Sprachbund and A-reflexives

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Dan is [w]ondering aloud:

> Caucasian languages, Turkish, Farsi... and Nepali. Is there a language
> contact/Sprachbund-type connection here?

I don't think that A-reflexives (or reflexives in subject position) in
the languages you mentioned have something to do with sprachbund
phenomena. Sure, we have some hints at a certain communcative style that
share in Farsi, Turkish, and some esp. southeast Caucasian languages.
This 'style' is based on loan words, chalques populaires, and a
restricted number of phenomena in morphsyntax as well as in pragmatics
(another important feature may be sentence intonation). As for
A-reflexives, we cannot refer to this technique neither in the sense of
a specific inter-communicative style nor to a sprachbund at least with
respect to the Caucasus/Turkey/Iran etc. connection [note that the
notion of 'sprachbund' is not applicable for the Caucasian languages,
see Kevin Tuite' excellent article in Lingua 1999 (108,1):-1-29 ('The
myth of the Caucasian Sprachbund: The case of ergativity")].

Just in those 'Caucasian' areas that have the closest contact with
Iranian and Turkic languages (i.e., in Southeast Caucasian (Lezgian)) we
do not find cataphoric A-reflexives that have a referential 'postcedent'
in O-function (the type: 'REFL(i):A (PRO)NOUN(i):O VERB). I claimed in
in earlier posting that A-reflexivization is perhaps based on (and
restricted to?) de-nominal reflexives (such as body-part terms) which
maintain parts of their nominal (and referential?) semantics in
A-function. This is true for Georgian _tavi_ ('head'), but not for the
South East Caucasian reflexives (*_VchwV_ or something the like).
Persian _xod_ stems from the IE reflexive *su- (Old Persian _uva:-_,
Avesta xvato:, Pehlevi _xvat(i:h)_, Sanskrit _svátas_ etc.), Turkish
_kendi_ is nothing but a reflexives pronoun already in Old Turkish
(_kendü_ in the sense of '-self', cf. _ol kendü aidy_ 'he himself said'
etc.). I did not check the history of Nepali _aaphii_ but my guess it
that it has another grammaticalization background. To my knowledge
neither _kendi_ nor _xod_ allow A-reflexivization with co-referential
'postcedent'...

That fact that many of the languages in question allow A-reflexives (as
well as S-reflexives) in the sense of emphatic pronouns (Udi _ich
tanesa_ 'self:ABS go:3SG:PRES' '(s)he go(es)') [no 'postcedent' in
O-function] may belong to that kind of (polite/emphatic) communicative
style that I alluded to above...

Hence, sorry to say: No sprachbund phenomenon at all.

Wolfgang

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Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
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