Sinhala and Tamil : a case of contact-induced restructuring

PhD ThesisThe dissertation presents a comparative synchronic study of the morphosyntactic features of modern spoken Sinhala and Tamil, the two main languages of Sri Lanka. The main motivation of the research is that Sinhala and Tamil, two languages of diverse origins—the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) and Dravidian families respectively—share a wide spectrum of morphosyntactic features. Sinhala has long been isolated from the other NIA languages and co-existed with Tamil in Sri Lanka ever since both reached Sri Lanka from India. This coexistence, it is believed, led to what is known as the contact-induced restructuring that Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone on the model of Tamil, while retaining its NIA lexicon. Moreover, as languages of South Asia, the two languages share the areal features of this region. The research seeks to address the following questions: (i) What features do the two languages share and what features do they not share?; (ii) Are the features that they share areal features of the region or those diffused into one another owing to contact?; (iii) If the features that they share are due to contact, has diffusion taken place unidirectionally or bidirectionally?; and (iv) Does contact have any role to play with respect to features that they do not share? The claim that this research intends to substantiate is that Sinhala has undergone morphosyntactic restructuring on the model of Tamil. The research, therefore, attempts to answer another question: (v) Can the morphosyntactic restructuring that Sinhala has undergone be explained in syntactic terms? The morphosyntactic features of the two languages are analyzed at macro- and micro-levels. At the macro-level, a wide range of morphosyntactic features of Tamil and Sinhala, and those of seven other languages of the region are compared with a view to determining the origins of these features and showing the large scale morphosyntactic convergence between Sinhala and Tamil and the divergence between Sinhala and other NIA languages. At the micro-level the dissertation analyzes in detail two morphosyntactic phenomena, namely null arguments and focus constructions. It examines whether subject/verb agreement, which is different across the two languages, plays a role in the licensing of null arguments in each language. It also examines the nature of the changes Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone because of the two kinds of Tamil focus constructions that Sinhala has replicated. It is hoped, that this dissertation will make a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the morphosyntax of the two languages, the effects of language contact on morphosyntax, and more generally, the nature of linguistic variation.Scholarship Programme of the Higher Education for the Twenty First Century (HETC) Project, Ministry of Higher Education, Sri Lanka

Copulae and Classifiers in the Arabic Noun Phrase

This thesis proposes a reconsideration of the Arabic adnominal markers and of its modification structure, on the ground that the current analytical trend, which likens them to their Indo-european counterparts, runs into several problems. It develops an unified account of the adnominal markers, and argues that all of them are to be understood as copulae recursively embedded into the Arabic modification structure. Modifiers too are interpreted here in an unified way, all of them being rethought of as a non-restrictive relative clause, at least originally. Among the consequences of this approach are reinterpreting nunation as a Numeral Classifier and the prenominal article as a medial article. As for case-endings, the present dissertation revives the Semitistic hypothesis that underlying to them is a morpheme w and proposes to identify it with the Conjunction w ‘and’ widespread in Arabic and Semitic, since this kind of conjunction crosslinguistically (e.g. in English, Somali) mediates the predicational relationship between the NP / Subject and the non-restrictive relative clause / Predicate. Moreover, it is argued here that Arabic case is actually a semantic opposition Subject vs. Non-subject that develops out of a copular opposition between lack vs. presence of Predicate Inversion. The copula analysis of the Arabic modification structure has also some interesting implications for linguistic theory in general, because it provides a definition of word as well as a better understanding of the fusive, agglutinating and isolating morphological types. This thesis capitalizes on the findings of some recent threads of research. On diachronic level, it adopts Owens’s theory about Arabic dialects and Classical Arabic, according to which the former are older than the latter, as well as Garbini’s and Durand’s view that Arabic is a mixed language made up of an Amorite and a Pre-semitic parastrate. In synchrony, it follows Moro’s theory of Dynamic Antisymmetry, which explains the displacement phenomenon typical of natural languages as a consequence of another key-property of them, namely Saussurean linearity

The structure of the Bangla DP

The thesis offers a description and analysis of the DP in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language Bangla (Bengali). In particular, it re-establishes the dominant theme in the DP literature of showing the syntactic equivalence between the structure of the clause and that of the DP. This is done on the one hand by investigating various clause-like syntactic phenomena like specificity, deixis and aspect inside the DP and on the other by working out NP movement inside the DP -- the common theme across chapters 2-4. Chapter 1 provides an outline of the thesis and introduces relevant parts of the minimalist and the antisymmetry framework adopted for this study. In addition, it suggests a trigger for Merge and proposes that a condition governing XP movements to multiple specifiers in clauses is operative in DPs as well. The second chapter discusses a three layered structure of the DP structure for Bangla where the layer intermediate between DP and NP is the Quantifier Phrase. The proposed structure accounts for the DP-internal specificity in Bangla and suggests that specific NPs move out of the deepest NP-shell by LF. This is identified as the DP-internal 'Object' Shift and constitutes the first instance of DP- internal NP movement. In the following chapter, the three-layered DP structure is re-examined on the basis of data from kinship terms. Specifically, it is shown that the possessive is generated in the nP shell of the DP but moves up to its derived position of [Spec,DP] for reasons of feature checking. It is proposed that the demonstrative is an XP and is the specifier of a 'focus-related' head F, located between the D and the Q heads. NP movement proposed in this chapter is identified as Kinship Inversion and is shown to be triggered by the same feature of specificity explored in chapter 2. The analysis exploits two different types of NP movement within the DP which accounts for DP-internal deixis. The last chapter discusses the structure of the gerund phrase and proposes that it too has the structure of a DP. Both the external and the internal distribution of the gerund is investigated which show that they exhibit both nominal and verbal properties. This is reflected in the proposed derivation of gerunds which involve leftward NP movement out of a VP embedded inside an Aspect Phrase. The presence of aspectual features like [±PERFECT] and [±DELIMITED] drive this movement. This final evidence for DP-internal NP movement leads us towards the conclusion that NP movement inside the DP is a pervasive phenomenon in Bangla

Gradability in the nominal domain

This dissertation investigates whether and how gradability is manifested in the nominal domain, as well as the implications this could have for theories of the representation of gradability. It is shown that the various gradability diagnostics proposed in the literature not only yield different results, but that they do not actually work as could be expected. In case after case, other factors turn out to underlie the noted effects: epistemicity and evidentiality (cf. the epistemic verb seem and real-type adjectives), the expression of a value judgment (e.g. N of an N constructions), the delineation of salient sub-kinds identifiable by natural consequences (cf. internal such) and abstract size modification (e.g. when a size adjective like big modifies a noun denoting an instance of a property or a set of individuals defined in terms of such an abstract object). Our investigation leads to the unexpected conclusion that,there are no grammatical contexts in the nominal domain that are exclusively reserved for a particular class of nouns that could properly be called gradable. As a result, there is no motivation for postulating a degree structure in the syntactic representation of nouns. In addition, there are no expressions performing the type of semantic operations familiar from degree modification in the adjectival domain that would indicate the existence of a grammatically accessible gradable structure in the semantics of nouns at the lexical level. The tale of this dissertation is therefore a cautionary one: arguments to reduce gradability in the nominal and in the adjectival domain to the same phenomenon are misguided. This study shows the importance of a cross-categorial perspective for a better understanding of gradability. It is of interest to a general syntactic and semantic readership.LEI Universiteit LeidenNWO (project no. 276-70-007); LUCLTheoretical and Experimental Linguistic

A Sketch of the Phonology and Grammar of Rajbanshi

This dissertation is a synchronic description of the phonology and grammar of two dialects of the Rajbanshi language (Eastern Indo-Aryan) as spoken in Jhapa, Nepal. I have primarily confined the analysis to the oral expression, since the emerging literary form is still in its infancy. The grammatical analysis is therefore based, for the most part, on a corpus of oral narrative text which was recorded and transcribed from three informants from north-east Jhapa. An informant, speaking a dialect from south-west Jhapa cross checked this text corpus and provided additional elicited material. I have described the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language, and also one aspect of its discourse structure. For the most part the phonology follows the basic Indo-Aryan pattern. Derivational morphology, compounding, reduplication, echo formation and onomatopoeic constructions are considered, as well as number, noun classes (their assignment and grammatical function), pronouns, and case and postpositions. In verbal morphology I cover causative stems, the copula, primary and secondary agreement, tense, aspect, mood, auxiliary constructions and non-finite forms. The term secondary agreement here refers to genitive agreement, dative-subject agreement and patient (and sometimes patient-agent) agreement. The breaking of default agreement rules has a range of pragmatic inferences. I argue that a distinction, based on formal, semantic and statistical grounds, should be made between conjunct verbs, derivational compound verbs and quasi-aspectual compound verbs. Rajbanshi has an open set of adjectives, and it additionally makes use of a restricted set of nouns which can function as adjectives. Various particles, and the emphatic and conjunctive clitics are also considered. The syntactic structures studied include: non-declarative speech acts, phrase-internal and clause-internal constituent order, negation, subordination, coordination and valence adjustment. I explain how the future, present and past tenses in Rajbanshi oral narratives do not seem to maintain a time reference, but rather to indicate a distinction between background and foreground information. I call this tense neutralisation .Tämä väitöskirja on synkroninen kielenkuvaus rajbanshinkielestä, joka kuuluu itäisten indoarjalaisten kielten ryhmään. Tilastojen mukaan rajbanshi on Nepalin 14:ksi suurin kieliryhmä: kielenpuhujia arvioidaan olevan Kaakkois-Nepalin Jhapan ja Morangin piirikunnissa yhteensä noin 129 000. Rajbanshinkielen eri murteita puhutaan myös Intian Länsi-Bengalin, Assamin ja Biharin osavaltioissa sekä Pohjois-Bangladeshissa. Tutkimuksen ensisijainen tarkoitus on selvittää tämän aikaisemmin vähän tutkitun kielen kielioppia. Rajbanshin kielialueesta länteen sijoittuva maithilinkieli on vaikuttanut Nepalissa puhuttaviin rajbanshin murteisiin. Niissä on piirteitä myös itäisistä indoarjalaisista kielistä, kuten esimerkiksi bengalista ja assamista. Rajbanshia onkin usein pidetty pohjoisbengalin murteena. Toulmin (2006) kuitenkin kyseenalaistaa näkemyksen, jonka mukaan rajbanshi olisi vain korruptoitunutta bengalia . Historiallisen rekonstruktionsa perusteella hän on sitä mieltä, että rajbanshinkielen historia on vähintäänkin yhtä vanha kuin assamin- ja bengalinkielenkin. Tässä työssä kuvataan muun muuassa rajbanshinkielen äännesysteemiä, sananmuodostusta, nomineitten ja verbien morfologiaa, adjektiiveja, adverbeja, partikkeleita ja kliittejä sekä syntaksia. Lopuksi käsittellään aikamuotojen käyttäytymistä narratiivissa: sitä, miten futuuri, preesens ja menneen ajan tempus eivät ilmaise niinkään aikasuhteita kuin narratiivin informaatiorakennetta. Dokumentaatio on rajattu kahteen rajbanshin murteeseen, joita puhutaan Kaakkois-Nepalin Jhapan piirikunnassa, mutta joissakin kohden annetaan esimerkkejä myös muista murteista. Kielenkuvaus perustuu pääosin puhuttuun tekstikorpukseen. Se on äänitetty ja transkriboitu kolmelta kielenpuhujalta, jotka ovat kotoisin Jhapasta. Tekstikorpuksen on tarkistanut ja arvioinut myös neljäs rajbanshin puhuja, jonka käyttämä Lounais-Jhapan murre poikkeaa jonkin verran itäisen Jhapan murteesta. Tämän puhujan murretta on tutkittu myös elisitoidun aineiston pohjalta. Analyysi rakentuu pääasiassa suullisen aineiston varaan, sillä kielen kirjallinen muoto on varsin nuori eikä se ole vielä vakiintunut. Jotkut puhekielessä ilmenevät rakenteet, kuten esimerkiksi dislokaatio, löytyvät vain harvoin kielen kirjallisesta tuotannosta. Toisaalta taas jotkut rajbanshikirjoittajat käyttävät teksteissään esimerkiksi sellaisia rakenteita kuin relatiivilause ja passiivi, jotka eivät useinkaan esiinny puhutussa kielessä

North East Indian Linguistics 8 (NEIL 8)

This is the eighth volume of North East Indian Linguistics, a series of volumes for publishing current research on the languages of North East India, the first volume of which was published in 2008. The papers in this volume were presented at the 9th conference of the North East Indian Linguistics Society (NEILS), held at Tezpur University in February 2016. The papers for this anniversary volume continue the NEILS tradition of research by both local and international scholars on a wide range of languages and topics. This eighth volume includes papers on small community languages and large regional languages from across North East India, and present detailed phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic studies of structures that are characteristic of particular languages or language groups alongside sociolinguistic studies that explore language attitudes in contexts of language shift

Order and structure in syntax I

This book reconsiders the role of order and structure in syntax, focusing on fundamental issues such as word order and grammatical functions. The first group of papers in the collection asks what word order can tell us about syntactic structure, using evidence from V2, object shift, word order gaps and different kinds of movement. The second group of papers all address the issue of subjecthood in some way, and examine how certain subject properties vary across languages: expression of subjects, expletive subjects, quirky and locative subjects. All of the papers address in some way the tension between modelling what can vary across languages whilst improving our understanding of what might be universal to human language

The personal pronouns and their related clitics in six Khasi dialects: A grammatical and sociolinguistic study.

The thesis, as the title suggests, is divided into two parts: a grammar section and a sociolinguistic section. The grammar section comprises chapters II, III and IV and the sociolinguistic section chapters V, VI and VII. Chapter I provides general information on the language and its people, the system of notation used to present the linguistic data, the issues that are raised in the thesis, the methodology employed and the criteria upon which the questionnaire and the fieldwork are based. Chapter VIII, the general conclusion, summarizes the findings of the grammar and sociolinguistic sections. The main issues that are raised in the grammar section are two. The first concerns the syntactic status of a set of clitics which all share the same property of encoding the categories of person, number and gender. In prenominal position acting as 'articles', they convey the gender and number of the noun, and as 'agreement markers' show the agreement of modifiers with the head in the noun phrase. In combination with the verb they either act as agreement markers showing grammatical agreement between the lexical subject NP and the verb or as pronominals, that is to say they are referential pronouns that fulfil argument functions. The other issue that is raised in this section is the functions and distribution of the independent pronouns by comparison with those of the pronominal clitics. Chapter II deals with these issues in the standard dialect, chapter III examines them in the five regional dialects and chapter IV deals with their comparison across the dialects. The two main differences that will be seen between the dialect groups concern: (a) the gender system as encoded in the prenominal clitics, the peripheral and the. transitional dialects having a basic three-gender system whereas the central dialects have a basic two-gender system (innovations on the part of the central dialects in developing a polite or honorific gender for pragmatic purposes and the influence of these dialects on the other groups are also considered); (b) in the central dialects the clitics have a wide range of functions in that they fulfil all argument functions whereas the independent pronouns fulfil purely discourse functions. In the peripheral dialects on the other hand, the clitics have a very restricted range of functions that of a subject in continued discourse and of possessor in a construction without preposition. This chapter also studies the forms of the pronouns, the clitics being shown to be clearly cognate across the dialects and the independent pronouns to have developed from the clitics independently in the individual dialects. The sociolinguistic section deals with the informants' reported use of the second person pronouns and third person constructions in addressing, and of the different articles with appropriate nominals in referring to, kin and non-kin members of the community. Chapter V presents some theoretical considerations regarding the Address variable and the Reference variable as part of the pronominal strategies adopted in various languages. The variants of the Address and the Reference variables that are reportedly used by speakers in the Khasi dialects selected for analysis are also dealt with here. Chapter VI presents an analysis of the informants' reponses to a questionnaire regarding their use of the variants of the Address and the Reference variables. Chapter VII compares the informants' reported use of Address and of Reference across the dialects. This chapter also looks at the diachronic development of the second person 'polite' pronoun which has led to changes in the pronominal paradigm in the central dialects. It also examines the development of the honorific article as part of the variants of Reference. Here too the claim is that the central dialects are responsible for the innovations that have taken place in the way the second person pronouns and the honorific article are used

Taking Stock to Look Ahead: Celebrating Forty Years of English Studies in Spain

This volume brings together a diverse but well-balanced selection of the plenary lectures, scholarly papers and round tables presented at the AEDEAN Conference at Huesca. The contents of this e-book are divided into four sections. The volume opens with two thought-provoking essays by writers Anne Karpf (London Metropolitan University) and Tabish Khair (Aahrus University). The next two sections constitute the main body of the volume and comprise over thirty essays on the two wider areas of scholarship within English and North-American studies: literature and cultural studies (Part I) and language and linguistics (Part II). Finally, the last section of this volume includes some of the latest findings of three research projects in the form of round tables, dealing with cutting-edge research topics such as Neo-Victorian studies, musical narratives of the American West and European renditions of the American West. In short, the contributions included in this volume succeed not only in putting forward provocative and innovative research, but also in sampling the wealth and breadth of scholarly interests and approaches that the annual AEDEAN Conference unfailingly gathers