Number morphology on honorific nouns

Singular honorific nouns in Hindi, Punjabi and Marathi show interesting behavior with respect to number morphology. While they uniformly trigger plural agreement, we find that certain plural affixes occur on these nouns, but others do not. I propose a morphosyntactic analysis for this asymmetry. I argue that the two types of plural affixes realize different syntactic heads: the plural affixes that occur on singular honorific nouns realize n, while the others realize Num. Building on Bhatt & Davis (2021) and using a mechanism for feature copying within the nominal phrase, I propose a structure for singular honorific nouns that can capture this generalization

Number, Honor, and Agreement in Hindi-Urdu

In Hindi-Urdu, the honorific marker ji: can be added to a third person nominal to signal honorification of the nominal referent. The use of ji: triggers plural agreement, despite the nominal itself being singular. We propose that the formative that carries the semantics of plurality (*) and the formative that carries the semantics of honorification (Hon) occupy the same syntactic position, which we identify as Num. These two formatives have the same formal features, which correspond to the features responsible for what is called plural agreement, and make the same selectional demand of their complement, namely that it appear in the oblique form. However the formatives have distinct realizations and distinct semantics. Both can have zero realization or overt realization; for honorification the overt realization can be at least -ji:, sa:b, mahoday, sir, ma’am, and for pluralization -˜a:, -˜o. The two formatives are in complementary distribution; Hon blocks and vice-versa; this means that the complement of Hon has no choice but to stay singular. We end by describingthe honorific distinctions shown with second-person pronouns, describing additional complexities that their analysis requires

Specification of the underspecified: A pragmatic analysis of the injunctive in the Rgveda

This paper uses formal pragmatics to show that discourse context alone is inadequate to explain the function of “injunctive” verb forms (i.e., finite verbs unspecified for tense or mood) in Rgvedic Sanskrit. Prior treatments, which explain the temporal and modal specification of the injunctive as being picked up from other verb forms in the immediate discourse, do not fully account for the injunctive’s observed meanings. By applying a framework known in neo-Gricean pragmatics as a “Horn strategy” to tense and modality, I explain the various functions of the injunctive as arising from partial blocking relationships that hold between it and other verb forms with which it competes

Coordinated on the context: the many uses of Marathi =ts

Several Indo-Aryan languages, including Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, and Marathi contain a discourse clitic whose uses overlap with those of English particles like exclusives only/just, anaphoric indeed/that very, intensifiers really/totally, precisifiers right/exactly/absolutely, and scalar additive even without corresponding perfectly to any of them. This paper focuses on the Marathi variant =ts and offers a detailed empirical picture of a subset of its uses – uses involving discourse salience and noteworthiness or unexpectedness. I put forward the hypothesis that =ts conventionally signals that interlocutors are in mutual agreement that the proposition denoted by the prejacent is uniquely salient among alternatives in the current question. That is, =ts conveys that the proposition expressed by the prejacent offers a schelling point (or focal point) for the interlocutors to coordinate on

Gender and allocutivity

The term ‘allocutivity’ refers to the grammatical encoding of speech act participants, i.e. speaker and addressee of an utterance, which may also describe the social relations that they share with each other like politeness and familiarity. This paper explores allocutivity and its interaction with gender marking by identifying three types of allocutive languages: plain allocutive languages, addressee allocutive languages, and speaker allocutive languages. In order to account for the presence and absence of gender marking as part of the allocutive expression, we propose an analysis that assumes speaker and addressee to instantiate implicit syntactic arguments (Speas & Tenny, 2003), which trigger gender marking if they are in the vicinity of a gender probe, situated on the speech act head. Locality is achieved via external Merge of the speaker argument and internal Merge of the hearer argument. The latter we derive from drawing parallels to object shift phenomena

'and-a-half' Numeral constructions in Hindi

Complex numerals combine via addition and multiplication in the syntax from a sequence of simplex numerals. In this paper, we investigate a novel class of numerals labeled ‘and-a-half’ numerals which can combine with simplex numerals via addition resulting in a simplex numeral. But across languages, the presence of ‘and-a-half’ limits the formation of complex numerals to only via multiplication. Further addition of another numeral in this structure considerably degrades the construction. This paper focuses on Hindi data and seeks to explain this restriction placed by ‘and-a-half’ by investigating its pragmatic role in setting standards of precision. The analysis presented here predicts that the planning component in communicating standards of precision is encoded at the phrasal level where once you set a low standard of precision you cannot arbitrarily raise it - which is exactly what happens when an additive component is introduced in the structure

The influence of orthography on spoken word recognition in Bangla

The lexical representation of words constitutes the phonological, orthographic and semantic information about a word, which is accessed together despite the task demanding only one aspect of the information. The role of orthography in word recognition tasks has been validated, though its influence on phonological tasks is lesser known. Recent studies in psycholinguistics have begun to investigate the possible influences of orthography on the auditory processing of words. The present paper reviews studies that have looked at orthographic influence on phonological tasks, and reports findings from a Rhyme-monitoring task in Bangla, to examine the role of orthography in auditory processing

Acquisition of Hindi's laryngeal contrast by Meiteilon speakers

Though Meeteilon does not have phonemic contrast in voicing, native speakers can accurately recognize voiced stops and aspirated voiced stops in word initial positions and categorically distinguish these from voiceless stops and aspirated voiceless stops. However, they are unable to perceive any of these laryngeal contrasts in word-final position. We explain these facts by proposing that tone and aspiration being phonemic in Meeteilon, these cues from L1 can be re-recruited by native speakers for learning laryngeal contrasts in a second language like Hindi. Since these cues from L1 cannot be used to perceive laryngeal contrasts in word-final position, the contrasts are not perceived in these positions

Acoustic phonetic properties of p-words and g-words in Sora

This paper presents the first analysis of the intonational properties of polysyllabic verbal forms in Sora, a mildly polysynthetic language belonging to the Munda language family of India. The data indicate the previous claims on Sora cannot be maintained, and the language in no sense reflects a Quantity Sensitive trochaic pattern of prominence assignment