In PIE, quality modifiers were expressed by stative verbs and nominal epithets, rather than by special adjectival lexemes. Adjectives did not form a separate lexical class. This made the encoding of the NP constituency less explicit. If we consider what I suggest calling “second-generation IE languages” we can observe a general tendency to create new, more explicit morphological means of dependency marking within a NP. The exact outcomes of this diachronic process vary from one language to another. However, if we parametrise the variation, a common pattern becomes clearly observable. In all the languages analysed in the present paper, there is a pronoun undergoing grammaticalisation as a dependency marker. What varies is (1) the position of this element with respect to the nominal base (pre- vs. postposed); (2) the degree of agglutination (bound morpheme vs. clitic vs. free morpheme); and (3) the locus of marking (head vs. modifier vs. double or alternant marking); (4) the source morpheme that undergoes grammaticalisation (relative vs. demonstrative pronoun).
Abstract:The present paper opens this topical issue on translation techniques by drawing a theoretical basis for the discussion of translational issues in a linguistic perspective. In order to forward an audienceoriented definition of translation, I will describe different forms of linguistic variability, highlighting how they present different difficulties to translators, with an emphasis on the semantic and communicative complexity that a source text can exhibit. The problem is then further discussed through a comparison between Quine's radically holistic position and the translatability principle supported by such semanticists as Katz. General translatability -at the expense of additional complexity -is eventually proposed as a possible synthesis of this debate. In describing the meaningfulness levels of source texts through Hjelmslevian semiotics, and his semiotic hierarchy in particular, the paper attempts to go beyond denotative semiotic, and reframe some translational issues in a connotative semiotic and metasemiotic perspective.
The paper is devoted to the labile verbs in the Middle Indo-Aryan languages. To begin with, the general causes of the diachronic development of lability are taken into consideration. The main such cause is suggested to be the casual diachronic deletion of the valency changing morphemes. In this respect, the valency changing verbal morphology of late Sanskrit, along with its outcome at the Middle Indian stage, is taken into consideration. All of the possible sources of ambiguity are identified. Subsequently, it is shown how these ambiguities effectively brought about the creation of labile patterns, which are indeed attested in our sources in MIA languages (namely, literary and epigraphic Prakrits, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Pali). At the end, some indirect traces of labile verbs in MIA languages are hypothesized through the analysis of the writings of the Paninian grammarians
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