The Quest for Cognates: A Reconstruction of Oblique Subject Constructions in Proto-Indo-European

Abstract

The enigma of the origin of non-canonical subject marking in the world’s languages has been met with two competing hypotheses: the Object-to-Subject Hypothesis and the Oblique Subject/Semantic Alignment Hypothesis (cf. Eythórsson and Barðdal, 2005). The present article argues in favor of the Oblique Subject/Semantic Alignment Hypothesis, presenting five sets of cognate predicates in the early/archaic Indo-European daughter languages that occur in the Oblique Subject Construction. These cognate sets have not figured in the earlier literature. Not only are they stem cognates, but they also occur in a cognate compositional predicate and argument structure construction, with a dative subject, the verb ‘be’ and an adjective, a noun, or an adverb. The discovery of these cognate data sets immediately invalidates the axiomatic assumption that non-canonical subject marking must originate in an earlier object status of these arguments. The data, moreover, form the input of a correspondence set, on which basis we reconstruct predicate-specific oblique subject constructions, a partial predicate-specific oblique subject construction, as well as a more abstract schematic dative subject construction for Proto-Indo-European, using the formalism of Sign-based Construction Grammar. The evidence presented here thus suggests that oblique subjects are inherited from an early proto-stage and do not represent an individual development in the Indo-European daughter languages.

Between the historical languages and the reconstructed language

“…We argue, in line with the nascent but ever-growing research interest in syntactic reconstruction, that comparison among syntactic structures and subsequent reconstruction is possible and worth more attention, following Harris & Campbell (1995), Gildea (1998), Kikusawa (2002), Bowern (2008), Barðdal & Eythórsson (2012a-b), Barðdal (2015), Barðdal et al (2013) and . More specifically, we argue that on a Construction Grammar analysis, the GER+(NOM+)DAT structure must be regarded as a construction, i.e.…”

“…• the traditional Indo-Europeanist school (for instance, Lühr 2008, Hock 2013, Keydana 2013, Kulikov & Lavidas 2013, Cotticelli Kurras & Rizza 2013, Viti 2014 • the generativist school (Hale 1987a-b, Garrett 1990, Willis 2011, Walkden 2014 • the construction grammar school (Barðdal & Eythórsson 2012a-b, 2017, Barðdal 2013, 2015, Barðdal & Smitherman 2013, Danesi et al 2017). …”

Syntactic Reconstruction in Indo-European: State of the Art

“…as we have emphasized elsewhere (Barðdal & eythórsson 2017), the possible criteria for reconstruction accepted by watkins constitute by no means an insignificant portion of grammar -the whole of morphosyntax. some of our own syntactic reconstructions are indeed based on morphological pointers, as for instance our reconstruction of argument structure constructions, mostly focusing on the accusative and the dative subject Constructions (Barðdal & eythórsson 2012b, Barðdal 2013, Barðdal & smitherman 2013. thus, we have suggested a reconstruction of a lexically-filled subconstruction of the dative subject Construction, dat-is-woe, for Proto-indo-european (Barðdal 2013).…”

“…Further arguments for the legitimacy of syntactic reconstruction have been put forward, as well as suggestions on how to formalize syntactic reconstruction in a precise and theoretically-coherent manner. see Hale (1987aHale ( , 1987bHale ( , 2015, Garrett (1990Garrett ( ), willis (2011Garrett ( ) and walkden (2013Garrett ( , 2014, within the generative framework, and Barðdal and eythórsson in several contributions within the construction grammar framework (eythórsson & Barðdal 2011, Barðdal & eythórsson 2012a, 2012b, in press, Barðdal 2013, Barðdal & smitherman 2013). a further explication of the contributions made by these different approaches will be outlined below.…”

Semantic and (morpho)syntactic constraints on anticausativization: Evidence from Latin and Old Norse-Icelandic

“…Also the relationship between these structures and the synthetic mediopassive construction needs to be explored: a comparative analysis, in fact, might throw new light on the issue of the origin, function and spread of oblique subjects in early Indo-European, confirming their inherited nature (cf. also Barðdal and Eythórsson 2012;Barðdal et al 2013;and Barðdal and Smitherman 2013).…”