The Pashto genitive Diachronic and synchronic perspectives on a - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Pashto genitive

Diachronic and synchronic perspectives on a typologically unique “prepositional” prenominal genitive

Brianna Wilson blw512@york.ac.uk

1

Overview

• Pashto: Iranian language; Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Word order
• SOV
• Adj.N
• GenN
• Circumpositions (+ some prepositions, postpositions)
• Genitive marker də precedes the possessor
• [[Prep – Gen] N ]

1.

2

Typological considerations

• Prepositional prenominal genitive unexpected

Generalized consistency: (Hawkins, 1984; Longobardi & Silvestri, 2013) GenN à postpositions, NGen à prepositions Final-over-Final constraint (FOFC):

(Holmberg, 2000)

• Head-initial phrase dominated only by head-initial
• Head-final phrase dominated by head-initial OR head-final

Head-final Head-initial

= FOFC Violation

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Genitive case theory

• Free genitive vs. functional genitive

(Longobardi & Silvestri, 2013) Free genitive 1) Formally marked

• Adpositionally or inflectionally

2) Freely iterable 3) Does not satisfy definiteness marking on head nominal Functional genitive 1) Formally marked or zero-realization

• Never marked prepositionally

2) Not iterable 3) Interacts with definiteness

Ex: English of-genitive (Romance de, di, German von) Ex: English Saxon-genitive (German –s, Romance possessives mi, mio)

Pashto genitive: Free or functional?

• Is də truly a preposition?
• Is də-genitive iterable?

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Diachronic explanations GREENBERG (1980)

• Amharic and Pashto
• A prepositional prenominal genitive due to a series diachronic syntactic changes

Ordered Changes 1) NA à AN 2) NGen à GenN 3) Prepositional à circumpositional à postpositional

• Origin of asymmetric genitive from a relative clause
• Development of a construction based on a relative clause
• HOUSE THAT IS MAN’S [N [Rel Gen]]
• Relative pronoun reanalyzed as a preposition and genitive phrase becomes

prenominal

• OF MAN HOUSE

[[Prep Gen] N]

• When language shifts to postpositional, the genitive preposition may be dropped

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Word order changes in Pashto

Comparison of Trumpp (1873) to more recent grammars*

1) NA à AN order

• Trumpp: NA order was possible though considered archaic

2) NGen à GenN order

• Trumpp: GenN is the usual order, but NGen is possible

3) prepositional à circumpositional à postpositional

• Middle Iranian - prepositional (Hewson and Bubeník, 2006)
• Modern Pashto circumpositions
• də … pore ‘across’
• pə ... bānde ‘on top of’
• 1st element commonly omitted

*(Tegey & Robson, 1996; Babrakzai 1999; Roberts, 2000; David, 2014)

What about də?

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Relative clause origin?

OLD IRANIAN MIDDLE IRANIAN

• Inflectional genitive, and a relative clause construction
• Loss of inflectional genitive & relative pronoun reanalyzed as a linker (ezafe)
• Phonetics forms of the ezafe: é, yé, or ə

MODERN IRANIAN

(e.g. Farsi, Kurdish, Gilaki)

Problem: Pashto did not develop an ezafe construction…

2. 3.

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də: a borrowing from Punjabi?

• Indo-Aryan languages (e.g. Punjabi, Hindi) spoken to the east of

Pashto

• Punjabi and Hindi have a genitive enclitic (“postposition”)

daa/kaa which agrees with the possessum (Thakur 1997)

• Punjabi: daa/de/dii
• Hindi: kaa/ke/kii
• Proposal
• Pashto borrowed the genitive marker from Punjabi
• Explains certain dialectal variants of Pashto genitive: də, de,

di, and perhaps da

• Two other variants, ye and e, from ezafe?

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Synchronic considerations

Optional omission of də

• Not discussed in previous literature
• də dropping - a FOFC violation repair strategy?
• Only in certain syntactic contexts

1. when possessor is modified by a determiner (except the indefinite) 2. in non-initial position in recursive genitives 3. with strong pronouns 4. when the object of a circumposition has a genitive

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Də dropping: Possessor modified by determiner

4a. 4b. 5.

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Də dropping: non-initial də in recusion

6. 7.

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Interim summary

• Pashto də-genitive: a FOFC violation and a typological anomaly
• Evidence of syntactic changes proposed by Greenberg (1980)
• Relative clause in Old Iranian led to ezafe in Middle and (some)

Modern Iranian

• Pashto is non-ezafe
• Certain variants (e, ye) from relative clause/ezafe
• Certain variants (də, de, di) borrowing from Punjabi
• Synchronic evidence of də dropping in certain contexts: FOFC repair
• What about free (of-genitive, iterable) vs. functional genitive (saxon

genitive, non-iterable)? If də = preposition à də = iterable à də = free genitive If də ≠ iterable à də ≠ preposition à də = functional genitive

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Genitive case theory

• Free genitive vs. functional genitive

(Longobardi & Silvestri, 2013) Free genitive 1) Formally marked

• Adpositionally or inflectionally

2) Freely iterable 3) Does not satisfy definiteness marking on head nominal Functional genitive 1) Formally marked or zero-realization

• Never marked prepositionally

2) Not iterable 3) Interacts with definiteness

Ex: English of-genitive (Romance de, di, German von) Ex: English Saxon-genitive (German –s, Romance possessives mi, mio)

Pashto genitive: Free or functional?

• Is de truly a preposition?
• Is de-genitive iterable?

Slide 4

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Is də iterable?

• Iteration: multiple genitives modifying the same head noun
• The picture of Mary of John
• The painting of Mona Lisa of Leonardo of the museum
• de is not iterable

8. 9.

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10. 11.

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Conclusions

• Given Longobardi & Silvestri (2013):
• If də is not iterable then it must be free gen, not funct gen
• Consequence: də cannot be a preposition
• Conclusion
• də-genitive is a functional genitive
• də must be reclassified, an inflectional marker(?)
• Advantages: if də is not a preposition, then there is no

longer a Generalized Consistency violation (but still a FOFC violation)

• What is the syntactic status of də?
• Is də non-iterable in all Pashto dialects?
• Is də dropable in all Pashto dialects?
• What are the constraints on dropability?

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Select references

• David, A. (2014). Descriptive grammar of Pashto and its dialects (Vol. 1). Walter de

Gruyter

• Greenberg, J. H. (1980). Circumfixes and typological change. In Papers from the 4th

International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Vol. 14, pp. 233-241)

• Hawkins, J.A. (1984). Modifier-head or function-argument relations in phrase

structure? The evidence of some word order universals. Lingua, 63, 107-138.

• Hewson, J., & Bubeník, V. (2006). From case to adposition: The development of

configurational syntax in Indo-European languages (Vol. 280). John Benjamins.

• Holmberg, A. (2000). Deriving OV order in Finnish. In The Derivation of VO and OV

(pp. 123-152). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Larson, R.K. (2009). The nature of ‘attributive markers’. ConSOLE XVII, Nova Gorica.
• Longobardi, G. & Silvestri, G. (2013). The structure of NPs. In The Bloomsbury

companion to syntax (pp. 88-117). New York: Continuum Publishing.

• Tegey, H., & Robson, B. (1996). A reference grammar of Pashto. Washington D.C.

Center for Applied Linguistics.

• Trumpp, E. (1873). Grammar of the Paštō or language of the Afghāns: Compared

with the Irānian and North Indian idioms. Trübner.

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Strong pronouns

Standard With də dropping

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Object of circumpositions with a genitive Object of circumpositions with a genitive

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Structure of recursive genitive

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