Category Books

Studies in South Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages »

Authors: James W. Gair, Barbara C. Lust (Editor), Barbara C. Lust
ISBN-13: 9780195095210, ISBN-10: 0195095219
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: April 1998
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: James W. Gair

Book Synopsis

This volume collects twenty-nine published and unpublished papers by the linguist James Gair, considered the foremost western scholar of the Sri Lankan languages Sinhala and Jaffna Tamil.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.

	A Note on Transcription and Terminology
	Introduction
I	Background and Description of Basic Categories
1	Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan Isolate (1982)	1
2	Colloquial Sinhala Inflectional Categories and Parts of Speech (1967)	13
3	Action Involvement Categories in Colloquial Sinhala (1971)	25
II	Syntax: Configuration, Order, and Grammatical Function
4	About Colloquial Sinhalese Clause Structures (1970)	47
5	Nonconfigurationality, Movement, and Sinhala Focus (1983)	50
6	Subjects, Case, and INFL in Sinhala (1991)	65
7	Sinhala Nonverbal Sentences and Argument Structure (with John Paolillo) (1989)	87
III	Deixis, Anaphora, and Agreement
8	Discourse Deixis and Situational Deixis in Sinhala (1991)	111
9	Pronouns, Reflexives, and Antianaphora in Sinhala (with W. S. Karunatillake) (1990)	126
10	On Distinguishing AGR from agr: Evidence from South Asia (with Kashi Wali) (1988)	140
IV	Change, Grammaticization, and Linguistic Area
11	Sinhala Focused Sentences: Naturalization of a Calque (1985)	153
12	Some Aspects of the Jaffna Tamil Verbal System (with S. Suseendirarajah) (1981)	170
13	Selections from the Review of Southworth and Apte (1978)	182
14	How Dravidianized Was Sinhala Phonology? Some Conclusions and Cautions (1985)	185
15	Selections from "The Verb in Sinhala, with Some Preliminary Remarks on Dravidianization" (1976)	200
V	Diglossia
16	Sinhalese Diglossia (1968)	213
17	Sinhala Diglossia Revisited, or, Diglossia Dies Hard (1985)	224
18	Syntactic Theory, AGR, and Sinhala Diglossia (1995)	237
VI	The Development of Syntax
19	Acquisition of Null Subjects and Control in Some Sinhala Adverbial Clauses (1989)	271
20	A Parameter-Setting Paradox: Children's Acquisition of Hindi Anaphora in jab Clauses (1995)	286
	Notes	305
	Bibliography	345
	Index	361