Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T20:59:24.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The syntax of participial adjuncts in Eastern Bengali1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Wim Van Der Wurff
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Amsterdam

Extract

In this article I will discuss the syntactic properties of participial adjuncts in Eastern Bengali. From a GB-point of view, these constructions are quite interesting, because they can contain a nominative which is apparently not assigned by AGR, and because they show a quite intricate pattern of possibilities for coreference and disjoint reference, with some seemingly arbitrary differences among the three types of adjuncts. In Section 2, I shall present the empirical data for these constructions. In Section 3 I will discuss the relevant general syntactic principles of Eastern Bengali, specifically those responsible for Case-assignment, word-order, pro-drop (including ergative verbs) and binding properties. In Section 4, I will show that the characteristics of the participial constructions, including the apparently haphazard binding properties, follow from the general syntactic principles of Eastern Bengali, if we assume one simple statement for each type of adjunct. No further construction-specific stipulations need be made. To the extent that the analysis I propose can be upheld, it will constitute indirect support for the GB-mechanisms that are crucially involved in it. Apart from various principles of configurationality and binding, I will make use of the idea that there is no abstract AGR, in these cases at least, and also of the analysis of pro-drop as a silent clitic phenomenon, proposed in Safir (1985). It is of course a fact that the principles of grammar I appeal to still need to be investigated more carefully, and may have to be modified on the basis of data not yet taken into account or accurately analyzed. However, as they stand, the relevant principles of GB-theory appear to be able to account for the Eastern Bengali facts I discuss here. Apart from these more theoretical concerns, this paper naturally has an important descriptive component too, which I hope will make it also interesting to linguists working in a different theoretical framework and may stimulate linguists specifically concerned with Bengali to explore further the intricascies of this area of Bengali grammer.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arai, M. (1984). Evidence for configurationality in Japanese. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 1. 122.Google Scholar
Bayer, J. (1981). Bengalisch. Studium Linguistik 11. 5874.Google Scholar
Bayer, J. (1986). Review article on Safir (1985). Studies in Language 10. 167185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhattacharyya, J. (1987). Language, class and community in Bengal. South Asia Bulletin 7. 5663.Google Scholar
Burzio, L. (1981). Intransitive verbs and Italian auxiliaries. PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Chatterji, S. K. (1926). The origin and development of the Bengali language. 3 vols. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chowdhury, M. (1960). The language problem in East Pakistan. IJAL 26. 6478.Google Scholar
Cole, P. (1987). Null objects in universal grammar. LIn 18. 597612.Google Scholar
Dabbs, J. A. (1965). Spoken Bengali: dialects of East Bengal. Texas: A & M University.Google Scholar
Dabbs, J. A. (1966). Spoken Bengali: Standard, East Bengal (transcription). Texas: A & M University.Google Scholar
Das, S. K. (1978). Standardization of Hindi and Bengali. In Perez, A. Q. et al. (eds) Papers from the Conference on the Standardization of Asian Languages. Canberra: Australian National University. 193206.Google Scholar
Dasgupta, P. (1983). Bangla equatives, complementizers, final foci, and roots. Linguistic Analysis 11. 103137.Google Scholar
Dasgupta, P. (1988). Bangla quantifier extraction, unaccusative in situ, and the ECP. LIn 19. 691698.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L. (1986). INFL, COMP and nominative Case assignment in Flemish infinitivals. In Muysken, P. & van Riemsdijk, H. (eds) Features and projections. Dordrecht: Foris. 127137.Google Scholar
Higginbotham, J. (1983). Logical form, binding, and nominals. LIn 14. 395420.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, T. (1984). Transitivity: grammatical relations in Government-Binding theory Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. J. (1984). On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. LIn 15. 531574.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. J. (1987). Remarks on empty categories in Chinese. LIn 18. 321337.Google Scholar
Klaiman, M. H. (1981). Volitionality and subject in Bengali: a study of semantic parameters in grammatical processes. Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Klaiman, M. H. (1983). Bengali conjunctive participle constructions. Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 138147.Google Scholar
Klaiman, M. H. (1987). Bengali. In Comrie, B. (ed.) The world's major languages. London & Sydney: Croom Helm. 490513.Google Scholar
Koopman, H. (1984). The syntax of verbs. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, S. (1985). Kasus und Diathese im Bengalischen. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Google Scholar
Raposo, E. (1985). Some asymmetries in the binding theory in Romance. The Linguistic Review 5. 75110.Google Scholar
Raposo, E. (1987). Case theory and INFL-to-COMP: the inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. LIn 18. 85109.Google Scholar
Reuland, E. J. (1983). Governing -ing. LIn 14. 101136.Google Scholar
Riemsdijk, H. & van Williams, E. (1981). NP-structure. The Linguistic Review 1. 171218.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (1982). Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Safir, K. J. (1985). Syntactic chains. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Saito, M. (1985). Some asymmetries in Japanese and their theoretical implications. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Sen, N. (1972). Some dialects of Bangla Desh – an outline. Indian Linguistics 33. 143152.Google Scholar
Stowell, T. (1981). Origins of phrase structure. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Webelhuth, G. (1985). German is configurational. The Linguistic Review 4. 203246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wurff, W. van der (forthcoming a). A remarkable gap in the history of English syntax. To appear in Folia Linguistica Historica 9.Google Scholar
Wurff, W. van der (forthcoming b). One thousand and one principles of historical linguistics. Review article on Hock, H. H. (1986), Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. To appear in English Studies.Google Scholar
Xu, L. (1986). Free Empty Category. LIn 17. 7593.Google Scholar
Zbavitel, D. (1970a). Non-finite verbal forms in Bengali. Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Zbavitel, D. (1970b). Lehrbuch des Bengalischen. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Google Scholar