27.2948, Review: Gen Ling; Historical Ling; Phonology: Gholami (2014)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2948. Wed Jul 13 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2948, Review: Gen Ling; Historical Ling; Phonology: Gholami (2014)

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Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 10:46:34
From: Blake Lewis [blakelewis at shaw.ca]
Subject: Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5168.html

AUTHOR: Saloumeh  Gholami
TITLE: Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar
SERIES TITLE: Göttinger Orientforschungen, III. Reihe: Iranica (12)
PUBLISHER: ISD, Distributor of Scholarly Books
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Blake Justin Collin Lewis, University of Calgary

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

INTRODUCTION

“Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar” by Saloumeh Gholami is a descriptive
grammar of the long-extinct Iranian language, Bactrian, modified from her
dissertation. In her book, Gholami provides an overview of Bactrian
characteristics with numerous examples, which she collected from the few
remaining sources of the language. The publication is written for linguist
researchers and students interested in collecting Bactrian source data or
researching a specific phenomenon, as the book focuses on examples rather than
focusing on a position in an explanatory or theoretical approach. The book
addresses issues primarily for those focusing on phonology or historical
phonology. The book may also be of some value to those focusing on syntactic
and morphological issues. However, as there are no morpheme boundaries given
in the top line to assist work on syntax or morphology, the researcher in
those fields may require some prior knowledge of the language or at the very
least the Iranian language family. Additionally, a working knowledge of Greek
Script is necessary, as the majority of the examples are not transliterated,
which would force a reader unfamiliar with the Greek Script to frequently turn
back to her charts. The reader should be advised that they will often need to
look ahead a page or two for definitions of some abbreviations. 

SUMMARY

The monograph is divided into ten chapters: introduction, historical phonology
of Bactrian, nominal phrases, pronouns, prepositions and postpositions,
adverbs, conjunctions, the verb, word order, and compounds. 

The introduction gives a very brief background on the history of Bactria. The
author also briefly outlines the relation of Bactrian with other Iranian
languages, as well as the early use of written communication with respect to
the Greek script. Gholami provides an inventory of the remaining Bactrian
sources, including coins, seals, inscriptions, manuscripts, and documents. She
concludes by discussing her aims and the purpose of the book, which she states
as designed “to present an overview of the different characteristics of this
language and provide a basis for general comparison with other Middle Iranian
languages” --and indeed she does.

Chapter Two covers the historical phonology of Bactrian, comparing it with
Proto-Iranian. She divides up the first part of the chapter by types of
consonant speech sounds, namely: plosives, fricatives and affricates,
sonorants, and consonant clusters (involving numerous combinations of
plosives, affricates, nasals, approximants, trills, and fricatives). The
second half of the chapter is devoted to vowels, diphthongs, palatalization,
and various phonological processes involving vowels. Throughout the chapter
Gholami makes various claims about sound change, which seem to be based on the
direct surface forms of Proto-Iranian and Bactrian. For instance, she states
that in Bactrian the *ā is generally lost in final position, giving examples
such as the reconstructed *mātā ‘mother’ changing to μαδο [mado] (for ease of
reading, I have provided approximate transliterations in the brackets).
However, she does not give any reason for such assumptions, nor does she
discuss the possibility that the vowel simply changed and was not lost (in
fact all of her *ā# > ∅ examples show a final /o/ in Bactrian). In some
respects, Gholami is not overly specific in her usage, as she provides
headings such as *au > o, where the o is sometimes /o/ (*sapauda changing to
σαβολο [sabolo] ‘jar’) and other times /ω/ (*kaučapa changing to κωσοβο
[kōsobo]. Therefore, if a reader were looking for examples of compensatory
lengthening, they would need to examine the sections rather carefully. 

Chapter Three covers nominal phrases and focuses on case morphology,
genitives, apposition, and constructions containing multiple adjectives. In
her case morphology section, Gholami shows examples of a two case system in
the singular and plural (direct and oblique). She observes that the plural
ending was generalized and that case distinction is very rare and concludes
that such a distinction faded from use. Gholami also notes various word orders
with respect to proper nouns and particles. It seems that although such nouns
generally occur head final, there are some exceptions. Interestingly, Bactrian
adjectival morphology is quite rich. Adjectives are formed from nouns via
prefixes and suffixes, such as ‘belonging to’ or ‘likeness’, and get inflected
for number only. Additionally, adjectives can occur in various positions in
the nominal phrase, either before or after the noun (similar to Italian), or
in a long distance relationship, separated by genitives and prepositions.
Gholami does not posit a structure for adjectives, but does suggest that there
may be a semantic difference between the orders. Another possibility is that
it may be due to nominal topic or focus, which could be explored by examining
the context (cf. Aboh 2004, Giusti 1996, Ntelitheos 2006). However, only
fragments are given in this chapter.

Chapter Four discusses Bactrian pronouns. Bactrian makes use of both full and
enclitic pronouns. The enclitic pronouns can be attached to conjunctions and
prepositions. Interestingly, Bactrian does not use full third person pronouns,
but rather demonstratives instead. Demonstratives in Bactrian, which have a
variety of forms, can occur with or without a copula. In cases where no copula
is used, Gholami concludes that demonstratives are also used in the function
of a copula in Bactrian. However, it is odd that she does not address the
notion that there is just a null copula in use, which is common in a case
based system, as found in Latin and Greek (Danckaert 2012, Lewis 2014, Liceras
et al. 2012). Also in the chapter, Gholami discusses reflexives (which has two
reflexive pronoun and two reflexive adjective forms), indefinite pronouns
(divided into two groups: animate and inanimate), possessive pronouns, and
relative pronouns.  

Chapter Five surveys prepositions and postpositions. Here Gholami makes a
comparison with the Yidgha-Munji and Sanlechi (Pamir languages) in that a
preposition can be used to mark the object of a transitive verb. She also
notes that the preposition αβο [abo] can be used to mark an indirect object,
which can also be inanimate and can occur with infinitives. Prepositions can
be suffixed or prefixed to other words such as substantives and make a
compound, such as an adjective or adverb. They can also be suffixed to
conjunctions and negation particles.

Chapter Six discusses Adverbs, which can surface via suffixation. Gholami
notes three kinds of adverbs in Bactrian: (i) words which only play the role
of an adverb, such as ωσο [ōso] ‘now’, οαλο [oalo] ‘then’, and ταλο [talo]
‘there’; (ii) adverbs which are also used as pre-verbs and prepositions; and
(iii) words that are nouns or adjectives, but used as an adverb. Adverbs in
Bactrian occur in different syntactic positions , which is expected
considering that they vary in their distribution in other languages and that
adverbs are generally thought to merge at the phrase level at various
positions in the hierarchy (Cinque 1999, 2004).

Chapter Seven discusses the various phrases level projections that can be
conjoined. Conjunctions are observed to coordinate only words, nominal
phrases, and clauses with words, nominal phrases, and clauses respectively.
The only exception to this is αφαρσιδο [afarsido] ‘but, except’, which
coordinates a clause with a nominal phrase. However, Gholami notes that this
is rare and is found only in two documents. 

Chapter Eight focuses on the verb. Interestingly, the verb can occur in
various positions in the clause (such as either in the beginning, middle, or
end of a clause) and in different orders between the main verb and embedded
verb. For instance, infinitives can either precede or follow the main verb.
Additionally, the verb tends to occur in the singular in non-ergative
constructions, when there is more than one subject (as in coordinated
subjects).  

Chapter Nine gives special attention to word order. Similar to Latin, Bactrian
has a flexible word order (perhaps due to topic and focus (Giusti 1996,
Danckaert 2012); however Gholami does not provide any such discussion). In a
transitive verb sentence the following word orders are possible: O-S-V
(Object-Subject-Verb), O-V (where the subject is omitted), V-S-O, S-V-O, and
S-O-V, with the latter being the most common. Gholami notes that due to a lack
of material, it is not possible to take an in-depth survey or the word order
in Bactrian. 

Chapter Ten covers Bactrian compounds, both exocentric and endocentric.
Gholami provides examples of compounds in the following orders. If the first
element is a noun, it can be followed by a noun, adjective, suffix, adverb, or
preposition or past stem. If the first element is an adjective, it can be
followed by a noun, adjective, or preposition or past stem. If the first
element is a number, prefix, or a preposition or past stem, it can only be
followed by a noun. If the first element is a preposition, it can be followed
by a noun, adjective, or adverb.

EVALUATION

Overall this book presents a detailed catalogue of Bactrian, and it gives the
reader a general impression of the structure of the language, while giving a
few comparisons to other languages. Generally speaking, the book is a good
source of data for historical phonologists and to some extent for those
working on syntax or morphology. 

As mentioned above, a reader would benefit if they already had a working
knowledge of the Greek Script. Fortunately, I do have such knowledge, but I
would think that if a reader did not, they would be forced to continually
check Gholami’s charts, where she puts the only transliterations.

Readers may also fault Gholami for making numerous assumptions on sound change
and syntax (a few of these were pointed out in the summary). It would seem
that she is assuming the scholars she frequently cites, such as Sims-Williams.

If a second edition were to be written, I would suggest that Gholami provides
transliterations for all her data, justify (or at least explain) her
assumptions, make use of standardized IPA characters (especially for the
phonology chapter), and remove minor sections from the table of contents and
perhaps put them in an index (chapter 2 in the table of contents spans seven
pages, making it hard to search).

However, the shortcomings of this book can be overlooked by a reader in search
of Bactrian data or specific phenomena, as it is indeed a useful tool.

REFERENCES

Aboh, Enoch. 2004. Topic and focus within D. Linguistics in the Netherlands.
1-12.

Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic
perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2004. Issues in adverbial syntax. Lingua 114.6: 683-710.

Danckaert, Lieven. 2012. Latin embedded clauses: The left periphery series
184. John Benjamins.

Giusti, Giuliana. 1996. Is there a FocusP and a TopicP in the Noun Phrase
structure? UVWPL 6. 105-128.

Lewis, Blake. 2014. The syntax and semantics of demonstratives: a DP-external
approach. Proceedings of the 2014 Canadian Linguistics Association conference.
1-15.  

Liceras, Juana M., Raquel Fernández Fuertes, & Anahí Alba de la Fuente. 2012.
Overt subjects and copula omission in the Spanish and the English grammar of
English–Spanish bilinguals: On the locus and directionality of interlinguistic
influence. First Language 32.1-2: 88-115.

Ntelitheos, Dimitrios. 2004. Syntax of elliptical and discontinuous nominals.
Unpublished MA thesis: UCLA: California.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Blake Lewis is a Masters graduate student in the department of Linguistics,
Languages, and Culture at the University of Calgary. His research interests
include the syntax-semantics interface, demonstratives, time, modality, and
nominal-clausal parallelism. He focuses on the languages Latin, Greek, and
Blackfoot.





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