Очередное 40-е заседание Проблемной группы по теории грамматики состоится в конференц-зале в понедельник 5 декабря 2011 года в 17:00.
Выступает: Krzysztof Stroński (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)
«Decay or Reinforcement of Ergativity? The Case of Pahari»
The present paper will attempt to demonstrate the particular place of Pahari dialects within the Indo-Aryan branch as regards preservation of the ergative pattern both at the level of morphology and syntax.
It seems that this dialectal group has preserved many more traces of ergative alignment than other languages belonging to the so called ‘Hindi belt’. Among morphological factors the following can be enumerated: maintaining of ergative/instrumental case syncretism, unmarked pronominal O in the ergative construction and employment of ergative postposition in the obligative construction. Apart from that, alongside the prevailing stability of an A/S pivot there are several instances of syntactic lability, i.e. there is no palpable syntactic pivot. Another factor which could testify to the assumed attrition or reinforcement of ergativity is the encroachment of the resultative construction (e.g. in Kului) on the tenses based on the past participle (cf. Ṭhākur 1975).
Pahari dialects have preserved or have introduced new A marking which is equal to the Instr., thus complying with one of the implications of ergativity (proposed e.g. by Klimov 1983). In Eastern Pahari the old synthetic Instr. case has been replaced by the postpositional case, in fact repeating the previous pattern which treated equally A and Obl. argument and which is still existent in Western Pahari.
Another peculiarity is the employment of the ergative marker in the obligative or future domain. This can again be perceived as either retaining or reinforcing the old patterns. In contemporary dialects the instrumental marking of A in the obligative construction is being ousted by Dat./Acc. marking, thus coming closer to the Modern Standard Hindi pattern. There is also another tendency noticeable in Western Pahari, namely emergence of pattern based on genitive A marking (Hendriksen 1986; Zoller 2008).
As regards the introduction of O marking, its spread from the pronominal to the nominal system is a sign of the shift towards morphological nominativity. One can thus speak of two opposite tendencies, namely reinforcement of the ergative A marking and spread of the accusative O marking.
At the level of syntax Pahari dialects can be interpreted as mixed pivot languages. Evidence for such a claim comes from newly discovered inscriptions from Kumaon and Western Nepal and it can be additionally supported by other early varieties of Hindi such as Braj and Awadhi.
Although early Pahari inscriptions show predominantly absolutives controlled by A, there are several instances of conjunction reduction which are clearly not controlled by A of the main clause. What is more, co-referential deletion in contemporary Pahari still shows an S/O pivot.
The resultative constructions in Pahari, formed from perfective bases, should constitute evidence for the loss of ergativity in NIA (Khokhlova 2001). However Pahari dialects, among other NIA tongues, remain ‘strongly’ ergative, preserving non-nominative agent marking even in objective and possessive resultative constructions (cf. Nedjalkov & Jaxontov 1988). These structural similarities with Punjabi – but not with Rajasthani – can be partly accounted for by language contact; however individual developments cannot be excluded (e.g. genitive agent marking in certain Western Pahari dialects). The non-nominative patterns in the static domain coincide with reinforcement of the ergative pattern in Pahari as opposed to its attrition in Rajasthani or Hindi.
The data for the present research has been excerpted from Western Pahari inscriptions (Chhabra 1957), Eastern Pahari inscriptions (Pokharel 1974; Cauhān 2008; Joshi 2009), reference grammars, folk texts and the author’s field notes.
Доклад Я.Г. Тестельца, предварительно объявленный на 31 октября, состоится в январе 2012.