Volume 10, Issue 1

One of the structures denoting the future in Sanskrit is the so-called -tā́ -future, based on an agent noun and a present tense copula. Typologically, this grammaticalization path is unique. In this paper, this astonishing fact is tied to another unique feature of hysterotone -tŕ̥- nouns, their situative semantics, which forces a presupposition relating the event depicted by the noun to another event taken from the context. In ambiguous contexts, this relation could be (re-)interpreted by hearers as one between the event and the speech act itself. The grammaticalization, then, is hearer-based and triggered by semantic reanalysis. The process is essentially identical to phonemicization. The scenario developed in this paper thus further strengthens the position that grammaticalization is ontologically not distinct from other types of language change based on speaker–hearer interaction.

The tendency for the abstract domain of time to be lexicalized in terms of the relatively concrete domain of space has been extensively researched with reference to languages spoken in the Western hemisphere. That such cross-domain mappings in the conceptual system give rise to metaphors is also a well-established fact. The surface realization of metaphors known as “metaphoric expressions” are said to be language and culture specific and tend to play an important role in expressing inter-subjective communication needs. There is limited published literature on this topic with reference to the languages of South Asia, and especially those of India. Drawing on some insights gathered from previously published research on this topic, this corpus-based study examines aspects of temporality encoded in a set of 105 metaphoric expressions in Telugu. The results revealed that metaphoric expressions containing reduplicated spatial terms encode “time-as-such” temporality and are greater in number compared to both temporal terms expressing “matrix-sense”, and onomatopes expressing “event-based time”. These results are discussed with the help of examples and some suggestions are made for future research.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of adjectives in Dzongkha, a Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) language spoken in Bhutan. Several syntactic and morphological properties serve to differentiate adjectives from other word classes. Syntactic properties include the ability of adjectives to directly modify the head noun in a noun phrase (NP), to be modified by an intensifier in the copula complement function, and to serve as the parameter of comparison in comparative constructions. They also include the inability of adjectives to form a complete NP or an intransitive predicate, to function as the possessor and the possessed in possessive constructions, and to occur in cleft-focus constructions. Morphological properties include comparative and superlative markings, as well as the inability of adjectives to take the markers of grammatical categories typically associated with verbs, such as tense, aspect, modality, causative derivation, imperative mood, and negation; or the markers of grammatical categories typically associated with nouns, such as gender, augmentative and diminutive, and case and number. This study is anticipated to cast light on the status of adjectives in other closely related Trans-Himalayan languages.