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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Goals and other post-verbal arguments in Balochi and Bashkardi

Agnes Korn

Résumé

This paper builds on HAIG 2014, who shows that the post-verbal position of “goal” arguments is very common in Kurdish varieties, and regular in Kurmanji. I will contrast his findings with those from two other Western Ir. languages, confirming the main point of HAIG’s argument and contributing precisions on some part of it. As noted by (Haig 2015:408), languages that share the combination of (1) OV word order, prepositions and noun-genitive order are very rare cross-linguistically. Only eight among the 1142 languages in the sample of (Dryer 2013) show this configuration, of which three belong to the Western Iranian group (viz. Persian, Tajik and Central Kurdish), and one is an Aramaic variety under strong Iranian influence. HAIG concludes that Western Iranian is an “outlier” of an (otherwise) “OV/postposition/GN block” and the configuration in (1) is likely to be due to language contact (Haig 2015:410), Kurdish and NENA (Northeastern Neo-Aramaic) being the cases in point that he studies. Haig proceeds to argue that Kurdish (and some more closely related Ir. varieties) and NENA developed the combination of OV and post-verbal goals under strong mutual influence, yielding a pattern that is unusual for both (otherwise head-initial) Semitic and (head-final) Iranian. This can also be seen in the fact that postverbal goals are regular in Kurdish varieties in the area of Semitic influence and less generalised in other Kurdish (and related) varieties. In Haig’s article, these include the goal of verbs of motion as well as recipients of “give”-verbs and addressees of speech verbs (Haig 2015:413). In some of the varieties, the position of the goal argument (and/or its being human or nun-human) can determine whether a preposition is used; for instance, the postverbal position being typical for goals, prepositions are not used in some varieties while they would be on preverbal goals (Haig 2015:416–421). I argue that Bashkardi (a group of dialects spoken in the province of Hormozgan) and Balochi (spoken in the far south-east of the Ir. sphere) represent cases of contrast that might shed some light on Haig’s results. Differently from Kurmanji or NENA, both are not in an area of strong contact with Semitic and Turkic languages. Crucially, Bashkardi shares the features in (1). Balochi, on the other hand, shares the features only partly: traditionally it largely is a member of the “OV/postposition/GN block”, although the dialects of Sistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan have moved towards the Persian model. Differently from what Haig observes for Kurmanji, the postverbal position is not grammaticalised for goals in these two languages, but it is the most frequent position for goals of verbs of motion and occurs with and without adpositions. Lower on the frequency scale are other postverbal goals, viz. indirect objects. These overlap with direct objects that, contrary to Haig’s findings, are likewise not infrequently found in this position. Another type of arguments that is frequently postposed are other types of movements (e.g. coming from somewhere) and other types of location (non-directional) and related metaphoric expressions, suggesting that goal-related patterns might not be the only types of argument for which there is maybe a cognitive reason to be placed postverbally.

Domaines

Linguistique
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Dates et versions

halshs-01951352 , version 1 (11-12-2018)

Licence

Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale - Pas de modification

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-01951352 , version 1

Citer

Agnes Korn. Goals and other post-verbal arguments in Balochi and Bashkardi. (S)OV basic word order correlates and information structure, Dec 2018, Paris, France. ⟨halshs-01951352⟩
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