Numeral Classifier and Plurality: The Puzzle of Quantification in Magahi

The paper investigates the semantic and syntactic account of the interaction between the classifier and plurality in Magahi. We show that Magahi, a modern Indo-Aryan language, is a classifier language similar to classifier languages like Chinese, Japanese, etc., but unique in its approach to the concept of quantification. Magahi offers two kinds of plurals and a non-optional classifier which is not pervasive in its distribution for quantification. The semantics of the numeral classifier ranges over its distribution but has a general abstracted interpretation of atomization/individualization. Further, the paper revisits the complementarity between regular plural and classifier. This conceptual complementarity though seems robust presents scope to see if either of the system (plurality and classifier) presents vagueness to be investigated. It is proposed that plurality seeks different kinds of configuration from the noun compared to numerals. This approach explains the co-occurrence of regular plurality with a numeral classifier. The paper approaches the distribution of classifiers in count and mass nouns from a constraint-based account and explains the phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic reasonings

The possessive relation in Sanskrit bahuvrihi compounds: Ellipsis or movement?

Many Sanskrit bahuvrihis involve a possessive relation whereby one of the bahuvrihi-members is the possessum and an expression not mentioned within the bahuvrihi is the corresponding possessor: e.g., ugra-putra- (?V 8.67.11), not ‘mighty son(s)’ but ‘Aditi having mighty sons’ or ‘Aditi whose sons are mighty’. This study addresses the following research question: how is this possessive relation established in Sanskrit bahuvrihis? We consider two possible strategies. According to the first strategy, a linguistic unit which conveys the meaning ‘having’ and undergoes ellipsis combines with the bahuvrihi stem: e.g., the combination of this elided unit with ugra-putra-, which per se would convey the meaning ‘mighty son(s)’, yields the meaning ‘having mighty sons’. According to the second strategy, the possessor starts out within the phrase projected by one of the bahuvrihi-members: e.g., áditi- (i.e., the Sanskrit term for ‘Aditi’) starts out as the specifier of the phrase projected by putrá- in the above example; in this configuration áditi- is read as the possessor of putrá-; only subsequently will áditi- exit the bahuvrihi. We argue that the second strategy is superior because only it captures certain restrictions on the internal order of bahuvrihis

Dispensing with ellipsis devices in the analysis of Sanskrit bahuvrihi: Resurfacing, testing and assessing Panini’s model

In modern linguistics it is quite common to analyse bahuvrihis as derived from an endocentric compound to which a phonetically null suffix applies (Whitney 1889:501-502; Kiparsky 1982a:139; Gillon 2008:2-3). Despite his extensive use of zero devices, Panini does not adopt any of them to explain bahuvrihis. This study attempts to resurface the modernly underrated import of Panini’s approach. We shall capitalise on the most original feature of Panini’s handling of compound analysis, namely the fact that he does not focus on the head, but rather on the so-called upasarjana constituent, characterised in the source-phrase by a frozen case-ending expressing the syntactic relation with another constituent of the compound. A frozen syntactic relation is furthermore established between one of the constituents and the denotatum of the whole compound, and is reflected in the case-ending of the pronoun used (in the traditional analysis) to signify this relation. It is exclusively the syntactic meaning conveyed by this case-ending that is assumed to explain the final meaning of the bahuvrihi

An acoustic study of voiceless stops in Indian English

This paper analyzes phonetic corpus data showing that speakers of Indian English produce word-initial and post-/s/ stops that do not differ in terms of voice onset time (VOT). They sys- tematically produce both categories with short positive VOT which is typical of unaspirated stops. By contrast, speakers of British English do distinguish aspirated and unaspirated stops in terms of VOT in the same contexts. These results are based on VOT measurements for word- initial and post-/s/ bilabial and dorsal stops produced by 102 bilingual speakers of one of nine Indic languages and Indian English, and by 28 monolingual British English speakers. Given that Indian English is influenced by Indic languages which have phonological voiceless aspirated stops, this pattern is particularly surprising. We suggest that this cross-language category mismatch might be driven by the phonetic implementation of aspirated stops in Indic languages. More generally, if our results are representative of the stage in which Indian English and British English were in direct contact, they suggest that the existence of a richer laryngeal system in borrowing languages cannot in itself prepare the speakers to perceive and produce borrowed laryngeal contrast more faithfully. Finally, we also measured vowel onset f0 in our corpus, but found no significant differences by context – word-initial and post-/s/ stops were followed by comparable onset f0. These results suggest that intonational context may need to be further controlled for more sensitive f0 analysis

Productivity and argument sharing in Hindi light verb constructions

Light verb constructions (e.g. give a sigh, take a walk) are a linguistic puzzle, as they consist of two predicating elements in a monoclausal structure. In the theoretical linguistics literature, there has been much interest in the linguistic analysis of such constructions across a range of grammatical frameworks. One such proposal is event co-composition, where the argument structures of noun and light verb merge, resulting in a composite argument structure, which has been shown to incur processing cost in English and German. In contrast to these languages, a larger proportion of the predicates in Hindi are light verb constructions. Hence, we may ask whether a Hindi speaker’s experience with light verb constructions allow them to go through the same co-composition operation faster than a speaker of English. Our results show that Hindi speakers are adept at the process of using light verb constructions to verbalize predicates, much more so than speakers of Germanic languages. We argue that these data provide evidence for a case of specific linguistic experiences shaping cognition: cost disappears with practice

Prosody of discontinuous nominal phrases in Indian languages

The purpose of this survey is to compare the tonal and prosodic structure of discontinuous nominal phrases in several Indian languages with those of the better studied intonation languages, such as English and German. From a syntactic perspective, the SOV base order and the free constituent order property in nearly all Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Tibeto-Burman languages lead to a fairly rich system of discontinuous NPs of the type involving two independently generated NPs. From a prosodic perspective, the Indian languages discussed in the article are prototypical examples of phrase languages, i.e., the intonation is not dependent on variable pitch accent placement, but is rather based on the existence of prosodic domains, each with a characteristic ‘phrasal’ intonation. We will see that the division between cohesive and non-cohesive patterns that has been made for intonation languages is blurred in these languages. In line with this observation on prosody, the hierarchy-preserving and hierarchy-inverting discontinuous nominal phrases are not always easy to tell apart syntactically

The effect of phonological and morphological overlap on the processing of Bengali words

In normal language processing, we are continuously analyzing the form and structure of incoming speech signals in order to understand their meaning. At the same time, we unavoidably encounter situations in which words are contained within other words (e.g. ham in hammer). Since morphologically-related words often have a certain amount of phonological overlap, it is essential to understand the relevance of this overlap while investigating morphological processing. The current study provides a psycholinguistic investigation of the processing consequences of Bengali words overlapping in form both with and without being morphologically related. Overall, form-related items elicited significantly less priming than morphologically-related items. Form-related items differing in length by a single segment did not prime one another, while morphologically-related items did. However, form-related items matched in length but differing in a single segment did prime, indicating that relationships between formrelated words are not always straightforward

Post-focal compression as a prosodic cue for focus perception in Hindi

Focus in Hindi is prosodically marked by means of post-focal compression (PFC) and the present study examines whether PFC is a prosodic cue that is functionally used by listeners to perceive the focus. In a production study with 30 native Hindi speakers uttering six different ambiguous contrastive ellipsis structures PFC occurred after the focused indirect object, thought not after a focused direct object. These structures served as input for a forced-choice sentence-completion experiment, in which 18 listeners listened to sentence fragments of the matrix clause and were asked to decide which of the two possible objects contrasts (direct object or indirect object) would correctly complete the sentence. Results show that if PFC was absent listeners were unable to choose the intended sentence completion. If PFC was present correct sentence completion judgements increased significantly. Thus PFC is a cue for focus perception in Hindi. Based on the functional load of the pitch register in Hindi, we argue that pitch register represents a further intonational category to consider, at least for languages like Hindi

Ergativity and stage/individual level predications in Nepali and Manipuri

Many Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman languages of South Asia are morphologically ergative. Of these a few Tibeto-Burman languages of the Central region such as Tamang and Bhujel have consistent ergative systems while majority of them have split ergative systems. These split ergative languages fall into two groups:  aspectual based split ergative patterns such as Indo-Aryan Hindi/Urdu and person based split ergative patterns such as Indo-Aryan Punjabi and Tibeto-Burman Kham. Besides these well known types of split ergative patterns, some South Asian languages such as Manipuri, a Tibeto-Burman language from Eastern region and Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language from Central region show another split ergative pattern based on generic sentences. In these two languages the ergative aligns with the individual level predications and the nominative with the stage level predications. This finding is significant for both typological generalizations and general linguistic theorizing as it provides a new perspective on the uses and functionality of the ergativity in case marking systems