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Indo-Aryan Ergativity in Typological and Diachronic Perspective
Edited by Eystein Dahl and Krzysztof Stroński
[Typological Studies in Language 112] 2016
► pp. 133–164

Why the ergative case in modal (in)transitive clauses? The historical evolution of aspect, modality, ergative and locative in Indo-Aryan

| Inalco, Paris, UMR 8202 (CNRS | INALCO | IRD)

Hindi transitive verbs, contrary to Bengali verbs, require the ergative structure in the perfective aspect, an atypical feature for an Indo-European language, and are considered to display only surface ergativity, since most syntactic and discursive properties are attached to the agent. However its affinities with other locational predications in the dative, as well as the historical parallel rise of both pre-ergative and modal future patterns in Western Indo-Aryan, the paper develops Montaut’s earlier suggestions (1996, 2006), with an attempt to reconcile Benveniste’s well-known theory of the “possessive perfect” (1952) with Kurylowicz’s views on the parallel evolution of future and past in Romance and Persian languages (1960), and a study of ergative and dative new markers in various Indo-Aryan languages.

Published online: 14 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.112.05mon
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