Volume 1, Issue 2

This paper focuses on the evolution of the Old Indo-Aryan reciprocal pronoun anyo'nya- as well as some related forms, tracing its grammaticalization from the early Vedic period onwards until the beginning of the Middle Indic period. On the basis of a comparison of the history of this formation with similar processes documented in some other Indo-European branches (Greek, Slavic etc.), I uncover some basic mechanisms and scenarios of the evolution of reciprocal constructions attested in the history of Indo-Aryan languages in a diachronic typological context, offering a number of typological generalizations on the diachrony of reciprocals.

A split-ergative construction had developed during the late MIA period (Bubenik 1998; Peterson 1998) in which subjects of perfective transitive clauses were marked ergative by an oblique form, in contrast with the nominative form for non-ergative subjects. Later in the NIA period, most NIA languages (e.g. Urdu/Hindi) developed a postpositional clitic that was added to the oblique suffix, while others (e.g. Sindhi) continued to mark ergative subjects with a generic oblique suffix. This paper focuses on one exceptional case: the Dehwali language of Gujarat. Dehwali has an ergative marker that is a fusional suffix (i.e. layer I – Masica 1991: 231) and appears to inflect to agree in number and gender with the subject it marks. I will present two possible scenarios as to the origin of the Dehwali ergative marker: that it may be the remnant of an archaic MIA oblique form, or that it may be a more recent innovation as the result of increased contact with neighbouring varieties. Based on theories of grammaticalisation, I argue that the former hypothesis is more likely. These theories show that it is not uncommon for oblique case forms (i.e. ablative; genitive) to carry agentive properties.

The article presents a semantic analysis of five local suffixes in the Indo-Aryan language Kalasha (north-west Pakistan): the three locative suffixes -a , -una and -ai and the two ablative suffixes -ani and -aw . It is shown that these suffixes have both spatial and non-spatial functions. In their basic semantics, the five local suffixes differentiate between point-like location, location on a surface and location in a container. In their non-spatial functions they encode in a systematic way differences with respect to dispersion, visibility and referentiality. It is argued that the five local suffixes constitute a closed-set inflectional case paradigm. As a supplementing areal-typological perspective, non-spatial semantics of case markers in neighbouring Hindu Kush languages is included in the analysis.