Volume 11, Issue 1-2 - Special Issue: Complex Verb Constructions in Indo-Aryan in Synchrony and Diachrony; Guest Editors: Eystein Dahl and Beatrice Grieco

This article explores the origin and development of three periphrastic constructions in Vedic Sanskrit, aiming, on the one hand, to establish their relative chronology and, on the other hand, to pinpoint the systemic factors that facilitated their rise and development at different historical stages. An important claim of the paper is that the rise of the various periphrastic constructions under scrutiny is closely related to more general developments characterising the tense/aspect systems from Proto-Indo-Iranian to Middle Indo-Aryan.

In Late Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, a periphrastic construction consisting of a desemanticized motion or position verb and a participle is used to express a continuous, habitual or iterative action. Since in Early Vedic the finite verb still retains its lexical meaning, the grammaticalization must have taken place in post-Rigvedic times. Still, there are some ambiguous sentences in the Rigveda where interpretation as motion event and as continuous etc. event appear equally plausible and which are possible bridging contexts for the later reanalysis as a periphrasis. This paper focuses on the start of the development and re-evaluates the Rigvedic data. Two factors that have not been considered yet seem to have played a decisive role in the grammaticalization process: (1) the synchronic function of the participle as secondary predicate, a participant-oriented adjunct that overlaps temporally with the time frame set by the finite verb, and (2) the usage of motion verbs in non-directional contexts, i.e. in sentences without overt complements. Both factors are fundamental for the interpretational switch from motion to non-motion event, which is a prerequisite for the rise of the later periphrastic construction.

Several of the synthetic denominative stems known in the earliest Vedic texts correspond to synonymous analytic constructions employing the verbs √ kr̥ ‘make, do’ and √ dhā ‘place’. The relative frequencies of homologous synthetic and analytic expressions may follow several diachronic trajectories, of which two are common: (1) the denominative dominates in the older layers of the texts; or (2) analytic tokens outnumber denominatives in the same chronological setting. The facts of distribution motivate the argument that certain denominatives (those of the first type) belong to a high register in the inherited lexicon while others (of the second type) are innovative formations recently incorporated into priestly poetic vocabulary. It is further proposed that (1) the synchronic functional range of the root √ kr̥ fostered a great deal of surface ambiguity and (2) the denominatives following the second distribution trajectory are neologisms consciously coined in the context of this ambiguity.

Action nouns can be formed from verbal roots in Vedic Old Indo-Aryan following various derivational patterns. The question is whether, and to what extent, such nouns, if derived from the same underlying root, can be considered equivalent or synonymous. It has been argued by several scholars that deverbal * -ti- stem and * -tu- stem action nouns were functionally-semantically different in Proto-Indo-European and ancient Indo-European languages such as Greek, Latin and the Indo-Iranian languages basically preserved this distinction. In this context, Benveniste pointed out that support-verb constructions in Ancient Greek, as a rule, involved -σι-stems (< * -ti- ) as nominal hosts and not -τυ-stems (< * -tu- ). The present paper shows that the same distribution of the two types of action nouns can be observed in the support-verb constructions of Early Vedic as well, a fact that nicely corroborates the assumption of their fundamental functional-semantic difference. It may be expected that further research will be able to reveal similar distinctions between other types of action nouns on the basis of analogous distributional patterns.

The auxiliary ās - ‘sit’ is one of a set of verbs that forms iterative-continuative periphrases in Sanskrit, but it has hardly been studied. While modern-day Sanskrit grammars acknowledge its presence, a comprehensive investigation into its usage is lacking. Given the lack of studies on the ās - periphrasis, this paper explores the verbal construction constituted of the root ās- ‘sit’ plus participle or gerund from Early Vedic to Epic Sanskrit, also offering a brief comparison with vas- ‘dwell, live’. A few passages from Vedic prose show vas- in combination with participles and gerunds in a similar use of that with ās -, but these contexts have never been extensively studied in the literature.

Steever (1988. The serial verb formation in the Dravidian languages . Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass) introduced to South Asian linguistics the notion “Serial Verb” – a Dravidian construction in which two morphologically finite verbs agree in person and number features in the same sentence. I show that similar “double-finite” structures are found in Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan, although details differ. One double-finite construction, inherited from Proto-Indo-European, does not seem to have continued in the post-Vedic language, but others do, and similar structures occur in Modern Indo-Aryan languages. While the historical developments are relatively clear for early Indo-Aryan, from Vedic down to Pāli, there are questions about whether the double-finite constructions of Modern Indo-Aryan are inherited , since comparable structures have not been noted in late Middle Indo-Aryan Apabhraṁśa, the near-ancestor of (peninsular) Modern Indo-Aryan. In the conclusion I discuss alternatives to Modern Indo-Aryan inheritance, including areal and typological factors and the proposal by Milizia (2018. Sul presente neoindoarico a doppio verbo finito. Atti del Sodalizio Glottologico Milanese 12(n.s.). 93–111) that the perhaps most widespread Modern Indo-Aryan double-finite construction results from analogical developments. (Unfortunately, the latter proposal does not account for the other Modern Indo-Aryan double-finite constructions.)