Studies in South Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and Other South Asian LanguagesThis volume collects twenty-nine published and unpublished papers by the linguist James Gair, considered the foremost western scholar of the Sri Lankan languages Sinhala and Jaffna Tamil. Ranging over thirty years, his work also considers issues in a variety of Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Bengali. The collection reflects the wide range of Gair's interests, from morpho-syntactic questions to questions regarding historical and areal linguistics, especially language contact and diglossia, and extending to language acquisition. By collecting these papers and making them newly accessible, this volume will provide an important resource not only for scholars of these languages but for linguists interested in the theoretical issues Gair explores. |
Contents
Syntax Configuration Order and Grammatical Function | 45 |
Deixis Anaphora and Agreement | 109 |
Change Grammaticization and Linguistic Area | 153 |
Diglossia | 211 |
The Development of Syntax | 269 |
Notes | 305 |
| 345 | |
| 361 | |
Common terms and phrases
aamə accusative rule adjectives adverbial affix agreement anaphoric appears assigned c-command chapter characteristics Chomsky clearly clefting clitic coindexed Colloquial Sinhala Colombo COMP contrast copula coreference dative deictic deixis dialects diglossia distinction Dravidian languages earlier empty categories English equational sentences example external argument eyaa finite focus focused sentences Formal Spoken function Gair geminate grammatical Gunapala Hindi I-DAT Indo-Aryan Indo-Aryan languages INFL inflection intransitive involitive involved Jaffna Tamil Karunatillake lack language acquisition left-branching lexical linguistic Literary Sinhala mahattaya Malayalam mama mamə Marathi marker marking miniha nææ nemey nominative nouns null occur Paolillo paper participle phonologically possible postpositional pota pragmatic lead predicator proforms pronominal pronoun referred relation relative clauses relevant Sanskrit semantic Silva Sinhalese South Asian Languages speakers specific Spoken Sinhala Sri Lanka structure Sumangala syntactic tamun tense theory tion varieties verb forms verbal village-DAT vowel WH-forms yanne