Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan
John J. Lowe
Abstract
This book explores the wealth of evidence from early Indo-Aryan for the existence of transitive nouns and adjectives, a rare linguistic phenomenon which, according to some categorizations of word classes, should not occur. The author shows that most transitive nouns and adjectives attested in early Indo-Aryan cannot be analysed as belonging to a type of non-finite verb category, but must be acknowledged as a distinct constructional type. The volume provides a detailed introduction to transitivity (verbal and adpositional), the categories of agent and action noun, and early Indo-Aryan. Four per ... More
This book explores the wealth of evidence from early Indo-Aryan for the existence of transitive nouns and adjectives, a rare linguistic phenomenon which, according to some categorizations of word classes, should not occur. The author shows that most transitive nouns and adjectives attested in early Indo-Aryan cannot be analysed as belonging to a type of non-finite verb category, but must be acknowledged as a distinct constructional type. The volume provides a detailed introduction to transitivity (verbal and adpositional), the categories of agent and action noun, and early Indo-Aryan. Four periods of early Indo-Aryan are selected for study: Rigvedic Sanskrit, the earliest Indo-Aryan; Vedic Prose, a slightly later form of Sanskrit; Epic Sanskrit, a form of Sanskrit close to the standardized ‘Classical’ Sanskrit; and Pali, the early Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Buddhist scriptures. The author shows that while each linguistic stage is different, there are shared features of transitive nouns and adjectives which apply throughout the history of early Indo-Aryan. The data is set in the wider historical context, from Proto-Indo-European to Modern Indo-Aryan, and a formal linguistic analysis of transitive nouns and adjectives is provided in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar.
Keywords:
Sanskrit,
Pali,
transitivity,
agent noun,
action noun
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198793571 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198793571.001.0001 |
