Middle Indo-Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan, this language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European. This volume is divided into two main sections dealing with general matters and individual languages. Each chapter on the individual language covers the phonology and grammar (morphology and syntax) of the language and its writing system, and gives the historical background and information concerning the geography of the language and the number of its speakers.


Pre-Pāṇinian Linguistic Studies

Pre-Pāṇinian Linguistic Studies

Author: D. D. Mahulkar

Publisher: Northern Book Centre

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9788185119885

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Presents Sanskrit language studies in a new setting-that of `socio-linguistics'. Illustrate how some of the missing links in traditional Sanskrit studies can be understood if the evolutionary aspect of language studies is connected with the study of socio-cultural history of the speech The new model of socio-historical linguistics is for the first time conceived and developed as a variational, dynamic and developmental model. Neatly planned and richly illustrated, this book breaks a new ground in modern linguistic studies showing how socio-linguistic studies can be enjoyed not only as sources of new hypotheses in historical studies but also as source of rich cultural contexts lost from material archaeological discoveries. Language, pleads the author, preserves a rich cultural archaeology of a community. The formulation of the scientific methodology of language studies from this point of view has to be the logical sine qua non of all historical linguistic studies which have been in a state of revival since 1965.


Vedic and Sanskrit Historical Linguistics

Vedic and Sanskrit Historical Linguistics

Author: Jared Klein

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 8120836324

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This volume contains 10 articles based on papers presented at the Linguistics sessions of the 13th World Sanskrit Conference (Edinburgh, July 2006) and shows the engagement of scholars with all aspects of Vedic Grammar, including phonology, inflectional and derivational morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicography, and stylistics. In many cases the articles constitute integral parts of long-term research projects of their authors that are ongoing even at this date of publication and therefore present the broad sweep of the field of Vedic linguistics as it is currently being practiced. The contributions include two on phonology (Kobayashi and Kummel), two on morphology (Garcia Ramon and Tucker), three on syntax (Bubenik, Hettrich, and Hock), one on the semantics of tense and aspect (Dahl), one on lexicography (Krisch), and one on stylistics (Klein). In several instances these papers fit integrally into the research agendas of their authors, representing parts of larger projects reflected in recent publications (Bubenik, Dahl, Garcia Ramon, Hettrich, Klein, Kobayashi) or deal with issues touched on repeatedly by their authors over a number of years (Hock). In one case (Krisch), the work announced has in the interim begun to appear and represent a broad reflection of research projects currently underway in Sanskrit Linguistics. That all but one of the papers focus exclusively on Vedic is simply a reflection of the reality that in Western countries the study of Sanskrit has frequently been treated as an entree to Indo-European linguistics, and it is especially the oldest texts that have been mined for whatever nuggets they can yield relative to our understanding of the proto-language. Already Published :- Vol. I : Scientific Literature in Sanskrit - Eds. S.R. Sarma & Gyula Wojtilla Vol. II : Battle, Bards and Brahmins - Ed. John Brockington


The Indo-European Controversy

The Indo-European Controversy

Author: Asya Pereltsvaig

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-30

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1107054532

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This book challenges media-celebrated evolutionary studies linking Indo-European languages to Neolithic Anatolia, instead defending traditional practices in historical linguistics.


Grammaticalization and the Rise of Configurationality in Indo-Aryan

Grammaticalization and the Rise of Configurationality in Indo-Aryan

Author: Uta Reinöhl

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-04-14

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0191056375

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This book examines historical changes in the grammar of the Indo-Aryan languages from the period of their earliest attestations in Vedic Sanskrit (around 1000 bc) to contemporary Hindi. Uta Reinöhl focuses specifically on the rise of configurational structure as a by-product of the grammaticalization of postpositions: while Vedic Sanskrit lacks function words that constrain nominal expressions into phrasal units - one of the characteristics of a non-configurational language - New Indo-Aryan languages have postpositions which organize nominal expressions into postpositional phrases. The grammaticalization of postpositions and the concomitant syntactic changes are traced through the three millennia of Indo-Aryan attested history with a focus on Vedic Sanskrit, Middle Indic Pali and Apabhramsha, Early New Indic Old Awadhi, and finally Hindi. Among the topics discussed are the constructions in which the postpositions grammaticalize, the origins of the postpositional template, and the paradigmatization of the various elements involved into a single functional class of postpositions. The book outlines how it is semantic and pragmatic changes that induce changes on the expression side, ultimately resulting in the establishment of phrasal, and thus low-level configurational, syntax.