Alignment Change in Iranian Languages: A Construction Grammar Approach

381 Pages·2008·1.26 MB·English

by  Geoffrey L. J. Haig

Alignment Change in Iranian
Languages: A Construction
Grammar Approach
Geoffrey L. J. Haig
Mouton de Gruyter
Alignment Change in Iranian Languages
≥
Empirical Approaches
to Language Typology
37
Editors
Georg Bossong
Bernard Comrie
Yaron Matras
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Alignment Change
in Iranian Languages
A Construction Grammar Approach
by
Geoffrey L. J. Haig
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
MoutondeGruyter(formerlyMouton,TheHague)
isaDivisionofWalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,Berlin.
(cid:2)(cid:2)Printedonacid-freepaperwhichfallswithintheguidelinesofthe
ANSItoensurepermanenceanddurability.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Haig,Geoffrey.
Alignment change in Iranian languages : a construction grammar
approach/GeoffreyL.J.Haig.
p.cm.(cid:2)(Empiricalapproachestolanguagetypology;37)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-3-11-019586-6(cloth:alk.paper)
1. Iranian languages (cid:2) Verb. 2. Iranian languages (cid:2) Ergative
constructions. 3.Iranianlanguages(cid:2)Transitivity. 4.Iranianlan-
guages(cid:2)Tense. I.Title.
PK6035.H35 2008
4911.5(cid:2)dc22
2007047473
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ISBN 978-3-11-019586-6
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Acknowledgements
Workonthisbookgoesbackalmostadecade,andhasbeendependentonthe
supportofalargenumberofpeopleandinstitutions.Itismygreatpleasureto
acknowledgetheirvariouscontributionshere,inveryroughchronologicalor-
der.Beforedoingso,letmefirstexpressmygratitudetothosenativespeakers
of Iranian languages who with unfailing patience and good humour so will-
ingly shared their knowledge with me: Ismet Ramm, Sadiq Basid, Behrooz
Shojai, Parwin Mahmutweyssi, Abdullah Incekan, Ergin Opengin, Mehmet
S¸erifDerince,andmanyotherswhoprefertoremainanonymous.
A two-year research position (1999–2001) funded by the Deutsche For-
schungsgemeinschaft (Grant number Mo 728/2-1) enabled me to begin seri-
ously investigating alignment in Iranian. I am deeply indebted to the project
supervisor, UlrikeMosel, for herencouragement, rigour and unfailing spirit,
which have been a continuing source of inspiration ever since. A short vis-
iting fellowship at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (La Trobe
University) in2003 helped meclarify manyoftheideasbehind chapter two;
IwouldliketothankAlexandraAikhenvaldandBobDixonfortheirgeneros-
ity in providing such a stimulating research environment and infrastructure.
The fruits of those earlier endeavours were submitted to the Philosophische
FakultätoftheUniversityofKielasaHabilitationsschrift (Haig2004a), and
I am indebted to the members of the commission for their critical input: Ul-
rike Mosel, Ludwig Paul, Harald Thun and Jarich Hoekstra. In the interven-
ing years I began to delve deeper into the history of the Iranian languages
in search of answers to some of the unresolved issues. However, historical
Iranian philology is extremely rugged terrain for the uninitiated; without the
assistance of several experienced guides I would doubtless have gone hope-
lesslyastray.Inparticular,LudwigPaulhasbeen,andcontinuestobeaboun-
tiful source of knowledge on historical Iranian linguistics. Bo Utas, Agnes
Korn and Prods Oktor Skjærvø also made very significant contributions in
theinterpretation ofthehistorical data,whichIgratefully acknowledge here.
Thereal breakthrough inbringing this book intoitsfinalform wasmade
possible through a six-month research fellowship from the Swedish Col-
legium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala (2005–2006). At that won-
derful institution I not only found the time, but also the company and the
vi Acknowledgements
resources to extend the data base to include a reasonable selection of West
Iranian languages, and partial coverage of Middle Iranian. In particular, I
would like to thank Björn Wittrock, Barbro Klein and all the staff of SCAS
forprovidingsuchamarvellouslyinvigorating environment, andLarsJohan-
sonandÉvaCsatófororganizingtheinterdisciplinaryresearchgroup.During
my time at SCAS, Don Stilo initiated me into the study of the minority lan-
guagesofIran,andhasbeenmymentoronmoremattersthanIcaretoname
since.AmongmyothercolleaguesatSCAS,ProdsOktorSkjærvø,Christiane
Bulut,BoUtas,CarinaJahaniandSergeAxonovalsocontributedindifferent
waystoshapingtheideasputdownhere,thoughtheymaynotrecognizetheir
respectivecontributions, orevenagreewithwhatIhavemadeofthem.Later
versions of the manuscript benefited enormously from the critical input of
NicoleNau,SzymonSłodowicz,AgnesKorn,ThomasJuegel,ShaharShirtz,
DeniseBailey,ParwinMahmutweyssi,GerardoDeCaro,BehroozShojaiand
ananonymousreviewerfromMoutondeGruyter.Partsofthebookwerepre-
sentedatvariousvenues,andIwouldlikethanktheaudiencesthereformuch
critical discussion: the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe
University, Melbourne (March 2003); LENCA 2, Kazan (May 2004); the
Workshop on the Evolution of Syntactic Relations, Mainz (Feb. 2004); the
Workshop on Case at Uppsala University (Jan. 2006); the FirstInternational
Conference on Iranian Linguistics in Leipzig (June 2005), and the Second
International Conference onIranianLinguistics inHamburg(August2007).
The staff at Mouton de Gruyter were extremely helpful throughout the
publishingprocess,inparticularUrsulaKleinhenzandWolfgangKonwitsch-
ny. Christoph Eyrich mastered countless difficulties in the final formatting
with admirable patience and professionalism, and Allison Peirse and Stefan
Schnell did a fine job of proofreading the manuscript at very short notice.
Finally,awordofgratitudetomyfamilyfortheirunflaggingsupport,asource
of great comfort across many years of what at times has been fairly solitary
labour.
Contents
Acknowledgements v
Abbreviations ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Aimsandassumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 TheIranianlanguages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 AlignmentintheIraniancontext . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Constructions andsyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 AlignmentinOldIranian 23
2.1 Themana¯ kartamconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2 Implications fordiachronic syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3 Whatisapassive? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4 Re-assessing them.k.construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.5 Thesemantics oftheGenitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.6 Summingupthealternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
2.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3 WesternMiddleIranian 89
3.1 MiddleIranian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.2 PastTransitiveConstructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.3 Thecasesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3.4 Caseandperson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.5 Pronominalclitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.6 Cliticsexpressing corearguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.7 Pasttransitive verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3.8 SummaryofMiddleIranian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4 CasesystemsinWestIranian 131
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.2 Threeprocesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.3 Innovated objectmarkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
viii Contents
4.4 TheTatic-typelanguages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
4.5 Explanations forchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
4.6 Caseandanimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
4.7 Towardsasolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
4.8 Summaryofcase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
5 Kurdish(NorthernGroup) 201
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
5.2 Overviewofthemorphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
5.3 Thecanonical ergativeconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
5.4 Deviations fromcanonical ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
5.5 Summaryofdeviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
5.6 EvidencefromBad¯ına¯n¯ı . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
5.7 SummaryoftheNorthernGroup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
6 TheCentralgroup 277
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
6.2 Suleimanimorphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
6.3 Pasttransitive constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
6.4 Aligningcaseandagreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
6.5 SummaryoftheCentralGroup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
6.6 Desire,Obligation, Possession, andErgativity . . . . . . . . . . 305
7 Conclusions 311
7.1 Abriefsynopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
7.2 Arealpressureandalignment change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
7.3 AlignmentinIndo-European . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
7.4 Onexplanations forchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Appendix 333
A.1 CaseinOldPersian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
A.2 Changingrulesofcliticplacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
References 339
Subjectindex 359
IndexofIranianlanguages 365
Indexofnon-Iranianlanguages 367
Abbreviations
A Subjectoftransitiveverb LOC Locative
A-past Aofpasttenseverbform M Masculine
A-pres Aofpresenttenseverbform MED Medium(MiddleVoice)
ABS Absolute MHG MiddleHighGerman
ACC Accusative m.k. mana¯ kartam(construction)
Adj Adjective NEG Negation
ADP Adposition NCS Non-CanonicalSubject
Bad¯ın. Bad¯ına¯n¯ı(dialectofKurdish, NHG NewHighGerman
NorthernGroup) NP Nounphrase
CLC Clitic N Noun
COP Copula O Objectoftransitiveverb
DAT Dative O-past Oofpasttenseverbform
DEF Definite O-pres Oofpresenttenseverbform
Det. Determiner OBL Oblique
DIR Direct(case) PTC PastTransitiveConstruction
DIREC Directional PL Plural
DOM DifferentialObjectMarking PLUP Pluperfect
EXCL Exclamatory PP Prepositionalphrase
F Feminine PST Past
FUT Fut PTCPL Participle
GEN Genitive PROG Progressive
IMP Imperative RECIPR Reciprocal
IND Indicative REFL Reflexive
INDEF Indefinite s Singular
INNOBJ Innovatedobjectmarker S Subjectofintransitiveverb
INTERR Interrogative SAP SpeechActParticipant
IRR Irrealis TAM Tense,AspectandModality
IZ Izafeparticle TSA TenseSensitiveAlignment
IZF FeminineIzafeparticle V Verb
IZM MasculineIzafeparticle VP Verbphrase
IZP PluralIzafeparticle 1s/2s/3s Firstpersonsingular/
Kurm. Kurmanji(alternativename Second.../Third...
forNorthernGroup,Kurdish)