Chapter published in:
Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change: Studies in honor of Henning Andersen
Edited by Lars Heltoft, Iván Igartua, Brian D. Joseph, Kirsten Jeppesen Kragh and Lene Schøsler
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 345] 2019
► pp. 181–191

Anticausative and passive in Vedic

Which way reanalysis?

| University of Illinois
In a 2001 publication on reanalysis and linguistic change, Henning Andersen states that “(i)t is not clear yet what constitutes structural ambiguity in surface realizations; this remains a question for the future”. As a tribute to Henning, this paper examines a case of (near-)systematic structural ambiguity regarding Vedic passives and anticausatives and demonstrates that this ambiguity creates serious obstacles to determining whether anticausatives are reanalyzed from passives or vice versa. In fact, given the persistent structural ambiguity it is possible that different speakers preferred different accounts, whether for all relevant verbs, for subsets of the verbs, or even for individual verbs, in individual contexts.
Keywords: reanalysis, structural ambiguity, passive, anticausative, historical change
Published online: 18 June 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.345.07hoc
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