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Alignment Change in Iranian Languages : A Construction Grammar Approach / Geoffrey L.J. Haig.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT] ; 37Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2008]Copyright date: ©2008Description: 1 online resource (366 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9783110195866
  • 9783110198614
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 491.5
LOC classification:
  • PK6035.H35 2008
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Alignment in Old Iranian -- Chapter 3. Western Middle Iranian -- Chapter 4. Case systems in West Iranian -- Chapter 5. Kurdish (Northern Group) -- Chapter 6. The Central group -- Chapter 7. Conclusions -- Backmatter
Summary: The Iranian languages, due to their exceptional time-depth of attestation, constitute one of the very few instances where a shift from accusative alignment to split-ergativity is actually documented. Yet remarkably, within historical syntax, the Iranian case has received only very superficial coverage. This book provides the first in-depth treatment of alignment change in Iranian, from Old Persian (5 C. BC) to the present. The first part of the book examines the claim that ergativity in Middle Iranian emerged from an Old Iranian agented passive construction. This view is rejected in favour of a theory which links the emergence of ergativity to External Possession. Thus the primary mechanisms involved is not reanalysis, but the extension of a pre-existing construction. The notion of Non-Canonical Subjecthood plays a pivotal role, which in the present account is linked to the semantics of what is termed Indirect Participation. In the second part of the book, a comparative look at contemporary West Iranian is undertaken. It can be shown that throughout the subsequent developments in the morphosyntax, distinct components such as agreement, nominal case marking, or the grammar of cliticisation, in fact developed remarkably independently of one another. It was this de-coupling of sub-systems of the morphosyntax that led to the notorious multiplicity of alignment types in Iranian, a fact that also characterises past-tense alignments in the sister branch of Indo-European, Indo-Aryan. Along with data from more than 20 Iranian languages, presented in a manner that renders them accessible to the non-specialist, there is extensive discussion of more general topics such as the adequacy of functional accounts of changes in case systems, discourse pressure and the role of animacy, the notion of drift, and the question of alignment in early Indo-European.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9783110198614

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Alignment in Old Iranian -- Chapter 3. Western Middle Iranian -- Chapter 4. Case systems in West Iranian -- Chapter 5. Kurdish (Northern Group) -- Chapter 6. The Central group -- Chapter 7. Conclusions -- Backmatter

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http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

The Iranian languages, due to their exceptional time-depth of attestation, constitute one of the very few instances where a shift from accusative alignment to split-ergativity is actually documented. Yet remarkably, within historical syntax, the Iranian case has received only very superficial coverage. This book provides the first in-depth treatment of alignment change in Iranian, from Old Persian (5 C. BC) to the present. The first part of the book examines the claim that ergativity in Middle Iranian emerged from an Old Iranian agented passive construction. This view is rejected in favour of a theory which links the emergence of ergativity to External Possession. Thus the primary mechanisms involved is not reanalysis, but the extension of a pre-existing construction. The notion of Non-Canonical Subjecthood plays a pivotal role, which in the present account is linked to the semantics of what is termed Indirect Participation. In the second part of the book, a comparative look at contemporary West Iranian is undertaken. It can be shown that throughout the subsequent developments in the morphosyntax, distinct components such as agreement, nominal case marking, or the grammar of cliticisation, in fact developed remarkably independently of one another. It was this de-coupling of sub-systems of the morphosyntax that led to the notorious multiplicity of alignment types in Iranian, a fact that also characterises past-tense alignments in the sister branch of Indo-European, Indo-Aryan. Along with data from more than 20 Iranian languages, presented in a manner that renders them accessible to the non-specialist, there is extensive discussion of more general topics such as the adequacy of functional accounts of changes in case systems, discourse pressure and the role of animacy, the notion of drift, and the question of alignment in early Indo-European.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)