Alignment Change in Iranian Languages

This book presents an account of alignment shifts in Iranian languages, and covers a time-span of some two and half millennia. It blends data from more than 20 Iranian languages, past and present, with theoretical discussion of alignment (ergativity, accusativity), subjecthood, diachronic syntax and morphology. No specialist knowledge of the Iranian languages is presupposed. The most detailed analyses of single languages are from Kurdish, based on extensive original field-work. Ergativity in Iranian is shown to be most prominently linked to the notion of Non-Canonical Subject. The results have repercussions for theories of alignment and grammatical relations, morphosyntactic change, and for comparative syntax of Indo-European.

Introduction	p. 1
Aims and assumptions	p. 1
The Iranian languages	p. 4
Alignment in the Iranian context	p. 6
Constructions and syntax	p. 15
Alignment in Old Iranian	p. 23
The mana kartam construction	p. 26
Implications for diachronic syntax	p. 32
What is a passive?	p. 36
Re-assessing the m. k. construction	p. 41
The semantics of the Genitive	p. 55
Summing up the alternatives	p. 82
Conclusions	p. 86
Western Middle Iranian	p. 89
Middle Iranian	p. 89
Past Transitive Constructions	p. 92
The case system	p. 95
Case and person	p. 101
Pronominal clitics	p. 105
Clitics expressing core arguments	p. 112
Past transitive verbs	p. 117
Summary of Middle Iranian	p. 128
Case systems in West Iranian	p. 131
Introduction	p. 131
Three processes	p. 133
Innovated object markers	p. 152
The Tatic-type languages	p. 160
Explanations for change	p. 172
Case and animacy	p. 179
Towards a solution	p. 193
Summary of case	p. 197
Kurdish (Northern Group)	p. 201
Introduction	p. 201
Overview of the morphosyntax	p. 204
The canonical ergative construction	p. 213
Deviations from canonical ergativity	p. 224
Summary of deviations	p. 255
Evidence from Badinani	p. 256
Summary of the Northern Group	p. 273
The Central group	p. 277
Introduction	p. 277
Suleimani morphosyntax	p. 277
Past transitive constructions	p. 288
Aligning case and agreement	p. 301
Summary of the Central Group	p. 304
Desire, Obligation, Possession, and Ergativity	p. 305
Conclusions	p. 311
A brief synopsis	p. 311
Areal pressure and alignment change	p. 317
Alignment in Indo-European	p. 320
On explanations for change	p. 323
Case in Old Persian	p. 333
Changing rules of clitic placement	p. 334
References	p. 339
Subject index	p. 359
Index of Iranian languages	p. 365
Index of non-Iranian languages	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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Alignment Change in Iranian Languages

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