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9 - Reciprocal constructions in Asamiya
- from Assamese grammar
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- By Runima Chowdhary, Gauhati University
- Edited by Gwendolyn Hyslop, Research Fellow, Linguistics, Australian National University, Stephen Morey, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Centre for Research on Language Diversity, La Trobe University, Mark W. Post, Oberassistent, Historical Linguistics, Universität Bern
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- Book:
- North East Indian Linguistics
- Published by:
- Foundation Books
- Published online:
- 05 September 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 March 2013, pp 213-233
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Summary
Introduction
The term reciprocal construction refers to specialized patterns used in languages to encode reciprocity. Reciprocity is understood as: (a) a kind of symmetrical situation between two mutuants, i.e., participants or arguments, that are engaged in a mutual situation, where (b) the relation between the mutuants A and B is the same as that between B and A (Haspelmath 2007: 2087; Lichtenberk 1985: 21). Put differently, a reciprocal construction encodes a mutual relationship between at least two non-identical participants simultaneously engaged in an identical situation. Some of the most widespread reciprocal strategies which get conventionalized in grammars are affixes, pronouns and clitics (Nedjalkov 2007: 102). Cross-linguistically, the pronominal reciprocal is the most common among syntactic reciprocals, while affixes are one of the important types of morphological devices, and clitics fall into an intermediate position between the two (Nedjalkov 2007: 102). Apart from syntactic and morphological reciprocal strategies, languages may have lexical reciprocal, which is to say lexical words with inherent reciprocal meanings; such words are used for denoting mutual configurations by themselves, and need not occur in a special grammatical construction (Haspelmath 2007; Knjazev 2007).
This chapter presents a descriptive analysis of the various strategies employed in Asamiya (Assamese) for encoding reciprocity in mono-clausal constructions. It is organized into five sections: following this Introduction, §2 is a brief overview of Asamiya.
13 - On Classifiers in Asamiya
- from Classifiers
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- By Runima Chowdhary, Gauhati University
- Edited by Gwendolyn Hyslop, Specialist in the East Bodish languages of Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, Stephen Morey, Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University, Mark W. Post, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Anthropological Linguistics at The Cairns Institute of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia
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- Book:
- North East Indian Linguistics
- Published by:
- Foundation Books
- Published online:
- 05 May 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2012, pp 269-291
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Summary
Introduction
This study is a descriptive account of the classifier system in Asamiya (Assamese), used as one of the most productive noun-encoding devices in the language. Asamiya shares many linguistic features with genetically related Indic languages, particularly with the Magadhan languages of Eastern India, but makes the most extensive and elaborate use of classifiers in terms of their scope and function. This phenomenon is generally ascribed to the influences and counter influences of the non-Aryan languages, particularly the neighbouring Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in and around Assam from the very early periods of its history (Kakati 2007: 278, 381–382; Goswami 1968; Emeneau 1956).
The study is concerned with various aspects of classifiers in Asamiya, as organised into different sections. §2 discusses the distribution of classifiers in the NP structure. §3 deals with the pragmatic, semantic and grammatical functions of classifiers. §4 attempts to subcategorize classifiers on the basis of their semantic considerations, followed by concluding remarks.
The classifiers in the examples are printed in bold and glossed as conglomerations of inherent semantic features without their grammatical or pragmatic information which are interspersed among the relevant texts, tables and/or free translations of examples. However, due to constraints of space, glossing in the Tables has been eschewed.
12 - Copular Sentences in Asamiya
- from Eastern Indo-Aryan
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- By Runima Chowdhary, Gauhati University
- Edited by Gwendolyn Hyslop, Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Stephen Morey, Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Mark W. Post, Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University
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- Book:
- North East Indian Linguistics
- Published by:
- Foundation Books
- Published online:
- 26 October 2011
- Print publication:
- 02 January 2011, pp 197-222
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Summary
Introduction
Copular constructions have since long drawn the attention of scholars engaged in explorative studies of a particular language or across languages because of the intriguing features that set copular constructions apart from other types of constructions in language(s). The term “copula” (COP), as a constituent of a copular construction, has been used in typological studies to refer to any morpheme (affix, particle or verb) that links or “couples” a subject with a copula complement in a “family” of constructions, collectively often referred to as “predicate nominal constructions” (Payne 1997: 111–14). In contrast to the dimension of verb complementation distinguished in terms of the number of objects present, a copular construction, characterized by a copula, contains an obligatory copula complement (CC)/predicative complement (PC), predicated of the copula subject (CS) (Dixon 2004; Huddleston & Pullum 2002). Cross-linguistically, “the most basic copular construction” is used to encode the meanings of classification (inclusion/group membership) or identification (specification/equation of two participants “normally encoded as noun phrases,” others being “less basic” (Curnow 2000: 2). Typological studies show that besides that of inclusion and equation, copular sentences are used to express other assertions like that of location, attribution, possession or existence of a referent (Payne 1997; Declerck 1988; Pustet 2003). The distinctively different categories of overt copulas that have been attested across languages are mostly verbal, pronominal and particle (Stassen 1997: 85, cited in Pustet 2003: 45; Payne 1997: 118–119).
13 - Explorations in the Nonfinite Verbal System in Asamiya
- from Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics
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- By Runima Chowdhary, Department of Linguistics, Gauhati University
- Edited by Stephen Morey, Research Fellow, La Trobe University, Australia, Mark Post, Research Fellow, La Trobe University, Australia
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- Book:
- North East Indian Linguistics
- Published by:
- Foundation Books
- Published online:
- 26 October 2011
- Print publication:
- 31 March 2008, pp 221-240
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Summary
Introduction
This paper is an attempt to redefine the notion of Nonfinite verb in Standard Asamiya (Assamese) and to provide a description of the verbal forms in the language on the basis of factual observations of the inventory of the nonfinite verbals in the language, thereby explicating their different uses and functions for fulfilling various communicative needs in the language.
A survey of the available works on the structure of Asamiya shows a dearth of attempts at a comprehensive treatment on the issue. The works of various traditional grammarians of the language, starting from Hemchandra Barua's pioneering work (first published in 1857) are more or less confined to providing a notional basis for the concept of nonfinite verbs, as evidenced from the term Asamapika Kriya (Incomplete verb) popularly used to refer to such verbal forms. The notion of ‘incompleteness’ has been defined by different scholars in various ways, by some as indicative of ‘non-completion of a sentence’ (Barua 1984:138), whereas by some as that of ‘non-completion of an action’ (Bora 2005:136), yet by some others as indicative of not only of ‘non-completion of a sentence, but also that of completion or progression of an action’ (Goswami 2003:295). Kakati (1972), the first ever analytic work carried out on the language, while subcategorizing such forms as conjunctives or gerunds, infinitives and participles has basically focused on their morphological derivation from a historical perspective only. However, all are unanimously in agreement that a nonfinite verb is an invariable form lacking concord in terms of the grammatical category of person.