Difference between revisions of "Bengali Constructions"

Revision as of 09:58, 11 December 2009

Gautam Sengupta

Lars Hellan

New Label page for Bengali

Multiverb constructions (mvc) come in two varieties in Bangla:

- SVCs, with one important difference from SVCs in the Volta Basin: where in the latter all the verbs share tense and aspect (and count as ‘finite’), in the Bangla SVCs there is just one finite verb (the last one), and the others have a form called ‘conjunctive participle’.

- VVs – 2-verb sequences with one ‘pole’verb and one ‘vector’ verb, where the pole verb (the first verb) can be any transitive or intransitive verb, and the vector verb is one from a set of 15-20 verbs, in the VV connection determining aspect or orientation. The pole verb is in conjunctive participle form, the vector verb is finite.

Inside an SVC, a VV can take part counting as one ‘verb’.

In this respect, VVs relate to SVCs in a similar fashion as EVCs relate to SVCs in Ga.

So, schematically speaking, one can distinguish a ‘flush mvc’ from a ‘participle-finite mvc’, and an ‘indef-numbered mvc’ from a ‘restr-numbered mvc’:

(1)

Volta-BasinSVC: flush and indef-numbered

BanglaSVC: participle-finite and indef-numbered

EVC/ ‘essential SVC’ (Ga): flush and restr-numbered

VV (Bangla): participle-finite and restr-numbered

What is called ‘multinumbered’ is the temporally consecutive type of SVC. But in the SVC typology, there are also, e.g., benefactive SVCs and instrumental SVCs, which are restr-numbered, and in Ga, these are not EVCs – one may use Christaller’s term ‘essential’ SVCs for these. Such SVCs occur in Bangla too, but it may be debated whether they constitute a class distinct from VVs.

For ‘first slot’ labeling, vv, ev and sv are candidates, but ‘sv’ should probably be split into two, for the ‘flush’ and the ‘non-flush’ variant. We suggest using sv for the Volta-Basin type, and cv for the Bangla type, read as ‘conjunctive participle serial verb’, alternatively ‘converb sv’ (reflecting Ethiopian tradition).

Among issues concerning 'v-v-sequences' in the normal glossing are:

- how to gloss each of the verbs;

- how to gloss the 'participial' morpheme.

Consider this annotated token:

Here 'e' is glossed 'CMPL', for 'completed', which is motivated by the fact that this so-called 'participial' form expresses completedness.

As for the verbs as wholes, one tradition calls the 'free' verb (the first one) the POLE verb and the other verb the VECTOR verb. Should these notions be used here?

Less telling is using 'V1' and 'V2'. For the time being, they are labeled 'V' and 'V2'.

--Lars 11:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC)