Accusative Subjects in Avestan: 'Errors' or Non-Canonically Marked Arguments?
In Avestan, recurrent idiosyncrasies, mostly attested in the Young Avesta, are found in the case marking system: one of the most frequent anomalies is the accusative used in place of the nominative. This non-canonical marking of the subject is obviously relevant both for the study of the Avestan lan...
| Publicado en: | Indo-Iranian Journal Vol. 57; no. 3; pp. 223 - 261 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Brill Academic Publishers
2014
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=97215096&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 97215096 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00197246 OG7 jtl: Indo-Iranian Journal issn: 00197246 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: 2014 vid: 57 iid: 3 pid: 639 pub: Brill Academic Publishers artinfo: ui: 97215096 10.1163/15728536-05703017 ppf: 223 ppct: 38 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 13.2MB tig: atl: Accusative Subjects in Avestan: 'Errors' or Non-Canonically Marked Arguments? aug: au: Danesi, Serena affil: University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway su: Avestan language Historical linguistics Comparative linguistics Accusative case (Grammar) Linguistic analysis Semantics Pragmatics Grammar sug: subj: Avestan language Historical linguistics Comparative linguistics Accusative case (Grammar) Linguistic analysis Semantics Pragmatics Grammar keyword: accusative subject constructions information structure lexical semantic verb classes manuscript tradition non-canonically marked arguments Vendīdād young Avestan ab: In Avestan, recurrent idiosyncrasies, mostly attested in the Young Avesta, are found in the case marking system: one of the most frequent anomalies is the accusative used in place of the nominative. This non-canonical marking of the subject is obviously relevant both for the study of the Avestan language and for historical-comparative linguistic studies, since accusative-marked subjects are found in several ancient Indo-European languages. Despite the fact that this phenomenon is regularly mentioned by Avestan grammars, it has not been properly investigated so far, either by philologists or by linguists. It has been tacitly assumed that such anomalous accusatives are errors due to the tortuous transmission of the Avestan texts. This article reconsiders the data reported in Avestan grammars and adds further examples to the bulk of the relevant data. As a result, a new interpretation based on both a linguistic analysis and an Indo-European comparison is proposed. Thus, it is argued that the accusatives found in place of a nominative cannot be taken as trivial mistakes since their distribution obeys certain principles. On the contrary, Avestan accusative subjects represent a linguistic phenomenon, only occasionally registered in the written texts and taking place under specific semantic and pragmatic conditions. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Indo-Iranian Journal is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Indo-Iranian Journal holder: Brill Academic Publishers dt: @attributes: year: 2014 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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