VARIATION OF ERGATIVITY PATTERNS IN INDO-ARYAN

Ergativity in the Indo-Aryan languages is a very intricate phenomenon. At the morphological level, we can observe a certain continuum, from disappearance of ergativity to its reinforcement. The first tendency is clearly visible not only in Eastern Hindi and Bihari dialects, but also in Western Rajasthani. The second tendency can be noted in the Pahari dialects. Somewhere in be- tween are the Western Hindi dialects, which have introduced analytical marking for agent and pa- tient. The transitional character of ergativity in Indo-Aryan can be observed in considering the alignment of the three syntactic-semantic Dixonian primitives, namely A, S, and O (Dixon 1979; 1994). It appears that, in fact, all possible alignments are traceable, even that in which A and O receive the same marking and which has been excluded by typologists (Comrie 1978). However, extending the Dixonian three-primitive system by Obl. (Klimov 1983), we can also observe that the same treatment of A and Obl. (perceived as one of the implications of ergativity) is shared by, for example, early Rajasthani, contemporary Pahari and Western Hindi, where it is closely con- nected with the polyfunctionality of the ergative postposition

Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages

Languages of the Indo-European family are spoken by almost half of the world’s population, but their origins and patterns of spread are disputed. Heggarty et al. present a database of 109 modern and 52 time-calibrated historical Indo-European languages, which they analyzed with models of Bayesian phylogenetic inference. Their results suggest an emergence of Indo-European languages around 8000 years before present. This is a deeper root date than previously thought, and it fits with an initial origin south of the Caucasus followed by a branch northward into the Steppe region. These findings lead to a “hybrid hypothesis” that reconciles current linguistic and ancient DNA evidence from both the eastern Fertile Crescent (as a primary source) and the steppe (as a secondary homeland)