Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages PDF

Author: John Hewson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1997-03-06

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 9027275971

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This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of IE verbal systems within a coherent cognitive framework. The work encompasses all the language families of the IE phylum, from prehistory to present day languages. Inspired by the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Gustave Guillaume the authors relate tense and aspect to underlying cognitive processes, and show that verbal systems have a staged development of time representations (chronogenesis). They view linguistic change as systemic and trace the evolution of the earliest tense systems by (a) aspectual split and (b) aspectual merger from the original aspectual contrasts of PIE, the evidence for such systemic change showing clearly in the paradigmatic morphology of the daughter languages. The nineteen chapters cover first the ancient documentation, then those families whose historical data are from a more recent date. The last chapters deal with the systemic evolution of languages that are descended from ancient forbears such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and are completed by a chapter on the practical and theoretical conclusions of the work.

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages PDF

Author: John Hewson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9027236496

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This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of IE verbal systems within a coherent cognitive framework. The work encompasses all the language families of the IE phylum, from prehistory to present day languages. Inspired by the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Gustave Guillaume the authors relate tense and aspect to underlying cognitive processes, and show that verbal systems have a staged development of time representations (chronogenesis). They view linguistic change as systemic and trace the evolution of the earliest tense systems by (a) aspectual split and (b) aspectual merger from the original aspectual contrasts of PIE, the evidence for such systemic change showing clearly in the paradigmatic morphology of the daughter languages. The nineteen chapters cover first the ancient documentation, then those families whose historical data are from a more recent date. The last chapters deal with the systemic evolution of languages that are descended from ancient forbears such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and are completed by a chapter on the practical and theoretical conclusions of the work.

A New Look at the Indo-European Verb

A New Look at the Indo-European Verb PDF

Author: Luca Panieri

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1326431021

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In this book there is described a new and innovative hypothesis on the Proto-Indoeuropean verb system. Many unresolved issues of historical-comparativereconstruction can find a straightforward solution in the light of this hypothesis; such as the origin of tense, mood, aspect, diathesis, etc. You will see that the original verb system was quite different from both the Hittite and the Greek one. Many verb categories, which were very important for the daughter languages, did not even exist in the protolanguage, and other categories, which were originally central to the protolanguage, have disappeared in all the descendant languages. In this regard, the key concept is the "control on action by the subject". This was what really mattered in the protolanguage.

Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond

Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond PDF

Author: Robert Crellin

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 9027260907

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This volume provides a detailed investigation of perfects from all the branches of the Indo-European language family, in some cases representing the first ever comprehensive description. Thorough philological examinations result in empirically well-founded analyses illustrated with over 940 examples. The unique temporal depth and diatopic breadth of attested Indo-European languages permits the investigation of both TAME (Tense-Aspect-Mood-Evidentiality) systems over time and recurring cycles of change, as well as synchronic patterns of areal distribution and contact phenomena. These possibilities are fully exploited in the volume. Furthermore, the cross-linguistic perspective adopted by many authors, as well as the inclusion of contributions which go beyond the boundaries of the Indo-European family per se, facilitates typological comparison. As such, the volume is intended to serve as a springboard for future research both into the semantics of the perfect in Indo-European itself, and verb systems across the world’s languages.

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European PDF

Author: Ian Benjamin Hollenbaugh

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13:

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Though Greek and Sanskrit possess clearly cognate tense-aspect categories, they differ significantly with respect to the function of these categories. This dissertation investigates the usage of the Aorist and Imperfect indicative in Homeric Greek and Rigvedic Sanskrit, in order to reevaluate the functional range of both categories in each language. A qualitative and quantitative examination of the data reveals that the differences in usage between the two languages are only superficial. In Homer as in the Rigveda, the Aorist is commonly used to express perfect aspect, while the Imperfect is used to sequence events in past narration. This thesis thus further extends the findings of Hollenbaugh 2018 in proposing that the Aorist and Imperfect do not represent a perfective/imperfective system, nor can they be traced back to such a system in the proto-language, as is often assumed. Rather, they originally marked perfect aspect and a simple past tense respectively. In addition, this dissertation explores the pragmatic interactions across functional categories to explain the lack of application of certain forms in contexts with which they are semantically compatible. The differences in usage observed for the two languages are thus attributed to systematic differences in their respective verb systems overall, rather than to any particular functional innovations per se. The Vedic injunctive and Homeric augmentless forms are also considered, and an account is given of the interaction between the augment and the verbal bases with which it combines. This provides insights into why the augment and augmentless forms behave differently in the two languages in the way that they do, and suggests how each can be derived from a common source in the proto-language.

Development of Tense/aspect in Semitic in the Context of Afro-Asiatic Languages

Development of Tense/aspect in Semitic in the Context of Afro-Asiatic Languages PDF

Author: Vít Bubeník

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789027248565

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The author reconstructs earlier aspectual systems in the Afro-Asiatic phylum. A central piece of the book is the development of aspectual and temporal categories in individual languages from the Old towards their Middle periods. It offers important contributions to our understanding of universals, and the typology and diachrony of tense and aspect.

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages PDF

Author: Vit Bubenik

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009-07-16

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9027289298

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The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.