Cambridge Scholars Publishing Exploring the Syntax and Semantics of South Asian Languages

Product Description This collection offers fresh perspectives on the syntax and semantics of South Asian languages, drawing on novel data from Meiteilon, Haryanavi, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam, and Bangla. It covers three major grammatical aspects: namely, the status of primitive categories, clausal and nominal structure, and case/phi-agreement. All the contributions here provide comprehensive descriptive discussions followed by analyses couched within the generative paradigm, thereby offering detailed and clearly presented linguistic treatments of important issues in South Asian languages. Review "Providing both a variety of unique data and theoretical exploration and hypotheses, these articles are a potentially useful resource not only for those in South Asian linguistics but also theoretical and comparative and typological linguistics more broadly. One can see intriguing grammatical phenomena, the full range of morphosyntactic to semantico-pragmatic. Regardless of one's theoretical preference, generative linguists will be able to explore hypotheses in areas such as ergativity, quantification, reduplication, degree phrases, among others."Professor Mark J. AlvesMontgomery College, USA About the Author Reena Ashem is a Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. She is currently working on phonological phrases in the Meiteilon language. Her research interests include prosodic phonology, morpho-syntax, syntactic theory and philosophy of language. Gurmeet Kaur has recently finished her doctoral dissertation on “Person in Punjabi: Investigating Argument and Clitic Licensing” at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Her research interests lie primarily in theoretical syntax and variation. Specific topics of focus include phi-features, case, agreement, and clitics. Usha Udaar has recently finished her PhD on “Ergativity in Western Indo-Aryan Languages” at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Her areas of interest include ergativity, case and agreement, and variation studies.