Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Indo-Aryan languages'

This study presents selected features in the phonology and grammar of Sauji, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in a village in the Kunar province in north-eastern Afghanistan. Sauji belongs to a cluster of (western) Shina languages - a subgroup of the Hindukush Indo-Aryan languages, which are spoken in large parts of northernmost Pakistan, north-eastern Afghanistan, and the disputed Kashmir region. As many languages in the Hindukush region, Sauji is largely underdescribed, hence the aim of this study was to provide a grammar sketch of the language, based on materials from field trips to the region. The results were compared to the closest related languages, to put the language into a broader context. Sauji is generally very similar to its closest linguistic relative, Palula, but also shows clear influence of Gawarbati, another Indo-Aryan language, on its phonology, lexicon, and some grammatical features.
Denna studie presenterar ett urval av fonologiska och grammatiska drag i sauji, ett indoariskt språk som talas i en by i Kunarprovinsen i nordöstra Afghanistan. Sauji tillhör ett kluster av shinaspråk, som är en undergrupp av de hindukush-indoariska språken som talas i stora delar av nordligaste Pakistan, nord-östra Afghanistan och det omstridda Kashmirområdet. I likhet med många av språken i denna region är sauji knapphändigt beskrivet och därför är målet med den här studien att bidra med en grammatikskiss. Studien är baserat på data som har samlats in under fältarbete i regionen. Resultaten jämfördes med de närmast besläktade språken för att undersöka språket i en bredare kontext. Sauji är i stora drag väldigt likt palula, det närmast besläktade språket, men det har också visat sig att fonologin, lexikonet och även vissa grammatiska drag har påverkats mycket av gawarbati, ett annat indoariskt språk som talas i omgivningen.
Language Contact and Relatedness in the Hindu Kush Region, Swedish Research Council (VR 421-2014-631)

Punjabi, a language primarily spoken throughout Pakistan and in the northern Indian state of Punjab, is one of a few closely related Indo-Aryan languages, including Lahnda and Western Pahari, or Dogri-Kangri, which are counted among the world's tone languages, despite having no genetic link to other recognized tone languages. Few grammars have been published for Punjabi, and of those available, the grammars either fail to discuss the existence of lexical tone or note tone only in passing, and these disagree among themselves on even the number of tones. Unfortunately, those grammars which do make note of the presence of lexical tone often fail to discuss the tone patterns or tonemics of Punjabi in a linguistically meaningful way or provide substantial evidentiary support for their own claims regarding tone pattern. This may be due to the fact that, unlike Chinese, which has a contrastive pitch on each syllable, Punjabi "does not lean heavily on pitch phonemes" (Malik, 1995). Still, they are widely evident in the spoken language and are in need of descriptive research supported by significant empirical data. It is the conclusion of this research that the high and low tones found in the Panjabi language can be directly correlated to the classic Gurmukhi orthography. The script features historically aspirated and unaspirated variations of most consonants, which, in certain phonemic environments, are explicit indicators of the tonal qualities found in the spoken language.

This is a study of processes of structural and functional diversification of the uses of three cognate verbs across the Indo-Iranian language family: “do/make”, “be/become”, and “give”. First, this study identifies over sixty distinct construction types in which these verbs are used, including complex predicate constructions, nominal predication constructions, serial verb constructions, and several distinct auxiliary constructions. Since the sets of verbs studied here are cognates, and share a common source, crosslinguistic differences in their uses are the result of grammatical change, and especially shared and parallel innovations of similar uses. Then, this study presents a taxonomy of different complex predication types with “do/make”, and shows that there are general patterns in the deployment of different types of complex predication to express different types of situations. These patterns exhibit “transitivity prominence” previously identified by typologists with “heavy” or “lexical” verbs. This study then shows that these patterns are the result of several distinct pathways of grammatical change, often motivated by analogy to existing constructions, giving raise to different types of N-V complex predication constructions. Then, this study shows that despite the fact that Indo-Iranian speakers can potentially deploy distinct constructions to encode each of the six nominal predication functions, sets of such functions are often co-expressed by the same structural coding means, especially clauses with cognate “be/become” verbs. This study uses a novel method, based on bipartite network graphs, to compare of the degree to which nominal predication functions are co-expressed in different languages. Finally, this study shows that the three sets of cognate verbs are more likely to be used similarity within branches and subbranches of Indo-Iranian than across branches. The scope of this branches, however, is different for different verbs: “do/make” and “give” behave more similarly in languages which belong to the same major branch, Iranian or Indo-Aryan, but “be/become” clusters are at different levels of subbranching. This is the result of the different types of innovations attested with these verbs: reanalysis and actualization motivated by analogy with “do/make” and “give”, and metaphorical and metonymy extensions with “be/become”.

The languages belonging to the group commonly known as the “Dardic languages” are on some levels insufficiently researched and have barely been subject to any comparative research on their finer grammatical structures, such as their tense and aspect systems. This comparative study analyses three Dardic languages spoken in the central Dardic speaking area (Khowar, Gawri, Palula) in view of their tense and aspect system, to find out how similar the languages are in this respect. The comparison is based on Dahl‟s 1985 Tense and Aspect questionnaire, partly to have an equal, comparable data set, and partly to be able to tie the results to the greater field of language typology. The study shows that the languages studied have a common primary focus on IPFV:PFV distinction, where past tense often is a secondary implicature following perfective aspect. There are notable differences in how and if the languages mark future tense and habitual aspect. The subject merits further studies on an extended sample and with more languages from the Dardic group.

This dissertation aims to provide a grammatical description of Dameli (ISO-639-3: dml), an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 5 000 people in the Domel Valley in Chitral in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in the North-West of Pakistan. Dameli is a left-branching SOV language with considerable morphological complexity, particularly in the verb, and a complicated system of argument marking. The phonology is relatively rich, with 31 consonant and 16 vowel phonemes. This is the first extensive study of this language. The analysis presented here is based on original data collected primarily between 2003-2008 in cooperation with speakers of the language in Peshawar and Chitral, including the Domel Valley. The core of the data consists of recorded texts and word lists, but questionnaires and paradigms of word forms have also been used. The main emphasis is on describing the features of the language as they appear in texts and other material, rather than on conforming them to any theory, but the analysis is informed by functional analysis and linguistic typology, hypotheses on diachronical developments and comparisons with neighbouring and related languages. The description is divided into sections describing phonology, morphology and syntax, with chapters on a range of individual subjects such as particular word classes and phrase types, phonological and syntactical phenomena. This is not intended to be an exhaustive reference grammar; some topics are only touched upon briefly while others are treated in more detail and suggestions for further research are given at various points throughout the work.

In this thesis, 9 Indo-Aryan languages which have previously been classified as Shina languages were analyzed. A cognate analysis of basic vocabulary was conducted, in order to explore the relatedness of the languages. Furthermore, a selection of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features was analyzed, in order to explore areal patterns among the languages. The data mainly consisted of first-hand data, which has been collected for the project ”Language contact and relatedness in the Hindu Kush region”, but even previous descriptions of the languages were used. The results primarily confirmed hypotheses about the relatedness of the Shina languages, and showed interesting areal patterns.The data also suggested that the Shina languages share many typical features with other Hindu Kush Indo-Aryan languages, such as SOV word order, the use of postpositions, sex based grammatical gender, and moderately complex to complex syllable structures. Other features, such as aspiration, retroflexion, and case alignment in noun phrases showed more variation and could certainly be relevant for future studies on these languages.
I den här uppsatsen har 9 indoariska språk som tidigare har klassificerats som shinaspråk analyserats. För att undersöka hur språken är besläktade med varandra har en kognatanalys av det grundläggande ordförrådet genomförts. Dessutom har ett urval fonologiska, morfologiska, syntaktiska, och lexikaladrag analyserats, i syfte att undersöka areala mönster hos språken. Datan för undersökningen bestod huvudsakligen av förstahandsdata, som har samlats in för projektet “Språkkontakt och släktskap i Hindukushregionen”, men även tidigare beskrivningar av språken har används. Resultaten bekräftade mestadels hypoteser om hur shinaspråken är besläktade med varandra, och visade intressanta areala mönster. Det visade sig att shinaspråken delar många drag med andra indoariska språk i Hindukushregionen, såsom SOV ordföljd, användning av postpositioner, grammatisk genus baserat på biologisk kön, och medelkomplexa till komplexa stavelsestrukturer. Andra drag, exempelvis aspiration, retroflexion,och kasuskongruens i nominalfraser, visade större variation och skulle kunna vara relevanta för framtida studier av dessa språk.
Language Contact and Relatedness in the Hindu Kush Region, Swedish Research Council (VR 421-2014-631)

In this thesis, I explore the use of copulas in non-copula constructions in the languages of South Asia to establish possible genetic and areal tendencies in the distribution. Using materials – language descriptions and data – from Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, I examine the phenomenon in 206 languages from four families (Munda, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Sino-Tibetan). It is found that the languages of South Asia appear to be more likely than the world-wide average to use the copula in non-copula constructions and that at least Munda, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan use it in the same way with regards to tense, namely in the past and present but not the future. Finally, I argue that there is some evidence supporting that the use of the copula in non-copula constructions is an areal feature, though more work is needed to make any definitive conclusions.

Surrounding the Hindukush mountain chain is a stretch of land where as many as 50 distinct languages varieties of several language meet, in the present study referred to as “The Greater Hindukush” (GHK). In this area a large number of languages of at least six genera are spoken in a multi-linguistic setting. As the region is in part characterised by both contact between languages as well as isolation, it constitutes an interesting field of study of similarities and diversity, contact phenomena and possible genealogical connections. The present study takes in the region as a whole and attempts to characterise the morphology of the many languages spoken in it, by studying three parameters: phonological fusion, exponence, and flexivity in view of grammatical markers for Tense-Mood-Aspect, person marking, case marking, and plural marking on verbs and nouns. The study was performed with the perspective of areal typology, employed grammatical descriptions, and was in part inspired by three studies presented in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). It was found that the region is one of high linguistic diversity, even if there are common traits, especially between languages of closer contact, such as the Iranian and the Indo-Aryan languages along the Pakistani-Afghan border where purely concatenative formatives are more common. Polyexponential formatives seem more common in the western parts of the GHK as compared to the eastern. High flexivity is a trait common to the more central languages in the area. As the results show larger variation than the WALS studies, the question was raised of whether large-scale typological studies can be performed on a sample as limited as single grammatical markers. The importance of the region as a melting-pot between several linguistic families was also put forward.
Språkkontakt och språksläktskap i Hindukushregionen, Vetenskapsrådet, Projektnummer: 421-2014-631

The present study investigates discourse markers in Dardic languages (Indo-Aryan; Pakistan), focusing on the discourse markers ba and ta in Palula in comparison with other languages of the region, particularly Dameli in which two markers with the same form and similar functions have been observed. The results showed that Palula ba functions as a topic-marker, in addition to other functions, whereas ta only signals subsequence, except in an adversative construction ta... ba. In Dameli, both ba and ta function as topic-markers, in addition to other functions such as ta marking subsequence, and the ta... ba construction functions similarly to Palula. Interestingly, Kalasha and Gawri showed some similarities, as both have a topic-marker surfacing as ta and tä respectively, which can be used in the adversative constructions ta... o and tä... i respectively, both of which have another marker as the second element. No other language in the sample was found to have a construction similar to the ta... ba construction nor a marker similar in form and function to ba, but all have a subsequence marker resembling ta. These results indicated that the Palula markers ba and ta are part of an areal phenomenon encompassing at least the Chitral, Panjkora and Swat valleys, where Palula originally only had the Shina subsequence marker and later adapted the Dameli system into the language.
Denna studie undersöker diskursmarkörer i dardiska språk (indoariska; Pakistan) med fokus på diskursmarkörer ba och ta i palula i jämförelse med andra språk i regionen, i synnerhet dameli i vilket två markörer med samma form och liknande funktion har observerats. Resultaten visade att palula ba fungerar som topikmarkör, tillsammans med andra funktioner, medan ta enbart signalerar subsekvens, förutom i den adversativa konstruktionen ta... ba. I dameli fungerar både ba och ta som topikmarkörer, tillsammans med andra funktioner så som att ta markerar subsekvens, och konstruktionen ta... ba fungerar i likhet med palula. Av intresse är att kalasha och gawri uppvisade en del likheter, så som att båda har topikmarkörer i form av respektive ta och tä, vilka kan användas i språkens respektive adversativa konstruktioner ta... o och tä... i, varav båda använder en annan markör för det andra elementet. Inget annat språk i urvalet observerades ha en konstruktion lik ta... ba eller en markör lik ba i form och funktion, men alla har en subsekvensmarkör lik ta. Dessa resultat indikerar att palulas markörer ba och ta är en del av ett arealt fenomen som innefattar åtminstone dalgångarna Chitral, Panjkora och Swat, och att palula ursprungligen enbart hade shinas subsekvensmarkör och därefter integrerade damelis system in i språket.

The Hindu Kush region stretches from Afghanistan over Pakistan to North India and is home to what is commonly known as the Dardic languages. The Dardic langagues are a group of Indo-Aryan languages that have in isolation and under contact developed or retained features that can not be found in Indo-Aryan languages outside the region. In the ongoing project ”Language contact and relatedness in the Hindu Kush region” data on over 50 languages has been collected including nine varieties of northwest Indo-Aryan Pashai spoken in west Afghanistan. A cognate analysis and an analysis of phonological, morphological, syntactical and lexical features were conducted. The cognate analysis shows that the Pashai varieties build two clusters, a western group consisting of the three western Pashai varieties and an eastern group consisting of six eastern varieties. The structural analysis shows a more diverse picture with three potential clusters, a group of the two most western varieties, a northeastern group and a central group consisting of one western variety and two southeastern varieties. Some features found to be shared by languages in the region are also found in all Pashai varieties like a subject-object-verb order and postpositions.
Hindukushregionen sträcker sig från Afghanistan över Pakistan till norra Indien och hyser de vanligtvis så kallade dardiska språken. De dardiska språken tillhör de indo-ariska språken vilka i isolation och genom kontakt utvecklade eller bevarade drag som inte längre finns i indo-ariska språk utanför regionen. I det pågående projekt “Språkkontakt och språksläktskap i Hindukushregionen” samlades data från mer än 50 språk inklusive nio varietéer av det nordvästra indo-ariska språket Pashai som talas i västra Afghanistan. En kognatanalys och en analys av fonologiska, morfologiska, syntaktiska och lexikala drag genomfördes. Kognatanalysen visar att Pashai varieteterna formar kluster, en västragrupp av de tre västra varieteterna och en östra grupp av de sex östra varieteterna. Struktruanalysen visar en mer skiftande bild av tre potentiella kluster, en grupp av de två mest västra varieteterna, en nordöstra grupp och en centergrupp bestående av en västra varietet och två sydöstra varieteter. Några drag som anses vara delad av språken i regionen kan också konstateras i alla Pashaivarieteter som ensubjekt-objekt-verb följd och postpositioner.

Hindukush Indo-Aryan (HKIA) is a disputed subgroup of Indo-Aryan languages spoken within a linguistically diverse area stretching from northeastern Afghanistan, across northern Pakistan to northwestern India, principally covering the mountainous region of Hindukush–Karakoram–Western Himalaya. A noteworthy feature of some of these languages is a three-way demonstrative system, or three deictic terms used by speakers to direct one another’s attention to referents at different distances in their environment. It has been suggested that the distinguishing feature of one such demonstrative in HKIA is its referents’ remote distance from the interlocutors, or their absence from the environment altogether. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, it is to more closely examine the demonstrative systems of a sample of HKIA languages on the basis of fieldwork data; secondly, it is to compare the data to previous accounts of the systems, as well as to the demonstrative systems of other languages spoken in the region. The results provide evidence that two demonstratives in HKIA are distance-contrastive, and one is invisibility-contrastive vis-à-vis the other two. Such a three-term system is moreover shown to be present in languages of the area that span across three other genealogical families, which suggests that the feature may be areally influenced.
Hindukush-indoariska (HKIA) är en omtvistad grupp av indoariska språk som talas i ett språkrikt område från nordöstra Afghanistan, genom norra Pakistan till nordvästra Indien, vilket främst täcker Hindukush-, Karakoram- och västra Himalaya-bergen. Ett anmärkningsvärt drag i ett antal sådana språk är demonstrativsystem med tre nivåer, eller tre deiktiska termer som talare använder för att rikta varandras uppmärksamhet åt referenter vid olika avstånd i deras omgivning. Det har föreslagits att det utmärkande draget för en av HKIA-språkens sådana demonstrativor är det stora avståndet mellan dess referenter och talarna, eller rentav referenternas frånvaro från omgivningen. Syftet med denna studie är dubbelt: i första hand att närmre undersöka demonstrativsystemen hos ett urval av HKIA-språken på basis av fältdata; i andra hand att jämföra dessa data med tidigare beskrivningar av systemen, samt med demonstrativsystem i andra språk som talas i regionen. Resultatet ger bevis för att två demonstrativor i HKIA är avståndskontrastiva, och att en kontrasterar osynlighet från de andra två. Det påvisas dessutom att ett likadant tredelat system finns i språk som talas i området från tre andra genealogiska familjer, vilket tyder på att draget kan vara arealt signifikant.
Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush Region, Swedish Research Council, Project number: 421-2014-631

This is a study of demonstratives in Gawri [ISO 639-3: gwc] (Hindukush Indo-Aryan, HKIA), based on field data collected in Islamabad, Pakistan during the winter of 2016–2017. Previous studies of HKIA languages report systems of third-person pronouns with a three-way demonstrative contrast – two terms distinguishing between proximal and distal referents, and one used with accessible referents out of sight. Gawri, by contrast, exhibits a five-term system of demonstrative determiners, which is separate from its personal pronouns. This study investigates the deictic meaning, pragmatic use, and syntactic function of each demonstrative in Gawri as well as a comparative sample of four Indo-Aryan languages. The purpose is to assess differences in reference to accessible and inaccessible entities, and whether Gawri’s invisible term is viable in an exophoric (situational) context. A modified version of Wilkins’ (1999) demonstrative questionnaire was used to elicit data from seven speakers. Results indicate that Gawri’s invisible demonstrative is functionally exophoric on at least two discrete distances from the deictic center, while it is restricted to accessible referents in other HKIA languages. A reanalysis of Gawri’s demonstrative system is proposed, which reduces its number of terms to two within each of the parameters of distance and visibility.
Detta är en undersökning av demonstrativor i gawri [ISO 639-3: gwc] (Hindukush-indoariskt, HKIA) baserad på fältdata samlade i Islamabad, Pakistan under vintern 2016–2017. Tidigare studier i HKIA rapporterar tredjepersonpronomen med en tredelad demonstrativkontrast, varav två termer särskiljer proximala från distala referenter och en används med tillgängliga referenter utom synhåll. Gawri har i motsats ett femdelat system av demonstrativdeterminerare som är separata från dess personliga pronomen. Denna studie undersöker samtliga demonstrativors deiktiska betydelse, pragmatiska användning och syntaktiska funktion i gawri samt i ett jämförelsesampel med fyra indoariska språk. Syftet är att upptäcka eventuella skillnader i referens till tillgängliga och otillgängliga entiteter, samt huruvida den osynliga demonstrativan är tillämpbar i en exoforisk (situationell) kontext. En modifierad version av Wilkins (1999) demonstrative questionnaire användes för att elicitera data från sju talare. Resultatet visar att gawris osynliga demonstrativa är funktionellt exoforisk vid åtminstone två diskreta avstånd från den deiktiska mittpunkten, medan den är begränsad till tillgängliga referenter i andra HKIA-språk. En omanalys av gawris demonstrativsystem föreslås, vilken reducerar dess termer till två inom var och en av parametrarna avstånd och synlighet.
Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush Region, Swedish Research Council, Project number: 421-2014-631

The Greater Hindu Kush designates a mountainous area extending from Afghanistan over Pakistan, Tajikistan and India to the westernmost parts of China. It is home to over 50 lan- guages from six different phyla; Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Turkic, Tibeto-Burman and the language isolate Burushaski. Due to its unique geographical setting, it is characterised by language contact and isolation, which lays the perfect ground for research on linguistic diversity, language convergence and genealogical relations. The present study relies on data from the entire region and attempts to identify structural similarities based on lexical items from core vocabulary, numerals and kinship terms. The study reexamines the genealogical affiliation through lexical similarity and investigates areal patterns of vergence, i.e. the branching out or mergence of these patterns. Results reconfirm the established classification of the languages and indicate a certain level of structural simi- larity across language families for some features such as numeral bases, numeral composition and the terms for ‘parents’ and ‘parents-in-law’, yet it also shows great diversity for other features such as ‘grandchildren’ and one’s siblings’ partner.
Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush region (421-2014-631)

The discovery of Shinto Rosengro brings about new data to the panorama of old settlement Romani varieties in Italy. Discovered by Leonardo Piasere in the early 90s’ and partly published in 2001, the manuscripts witnessing this Neo-Indo-Aryan dialect were arranged from 1892 to 1911. The author, Sigismondo Caccini, was a man who had a strict contact with the community of Shinte Rosengre and took part to its short-range movements through Central Italy. The wide corpus of texts and grammatical descriptions by Caccini consists of six grammars, eighteen tales and four dictionaries counting about four thousand terms. It shows a Sinti variety carrying some peculiar features, which distinguish it from the other old settlement varieties on the Italian ground (Sinti and Abruzzian Romani). This work aims to the description of the morphology of Shinto Rosengro, and to the discussion and possible explanation of some of its peculiarities. It is divided in three main parts. In the first part, a description of the morphology of the word classes of Shinto Rosengro is given (the described classes are: noun, article, adjective, personal pronoun, possessives, demonstratives and verb). Every chapter of this first part is divided into two sections: the first section presents and, if possible, accounts for the forms given by the grammarian Caccini, and shows the evolution of his description; the second section offers a description of the morphology extracted by the texts in Shinto Rosengro, that are considered as the most proximate example of what had to be the actual use of this language. The second part is a collection of five chapters that focus on some peculiar morphological traits of Shinto Rosengro, in order to offer a possible explanation for their genesis. The topics are: the dative/locative syncretism in the noun inflection; the imperfect marker -esta; the periphrastic future built with avra particle; the participle in -men; the abstract derivatives in -ipen/-iben and their distribution. The third part gives a synthetic analysis of some features of Shinto Rosengro, which are presented in relation to the main diagnostic isoglosses proposed by scholars up to now for the classification of Romani dialects. This part focuses especially on the relation of Shinto Rosengro with the geographically nearest old settlement varieties. As a final appendix, the transcription and translation of some unpublished tales of Caccini corpus is proposed.

Secondo i dati più recenti, il numero di lingue attestate in India è 452. Da questa cifra sono esclusi dialetti e varietà. Le lingue attestate appartengono a quattro famiglie linguistiche diverse: Indo-ariane, Tibeto-Burmane, Dravidiche e Austro-asiatiche. L'obiettivo di questa tesi è di rendere conto del comportamento dei sistemi pronominali di sei di queste lingue, rappresentative di due famiglie distinte, Indo-ariane e Dravidiche: Bangla, Hindi, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil e Telugu. In questo lavoro, l'attenzione è stata concentrata sui sistemi pronominali di queste lingue, che sono marcati morfologicamente da ciò che ho definito "deictic features" (tratti deittici). Come il nome suggerisce, i tratti deittici sono in relazione diretta con il contesto frasale. Più precisamente, le terze persone dei pronomi di molte lingue Dravidiche e Indo-ariane realizzano un morfema che specifica la posizione spaziale del referente. In altri termini, i pronomi analizzati realizzano gli stessi tratti che vengono normalmente realizzati dai pronomi dimostrativi in lingue come l'Inglese o l'Italiano. Tuttavia, il comportamento di questi pronomi nelle lingue in oggetto, si discosta da quello normalmente osservato a proposito dei dimostrativi. La maggior parte degli studi tipologici e teorici che hanno come oggetto i pronomi delle lingue Indiane, si concentrano principalmente su problemi relativi a pronomi riflessivi (blocking effects, teoria del legamento, etc.), mentre l'importanza dei tratti deittici nell'ambito della teoria della referenza ha ricevuto poca attenzione. La letteratura di riferimento non riporta neppure un insieme di dati solido e congruo. Per questo motivo, la prima fase del mio progetto di ricerca è consistita nella creazione di un questionario linguistico che è stato in seguito utilizzato per la raccolta dei dati sul campo (attività che ho condotto in India grazie al supporto della Central University of Hyderabad). Il corpus di dati che ho collezionato ha in seguito portato alla luce alcuni fenomeni linguistici nuovi, almeno in parte. Ad esempio la agrammaticalità di elementi prossimali (simili al dimostrativo "questo") in contesti di variabile legata, fenomeno che è solidamente attestato in entrambe le famiglie linguistiche. Alcuni dei dati più frequentemente attestati nel corpus sono stati in seguito discussi e, in parte, si è cercato di offrire un'analisi che rendesse conto della loro rilevanza teorica. Questa ricerca tipologica è, secondo quanto ho potuto constatare, la prima nel suo genere. Una delle conseguenze di questo fatto è che molti aspetti interessanti riguardo i sistemi pronominali osservati non hanno trovato spazio nell'analisi e sono stati messi da parte per un'eventuale ricerca futura. La struttura della tesi è la seguente: Il capitolo 1 offre un'introduzione basilare ad alcune nozioni teoriche a proposito della proprietà referenziali dei pronomi dimostrativi in generale e a proposito del loro uso come elementi del discorso; il secondo capitolo tratta di alcuni aspetti tipologici delle lingue in oggetto, soprattutto a proposito del problema della referenzialità, come ad esempio l'ordine dei costituenti, gli argomenti nulli, la morfologia dei pronomi e la distribuzione di pronomi e elementi anaforici nella frase; il terzo capitolo contiene un resoconto esaustivo dei dati che ho potuto raccogliere durante l'attività di lavoro sul campo, introdotti da alcune generalizzazioni preliminari; nel quarto capitolo, infine, si fornisce una discussione più dettagliata di alcuni dei fenomeni di maggior interesse che sono risultati dalla raccolta dati, come ad esempio il mancato accordo di tratti deittici tra pronome ed antecedente osservato in molte delle lingue campione ed il comportamento dei tratti prossimali rispetto a coreferenzialità e legamento.
According to the most recent data in India there are at least 452 attested languages, excluding dialects and varieties. All these languages are grouped into four major families: Indo-aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian and Austro Asiatic. The goal of this dissertation is to account for the behavior of the pronominal systems of six of those languages, representative of 2 of major families, namely Dravidian and Indo-aryan:• Bangla • Hindi • Punjabi • Malayalam • Tamil• Telugu. What is remarkable about these languages (and in general about their language families) is that their pronominal systems are overtly marked by morphemes that realize what I labelled ”deictic features”. As the name suggests, deictic features have a clear relationship with the context of utterance. More specifically, the 3rd person pronouns of many Dravidian and Indo-aryan languages realize an overt morpheme that encodes the position of their referent in the Place of utterance. In other terms, the deictic pronouns that I am analyzing here realize the same features that are realized by demonstratives in languages like English or Italian. However, their behavior, in some specific linguistic contexts, deviates from what is normally observed for demonstratives. The recent typological and theoretical researches on Indo-aryan and Dravidian pronominal systems focus mainly on problems related to reflexivity (blocking effects, long distance binding, etc.), and little attention has been devoted to the relevance of deictic features for a theory of reference. As a matter of fact, even the basic dataset is not available. For this reason, the first phase of my research project focused on the design of a questionnaire that I submitted to native speakers during my fieldwork activity (hosted by the Central University of Hyderabad). The data set that I collected, which constitutes the real backbone of this dissertation, brought to light some previously unnoticed facts, like the behavior of some pronominal elements akin to the English demonstrative pronoun this (a so called “proximal element”) in bound variable reading contexts, that is consistently attested in the two unrelated language families. Some of the most significant consistencies observed in the sample data are successively discussed and, in part, accounted for. However, the language survey is the first on its genre, to my knowledge. As a consequence, many interesting aspects of the behavior of deictic pronouns remained unaccounted for and had to be left aside for future research. The dissertation is structured as follows. In Chapter 1 I provide some basic notions about the referential properties of pronouns and demonstratives to- gether with some facts about the pragmatic uses of demonstratives. In Chapter 2 I discuss some of the most relevant typological facts about the sample languages that are related to reference, such as word order, argument drop, pronominal morphology and distribution of pronouns and anaphors. Chapter 3 contains an exhaustive account of the data that I was able to gather during my fieldwork activity, accompanied by some preliminary generalizations about the classes of data. In Chapter 4, finally, I provide a discussion of some of the most relevant phenomena that resulted from the survey, such as the deictic features mismatches between pronouns and antecedents, and the behavior of proximal pronouns with respect to coreference and binding.

蕭振豪.
"2010年8月".
"2010 nian 8 yue".
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-89).
Abstract in Chinese and English.
Xiao Zhenhao.
Chapter 第一章 --- 引言 --- p.1
Chapter 第二章 --- 華嚴字母簡介
Chapter 第一節 --- 字門與華嚴字母 --- p.3
Chapter 第二節 --- 「《禪門日誦》系」考:華嚴字母韻表版本考(上) --- p.13
Chapter 第三節 --- 華嚴字母韻表創作年代補說:華嚴字母韻表版本考(下) --- p.15
Chapter 第三章 --- 華嚴字母韻表與明清小學
Chapter 第一節 --- 華嚴字母與十二攝排序 --- p.20
Chapter 第二節 --- 韻表的作成 --- p.22
Chapter 第四章 --- 華嚴字母所載符號與明清小學 --- p.36
Chapter 第五章 --- 華嚴字母與音素
Chapter 第一節 --- 二合與三合輔音及其相關問題 --- p.45
Chapter 第二節 --- 普世的音系 --- p.46
Chapter 第三節 --- 劉獻廷與華嚴字母? --- p.48
Chapter 第六章 --- 華嚴字母與明清聲韻概念
Chapter 第一節 --- 華嚴字母與古音關係的誤解 --- p.58
Chapter 第二節 --- 華嚴字母與字母數 --- p.62
Chapter 第七章 --- 清廷與華嚴字母´ؤ兼論戴震〈聲韻考〉
Chapter 第一節 --- 清廷與華嚴字母 --- p.72
Chapter 第二節 --- 四庫館臣對華嚴字母的評價 --- p.74
Chapter 第三節 --- 紀昀與戴震〈聲韻考〉 --- p.77
Chapter 第八章 --- 總結與展望
Chapter 第一節 --- 從五十音排序檢討四十二字門 --- p.82
Chapter 第二節 --- 小結與研究展望 --- p.84
參考書目 --- p.86
附錄一四十二字門對音比較 --- p.90
附錄二〈禪門日誦〉系書版本一覽 --- p.104
附錄三內地、台灣所藏單行本「八十華嚴」善本書目 --- p.108
附錄四華嚴字母韻表小韻字比較 --- p.111