From Spatial Expression to Core Case Marker: Indo-Aryan Datives and Ergatives

Monday, 1 March 2010, Colloquium

Miriam Butt, University of Konstanz.

Abstract

The original case system found in Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan) was lost in Middle Indo-Aryan and then reinvented in most of the modern New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages. A close look at the diachronic data suggests that the ergative in several NIA languages is closely related to a dative form, rather than an instrumental, as is generally assumed. This talk presents some of the relevant diachronic and synchronic data and then goes on to suggest that the ergative/dative connection falls out naturally under an approach which assumes that a significant factor in the redevelopment of the NIA case systems is the expression of systematic semantic contrasts and that the precise distribution of the newly innovated case markers can only be understood by taking their original spatial semantics into account. In addition, I assume a model in which already existing case markers block or compete with newer ones, thus giving rise to differing particular instantiations of one and the same originally spatial postposition across closely related languages. That is, the dative of one language may work out to be an ergative in another one.