Historical Source of Ergativity in Indo-Iranian

Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 103:1 (2005) 172
EVIDENTIAL, RAISED POSSESSOR, AND THE

HISTORICAL SOURCE OF THE ERGATIVE
CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN1
By THEODORA BYNON
(Received 10 October 2003)
ABSTRACT
This paper argues (i) that the source of the ergative
construction of the transitive verb in Indic and Iranian
languages was anticausative but not passive as has widely
been assumed, (ii) that it functioned as a modally marked
evidential which indicated that the event in question was
inferred or reported rather than directly witnessed, and (iii)
that the agent was by origin a genitive-marked adnominal
possessor raised out of its noun phrase and later reanalysed as
the syntactic subject, its uniform instrumental-marking in
Sanskrit being an innovation. In view of the fact that the
possessive modier precedes its head this analysis can account
naturally for the position of the transitive agent at the
beginning of the clause, preceding the object. It is, nally,
suggested that the construction originated with non-agentive
intransitive verbs and that it spread to transitives through the
intermediary of ergative (ambitransitive) verbs which can
have both intransitive-spontaneous and transitive-causative
forms, a hypothesis which creates a diachronic link between
lexical and structural ergativity.
1
The present analysis is a radical revision of a paper presented at the meeting of
the Philological Society on 20 February 1998, and to some degree also of a lecture
given on 29 January 1999 at the University of Konstanz, on the occasion of an
Akademische Feierstunde in honour of the late Professor Manfred Faust. I am
grateful to Matt Shibatani, Werner Abraham, and Leonid Kulikov for helpful
comments on an earlier draft. I also thank the editors and two reviewers who read the
paper for the TPS. Any faults that remain are of course my own responsibility.
The Philological Society 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing,

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY
1. SPLIT
103, 2005
CLAUSE-MARKING
In a substantial number of languages far too many for it to be

coincidental nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive
clause marking co-occur, producing a split marking system. Split
systems in which the distribution of nominative-accusative and
ergative-absolutive marking is governed by verbal tense/aspect are
found not only in Indic and Iranian but also in Armenian, in
Caucasian languages, in certain Tibetan dialects, in Mayan
languages, and in Samoan and certain other Austronesian languages (Trask 1979, Dixon 1994:99., Milner 1973, Abraham
1996). In all of these it is the transitive clause in the perfective aspect
(or the past tense) which attracts the ergative-absolutive type of
alignment while all other clauses have nominative-accusative
alignment. The reverse distribution, although theoretically conceivable, is unattested in the languages of the world.
Prototypically, nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive
systems dier in the way the three universal syntactic-semantic
relations generally labelled S, A and O are treated in some part
or parts of the grammar. The rst of these, S, stands for the
single actant and syntactic subject of the intransitive verb. A and
O stand for the two actants of the transitive verb, A for the
prototypical agent (and noun phrases patterning like it) and O
for the prototypical object or patient. The nominative-accusative
type treats alike, and as morphologically unmarked, S and A,
which are in the nominative whereas O is (in the prototype)
overtly marked by means of the accusative case. The ergativeabsolutive type, by contrast, treats alike and as unmarked S and
O, which are in the absolutive case while A has distinctive
marking by means of the ergative case. (The third, activeinactive type, divides intransitive clauses into active and inactive
ones, the subject of the former being marked like A, that of the
latter like O.) Verb agreement is in both systems with
the unmarked actant (that is to say, with S and A in the
nominative-accusative type and with S and O in the ergativeabsolutive type), irrespective of syntactic relations. The casemarking patterns of these two systems may be represented as in
Table 1 (Dixon 1994:9):
BYNON
THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN
Table 1
NOMINATIVE-ACCUSATIVE TYPE
ERGATIVE-ABSOLUTIVE TYPE
nA
NOMINATIVE CASE
S
ACCUSATIVE CASE
ERGATIVE CASE
ABSOLUTIVE CASE
Given the wide distribution of split marking systems it is

perhaps surprising to nd that their origins are in major respects
still unresolved. Even in the Indo-Iranian family of IndoEuropean, which has a documented language history of some
three thousand years, the issue is in fact still controversial. It is
however undisputed that it is the ergative marking pattern which
here represents the innovation. The historical derivation of the
ergative construction to be developed in this paper is designed to
account for two essential facts hitherto unclaried, (i) the clauseinitial position of the agent and (ii) the grammatical function of
the source construction in early Indic and, ultimately, Proto-IndoIranian.
1.1. The ergative construction in present-day Indic and Iranian
languages
The split marking system found in many present-day Indic (IndoAryan) and Iranian languages is illustrated in (1) from Hindi
(Indic) and (2) from Pashto (Iranian). It will be seen that in the
ergative constructions at (1d) and (2d) the transitive agent (A)
has an overt marker, in Hindi the postposition ne, in Pashto the
oblique case (both labelled ergative) and that the verb agrees
with O. In the imperfective aspect on the other hand the
transitive agent is morphologically unmarked, having the same
form as the subject (S) of the intransitive verb, and the verb
agrees with A. Neither Hindi2 nor, with the exception of rst and
2
I am excluding here the clause type in which the denite animate object,
especially if human, is overtly marked by the postposition ko in both imperfective
and perfective. In the transitive perfective the verb here has the neutral (3SG.M) form.
103, 2005
second person pronouns, Pashto have an accusative marker so

that the transitive object (O) is unmarked also in the imperfective. (I have left the morphologically unmarked noun phrases
unglossed for case.)
(1) a. Intransitive imperfective
l r: ka sota
hai.
boy sleep.IPFV.M. be.2/3SG.PRES
The boy sleeps.
l r: k sot
hai.
girl
sleep.IPFV.F be.2/3SG.PRES
The girl sleeps.
b. Intransitive perfective
l r: ka soya.
boy sleep.PFV.M
The boy slept.
l r: k so.
girl
sleep.PFV.F
The girl slept.
c. Transitive imperfective
l r: ka
kitab
p r: h
r ha
hai.
boy
book
read
PROG
be.2/3SG.PRES
The boy is reading a book.
l r: k
kitab
p r: h
r h
hai.
girl
book
read
PROG
be.2/3SG.PRES
The girl is reading a book.
d. Transitive perfective
l r: ke-ne
kitab
p r: h.
boy.OBI-ERG book
read.PFV.M
The boy read a book.
l r: k
ne
kitab
p r: h.
girl
ERG
book
read.PFV.F
The girl read a book. (Y.Kachru, p.c.)
e
e
e
e
e
e
(2) a. Intransitive imperfective

baz
alw zi.
falcon y.3SG.PRES
The falcon ies/is ying.
e
BYNON
b. Intransitive perfective
baz
walwato.
falcon y.3SG.PAST.PFV
The falcon ew away.
c. Transitive imperfective
sar: e baz
alwazawi.
man falcon y.CAUS.3SG.PRES
The man is causing the falcon to y.
d. Transitive perfective
sar: i
baz
walwazaw lo.
man.ERG falcon y.CAUS.3SG.M.PAST.PFV
The man caused the falcon to y. (Khattak 1988:72)3
e
Syntactically, however, even in the transitive past perfective it is

the agent which exhibits such prototypical subject properties as
clause-initial position and deletion under co-reference in conjoined clauses, as is shown below in examples (3) from Hindi and
(4) from Pashto. In both languages an intransitive clause is
followed by a transitive clause. In Hindi the rst predicate is in
the form of the conjunctive participle whose empty subject is
controlled by the subject of the main clause. In Pashto the agent
is in the absolutive case, as required by the intransitive verb
although the deleted agent of the transitive verb does require a
clitic. In both languages the construction is therefore ergative
only morphologically.
(3) andar j
akar
gop
al-ne
cit: t: h likh.
inside go.CONJ.PRT Gopal-ERG letter write.PAST.PFV.F
Going inside, Gopal wrote a letter. (Masica 1991:342)
(4) Z lme
kor-ta
lar: o
aw lobe
ye
Zalme.ABS house-to go.3SG.M.PAST.PFV and games 3SG
w kr: e.
play.3PL.F.PAST.PFV
Zalme went home and played games. (Khattak 1988:77)
e
3
I wish to thank Dr. Khalid Khan Khattak for permission to draw on data from
his thesis.
103, 2005
In Indo-Iranian the historical origin of the split marking pattern is

to some degree transparent for, in the Old Indic and Old Iranian
ancestors of the ergative construction, the predicate is a past
participle employed as a nite verb. In the case of a transitive verb
base this participle is patient-oriented (Hock 1986), having, as
elsewhere in Indo-European, O as its subject (cf. English The letter
is written). The fact that it is the O constituent which bears the
nominative case and determines the inected form of the past
participle (which agrees with it in gender, number and case) is thus
well understood. What has not been resolved is the historical origin
of the agent. The traditional solution, elaborated in recent work, lay
in interpreting the construction as a passive with an adverbial agent
phrase, much as in English (Anderson 1977, 1988). For Old Indic
this analysis has, on the face of it, strong support from casemarking, the instrumental being the canonical marker of the agent
phrase in other passives as well. The diculty with this analysis
lies in the fact that in the ergative construction, unlike in a passive,
it is the agent which has topic and subject status so that the passiveto-ergative hypothesis needs to postulate a so-called markedness
shift in which the rhematic agent phrase has acquired topic and
subject status. I am here proposing an alternative hypothesis which
interprets the agent phrase as a possessive modier raised out of its
noun phrase to clause level (see 5.1). This has the advantage that the
agent is, from the beginning, in the crucial clause-initial position
because the genitival modier precedes its head. In the following
sections I will develop this hypothesis step by step.
1.2. The Old Indic and Old Iranian ancestors of the modern ergative
construction
The immediate ancestors of the present-day ergative construction of
the Indic and Iranian languages are readily identiable. They may
be illustrated, on the Indic side, by example (5) from Classical
Sanskrit4 and, on the Iranian side, by example (6) from Old Persian.
It will be seen that in both instances the verb is in the form of the
4
I will normally employ the short label Sanskrit rather than the more precise
Epic and Classical Sanskrit.
BYNON
past participle functioning as a nite verb, the patient is in the

unmarked nominative case, and the agent is oblique-marked,
although not uniformly in the two branches (Old Indic employs the
instrumental, Old Persian the genitive). The construction would
initially have had the status of a perfect (with current relevance at
the time of speaking) and, like many perfects elsewhere, would
subsequently have become a past tense. As will be seen from the
translations cited, the construction has generally been analysed as a
passive although it is often translated as an active.5
(5) a. may
a br
ahman: o
dr: s: t: ah: .
I.INS
brahman.NOM see.PP.NOM.SG.M
The brahman was seen by me. (Burrow 1965:354)
b. sa
may
a
dr: s: t: ah: .
he.NOM I.INS
see.PP.NOM.SG.M
He (was) seen by me for I saw him.
(Burrow 1965:369)
c. (aham) br
ahman: am apas yam.
(I.NOM) brahman.ACC see.1SG.IMPF
I saw the brahman. (Burrow 1965:355)
(6) a. ima
taya
man
a krtam.
this.N what.N I.GEN
do.PP.N
Voici ce que jai fait., litt. ce qui par moi a ete fait.
(This is what I have done. Literally: That which by me
has been done.) (DB I. 27; Benveniste 1966:177)
b. *man
a ima
krtam.
I.GEN this.N do.PP.N
I have done this.
Burrow, while accepting its historical derivation from a passive, clearly
had reservations regarding the synchronic status of the construction in
Sanskrit. For, in characterising it as Prakrit in disguise (1965:354),
he anticipated for it the active-voice value which it undoubtedly had in
5
It is this object-orientation which for a Sanskritist constitutes the dening
characteristic of the passive. For Pa n: ini the past participle and the -ya-passive have
stem suxes which designate the patients perspective whereas the present active
designates that of the agent (J.C.Wright, p.c.).
103, 2005
later language states. But it is clear that this active-voice status must
have applied in Sanskrit itself given that the construction came to
replace the inherited past tense clause with nominative subject and
nite verb (5c), which was becoming moribund. I will attempt to
demonstrate in what follows that the construction never had passive
status and was in fact ergative already in Sanskrit.
The corresponding Iranian construction in (6) had also long been
considered a passive but, since this was challenged by Benveniste
(1952 1966:17686), it has by some been reinterpreted as a
possessive construction with a possessive agent. A strong argument
in favour of this analysis lies in the fact that predicative possessive
expressions and transitive perfects have parallel structures in a wide
range of languages and that this structural parallelism extends to Old
Indic. In the following sections I shall discuss rst the situation in
Sanskrit, and then go back to the earlier Vedic and forwards to
Middle Indic. Finally I will return to Old Iranian in 4.2 and 7.
2. THE
ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN (EPIC AND CLASSICAL) SANSKRIT
As outlined in Table 2 (adapted from Bubenik 1998:19) the Old

Indic period is represented by two chronologically and dialectally
distinct varieties, the more modern Sanskrit and the more archaic
language of the Vedas. Grammatically Vedic is very conservative,
its morphology most closely resembling that of early Greek.6
Sanskrit, its close relative rather than its direct descendant,
although initially retaining the full spectrum of inherited morphoTable 2
OLD INDIC
MIDDLE INDIC
HIGH
Vedic
LOW
Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Pra krits
NEW INDIC
Sanskrit
Pra krits
Apabhram
: s a
Sanskrit
Pra krits
Apabhram
: s a
Modern Languages
6
Broadly speaking the paradigm of the verb comprises three tense complexes based
respectively on the present, aorist, and perfect stem; three voices (active, mediopassive,
and passive), three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and optative). The so-called past
tenses comprise imperfect, aorist, and perfect; the non-nite forms include the past
participle in -ta/-na-, the future participle (or gerundive), and the gerund or absolutive.
BYNON
logical forms made increasing use of impersonal expressions and of

such nominal forms of the verb as the gerundive (future participle)
and the past participle as nite forms.
Those who subscribe to the view that the ergative construction of
the modern Indic languages goes back to a Sanskrit passive (that is
to say both traditional grammarians and modern linguists such as
Anderson 1977, 1988, Bubenik 1989, 1993, 1988, Masica 1991:341),
have always had diculty in specifying at precisely what stage the
supposed passive-to-ergative reanalysis took place. In one sense this
is hardly surprising since a syntactic reanalysis, being the attribution of a new structure to an existing string, is by its very nature
covert (invisible). But one would expect it to manifest itself in its
consequences, in the present instance in a word-order change
promoting the agent to subject position. It has however repeatedly
been noted that in the past participle clause with an overt (nonclitic) agent this had always occupied the clause-initial subject
position. Lahiris counts of word-order patterns in Old Indic prose
texts led him to conclude that in passive clauses with overt subject
and object (that is, in practice, past participle clauses) the order of
the (original) active sentence is preserved so that all the texts prefer
to put the agent (which is in the instrumental) before the passive
subject (which is in the nominative) (1935:338). Hock (1986:16)
makes the same point. This state of aairs led perceptive adherents
of the passive-origin hypothesis to describe this claimed passive
source as having been non-promotional, the agent retaining the
subject position and the patient retaining the object position
ascribed to them in the underlying structure (Pray 1976, with special
reference to example (11) below). I am here interpreting this socalled non-promotional passive as simply an ergative construction.
The claim that the construction was already ergative in Sanskrit
is supported by the fact that it satised the formal criteria which
dene ergative clause-marking (Klaiman 1978, Andersen 1986a,b,
Hock 1986, Tikkanen 1987). For, as far as past participle clauses are
concerned, the intransitive subject (S) is case-marked in the same
way as the transitive object (O), both these being old nominatives,
while the transitive agent is oblique-marked. (Only in nite-verb
clauses was the transitive object accusative-marked and thus
formally distinct from the intransitive subject (nominative-marked),
10
103, 2005
and even here this was only so in the case of the masculine and
feminine.) This ergative analysis of the Sanskrit past participle
clause is, however, by no means generally accepted. There are those
who consider that the development of ergative clause marking
presupposes, according to the denition of ergative alignment given
in 1 above, the prior existence of an absolutive case (Bubenik 1989,
1993, 1998:4). This case was the result of the merger of the
nominative and the accusative, a change which would appear to
have reached completion only in Late Middle/Early Modern Indic7
so that, in the period preceding this merger, the construction which
I am interpreting as ergative would have been syntactically
ambiguous but formally passive (Bubenik 1998:4).
There are three powerful arguments which speak against this
morphology-centred approach. Firstly, what I am here identifying
as the ergative construction is found in Sanskrit texts in apparently
free variation with old-style past tense clauses characterised by a
nominative-marked subject and nite verb in the active voice, the
selection by the speaker of one or other variant being sociolinguistically, and certainly not grammatically determined. Secondly it can
be shown that over time, and at dierent speeds in dierent genres,
the old-style aorist, perfect and imperfect clauses were being
replaced by past participle clauses. Thirdly it will be seen that the
syntactic arguments drawn from clause-conjoining (illustrated in
(34) above from present-day Indo-Iranian languages) would have
applied to a large extent already in Sanskrit. These three arguments
will now be discussed in turn.
A particularly striking illustration of the syntactic variation
between old-style nite-verb and new-style past participle clauses is
to be found in two successive passages of the R
amayan: a, (2.57) and
(2.58), both of which narrate the same sequence of events.8 The
episode being described is a tragic hunting accident in which the
prince accidentally kills a young hermit. In the rst version (7a, 8a)
7
The majority of dialects in fact continue to retain contrasting nominative and
accusative forms in the rst and second person pronouns. The result is an animacybased split system which may happily co-occur with the aspect-based one. See for
instance Farrell (1995) for Baluchi.
8
I am indebted to Renate Sohnen-Thieme (SOAS) for drawing my attention to
these two versions which gure in her current work on such alternative encodings.
BYNON
11
the prince is telling the story to his wife, in the second version (7b, 8b)
he is repeating his description of what happened but this time in more
colloquial terms, employing the actual words he used when he was
speaking to the young mans humble parents. The syntactic variation
is between, in the rst version, the inherited old-style grammar, which
employs nite aorist forms with the subject/agent marked in the
verbal ending and, in the second version, the new-style grammar
which employs predicative ta-participles with the subject/agent in the
form of an overt personal pronoun (in the nominative when the verb
is intransitive, in the instrumental when it is transitive). Since the
corresponding clauses occur in the same positions in the discourse
they must be considered as equivalent alternative encodings, the
selection of one or other being simply a matter of register.
(7) a. saray
um
anu+ag
am:
nadm.
Sarayu.ACC PV+go.1SG.AOR
river.ACC
I set out along the river Sarayu. (R 2.57.14)

b. aham:
saray
utram
agatah: .
I.NOM
Sarayu.bank.ACC PV.go.PP.NOM.M
I came to the bank of the Sarayu.(R 2.58.12)
(8) a. as raus: am . . .
ghos: am.
hear.1sgAOR
noise.ACC
I heard a noise. (R 2.57.16)
b. s ruto
may
a
s abdo.
hear.PP.NOM.M
I.INS
sound.NOM
I heard a sound. (R 2.58.13)
With regard to the progress over time of the replacement of the oldstyle inherited forms by the new-style forms, Bloch (1906:48, 58)
counted in the Mah
abh
arata some 150 main-clause past participle
predicates as against 1033 nite verbs, whereas in the later
Vet
alapancavim: s atik
akath
a the proportion was reversed. In this
latter text he counted some 1750 nominal clauses9 (a majority
having a predicative past participle) as against 790 nite verbs (now
mainly present-tense forms), a development which he described as
the decomposition of the old verbal system (1906:93). It is clear,
9
Nominal clauses are dened as lacking a nite verb or overt auxiliary.
12
103, 2005
then, that the predicative past participle was rapidly gaining ground
as the normal expression of past tense, any surviving nite past
tense forms now being sporadic and archaic (1906:856). This
replacement of inherited synthetic verb forms by the past participle
has parallels in other Indo-European languages. What is dierent in
Sanskrit is merely the syntactic form (see 4.2 below).
With a transitive verb Sanskrit thus had the following three basic
clause types:
(i) the inherited active-voice clause, with topical subject/agent
in the nominative and a nite verb in the active voice;
(ii) the ergative clause, with topical subject/agent in the instrumental and the past participle agreeing with the patient;
(iii) the passive clause, with topical subject/patient in the
nominative and nite ya-passive, the agent if present being
in the instrumental.
Seen from this perspective the transitive clauses illustrated in (5a-b)
and (8b) are to be interpreted not as passives but as ergatives, the agent
having subject status in spite of being oblique-marked. The syntactic
subject criteria which are standard in the grammatical analysis of
present-day Indic languages (that is to say the rules which govern
reexivisation, raising, and ellipsis in complex sentences: Y.Kachru
et al. 1976:90.; Masica 1991:33962) would widely have applied
already in Sanskrit (Hock 1991a,b). I shall here, by way of my third
argument, illustrate only one of these criteria, namely ellipsis in
conjoined clauses.
If an intransitive and a transitive clause are conjoined, it is A and
S which pattern together irrespective of case-marking (although in
texts this rule was not without exceptions).10 The examples at (9)
and (10), taken from the above cited R
am
ayan: a passage, illustrate
this point. They show an initial gerund clause in conjunction with
10
For illustration and discussion of complexities see Sohnen 1985. According to
Hock (1991a:61.) apparent contradictions can be resolved by means of multiple
bracketings. Tikkanen (1987:147f.) formulated the rule more neutrally: The gerund
being mostly active and personal by construction, its implicit subject or agent has
typically the role of Actor and is normally coreferential with that (core) argument of the
superordinate clause which ranks highest when considering criteria of Actorhood,
Topicality and Animacy/Empathy. In [old-style, ThB] active and passive clauses this is
mostly the subject, but in ergative clauses it is the oblique agent. For illustration of the
reverse clause order, with the transitive clause preceding, see Bubenik 1998:157.
BYNON
13
an old-style (9) and a new style (10) main clause. Those in (1114),
taken from later texts, contain only new-style ergative main clauses.
It will be seen that the published translations often oscillate between
an active and a passive-voice reading, the alternative translations
being treated as mere stylistic variants of a passive original. The
passive analysis of these sentences, which identies the nominative
phrase as the subject, was able in practice to go unchallenged
because, ignoring considerations of discourse structure, both types
of clause encoded the same proposition. It will however be seen
from these examples that only the active-voice analysis does in fact
correctly render the discourse structure of the text.
(9) s aram
uddhr: tya . . . amuncam:
nis itam:
ban: am.
shaft.ACC PV.draw.GER . . . shoot.1SG.IMPF sharp.ACC arrow.ACC
Drawing out a shaft I shot a keen-edged arrow. (R 2.57.17)

(10) s abdam
a laks: ya may
a . . . visr: s: t: o
naracah: .
sound.ACC aim.GER I.INS
release.PP.NOM.M arrow.NOM
Aiming at the sound I released an arrow. (R 2.58.15)
aradhitah: .
(11) tapah:
kr: tv
a
may
a devo
austerity do.GER I.INS
god.NOM propitiate.PP.NOM.M
Having performed austerities I propitiated the god. (Pray
1976:202)
(12) so+ayam
tvay
a sam
akramya
paribhuktah:
and+this.NOM.M you.INS PV.PV.enter.GER PV.enjoy.PP.NOM.M
striy
a
saha.
woman.INS
with
And you have entered and enjoyed this (abode of mine)
together with a woman. (KSS 12.27.72; Breunis 1990:119)
(13) tay
a
s rutv
a
ca
nirbhartsya
she.INS
hear.GER and
PV.revile.GER

p
an: ibhy
am
aham
ahat
a.
hands.INS.DUAL I.NOM
PV.beat.PP.NOM.F
When she heard me, she railed at me and I was beaten by her.
(KSS 12.8.101; Breunis 1990:116)
And on hearing (this), she scolded me and beat me with her
hands. (J.C.Wright, p.c.)
14
103, 2005
(14) r
aks: asena+apahr: tya
s
a
nt
a
demon.INS+PV.carry.GER she.NOM lead.PP.NOM.F
Vindhy
at: avim.
Vindhy
at: avi.ACC
She is taken along to the Vindhya forest by a demon, who
has abducted her. (KSS 12.12.31; Breunis 1990:117)
The demon, having taken her away, led her to the Vindya
forest.
Example (15) illustrates a fragment of narrative text in which the
successive clauses have a single topic which is also the syntactic
subject. This has instrumental marking in the rst two clauses,
which are ergative constructions, and nominative marking in the
last clause, which is intransitive, the accusative here marking the
goal of the movement and not a direct object.
(15) yada. . .
anusmr: tam
devena
satyam
when
remember.PP.N divine.INS
truth.N
d: ha+p
u
urva . . .
maya . . .
s akuntala
married+before.NOM.F
I.INS
Sakuntala.NOM
pratya dis: :t a +iti
tada
pas ca t-tapam
PV.PV.show.PP.NOM.F+QUOT then
remorse.ACC
anugato
devah: .
PV.go.PP.NOM.M
god.NOM
When it was remembered by his majesty (that) in truth Sakuntala
was previously married by him and (then) rejected then he entered
upon remorse.(Sak.VI, 4; Jamison 1990:1)
When the divine remembered the truth that he had earlier married
Sakuntala and [then] rejected her (literally, I earlier married
Sakuntala and rejected her), he then entered upon remorse.
In this present section I have attempted to document, however

cursorily, the shift within Sanskrit from the older, Indo-European
style nominative-accusative type clause structure to the split
system of those present-day Indic languages which have preserved
ergative clause structure. It has been shown that, already in
Sanskrit, subject role can no longer be dened by reference to
nominative case and verb agreement and that in the ergative
construction these morphological subject properties are with the
BYNON
15
morphologically unmarked patient (which continues the old

nominative-marked subject) whereas discourse-syntactic critera
identify the agent as the subject.11 The Sanskrit ergative clause,
with overt subject in the instrumental and transitive past participle
in the role of nite verb, increasingly represents the normal
encoding of the transitive verb in the past tense and, leaving aside
sociolinguistic and stylistic factors, is a free variant of the old-style
clause with a nominative subject and a nite active-voice past
tense verb (especially the aorist) which it was in the process of
replacing. From the perspective of the historical grammar of IndoIranian, however, it is to be noted that this particular ergative
clause structure lacks direct counterparts in both the earliest Old
Indic (section 3) and Old Iranian (section 4.2).
3. THE
PRE-ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN
VEDIC
While it is true to say that in the archaic language of the Vedic

hymns past participles with an instrumental agent were amply
attested, these were almost exclusively of the properly participial,
non-nite type, which indeed had passive construction (see 16b).
The overwhelming presence in texts of these participles may have
led adherents of the passive-origin hypothesis to assume a historical
continuity between Vedic and Sanskrit which, in fact, simply does
not exist. For it is signicant that with main-clause nite past
participles an overt agent was, as noted by Jamison (1979a:2012)
and earlier by Speijer (1886 [1993]: 255), extremely rare indeed in
early Vedic, and when it became more frequent in prose texts the
evidence overwhelmingly points to the genitive case, and not
the instrumental, as its canonical encoding. I hope to show that the
Vedic proto-type of the Sanskrit ergative construction (which I will
refer to as the pre-ergative construction) was an intransitive main
clause with a noun phrase in the genitive, which encoded the
possessor of the O actant of the participle and which could also be
read as the agent. I will attempt to show that this source
11
Hock surmised (1986:22) that it was this change from subject to agent-oriented
syntax which explains why the Indian grammarians avoided operating with the
grammatical category subject.
16
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construction was a modally marked form, a so-called evidential

which indicated that the depicted event had been accessed
indirectly, be it through inference or be it from handed-down
knowledge (report) (see 5.2 below). In view of the fact however
that, in English, epistemic modals imply doubts regarding the truth
of the stated proposition, I will adopt a modally neutral translation.
It will be seen in section 5 that the proposed evidential reading
naturally follows from the here-and-now reference of the past
participle on the one hand and the possessor role of the agent on the
other.
The following Vedic data have been drawn from the grammatical
literature, supplemented by targeted searches in Lubotskys concordance to the Rigveda (Lubotsky 1997). Each example will be
followed by a text reference and the source from which it was
obtained.12 It has also been systematically glossed and followed by
one or more attributed translations. Geldners German translation,
which covers the entire Rigveda, is simply labelled Geldner; my
English rendering where this was felt to be useful, follows in
brackets. Unattributed alternative translations are my own, the
more doubtful ones being preceded by a question mark. I have felt
this rather cumbersome procedure to be necessary in order to
indicate the very real discrepancies which sometimes exist between
scholars in the interpretation of certain of the more dicult
passages.
In view of the fact that the deities to whom the hymns are
addressed and their worshippers represent given information, the
respective pronouns appear, as a rule, in clitic form. Barred from
clause-initial position for prosodic reasons, these clitics normally
occupy the second position in the clause (that is following the rst
accented word, in conformity with Wackernagels Law), irrespective of whether they represent an actant of the verb or form part of a
noun phrase the rest of which is located elsewhere in the clause.
Many are morphologically underspecied, those of the rst and
second persons for instance representing a genitive or dative in the
singular and a genitive, dative or accusative in the plural, and are
glossed 1SG, 2SG.
12
The abbreviations are those of the standard handbooks and grammars.
BYNON
17
3.1. The case of the transitive agent

The only statistical information on early Vedic of which I am
aware comes from Jamison (1979a,b), who carried out proper
counts of the morphological encoding of the passive agent for
both the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda. Although she did not
separate out the gures for non-nite and nite past participles
she states that the past participles in these texts were overwhelmingly non-nite. She found that the transitive agent had in
principle three possible encodings: the bare stem forming a
compound with the participle, or the instrumental or the genitive
form of the nominal. These are illustrated in (16) from the
properly participial, non-nite past participle. It will be seen that
this was, together with its satellites, embedded in a noun phrase,
its empty subject copying the gender, number and case marking of
the head noun.
varun: apras is: :ta
Indra.PV.impel.PP.NOM.M.PL Varun: a.PV.rule.PP.NOM.M.PL
ye
s
u ryasya
jyotis: o
bha gam
sun.GEN
light.GEN
share.ACC
who.NOM.M.PL

a nas uh: . . .
attain.3PL.PERF
Those who, urged forth by Indra, instructed by Varun: a, have obtained
their share of the suns light . . . (RV 10.66.2; cf.Jamison 1979a:202)
devebhir
nvr: ta
b.
a po
god.INS.PL
PV.cover.PP.NOM.PL
water.NOM.PL
atis: :than.
stand.3PL.IMPF
The waters stood enclosed by the gods. (RV 10.98.6; Jamison
1979a: 205)
cyautna ni
te
kr: ta
vars: is: :t ha ni parn: asa
c. et
a
this.N.PL endeavour.N.PL 2SG
do.PP.N.PL highest.N.PL in.full
v d: v
a`dha rayah: .
hr: d
a
heart.INS rm(ly)
hold.2sgIMPF
Diese hochsten Grotaten, die vollzahlig von dir getan sind, hast
du im Herzen fest beschlossen. (You rmly enclosed in your heart
those paramount deeds which you have performed in full.) (RV 8.77.9;
Geldner)
(16) a. ndraprasuta
It is important to note that these three possible encodings of the

agent show strikingly dierent frequencies. Jamison (1979b:
130.) found, in the Rigveda and Atharvaveda, hundreds of
18
103, 2005
instances of the instrumental and the compound types as against

a mere 20 to 30 possible instances of the genitive type
possible instances because she analysed the sentences in which
these occur as being potentially ambiguous, in that the genitive
phrase may be read either adnominally or as the agent of (the
verb underlying) the past participle. For example in (17) Geldner
analysed the genitive phrase as a possessive modier whereas
Cardona considered that it (also) had agent role (Cardona
1970:9), supporting his analysis by reference to structures such
as those in (18), in which the subject of the relative clause is coreferential with the possessor phrase of the main clause (the
referent of vajr the one with the thunderbolt and of maghava
the bountiful one being Indra). The situation is thus in fact not
so much one of straightforward alternative analyses but it is
rather the case that the agentive reading presupposes the
adnominal possessive role of the genitive phrase (hence the
term the possessive agent).
vocam
pra kr: ta ni
vrya .
:
Indra.GEN call.1SG.INJ PV do.PP.N.PL deed.N.PL
I shall proclaim Indras manly deeds performed (by him).
(RV 2.21.3; Cardona 1970:9, the translation reconstructed
from his rendering of 17c)
Des Indra vollbrachte Heldentaten will ich verkunden.
(I shall proclaim Indras accomplished deeds.) (Geldner)
b. vsva +d+ndrasya
vrya
kr: ta ni.
all.N.PL+PRT+Indra.GEN deed.N.PL do.PP.N.PL
all Indras manly deeds performed (by him) (RV 7.18.14;
Cardona 1970:9, with the translation reconstructed from
his rendering of 17c)
alles Heldentaten, die Indra vollbracht hat (all
[these being] heroic deeds accomplished by Indra)
(Geldner)
c. pra te+indra
vrya
vocam
pratham
a kr: t
a ni.
:
PV
2SG+Indra.VOC deed.N.PL call.1SG.INJ rst.N.PL do.PP.N.PL
I shall proclaim, Indra, your manly deeds, rst performed
(by you). (RV 10.112.8; Cardona 1970:9)
Ich will . . . deine erstgetanen Heldentaten verkunden, Indra.
(I shall proclaim your earliest-performed heroic deeds.)
(Geldner)
(17) a. ndrasya
BYNON
19
(18) a. ndrasya
nu
vry
an: i pravocam:
yani
Indra.GEN PRT
deed.N.PL PV call.1SG.INJ which.N.PL
cak
ara
pratham
ani vajr .
do.3SG.PERF rst.N.PL
with.club.NOM
I shall proclaim the manly deeds of Indra, which the
bearer of the vajra rst performed. (RV 1.32.1; Cardona
1970:8)
Des Indra Heldentaten will ich nun verkunden, die ersten,
die der Keulentrager getan hat. (I shall proclaim Indras
heroic deeds . . .) (Geldner)
b. pra+ndrasya vocam
prathama kr: tani
pra
PV+Indra.GEN call.1SG.INJ
rst.N.PL deed.N.PL
PV
n
utan
a
maghav
a
y
a
cakara.
recent.N.PL
bountiful.NOM REL.N.PL
do.3SG.PERF
I shall proclaim the rst deeds of Indra [and] the recent
ones, which the generous one has performed.
(RV 7.98.5; Cardona 1970:9)
Ich will die fruhesten Taten des Indra verkunden und
die neuesten, die der Gabenreiche vollbracht hat.
(I shall proclaim Indras rst deeds . . .) (Geldner)
3.2. The possessive agent with main-clause nite past participle

By contrast with non-nite embedded participial clauses, main
clauses with a nite past participle and overt agent seem almost
non-existent in the early language. Example (19), with a
genitival possessor which is potentially also the agent, is
Rigvedic but it is from the late Book 10. The remaining
examples are from prose texts which, according to Hock
(1986:20), were the rst to attest to the productive use of the
transitive ta-participle as a main verb. Pace Jamison who treats
it as embedded, the context (see 19) suggests that (19) is a main
clause. It also suggests that the sentence does not constitute an
eye-witness account of Indra smashing his enemies. It would
rather seem to be the case that the departure of the defeated
enemies had led the poet to conclude, be it from the actual
situation on the ground or from reported knowledge, that
20
103, 2005
either (i) Indras enemies are now all beaten (adnominal) or (ii)
Indra has now/will now have beaten all his enemies (agentive).
Reasons for the evidential reading of the pre-ergative construction are discussed in section 5, my basic contention being that it
is its possessor status in relation to the other noun phrase which
licenses both the agentive reading of the genitive phrase and the
modal semantics of the clause.
(19)
hat
a
ndrasya
s atravah:
smash.PP.NOM.M.PL Indra.GEN enemy.NOM.PL
Either (i) adnominal: Indras rivals, smashed (by Indra)
Indras smashed rivals; or (ii) agentive: the rivals smashed
by Indra (RV 10.155.4; Jamison 1979b:134)
(190 )
yad+ha
pr
acr
ajaganta13 . . .
when+PRT
east.NOM.PL.F
go.2PL.PLUPERF
hat
a
ndrasya
s atravah:
smash.PP.NOM.PL.M Indra.GEN
enemy.NOM.PL
sarve
budbuday
as avah: .
all.NOMpl.M . . .
with.bubbly.semen.NOMpl.M
Wenn ihr . . . weggegangen seid . . ., so sind alle blasensamigen Feinde Indras erschlagen. (. . . all Indras . . .
enemies are beaten) (Geldner)
When you have gone away . . . [either] Indras enemies are
all beaten [or] Indra has all his enemies beaten/has beaten
all his enemies.
All my other examples of main-clause genitive agents are postRigvedic, taken from prose texts concerned with ritual and
doctrine. (20) occurs in a passage concerned with the agnihotram
(re-oering). The context says that the libations which form
part of this oering rise upward and enter the air, from whence
they can enter man making his mouth his oering re and food
his libation. Eating food is thus an enactment of the re oering.
13
According to Paul Thieme, Das Plusquamperfektum im Veda (1929:30) ajagan
scheint immer aoristisch verwendet zu sein (J.C.Wright, p.c.).
BYNON
21
The verb is hu- to pour (or cast) into the re. Given that the act
of sacricing implies casting ones own oering, a possessive
relationship is inherently present between the person who
performs the sacrice and his oering. The fact on the other
hand that the genitive phrase is in a clause which forms one half
of a correlative construction and resumes the canonical subject of
the other clause would again support its analysis as a clause level
constituent. Despite its topic status and agentive properties it is
however not the syntactic subject. Oertel follows tradition in
oering a passive interpretation. In view of the fact that all the
examples in (202) record traditional knowlege (hearsay) they
justify an evidential reading.
(20) a. yah: . . .
agnihotram
juhoti
:
who.NOM.M Agni-sacrice.N oer.3SG.PRES
tasya
sarves: u
lokes: u
sarves: u
bh
utes: u
all.LOC.PL
world.LOC.PL all.LOC.PL creature.LOC.PL
he.GEN
a tmasu
sarvesv
hutam
bhavati.
:
selves.LOC.PL
poured.N
become.3SG.PRES
all.LOC.PL
He who performs the Agnihotra by him oering is/becomes/gets
performed in every world, in every creature, in every self ((ChUp 5.24.2;
Jamison 1990:16)
He who oers the Agnihotra has performed his oering in every
world . . ..
b. tasy
am
eva+asya
tad
devata yam
hutam
:
:
oer.PP.N
that.LOC. PRT+he.GEN that.N deity.LOC.
bhavati
ya
evam
veda.
:
this.N
know.3SG.PERF
becomes
who.NOM.M
Thus that is/becomes/gets oered in this divinity by him who knows
thus. (AV 15.13.9; Jamison 1990:15)
He who knows this has performed his oering to that deity.
In (21) the genitive phrase has again a phrase level (adnominal)

and potentially also a clause level role, the latter reading again
being favoured by the role of the participle clause in the
correlative construction. This example is crucial to the present
semantic analysis because it contains, in the formula they say, an
explicit reference to the fact that the utterance conveys reported
knowledge. The PP is hita-, from dh
a- to put, preceded by
negative an-.
22
103, 2005
(21) an
ahitas
tasya+agnir
ity
ahur
unlay.PP.NOM.M
he.GEN+re.NOM QUOT say.3PL.PERF
yah:
samidho+an
adh
ay
a+agnim
who.NOM
log.ACC.PL+NEG.lay.GER+re.ACC

adhatta
iti.
PV.lay.3sgPRES.MID.
QUOT
(i) Nicht gegrundet ist dessen Feuer/(ii) Nicht gegrundet ist
das Feuer von dem, so sagt man, der, ohne vorher die Scheite
(im Brahmaudanafeuer) aufgelegt zu haben, sich die Feuer
grundet. (They say that (a) the re of him who, having
kindled without rst having placed the logs (in the B. re), is
not founded/(b) By him who . . .. the re is not founded . . . )
(TB 1.1.9.10; Oertel 1994:1106)
?They say that he has not (properly) laid his re who lays the
re without (rst) having placed the logs . . ..
Example (22) introduces a further source of ambiguity which arises
from the fact that, from Vedic onwards, the genitive case was
frequently substituted for the dative, which had become increasingly vulnerable (Speijer [1886]1993:63). Oertel treated (22) as triply
ambiguous since the genitive phrase can in theory not only be
possessive (i) or agentive (ii) but also benefactive (iii). Note that in
its agentive reading it again correlates with the canonical subject of
the other clause. The PP in (22) is krta-, from kr- to buy.
(22) tr: t yena+asya
third.INS+he.GEN
tr: tyena
third.INS
somah:
soma.NOM
ya
who.NOM
tasya
she.GEN
ca
and
kr to
buy.PP.NOM
evam
:
thus
(scil. goh: )
(scil. cow)
sahasrasya
thousand.GEN
bhavati
become.3SG.PRES
vidva n
knowing.NOM
a tmanas
self.GEN
payasah:
milk.GEN
somam
krn: a ti.
:
soma.ACC buy.3SG.PRES
Fur ein Drittel des Selbstes dieser (Kuh) und fur ein Drittel der
Milch eines Tausends
(i) wird dessen Soma gekauft (the soma of him is bought who . . .)
(ii) wird der Soma von dem gekauft (the soma is bought by him who
. . .)
BYNON
23
(iii) wird fur den der Soma gekauft (the soma is bought for him who
. . .)
der so wissend den Soma kauft. (PB 21.1.4; Oertel 1994:1109).
Caland, quoted by Oertel (1994:1129) translates (ii) as: For the
third part of this (cows) self and for a third part of the milk of a
thousand is the soma bought by him who, knowing this, buys the
soma.
?He will buy his soma for [the price of] one third of the body of a
cow and one third of the milk of a thousand [cows] who, in this
knowledge, goes to buy his soma.
3.3. The non-possessive, lexically determined genitive agent
In the archaic language a second context for genitive agents is
found with verbs of perception, consumption, and enjoyment,
which in the active show variation in the case of the complement
and in the passive [in which category she included the present past
participle construction with overt agent] sometimes take noninstrumental agents (Jamison 1979b:134). This verb class (in which
she tentatively also includes verbs of ritual activity such as praising)
comprises verbs such as become aware, see, hear, which in
present-day Indic languages (see 5.4 below and Masica 1991:346
56, Shibatani and Pardeshi 2001) have dative-subject constructions.
Note that in (234) the past participle is followed by an overt
auxiliary.14
(23) anuspas: :to
bhavaty
es: o
asya
become.3SG.PRES he.NOM.M he.GEN
yo
asmai
reva n
na
sunoti
somam.
he.DAT
rich.NOM.M not
press.3SG.PRES soma.ACC
who.NOM.M
He who does not press soma is/becomes/gets spied out by him (Indra).
(RV 10.160.4; Jamison 1979b:1341990:15)
Der wird von ihm bemerkt, der Reiche, der ihm nicht Soma auspresst.
(The rich one who does not press soma for him is noticed by him (Geldner)
He will have spotted the one who . . ..
PV.see.PP.NOM.M
14
According to Jamison (1990:918) the past participle on its own is stative
(?resultative ThB) while an overt auxiliary adds an aspectual component, bh
a making it dynamic/eventive.
24
103, 2005
m
(24) tad
v
a
r: s:n: a
anus rutam asa.
that.N PRT poet.GEN.PL hear.PP.N
was
That was heard by (of) the singers. (SB1.6.2.13.2.2.3;
Macdonell 1958:330)
Thus the bards (have) heard.
3.4. Instrumental agent and subordinate nite past participle
It needs to be stated that instances of a past participle with what
appears to be an instrumental-marked agent do exist in the Rigveda
and Atharvaveda, even at a time when genitive agents were still
severely constrained. These putative agents seem however conned
to subordinate though nite relative clauses beginning with the
relative or demonstrative pronoun in the instrumental case
(Jamison (1979a:202). There is no mention of main clauses.15 The
cited translations again oscillate between a passive and an active
rendering. Example (25a) appears in a sequence of relative clauses
which recall Indras heroic deeds and which all lead up to the
recurrent refrain he, o ye people, is Indra. The great majority
(some thirty) have the relative pronoun in the nominative case and
a nite verb in the active voice ((He) who stabilised the swaying
earth, who calmed the raging mountains, who slew the dragon, who
encourages the sick, . . .) while others have the relative pronoun in
the genitive, accusative or instrumental without there being any
discernable dierence in modality. Example (25b) closely parallels
15
The following may seem a potential example. It has by some been interpreted as
a main clause with an instrumental-marked agent. But according to the scholarly
commentaries the syntactic division comes before hitah: which makes the past
participle clause subordinate and non-nite (J.C.Wright, p.c.).
tvam
agne
yajna na m
:
Agni.VOC
sacrice.GEN.PL
you.NOM
hot
a
v s ves: a m
hitah:
all.GEN.PL
placed.NOM.SG
priest.NOM.SG
devebhir
ma nus: e
jane.
human.LOC
kind.LOC
gods.INS
Du, Agni, bist zum Priester aller Opfer von den Gottern bei dem
Menschenvolk bestellt. (RV 6.16.1; Geldner)
Thou art the hotr: installed by gods among men. (J.C.Wright, p.c.)
BYNON
25
(25a), recounting the same primordial events. The rst and last line
here have a nite-verb predicate and the instrumental phrase of the
latter occurs alongside a canonical subject. I record the existence of
this clause type for the sake of completeness without oering an
analysis. In context a modal reading seems rmly excluded.
(25)
a. yena+ima
vs va
cyavana krta ni
who.INS+this.N.PL all.N.PL deed.PL do.PP.N.PL

yo
da sam
varn: am adharam . . .
:
who.NOM
black
colour
subdue.3SG.IMPF
Durch den alle diese Umwalzungen geschehen sind, der die dasische
Rasse unterworfen hat . . .(Through whom all these changes have
been made, who subjugated the Dasic race, . . .) (RV 2.12.4; Geldner)
b. rohito
dya va pr: thiv
adr: m
: hat
ruddy.NOM
heaven.earth.ACC.DUAL make.rm.3SG.IMPF
tena
sva`
stabhitam
tena
n
a kah
:
:
sun
steady.PP.N
he.INS
vault.NOM
he.INS
tena+antariks: am vmita
raja m
si
:
he.INS+sky.N
PV.measure.PP.N.PL
space.N.PL
tena
deva
amr: tam
anvavindan.
he.INS
gods.NOM
immortality.ACC PV.nd.3PL.IMPF
The ruddy one made rm heaven and earth; by him was the sun
propped, by him the vault. By him the atmosphere, the spaces were
measured out; by him the gods found immortality. (AV 13.1.7;
Jamison 1990:9)
3.5. Genitive and instrumental

In attempting to make a case for the antiquity of the genitive agent
in Vedic I have repeatedly referred to data and arguments from
Cardona (1970) and Jamison (1979a,b) without however sharing
their conclusion that the genitive agent must be an innovation.
Cardona argued that, as a reanalysed possessor, the possessive
agent was syntactically and semantically derived and hence secondary by comparison with the instrumental agent, which lacked a
comparable motivation and must needs represent the older encoding (his assumption always being that the construction was a
passive). However, as I am here arguing that the pre-ergative
construction was not a passive and had a historical source other
than a passive, it would rather be the case that the transparent
origin of the genitive agent, far from speaking against its antiquity,
in fact forms an integral part of the modality of the construction
(see section 5).
26
103, 2005
Leaving aside dative-subject verbs which are not at issue, the

genitive would initially have been the canonical marker of the
agent with main-clause transitive past participles provided that it
was sanctioned by an adnominal possessive relationship. In the
Vedic prose texts he had examined, Oertel (1939 [1994: 1109f.])
counted 429 possible genitive agents alongside 111 agents in the
instrumental, which means that genitive agents would have
outnumbered instrumental agents by a ratio of 4:1. He also
found genitive-marking occurring with the great majority of verbs
while only a minority had the instrumental or both cases, without
there being a lexical reason for the observed distribution. Thus,
for instance, in the case of the past participle of kr: - to make
there were, alongside twenty-four instances with the genitive only
four with the instrumental (as illustrated in (26). (Note that Oertel
has given a very minimum of context for his data; my translations
are tentative.)
(26) a. yady
u
vai
pura
sa mna +a rtvijyam
:
PRT
PRT
before chant.INS+priestly function.N
if
cakartha
ja my
u+eva tvaya tat kr: tam.
make.2SG.PERF repetition PRT+PRT you.INS that do.PP.N
(JB 1.302; Oertel (1939/1994:12)
?And if previously you performed priestly function with
chant you (will) have done precisely that as a repetition.
b. yady anena (scil. pitra ) kimcid aks: n: aya +kr: tam bhavati . . .
if
this.INS(scil.father) anything incorrect+do.PP.N become.3SG.PRES
?If the father has performed anything incorrectly . . . (SB 14.4.3.26;
Oertel (1939 [1994]: 12+ note)
Oertels statistical data are in themselves of course not indicative of

the direction of change. But there are a number of observations
which suggest that it was the instrumental which was replacing the
genitive rather than the other way round. In addition to evidence
from Middle Indic and Old Iranian (to be discussed in 4.1 and 4.2)
it has been noted above in relation to example (22) that genitivemarking created ambiguities, the genitive being the rightful marker
of the roles of possessor, possessive agent and beneciary.
Replacement of the agentive genitive by the instrumental as the
case par excellence of the agent with other constructions with
BYNON
27
O-subject (passives included, see section 7) would reduce if not

altogether eliminate ambiguity.
A further step in the historical development may be seen in
(27), noteworthy in two respects which are in fact closely
interrelated. Firstly, unlike in previous examples the genitive
phrase is not supported (licensed) by a co-existing possessive
relationship and, secondly, the past participle is compounded
with the negative a(n)-. It will be seen that both the rst and the
second line contain the genitive pronoun asya. While that of
the rst line, in the context of a nite verb, clearly encodes the
beneciary, that of the second can in principle and in context be
interpreted as either the agent or the beneciary. These two
possibilities are given in Oertels (slightly truncated) translations
at (i) and (ii). Note however that, in the case of the agentive
reading, Oertel (who did not query the received passive status of
the construction) had to assume a switch of logical subject,
which he however considered to be inoensive in brahmanic
style ([1939]1994:1107f.). I have suggested, at (iii) that, in view of
the fact that the instrumental phrase by means of this (scil.
hymn) refers to priestly activity, the sacricial priest be
considered the agent of both clauses so that a switch of logical
subject is not called for. (The past participle is apta-, from apto reach, attain).
a pnoti
eva+asya+etaya (scil. r: ca )
sarvam
PRT+3sg.GEN+this.INS (hymn)
all.N
reach.3SG.PRES
that.N
yad
asya
kimcana+ana ptam.
3SG.GEN
somewhat+NEG.reach.PP.N
what.N
(i) Er (der Opferpriester) erreicht fur ihn (den Opferherrn) was fur ihn
(den Opferherrn bis jetzt noch) nicht erreicht war. (He (the sacricial
priest) attains for him (the patron of the sacrice) what for him (the
patron of the sacrice) has not been attained.)
(ii) Er (der Opferpriester) erreicht fur ihn (den Opferherrn) was von ihm
(dem Opferherrn) nicht erreicht war [was er, der Opferherr, bis jetzt
noch nicht erreicht hat]. (He (the sacricial priest) attains for him (the
patron of the sacrice) what by him (the patron of the sacrice) has not
(so far) been attained [what he, the lord of the sacrice, has not so far
obtained]. (SB 10.1.3.10, 11; Oertel 1994:1107; the underlined rewording
is Oertels own, the emphasis mine, ThB)
(iii) He (the sacricial priest) attains for him (the patron of the sacrice)
by means of this (hymn) all that he (the priest) has not attained in any
other way.
(27) tad
28
103, 2005
It is possible that negative past participles indeed played a role in

the historical change under review. Cardona (1970:7, while
advocating a change dierent in substance from that argued
for here) advanced the hypothesis that the syntax of the past
participle could have been inuenced by that of the gerundive
(future participle), for the reason that, in certain lexically
determined cases, the two categories overlapped semantically
and the negative past participle could have the same potential
meaning as the negative gerundive. Now in view of the fact that
the model, in the form of the negative gerundive, lacked a
possessive relationship the negative past participle need not have
one either. Compare (289) with (30). The potential ambiguity of
the past participle astr: tam, from str: - to scatter, to mow down,
which could mean not only undefeated but also undefeatable,
is illustrated in (28), the potential meaning of an
apta- unattainable in (29).

(28) kad
u
vr: traghno astr: tam?
what.N PRT Vr: tra-killer.GEN unscattered.N
Is there anything invincible for/not laid low by the
destroyer of Vr: tra? (RV 8.66.10; Cardona 1970:7)
(29) yasna+an
aptah:
s
uryasyeva
yamo.
who.GEN.SG+NEG.reach.PP.NOM sun.GEN+PRT path.NOM
whose (course) is unreachable like the course of the sun.
(RV 1.100.2; Cardona 1970:7)
Now the gerundive, unlike the nite past participle, was well
attested from the earliest Vedic texts onwards and the changes in
the case-marking of its agent (the person under an obligation to
carry out the action) are well documented. This agent had three
possible encodings: dative, genitive and instrumental, but the dative
was already by the time of Vedic prose being replaced by the
genitive (Macdonell [1916] 1958:330, Speijer 1886 [1993]:63). The
two remaining possibilities are illustrated in (30) by means of hu- to
oer, sacrice.
BYNON
29
asya+anyad+hotavyam a s t
pra n: a t.
3SG.GEN+other.N+oer.GVE be.3SG.IMPF breath.ABL
Es gab nichts, das von ihm hatte geopfert werden konnen, als
den Odem.
(There was nothing he could oer but his breath.) (MS 1.9.3;
Oertel [1939] 1994:1163)
b. tasm
at
sama natra tis: :thata
hotavyam.
therefore same.place standing.INS oer.GVE
Deshalb ist von einem auf einem Flecke stehen
bleibenden zu giessen. (Therefore a person should oer standing in
one place.) (TS 3.1.2.3; Delbruck 1888:399; Oertel [1939] 1994:1163)
c. anyatra+ ks: ama n: ena
hotavyam.
elsewhere+looking.INS
oer.GVE
One looking away should make the oering. (MS 4.6.9; Oertel
[1939] 1994:1163)
(30) a. na+u
NEG+PRT
In the case of the gerundive Oertel [1939] 1994:1111) noted a 4:1

predominance of the instrumental over the genitive (72 instrumentals
against 17 genitives) whereas, in the case of the past participle, he had
observed a 4:1 predominance of the genitive over the instrumental.
His numbers for the two categories suggest that, while with the
gerundive instrumental-marking was well established with the past
participle this was not yet so always provided that what happened
in the syntax of these two categories represents one and the same
targeted development towards unambiguous coding of agent role.
Note that both categories start out with an oblique-marked noun
phrase which encodes a human referent. However, while in the case
of the gerundive this referent was under an obligation to see the event
through, in the case of the past participle it represented a possessor
endowed with a modicum of control. Both categories are initially
modal deontic modality in the case of the gerundive, epistemic
modality in the case of the past participle (provided the proposed
evidential reading is accepted) but both will lose their modal status
at which time their human referent will have become a mere agent
appropriately marked by the instrumental.
3.6. Evidentiality in the Old Indic grammatical system
While section 5 looks at evidentiality from a cross-linguistic
perspective the present section is concerned with showing that
evidentiality as a modal subsystem formed an integral part of the
30
103, 2005
categorial system of the Indian grammarians. P

an: ini had postulated
two contrasting categories, paroks: e (beyond [the reach of] the eye)
and aparoks: e (not beyond [the reach of] the eye), the former
comprising unwitnessed and the latter witnessed events. Subdividing the Old Indic past tenses on this basis, he assigned the
(inherited, synthetic) perfect to the paroks: e, as its use was restricted
to such facts as have not been witnessed by the speaker (Speijer
[1886] 1993:247, Subrahmanyam 1999:281). Aorist and imperfect
on the other hand he classed as aparoks: e, on the grounds that they
were employed to encode past facts which are within the compass
of the speakers experience. Aorist and imperfect would in addition
be chosen when the source of the evidence was of no concern. That
makes the perfect a modally marked form while the imperfect is
always and everywhere used both of past facts which are within the
compass of the speakers experience, and those which are not
(Speijer [1886] 1993:2489).
Speijer noted that these rules were observed in the practice of
good authors, who tended to avoid rst person perfect forms in
particular, the argument being that actions carried out by Self can
in principle not be unwitnessed except under such unusual
circumstances as drunkenness or dreaming. But this constraint
would have applied only in the later language (Speijer [1886]
1993:250) while in the Rigveda at any rate, rst person perfect
forms appear not to behave dierently from rst person aorist
and imperfect forms (Job 1995). But perhaps all this concentration on rst person forms may have focused attention onto a
rather narrow issue (see 5.3, where it is shown that rst person
evidentials are perfectly possible). What matters at this stage is
the fact that past participle predicates do not appear to have been
included in the evidentiality system. Speijer said ([1886] 1993:255)
that since the past participle performed the same role as the aorist
(both encoding past events which have current relevance) it must
needs represent the younger idiom, which ruled after the demise
of the aorist. But then he did not associate the form with
modality.
The following section adduces further support for the hypothesis that it is the genitive rather than the instrumental agent that
retains the state of aairs inherited from Indo-Iranian. I will also
BYNON
31
show that the correct derivation of the possessive agent is

possessor raising and, in section 5, argue for the existence of an
inherent link between a raised possessor and the modality of the
clause.
4. THE GENITIVE AGENT IN DIACHRONIC AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
4.1. Middle Indic: title pages,writing formulae and monumental
inscriptions
Variation between genitive and instrumental marking of the agent is
also found in some varieties of Middle Indic. Example (31) is the
title page (colophon) of a Gandhari Prakrit version of the
Dharmapada (Brough 1962), (31 ) is a shortened version. As will
be seen from his translation, Brough analysed the clause as passive
and the clause-initial genitive phrase as an adnominal modier. His
reading shows that the adnominal possessive relationship is still
integral to the structure, which is however here analysed as a preergative construction with evidential meaning. Far from recording
the personal experience of the scribe who did the copying, the
colophon is rather a legal document issued by the convent which
guarantees the authenticity of the text by naming its publisher,
title, and place of publication.
(31) budha-varmasa
s: aman: asa
Buddha-varman.GEN monk.GEN
budhan: adi-sardhavayarisa
Buddhanandin-pupil.GEN
ida
dharma-padasa postaka
this.NOM
Dharmapada.GEN manuscript.NOM
dharmuyan: e
likhida
arani.
Dharmodyana.LOC write.PP.NOM
park.LOC
This manuscript of Dharmapada belonging to the s raman: a
Buddhavarma, pupil of Buddhanandin, has been written in
the Dharmody
ana in the forest. (Brough 1962:117).
(310 ) Buddhavarmasa ida postaka likhida.
Buddhavarman has written this manuscript.
32
103, 2005
Similar formulae have recently been discovered in documents dated

to the rst century A.D., which constitute the very earliest actual
manuscripts to have been preserved in any Indic language (Salomon
1998; Wright 1999). In a number of these the past participle
lihida(ga) written, sometimes preceded by sarve or sarvo all, was
found added at the end in a hand dierent from that of the scribe who
had written the manuscript. According to Salomon (1998:725) the
purpose of these postscripts would have been to certify that the
scribe had completed the task of copying the original manuscript.
The original would then be taken out of circulation and stored
away in a jar (where it was discovered two millennia later). The fact
that the word lihida(ga) was written in a dierent ductus fully
supports the argued-for evidential reading. Again, far from relating
the scribes personal experience, these formulae certify that the copy
is complete.
The rock inscriptions of King As oka contain, according to
Andersen (1986a), 107 past participle clauses of which 51 have an
overt agent. In 35 instances this is in the form of the rst person
singular pronominal clitic me which I read as a genitive (see 32), in a
minority it is in the instrumental as in (33).16 Of the 16 lexical agents,
8 are in the genitive as in (34), and 8 in the instrumental as in (35).
Andersen suggests that in these inscriptions the genitive-marked
agent formed part of an ergative clause and represented old
information whereas the instrumental-marked type formed part of
a passive clause and represented new information. The textual
evidence does not however appear to support this claim. The
distribution of the two cases could rather be lexically governed,
genitive coding going with non-action (dative-subject) verbs and
instrumental-coding with transitive-causative verbs (Bubenik
1998:138, J.C.Wright, p.c.). But either way there remain inconsistencies and it may be just as likely that we witness here the gradual
replacement of the genitive by the instrumental. Much like the
colophons the inscriptions may be read as authoritative statements,
issued this time by the king, who bears the responsibility but would
16
Andersen considered me to be ambiguous between genitive and instrumental
because its distribution appears to correspond to the combined distribution of
genitive and instrumental with lexical noun phrases.
BYNON
33
not have carried out the various enterprises himself nor would he
have personally witnessed their progress.
(32) sad: uvsativasabhisitena
me iyam
dham
:
: malipi likha pita .
six.twenty.yearsconsecrated.INS 1SG this.NOM edict.NOM
write.CAUS.PP.NOM
Sechsundzwanzig Jahre nach der Weihe ist diese Dhamma-Inschrift von mir
veranlasst worden geschrieben zu werden. (This Dhamma inscription was
caused to be written by me twenty-six years after the consecration.) (PE.I.B;
Andersen 1986a:84)
?I wrote this inscription twenty-six years after my consecration.
(33) se
mamay
a
ha+evam:
kat: e.
this.NOM.M
I.INS
PRT+PRT
make.PP.NOM.M
Daher ist durch mich folgendes geschaen worden. (The
following has therefore been created by me.) (RE.V.C;
Andersen 1986a:83)
?I have therefore created this.
(34) savat
a
dev
anam: piyas
a
piyadasine
lajine
everywhere
[name]GEN
[name]GEN
king.GEN
duve
cikis
a
kat:
a.
two
cures.NOM
make.PP.NOM
Uberall richtete Konig D.P. (die folgenden) zwei
Heilbehandlungen ein.(King D.P. installed the two treatments everywhere.) (RE.II.A; Andersen 1986a:81)
(35) iyam:
dham: malipi
devanam: piyena
this.NOM
dharma.inscription.NOM
[name].INS
piyadasin
a
l
ajin
a
likhapita
[name].INS
king.INS
write.CAUS.PP.NOM
Diese Dhamma-Inschrift ist vom Konig D.P.veranlat
geschrieben zu werden. (This dhamma inscription was
caused to be written by King D.P.) (RE.I.A; Andersen
1986a:82)
?King D.P. has written this inscription.
The so-called Niya documents, rst analysed by Burrow (1937; see
Wright 1998) and lately by Jamison (2000), record a Prakrit of the
third century A.D. Burrow noted that, although this dialect diers
from all other varieties of Prakrit preserved, in the degree to which
34
103, 2005
its inectional system has decayed and altered . . . the changes are
actually found to occur over the rest of the Indo-Aryan eld at a
later date (1937:567).17 The documents include ergative structures
as well as a new past tense paradigm based on the past participle
(1sg ditemi, 2sg ditesi, 3sg dita), which as a rule takes a morphologically unmarked subject (1937:50).
Jamison (2000) found that the agent of the past participle bore
the unmarked (absolutive) case in the context of a non-human
direct object as in (36a) and the instrumental in the context of a
human direct object as in (36b). Instrumental-marking however
also occurred unnecessarily (that is to say with an inanimate
object) in certain formulaic expressions such as royal pronouncements (37a) and title pages (38). In (37), (a) has what would in the
given context appear to be a non-modal ergative construction with
the agent in the instrumental and verb agreement with the O actant,
(b) the innovative post-ergative form with a morphologically
unmarked subject which determines verb agreement. (38) shows
two dierent versions of the ergative construction: the plain past
participle with instrumental agent in (a), the enlarged past participle
with genitive agent in (b). In addition to these relatively pure
constructions there are however also mixed patterns. Some clauses
have genitive and instrumental forms side by side doing the same
job, and some have the new post-ergative nite verb with an
oblique-marked agent. Jamison says that the new post-ergative
17
The instrumental tends to be confused with the nominative accusative. This
process is closely associated with the development of the past participle into an active
past tense; tena dita given by him, began to be felt as active he gave, and nally the
nominative was used as well, se dita. This is exactly the same state of aairs as occurs
in many of the modern languages. . . . Of course these constructions correspond
exactly to the ordinary Sanskrit passive constructions, but there is no doubt that they
are translated as active because (1) exactly the same state of aairs is found in
modern languages such as Torwali, where the construction with the agentive
instrumental is translated as active, (2) in the vast majority of cases the past participle
in -ta is construed with the nominative where it must be active, (3) the instrumental is
used as the subject of the present tense, (4) in practically all denitely passive
constructions, i.e. with participles in -taga and with gerundives, the genitive, not the
instrumental, is used to express the agent. As a result of the development sketched
above, the instrumental is confused with the nominative in all positions, and since the
nominative is not distinguished from the accusative also with the accusative.
(1937:567).
BYNON
35
morphology predominates in the account books. It would appear

that all the examples, irrespective of their morphology, are nonmodal past tense clauses. (The numbers following the Prakrit text
refer to the edition of the Niya documents by Boyer et al., employed
by both Burrow and Jamison. The unmarked case is left unglossed.)
(36) a. kam: ci
as pa
nida.
Kamci
horse lead.PP
Kamci took a horse. (545; Jamison 2000:72)
b. tatigena
dajha picavida.
Tatiga INS slave hand.over.PP
Tatiga handed over a slave./A slave was handed over by
T. (506; Jamison 2000:73)
(37) a. maya maharayena mam: nus a 1 prasavida dita.
I.INS great.king.INS man
1 grant.PP give.PP
By me, the great king, one man has been granted. (355;
Jamison 2000:74)
?I, the Great King, have granted one man.
b. aham: maharaya manus a didemi.
I
great.king man
give.1SG.PAST
I, the great king, gave a man. (136; Jamison 2000:75 N.38)

(38) a. lyihida maya raja divira s ramam: na dhamapriyena.
write.PP I.INS royal scribe monk
Dhamapriya.INS
(This document) was written by me, the royal scribe,
the monk Dhamapriya. (575; Jamison 2000:74)
?I, the royal scribe . . ., have written (this document).
b. lihidaga mahi divira vugacasa.
write.PP I.GEN scribe Vugaca.GEN
Written by me, the scribe Vugaca. (507; Jamison
2000:74 N.36)
?I, the scribe Vugaca, have written this.
While as an indicator of change the distribution of genitive and
instrumental is inconclusive it has been seen that, of the language
varieties reviewed, Sanskrit is alone in having the instrumental case
in all instances. That it is Sanskrit that has innovated is suggested
36
103, 2005
also by its form of the stereotypical opening formula of Buddhist

sutras, where the instrumental may
a replaces the clitic me.
(39) a. evam
me
sutam. (Pali)
that.N
1sg
hear.PP.N
b. evam
may
a
s rutam. (Sanskrit)
that.N
I.INS
hear.PP.N
Thus have I heard (Brough 1986:63)
4.2. Comparative-historical evidence from Old Iranian
The genitive agent has a direct correspondence in Old Iranian,
where the passive derivation of the construction has found a serious
contender in Benvenistes analysis which relates the Old Persian
(pre-?)ergative construction in (6), here repeated as (40c) to other
possessive expressions with a genitive phrase in clause-initial
position. It will be seen that in (40a) the genitive phrase functions as
an adnominal possessor, in (40b) as the possessor of a predicative
possessive expression, and in (40c) as the possessive agent, the
syntactic context of this latter precluding it from having the clauseinitial position. As Benveniste saw it, the possessor in (40c) had
acquired agent status through becoming the owner of the accomplishment expressed in the predicate (1966:200), that is to say he
saw the transition from possessive expression to perfect in semantic
terms without proposing an explicit diachronic mechanism.18
(40) a. man
a
pit
a
I.GEN
father.NOM
my father (Benveniste 1966:179)

b. kanb
ujiyahy
a
br
at
a. . .
aha.
Cambyses.GEN
brother.NOM
was
Cambyses had a brother. (Benveniste 1966:179)
c. ima
tya
man
a
krtam.
this.N
what.N
I.GEN
do.PP.N
That which I have done (Benveniste 1966:177)
18
(Le parfait . . .) Cest une forme ou` la notion detat, associee a` celle de
possession, est mise au compte de lauteur de laction, . . . le parfait presente lauteur
comme possesseur de laccomplissement.
BYNON
37
As shown in (41), all three Old Persian expressions have direct

syntactic correspondences in early Old Indic so that, in the absence
of evidence to the contrary, these constructions may be assumed to
go back to Indo-Iranian.
(41) a. r
ajnah:
purus: ah:
king.GEN man.NOM
the kings man (Speijer 1896:82)

asa.
b. manor. . .
r: s: abha
Manu.GEN. . .
bull.NOM
was
Manu had a bull. (Macdonell 1958:320)
c. hat
a
ndrasya
s atravah: .
smash.PP.NOM.PL
Indra.GEN
enemy.NOM.PL
(i) Indras enemies are/have been beaten; (ii) Indra has
beaten his enemies (RV 10.155.4)
Benvenistes strongest argument in favour of his possessive analysis
is the existence of a structural parallelism between transitive perfects
and possessive predications found in quite a number of languages
(Benveniste 1952, Allen 1964). This parallelism obtains irrespective
of whether the auxiliary in question is HAVE, as in Romance and
Germanic or BE, as in Armenian and Old Persian. The data suggest
that ergativity results when BE is employed, and Allen (1964:342)
perceptively included the past perfective of present-day Indic
languages (see 1d above) among the BE-perfects.
(42) a. Jai
lu
le
livre.
I have read.PP the
book
I read/have read the book.
b. Jai
un
fre`re.
I have a
brother
I have a brother.
(43) a. tya
man
a
what.N
I.GEN
that which I have done
b. kanb
ujiyahy
a br
at
a
Cambyses.GEN brother.NOM
Cambyses had a brother.
(French)
krtam (Old Persian)

do.PP.N

aha.
was
38
(44) a. nora
teseal
he.GEN
see.PP
He has seen (it).
b. nora
t
un
he.GEN
house
He has a house.
e.
is
103, 2005
(Armenian)
e.
is
The state of aairs in Avestan mirrors that in Old Persian. As

illustrated in (45), here too the genitive is employed in the encoding
of adnominal and predicative possession as well as in the ergative
construction (Reichelt 1909:2x36).19
(45) a. mana
dami
I.GEN
house.LOC
in my house (Y.1.25; Reichelt 1909:290)
b. kahy
a
ah ?
who.GEN
you.are
Wem gehorst du zu? (Whose are you?/To whom do
you belong?) (Y.29.1; Reichelt 1909:288)
c. yezica
he anya
aVa
s yaona fravars ta . . .
when.and 3SG other.N.PL evil.N.PL deed.NPL PV.act.PP.N.PL
Und wenn von ihm andere Ubeltaten begangen (worden
sind) . . . (And if any other evil deeds have been
committed by him . . .) (V.3.21; Reichelt 1909:329)
And if he has committed any other evil deeds . . .
Although Benveniste did not say so explicitly, it is clear that he must
have interpreted the agentive genitive phrase of (40c) as an actant of
BE (as did Andersen (1991:98)), BE and HAVE being assumed to have
identical actancy structure while diering in the way they allocate
subject role. In the case of HAVE, which is syntactically transitive, it is
the locative actant which has subject role and takes the nominative
case, whereas in the case of BE this role falls to the most neutral actant,
O (Benveniste 1960, Vincent 1982, Den Dikken 1997); see Table 3.
19
Reichelt (1909:241) speaks of the Dativ der beteiligten Person in connection with
the past participle. But of his four examples two employ clitics, which do not distinguish
genitive and dative, and the other two are certainly not agentive. Elsewhere (1909:259)
he interprets the genitive phrase with a past participle as the subjective genitive.
BYNON
39
Table 3
HAVE
SEMANTIC ROLES:
LOC
SYNTACTIC ROLES:
SUBJECT
CASE:
NOM
BE
LOC
O
SUBJECT
ACC
OBLIQUE
NOM
There is wide agreement among linguists that in Romance and in

Germanic the HAVE perfect of the transitive verb resulted from the
reanalysis of a structure which had a non-nite reduced participle
clause embedded under main verb HAVE, as in He has [[goods
[stolen]]. This small clause complement contains a noun phrase and
the resultative verbal adjective (the etymological source of the past
participle) which, in the earlier language, agreed with it. The reanalysis
resulting in the dynamic perfect He [has stolen] goods would have
been set in motion by a pragmatically based inference which took the
unexpressed agent of the embedded verb as being co-referential with
the locative argument of HAVE (Vincent 1982:84 for Romance,
Abraham 1998 for Germanic). A person who was not himself a witness
to the event would have had circumstantial evidence which led him to
equate the two roles. The initial outcome of the reanalysis would be an
evidential perfect with the O actant shared by both verbs and acting as
a hinge (Vincent) between the two predicates; see Table 4.
As illustrated in Table 4, a corresponding reanalysis can in principle
be construed for BE. The point of departure would be a possessive
expression of the form *Indrasya [[satravo [hat
as]]] santi Indra has
(the) enemies smashed. Through a process of reanalysis which
parallels that of the HAVE perfect, the locative/possessor would, for
pragmatic reasons, become equated with the agent of the lexical verb
which underlies the past participle. The outcome would be the
evidential perfect of (19): *Indrasya satravo [hat
as (santi)] Indra has
smashed the enemies, with optional deletion of the auxiliary.
While this derivation is on the face of it attractive, it fails to
account for the fact that the genitive agent is not conned to forms
containing the auxiliary BE and cannot therefore be considered an
actant of it (see 6.1 and 5.3). The alternative analysis on the other
hand which is being proposed here and which treats the genitive
40
103, 2005
Table 4
STEAL
HAVE
LOC
THEME
he
goods
han- strike
AGENT
AGENT
BE
THEME
LOC=POSSESSOR
stravah
ndrasya
agent as a raised adnominal possessor20 seems well supported not

only cross-linguistically but also in the context of evidentiality.
5. POSSESSOR
RAISING AND EVIDENTIALITY
5.1. Possessor raising

Cross-linguistically, especially in the case of inalienable possession, a
human owner can in many languages be encoded either adnominally
or at clause level. As illustrated in (467), it is possible to consider the
two alternative encodings to be related by a syntactic process which
raises the adnominal possessor out of its noun phrase and promotes it
to clause level, where it is then assimilated into the actancy structure of
the verb (see Shibatani 1994 for references to earlier literature). Thus
in (46), from Acehnese, while in (a) the rst person pronoun forms a
20
A connection between the adnominal possessor and the possessive agent had
long been noted. Thus Macdonell ([1916]1958:321), like Delbruck before him
(1888:153) considered the genitive used with the past participle to be a possessive
genitive felt to be the agent, but he did not explicitly relate the two roles.
BYNON
41
noun phrase with the preceding noun, in (b) it is the subject of the
clause. Similarly in (47), from German, while the possessor in (a) is in
the form of an attributive possessive adjective, in (b) the corresponding personal pronoun is a constituent at clause level.
(46) a. seunang ate
lon. (Acehnese)
happy
liver
1SG
I am happy. (lit. My liver is happy.)
b. lon
seunang-ate.
1SG
happy-liver
I am happy. (Van Valin & La Polla 1997:258)
(47) a. Sie wascht seine
she
b. Sie
she
She
washes
wascht
washes
washes
Haare einmal in
der Woche. (German)
his
hair
once
in
the week
ihm
die
Haare einmal in der
Woche.
hair
once
in the
week
he.DAT the
his hair once a week. (Shibatani 1994:273)
The so-called adversative passive of Japanese illustrated in (48a)

looks like a classic case of possessor raising, which in many respects
it is. It will be seen that this clause has an initial constituent which is
not an actant of the intransitive verb to cry. The most natural
interpretation would postulate that the clause-initial noun phrase
forms a possessive relationship with the single actant, baby, of the
verb. However, the fact that this is not the only possible
interpretation is seen from (48b), in which an overt possessor
phrase has been inserted which has the eect of cancelling any
presumed possessive relationship between speaker and baby.
(48) a. Boku-wa akatyan-ni hito ban
zyuu
nak-are-ta.
I-TOP
baby-DAT
one night through cry-PASS-PAST
I had the/my baby cry on me all night. [Literally, I was cried by the
baby all night.]
b. Boku-wa tonari-no
akatyan-ni hito ban zyuu
nak-are-ta.
neighbour-GEN baby-DAT one night through cry-PASS-PAST
I-TOP
I had the neighbours baby cry on me all night.
[Literally, I was cried by the neighbours baby all night] (Shibatani
1994:473).
Shibatani uses (48b) to demonstrate that postulating a syntactic

process of possessor raising is plainly inadequate (1994:473). He
42
103, 2005
argues that all that is required for the utterance to be correctly

interpreted is that the baby be pragmatically relevant (in the present
case, be within earshot). The decisive factor is thus not possession,
and possessor raising is too restrictive a device as it fails to capture all
the possible readings of an utterance such as (48a). Now while this
argument is well accepted it would nevertheless appear to be the case
that prototypically the clause-initial constituent is anchored in a
semantic-pragmatic relationship of adnominal possession and that such
readings as physical contact, spatial proximity etc. constitute extensions of this possessive prototype (see Nedjalkov & Jaxontov 1983).
It will be seen in 5.3 below that, like the adversative passive of
Japanese, the ergative construction of German has the eect of
creating an extra actant. While in Japanese the extra actant is
generally taken to encode the person (adversely) aected by the
verbal action its role in German appears to go beyond this to
include agent-like properties. Note that in both languages the extra
actant is in the clause-initial subject position but it is not a
canonical subject.21 In the case of Japanese, Shibatani and Pardeshi
(2001) analyse it as the subject of an outer (higher) clause while in
the case of German (see 5.3) I have attributed it to possessor
raising. The formal (and semantic) similarity of these constructions
to the pre-ergative construction of Indo-Iranian is clear to see
although there is the dierence that in Indo-Iranian the raised
possessor has come to ll the (previously empty) agent slot of the
transitive verb, thereby creating an ergative structure. The crucial
factor which separates Sanskrit from Japanese and German thus
resides in the transitive reanalysis of the pre-ergative clause which
attributes subject status to the agent.
5.2. The grammatical coding of evidentiality
It is obligatory in a wide range of languages to give formal
expression to the source of the information in the proposition
21
Iwasaki characterises the adversative passive as valency-increasing, the extra
actant being pragmatically relevant to the scene depicted by the rest of the sentence
(2002:1315). He also makes the point that if the extra actant forms a possessive
relationship with one of the actants this entails that the depicted event, or state of
aairs, will impact more forcefully on the referent of the extra actant.
BYNON
43
(Willett 1988:53) by specifying in the grammar the nature of the

evidence on which this is based, whether the event was directly
witnessed, inferred from circumstances, or based on hearsay
(reported). An evidentiality system which treats direct experience
as grammatically unmarked while employing the so-called evidential form to record mediated experience is shared by a cluster of
languages in south-eastern Europe and western Asia (Johanson &
Utas 2000). In these it is the evidential, often formally related to a
resultative or perfect (Comrie 1976:110, Bybee and Dahl 1989,
Boeder 2000:310) which indicates that the utterance in question is
based on hearsay or inference (Lazard 1999:91) while the unmarked
form encodes the event as directly witnessed or as evidentially
neutral. Palmer (1986:51) subsumes evidentiality under epistemic
modality, the modal marker indicating the degree of commitment
by the speaker to what he says. However, for those working on
Turkic and Iranian languages, evidentials in themselves do not
imply any nuance of doubt or presumption (Lazard 1999:96, with
references). Rather, while ordinary, non-evidential forms state
facts purely and simply, . . . evidential forms point to the speakers
becoming aware of the facts, whether through hearsay or through
inference (Lazard 2001:362). For Lazard the evidential is accordingly a mediatif, expressing the notion as I see, as it appears
(Lazard 1999:96); for Johanson it is, in the same spirit, an
indirective (2000:60.), the event being encoded indirectly, by
reference to its reception by a conscious subject, this receiver being
either the speaker or one of the participants in the event. . . .. The
basic indirective meaning is the reception of an impression that
creates awareness of a situation (2000:65). It will be seen that the
Vedic (and Middle Indic) pre-ergative construction has exactly the
same interpretation.
The basic distinction made within the evidential is between
inferred and reported events although some recognise an additional (ad)mirative, which records surprise. Johanson notes that
in East Old Turkic the evidential form was employed to
summarise events often complex and discontinuous and outside
a narrative chain, as in (49), which is highly reminiscent of the
royal proclamations set in stone by the Great Kings As oka and
Darius (see 4 above).
44
103, 2005
_
(49) Elig
e_ t-mis
men
realm.ACC organise-EVID.PERF I
I have organized the realm.
(Johanson 2000:66)
As far as Indo-Iranian is concerned perhaps the most revealing
comparison is with South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages.22
Thus in Georgian, while the aorist represents the neutral
unmarked encoding of past events, the perfect is employed
when the speaker is referring to a past action which he did not
himself witness but assumes took place either on the basis of
some present result (e.g. wet ground suggests the past occurrence
of rain) or because someone has told him that it did (Hewitt
1995:259). Equally in Svan the evidential is employed when the
speaker wants to stress the fact that he did not himself witness
the event in question. Here too the main types of indirect
evidence are reported and inferred. In the latter, inferences are
drawn from observable results and from general regularities
encountered in the world (Sumbatova 1999:67) while the
mirative conveys new surprising information, as in (50), uttered
by the speaker on hearing the addressee play the guitar.
Sumbatova suggests (1999:14) that both the syntactic form and
the meaning of the Svan evidential reect its origin in a
resultative.
(50)
isgowd
xoc
a md oxwtorax
gitara-zi lis wme
your.TRFM good
teach.EVID3sgS.3plO guitar-up play.MASDAR.NOM23
You (apparently) have been well taught to play the guitar! (Sumbatova
1999:11)
Within Indo-Iranian a distinctive evidential form of the verb is

attested in a number of present-day Iranian languages including
Farsi and Tajik as a derivative of the perfect (Lazard 1999, 2000,
22
In both Georgian and Svan, the present-tense system has the subject in the
nominative and the direct object in the dative. In the aorist system the subject is in
the ergative case and the direct object in the nominative. In the perfect system the
subject is in the dative and the direct object in the nominative (i.e., this encoding
being the inverse of the present). It is this latter pattern which is associated with
evidentiality (Job 1995, Sumbatova 1999).
23
TRFM transformative; MASDAR verbal noun, gerund.
BYNON
45
Utas 2000). Provided that the reinterpretation of the so-called

involitive (Wijayawardhana et al. 1995) that I am suggesting is
correct (see 5.4 below), a distinct evidential form is present also in
the grammar of at least one present-day Indic language, namely
colloquial Sinhala. In the paired clauses in (51) for example, (a)
represents the basic neutral encoding and (b) the (marked)
evidential, which records the event indirectly, as inferred from
appearances or results. It will be seen that the agent of the
evidential is oblique-marked, by contrast with the unmarked agent
of the neutral form. (52) illustrates the fact that, unlike transitives,
unaccusatives lack the A-form. (The data and translations are
from Wijayawardhana et al. 1995:118.; the morphologically
unmarked nominative (inanimate accusative) case is unglossed.
The unmarked verb form is indicated by A, the marked form by
P. My alternative readings based on the revised interpretation here
suggested are enclosed between square brackets. See 5.4 for
further data.)
(51) (a) mam geyak
hduva.
I
house.INDEF build.PAST.A
I built a house.
(b) vaQuva-atin gee
hond
hduna.
builder-INS
house nicely
build.PAST.P
(On seeing a new house:) The house has come up nicely
at the hand of the builder.
[(Look), the builder has built the house well.]
e
ee
(52) kooppe vuna.

cup
fall.PAST.P
The cup fell.
5.3. The German ergative construction
It will be seen that the German clause type which I term the
ergative construction bears a striking resemblance to the preergative construction of Vedic. Unlike the Indo-Iranian construction however which occurs with transitive verbs, the German
construction is conned to non-agentive intransitive verbs with
46
103, 2005
patient-like subjects.24 Some of these verbs are unaccusatives such as

fall while others are ergative (ambitransitive) verbs such as burn,
break, which can also have transitive construction, the S of the
intransitive being coreferential with the O of the transitive. We are
thus here concerned with both lexical ergativity and ergative-like
morphosyntax. I believe that the kind of formal and semanticpragmatic analysis which I am putting forward here for German
(where I have access to my own and other native speakers
judgments) can throw light also on Vedic, where insucient language
knowledge prevents me from developing comparable arguments.
The German ergative construction, as illustrated in (53), is
characterised by a clause-initial dative phrase which, I argue, forms a
semantic-pragmatic (rather than a strictly syntactic)25 relationship of
possession with the nominative phrase. I will on the strength of this
relationship analyse it as a raised possessor and assign it to the verb as
an extra actant. Being topical and invariably human, this noun phrase
gives the construction a semblance of transitivity although the verb
itself is intransitive, anbrennen being a member of the class of
unaccusative verbs which encode spontaneous processes taken to
occur by themselves, without the intervention of an agent, see (54).
(53) Mir
sind die Kartoeln angebrannt.
I.DAT are
the potatoes
PV.burn.PP
I have been and gone and burned the potatoes.
(54) Die Kartoeln sind angebrannt.
PV.burn.PP
The potatoes
are
The potatoes are/have got burnt.
24
This construction is very common in every-day speech: Mir sind die Augen
zugefallen, die Apfel verfault, die Kartoeln erfroren, die Brotchen verbrannt; Mir ist
das Feuer/der Kaee/die Geduld ausgegangen, der Bleistift abgebrochen, die Milch
ubergekocht, der Kanarienvogel davongeogen etc. (Ive gone and let my eyelids
droop, the apples go rotten, the potatoes freeze, the rolls burn; Ive let the re go out,
Ive run out of coee/of patience, I have broken the point of my pencil, I have let the
milk boil over, the canary escape). See Wegener 1985:2001 for a list of other
examples.
25
Note that in colloquial southern German it is the dative which gures in
adnominal possessive expressions: dem sein Haus (he.DAT his house) his house, der
Marie ihr Mann (the.DAT Mary her man) Marys husband. The genitive is not
used.
BYNON
47
Considering rst the pragmatics, (53) would typically be uttered by

some-one who, on entering the kitchen, is met with smoke and a
smell of burning. Given this unexpected state of aairs the clause
can be read as a mirative, expressing surprise, which may be
reinforced by an exclamation such as Du liebe Zeit (oh dear). On
the other hand, from her knowledge of what had gone before, the
person involved will have inferred what must have happened
although she had not actually witnessed the event itself nor had she
deliberately set it in motion. She had put potatoes on the stove to
boil but had either failed to add enough water, or to reduce the
heat, or had for some reason or other left the potatoes unattended
for longer than she had intended, or had simply forgotten about
them. The event recorded in (53) is accordingly not directly
witnessed but is based on an inference drawn from background
knowledge and from the situation encountered at the time of
speaking.
Syntactically this so-called ergative construction has three
constituents: (i) the dative phrase, typically clause-initial and
human, and very commonly a personal pronoun; (ii) a noun phrase
in the nominative which is denite (its referent being contextually
identiable) and which has the role of syntactic subject; (iii) the past
participle of an intransitive verb of the unaccusative or ergative
class. The construction clearly has ergative-like morphosyntax to
the extent that what is semantically the object has subject-marking
whereas the unwitting human instigator is oblique-marked. It is of
course not ergative in the same way that the Hindi and Pashto
constructions are, since the dative phrase is only the psychological
and not the syntactic subject and the verb is not transitive (hence
my use of inverted commas when I refer to this construction).
Semantically the construction is generally interpreted as encoding
an accidental action involitively carried out by the referent of the
dative phrase. The semantic role of the dative phrase itself is
disputed in the literature.26 Zifonun et al. (1997:1342.) interpret it
as a beneciary (or its semantic converse) although its referent is at
the same time also seen as unintentionally having caused the event,
or at least as not having prevented it from occurring, the extent of
26
I am grateful to Martin Durrell for references and discussion.
48
103, 2005
the referents involvement being dependent on the semantics of the

lexical verb. Eisenberg (1994:298.) includes it among the free (i.e.,
non-actant) datives, as the person to whom the object in question is
entrusted. Wegener (1985) explores the possibility of a Benvenistebased possessive analysis which treats the dative phrase as an actant
of main-verb-turned-auxiliary sein to be, only to reject this on the
grounds that the syntactic pattern is not conned to the perfect. A
present tense clause such as (55) is equally well-formed and
pragmatically appropriate. Ascribing the dative phrase to the
lexical verb (by deriving it, in somewhat ad hoc fashion, from an
abstract higher predicate HAPPEN) she notes that it does have
certain limited subject properties such as clause-initial position and
control of subject-oriented adverbs (Wegener 1985: 314.).
As for the nominative phrase its characteristic deniteness would
appear to have gone generally unnoticed although in Wegeners
extensive list of illustrative examples it invariably has the denite
article. In the present analysis this deniteness nds a natural
explanation in the fact that the nominative phrase has an implied
possessive modier which is coreferential with the dative phrase. In
the case of body-part referents as in (56) this possessive relationship
is inherent and inalienable. (Note that with body-parts German
tends to employ the denite article rather than an overt possessive.)
Elsewhere, in e.g. (53) and (57), it is pragmatically based and
captures as wide and varied a range of meanings as does the
possessive pronoun, my book standing for the book in my hand, or
the book I am in the process of reading, or the book I have
written.27
The verb form of the construction encodes a past event which
retains current relevance at the time of speaking, a property which
is common to the present tense and (the perfect formed from) the
past participle. Nedjalkov & Jaxontov note (1988:52) that in general
27
Even where the indenite article is found the referent is still identiable, in this
case as a seam on an item of clothing being worn by the person at the time of
speaking.
Mir
ist eine Naht geplatzt
I.DAT is a
seam burst.PP
I have burst a seam.
BYNON
49
the occurrence of the bare predicative past participle is severely

constrained, Das Buch ist geschrieben (The book is [in the state of
having being] written) being possible only when the speaker has
recently completed the action and when the (expected) result is in
evidence (emphasis mine, ThB.).
Taking all three constituents together it is clear that the form of
the construction directly reects its anchoring in the speech act:
both nominal constituents are contextually identiable and the verb
refers to the here-and-now of the situation. The construction will
thus in the rst instance record the realisation of a state of aairs
together with some idea of the event that would have led to it. But
from there it is but a small step to a sense of frustration on the part
of the person for not having prevented the event, and from there to
the notion of accidentally having caused it. In the case of (56) for
instance the person knows that she could have avoided the
unpleasant sensation by exercising the control she is expected to
have over her own body (Neumann 1996:775), and in (53) and (57)
she has indirectly caused the event, or could at least have prevented
it from occurring. My German informants28 agree on this point.
Sie ist schuldig (She is at fault), as one of them put it with regard
to (53). And (53) is indeed semantically and pragmatically more or
less identical with the permissive causative in (58), in which the
person allowing the event to happen through not preventing it, is
encoded as the syntactic subject. The events in question are thus not
uncontrollable (as is sometimes claimed) but it is rather the case
that the person in question has failed to exercise proper control.
(55) (Du liebe Zeit!) Mir brennen
die/meine Kartoeln an!
(o dear)
I.DAT burn.3PL.PRES the/my
pototoes PV
(O dear) I am burning my potatoes
(56) Mir
ist der Arm eingeschlafen.
I.DAT is the arm PV.fall.asleep.PP
My arm has gone to sleep./Ive got pins and needles in my
arm.
28
I am grateful to Brigitte Konig, Gabriele Faust, Renate Sohnen-Thieme and
Gertrud Fritz for their assessments of a spectrum of my German sentences.
50
103, 2005
(57) Uns
ist die Wasserleitung eingefroren.
We.DAT is the water.pipe
PV.freeze.PP
Our pipes have frozen up./Weve let our pipes freeze up.
(58) (Du liebe Zeit!) Ich habe die Kartoeln anbrennen lassen!
(o dear)
I
have the potatoes PV.burn.INF let.PP
(O dear) Ive gone and burned the potatoes. (lit. I have let
the potatoes burn.)
In having responsibility and control, however ineective, attributed
to the referent of its clause-initial human constituent, the German
ergative construction contrasts with both the locative expression
in (59), in which the human referent is not attributed any responsibility for the event, and with the simple one-place construction in
(54), which is neutral. (53) and (59) on the other hand share the
property that they are interpretable only in the context of the
immediate here-and-now of the speech act, the permitted tenses being
perfect and present. The semantic range of the German construction
may thus best be captured by taking the evidential reading as basic
and primary, and by developing the further readings of it via the
notion of control. This will in the rst instance be the possessors
control over the possessed object and secondly, with the possessor
functioning at clause (rather than phrase) level, the control lodged in
the referent of the dative phrase over the event depicted in the clause.
As a result, although the dative phrase is clearly not the syntactic
subject (see 60) its human reference and topicality nevertheless
bestow on the ergative clause some semblance of transitivity.
(59) Bei
dir ist etwas
angebrannt!
chez you is something PV.burn.PP
Youve got something burning here!
(60) Mir sind die Kartoeln angebrannt und *() habe schnell
etwas anderes gekocht.
I burned the potatoes and () quickly cooked something else.
In the case of an ergative verb such as break, which has both
intransitive and transitive (causative) construction as illustrated in
BYNON
51
(61), the ergative construction could become attributed to the

transitive, contrasting with the transitive HAVE perfect, as illustrated in (62). Once such an association were made the ergative
construction could then come to be interpreted as the marked
counterpart of the HAVE-perfect generally and extend its domain
by analogy to all transitive verbs. This did not happen in German
but precisely this pathway is being postulated for Vedic (see 6.2 and
7), where it is suggested that the ancestor of the ergative construction
developed in the context of the intransitive rather than the transitive
form of the ergative verb.
(61) a. Der Krug ist zerbrochen.
the jug
is PV.break.PP
The jug is/has broken.
b. Ich habe den Krug zerbrochen.
I
have the jug
PV.break.PP
I have broken the jug.
(62) a. Ich habe den Krug (mit Absicht) zerbrochen
(, weil er angeschlagen war).
I (deliberately) broke the jug (because it was chipped).
b. Mir ist der blaue Krug zerbrochen.
I have (accidentally) broken the blue jug.
5.4. The Sinhala evidentiality system: a possible blue-print for
Vedic?
As suggested (in 3 above) it is conceivable that the lexical distribution
of the pre-ergative construction in Vedic could reect an evidentiality
system not unlike that of present-day colloquial Sinhala always
provided that my reinterpretation of the Sinhala involitive form
(Wijayawardhana et al. 1995) as an evidential is found acceptable.
Sinhala grammarians have labelled this form involitive and similar
(Reynolds 1980:101.) because it is employed among other things to
encode actions which, as in (68b) can be accidental or unintentional.
However, as I argued in the case of German, the notion accidental
action presupposes retrospective awareness of what must have
happened. The inferential reading would therefore seem to be more
basic than the accidental action one.
52
103, 2005
Colloquial Sinhala has two morphologically distinct sets of verb

forms (Geiger 1900:6973, Wijayawardhana et al. 1995:111). The
rst (here labelled A) is morphologically unmarked and associated
with action verbs; its subject is in the unmarked nominative case.
The second set of forms (here labelled P) is morphologically
marked (by vowel fronting etc.); it is the only form with non-action
verbs and is the marked form with action verbs, whose agent is in
the dative, instrumental or accusative or in the form of a
postpositional phrase. It will be seen that unaccusative verbs (63)
only have the P-form, as do verbs encoding physical and mental
states (64), which take a dative-subject (see Klaiman 1980, Masica
1991:34656, Shibatani &Pardeshi 2001 for dative-subject structures in other present-day Indic languages). Verbs of physical and
mental perception (65) employ the P-form with dative-subject to
encode intuitive perceptions whereas deliberate acts of listening,
watching, and conscious thinking take the nominative-marked
subject and the A-form of the verb.
Ergative verbs (66) have three possibilities: the A-form with
unmarked subject encodes a deliberate action carried out by an
agent, the P-verb with unmarked inanimate subject encodes a
spontaneous event which precludes an agent, and the P-form with
oblique-marked agent encodes what is described as an involitive or
accidental action. The rst two possibilities are illustrated below in
a dialogue fragment at (a), the involitive at (b). The same three
structural possibilities are found with transitive-only verbs, (678),
with which the agentless P-form has the immediate here-and-now
reference of an evidential. Two houses have come up here is the
speakers reaction to an altered state of aairs uttered on scene.
The same is the case with P-form and oblique-marked agent which,
as a rule, requires a judgmental adverb (nicely, well), showing
that it encodes the speakers assessment of the (assumed) event
which led to the perceived state of aairs: The builder has made a
good job of the house. This evidential reading is thus clearly visible
in the case of at least some action verbs and is here considered to be
more basic than the purported involitive reading found with certain
others (68b). Intransitive action verbs are illustrated in (80). [In the
examples below the morphologically unmarked nominative case is
left unglossed; the morphologically unmarked verb forms are
BYNON
53
glossed A, the morphologically marked forms P, as is the practice

in Wijayawardhana et al.1995, which is the source of all the data
and translations; my own alternative interpretations are preceded
by a question mark.29
(63) lam ya(-v ) gang
vuna.
child(-ACC) river.DAT fall.PAST.P
The child fell into the river. (W 124)
ee
(64) ma
riden va.
I.DAT hurt.PRES.P
I am in pain. (W 128)
e
(65) mam oonkamin huve

n
I
deliberately listen.PAST.A
not
namut eegollo
kiy n dee
ma huna.
but
they
tell.PRES.PART.THING I.DAT hear.PAST.P
I was not listening but I heard what they said. (W 126f.)
e
e e
(66) a. banQa, mokak d ee

binde?
Banda what
Q
that break.PAST.A
Banda, what was it that you broke?
binde
n,
noona.
break.PAST.A
NEG
Madam
I didnt break anything, Madam.
ehenan mokak d ee
sadd yak hune?
if so
what
Q
that noise.INDEF hear.PAST.P
Then what was the noise I heard?
viiduruak
binduna,
noona.
glass.INDEF
break.PAST.P
Madam
A glass broke/has got broken, Madam. (W 1067
after Coates 1972:471)
e
29
According to Wijayawardhana et al. (1995) the dierentiated case-marking
pattern of the Sinhala involitive reects degrees of control on the part of its referent
(instrumental full control; accusative no control; dative some control, and
aectedness).The genitive is treated in the grammars as adnominal only but it
remains to be seen whether it can operate at clause level. Possessive expressions of the
I have . . . type employ the dative.
54
103, 2005
b. lam ya-atin kooppe binduna.

child-INS
cup
break.PAST.P
The child (accidentally) broke the cup. [for instance while
trying to wash it] (W 1067, 113)
e
(67) a. mam geyak

hduva.
I
house.INDEF build.PAST.A
I built a house.
b. giy
maase et n
geval
dekak hduna.
last month there houses two
build.PAST.P
Last month two houses got built there. [that is two
houses have come up on the site. The speaker does not
know who built them.]
c. gee
ikm n
hduna.
house soon
build.PAST.P
The house has got built quickly. [that is, the building
has come up in a very short time]
d. vaQuva-atin gee
hond
hduna.
builder-INS
house nicely
build.PAST.P
The house has come up nicely at the hand of the builder.
(W.118f.)
?The builder has built the house well.
e
e e
ee e
ee
(68) a. miniha
vaha
kva.
man
poison eat.PAST.A
The man took poison.
b. lam ya vaha
kvuna.
child.DAT poison eat.PAST.P
The child (accidentally) swallowed poison. (W 120)
?The child has (will have) swallowed something poisonous.
e
(69) a. lam ya hond

na n va.
child
nicely
dance.PRES.A
The little girl dances well. [because she is trying hard or
has talent]
b. lam ya nen va.
child.DAT dance.PRES.P
The little girl is dancing willy-nilly.[because, with the
music, she cannot help herself] (W. 123)
e e
ee
BYNON
55
These examples illustrate the fact that what is here considered at least
by origin an evidential form (P) is distributed over the entire
spectrum of lexical verbs. If a comparable system had existed in Vedic
this would explain the role of the pre-ergative construction with
transitive verbs (see 3) but would at the same time raise the question as
to what was the situation in Vedic as regards intransitive verbs of the
unaccusative and ergative classes. Justication for this enquiry are
encouraged by the observations made on German and Pashto where
the evidential-involitive is found only with non-action intransitives.
6. RAISED
POSSESSOR AND NON-AGENTIVE INTRANSITIVE VERB IN
VEDIC
The verbs in this section have non-agentive O-like subjects and

encode spontaneous events. They are either unaccusatives such as
fall or ergatives such as break, bend, split, burn, which can be
construed intransitively and transitively. It will be seen that these
verbs can indeed occur with a genitive phrase capable of being
interpreted as a raised possessor, both in the present tense and with
the predicative past participle. On the basis of their distinct formal
characteristics I distinguish two verb sets, those in which the
intransitive is characterised by a distinctive stem in the present tense
and those in which intransitive and transitive have a tense-aspect
governed distribution.
6.1. Non-agentive intransitives with-ya-present
The present tense of these verbs is characterised by a ya-sux and
middle-voice endings, both being formal characteristics of intransitivity. In the case of the unaccusatives, which exclude the intervention
of an agent the word accent is invariably on the root and the present
has an anticausative reading. In the remainder the accent is
sometimes on the root and sometimes on the sux. Although the
accented -ya-sux had by the time of Sanskrit become the canonical
marker of the passive voice, in Vedic there was no systematic
association between accentuation and semantic function. Whether an
individual -ya-present had a passive or an anticausative reading was
accordingly an empirical matter (Kulikov (1998b; 2000; 2001:272
338, 53342). Those in (7072) are all anticausatives. It will be seen
56
103, 2005
that their genitive phrase can be construed either adnominally or with

the verb. However, in view of the fact that in these examples it
correlates with a canonical subject in the other clause I am analysing it
as a constituent at clause level which, like the German dative phrase,
encodes the person involved in and responsible for the event. It will be
seen that, again as in German, the genitive phrase is topical but does
not have subject status. The fact that the examples record handeddown knowledge (report) rather than direct experience is being
taken as justication for the identication of the construction as an
evidential. (I have added my own German translations which render
the Vedic structure more directly than the English ones.)
(70) yasya
gr
av
a+api
s ryate
who.GEN
pressing.stone+PRT break.3SG.PRES
pas ubhir vyr: dhyate.
cattle.INS PV (asunder) thrive.3SG.PRES
The one whose pressing stone breaks is deprived of cattle.
(KS 35.16:62.12; Kulikov 2001:333)
Wem der/sein Prestein zerbricht, dem mirat auch das/sein
Vieh. (He who breaks his pressing-stone also fails with his
cattle.)
v
a
es: a
prajaya
pas ubhir
(asunder) PRT
this.NOM.M ospring.INS cattle.INS
r: dhyate
yasya
gharmo
vidryate.
thrive.3SG.PRES who.GEN pot.NOM
PV.crack.3SG.PRES
Verily, the one whose gharma-vessel cracks is deprived of
ospring and cattle. (SB 14.3.2.1; Kulikov 2001:299)
Wem der/sein Topf zerspringt, dem mirat sein Nachwuchs
und Vieh.
(71) v
PV
(72) atha yasya

kap
alam
bhidyeta
and who.GEN pot.n
break.3SGPRES.OPT
tat sam:
dadhy
at.
it.N PV
put.3SGPRES.OPT
And if someones dish would break, he should mend it.
(MS 1.4.13:62.10; Kulikov 2001:310)
Und wenn wem der Topf zerbricht, soll er ihn reparieren.
BYNON
57
These demonstrably anticausative (i.e., non-passive)-ya-presents

provide clear evidence that, in the case of these particular verbs it is
the intransitive which is construed with the genitive agent to form
what is here considered an evidential present. The corresponding
past participles are employed adjectivally (broken, split, full,
etc.) and the majority is formed by means of the rarer -na- rather
than the usual -ta- sux, a fact which may perhaps be seen as
indicative of their intransitive spontaneous reading. According to
Speijer ([1886] 1993:281), past participles in -na- never convey a
transitive active meaning: bhinna - means split by itself and not
split by some-body. I have unfortunately not found examples of
these with a genitive agent.
6.2. Non-agentive intransitives with tense-aspect based split-causativity30
The verbs of this set dier from the former in not having distinct
transitive and intransitive paradigms. Kulikov (1999) describes
them as having split causativity on the grounds that their presenttense active forms are most likely to operate in transitive-causative
fashion whereas their perfect, and frequently also their present
middle forms have anticausative readings. The transitivity status of
the past participle has not so far been studied but its adjectival uses,
with meanings such as grown, rotten, decayed, swollen etc.
suggest the intransitive spontaneous rather than the agentive
reading.
There are some occurrences in the Rigveda of the past participle
of these verbs in combination with a genitive phrase. The following
two verbs in particular, sri- to (cause to) lie on/lean on and tan- to
stretch, have well attested past participles which, on a number of
occasions, do co-occur with a clause-initial genitive phrase or with a
clitic pronoun which can be interpreted as a raised possessor. It will
be seen that the clauses in (73) and (74) have properties characteristic of the evidential: they make reference to the immediate
30
The verbs of this group include vr: dh- to (cause to) grow, j
:r - to (cause to)
grow old, decay, nam- to (cause to) bend, p - to (cause to) swell, s ri- to (cause to)
rest on, tan- to (cause to) stretch.
58
103, 2005
here-and-now of the utterance and their two noun phrases form a

possessive relationship. The genitive phrase (or clitic) can accordingly be interpreted as a raised possessor and an extra actant of the
verb.
According to the dictionaries the rst verb, sri-, present active
srayati [ s ray-a-ti, not a -ya- present)], middle srayate, PP srita-,
passive (-ya- present) sr yate
and sr yate:
to (cause to) lie on, to

(cause to) be xed on; (sich) lehnen an, (sich) stutzen auf, has
transitive and intransitive readings. Kulikov (2001:202.), while
interpreting its accented -ya-present as passive, notes that the
-i- aorist and perfect middle have intransitive readings (2001, note
641). The past participle srita- occurs 26 times in the Rigveda. The
clauses in (73) have a second-position second person clitic the
referent of which is the addressee of the hymn. Their past participle
would appear to be intransitive but the interpretation is by no
means clear-cut as can be seen from the cited translations.
(a) is from a hymn addressed to Agni, whose smoke represents
the ketuh: (ag, banner, token of recognition) of the sacrice.
Structurally divi sritah: abhavat (with the imperfect form of the
dynamic auxiliary bh
u- become) may be analysed as a single
predicate, but abhavat may also be seen as the main predicate with
sritah: as a subordinate non-nite participle. The clitic te may in
principle be construed with dh
umah: as has been done by Geldner, or
with ketuh: , as has been done by Macdonell, or else as a clause-level
constituent. The latter analysis is favoured by myself, on account of
the relation of inalienable possession that exists between smoke and
re. The event itself is inferred from its visible result, namely the
spreading of the smoke in the sky. Given the intrinsic nature of re,
the event does not constitute a volitional act. (The sacricial re is
lit by the priest.) Semantically and pragmatically, therefore, an
evidential meaning based on the intransitive-anticausative reading
with raised possessor would seem appropriate.
In (b) the referent of the clitic is ghr:ta- melted butter, often
employed as a metaphor for fertility. It might seem best here to
construe the clitic adnominally with dh
aman although it is just
possible to interpret ghr:ta- as Fertility, inseparably linked with her
creation, in which case the clitic might be interpretable as a raised
possessor.
BYNON
59
(73) a. dh
umas
te
ketur
abhavad div
smoke.NOM 2SG ag.NOM became
sky.LOC
s ritah: .
lean.PP.NOM.M
The smoke, thy banner, (was raised) arose to heaven.
(RV 5.11.3; Macdonell 1958:32930)
Smoke became thy banner that reached the sky.
(Macdonell 1960:101)
Dein Rauch ward das Banner, das sich gen Himmel
reckt (Your smoke became the ag which stretches into
the sky.) (Geldner)
?Dir ist/hat sich der Rauch als (dein) Banner in den
Himmel gerichtet. OR Dir ist dein Rauch, in den Himmel
gerichtet, zum Banner geworden. (?You have had your
smoke cling to the sky as your banner. OR You have had
your smoke, clinging to the sky, become your banner.)
b. dh
aman te vs vam: bhuvanam adhi s ritam.
realm.LOC 2SG all.N
world.N
PV
cling.PP.NOM.N
In thy ordinance all the world is set [rests]. (RV 4.58.11;
Jamison 1990:14)
Auf dein Wesen/auf deine Grundlage/auf dich als
Grundlage ist die ganze Welt gestellt.(The whole world
is placed upon your being/upon your foundation/upon
you as its foundation.) (Geldner)
??You have caused all your creature to abide in your realm.
With the verb tan- to stretch, spread, extend; (sich) dehnen,
spannen, strecken) the intransitive non-passive uses predominate in
the perfect whereas the active voice of the present tense has
transitive-causative meaning, as illustrated in (74a,b).
(74) a. d
ur
at
s
uryo
na s ocs: a
tatana.
from.afar sun.NOM like ame.INS stretch.3SG.PERF
From afar he [Agni] has extended, like the sun, with
[his] ame. (RV 6.12.1)
b. aham rudr
aya
dhanur
a tanomi.
I.NOM Rudra.DAT bow.ACC PV stretch.3SG.PRES
I stretch the bow for Rudra. (RV 10.125.6; Kulikov 1999:27)
60
103, 2005
The -ya-present t
ayate occurs once only in the Rigveda (see (g)
below). It is, however, common in post-Rigvedic prose, where it
has the secondary meaning to perform a rite. The primary
meaning to stretch (intransitive) is found especially with certain
preverbs (Kulikov 2001:7781). The past participle tata- occurs
30 times in the Rigveda, with and without preverb, both
predicatively and attributively (most frequently qualifying tantuh:
warp thread and pavtram strainer). It is a resultative,
describing the object as being in a stretched state as the result
of having been stretched by someone or as having stretched itself.
In (c-g) I am interpreting the past participle as having the
spontaneous reading.
(c) is uttered by a man who was thrown into a deep well and
whose eld of vision was conned to the Seven Stars (the
Pleiades), a constellation which according to one interpretation
includes an ancestor of the man. The umbilical cord is a bodypart. Since in this context an agent seems out of place this
strongly argues for interpreting the clitic as a clause-level
possessor phrase.
In (df) the subject of the past participle is pavtram strainer,
an implement employed in the sacrice for the purpose of
purifying the soma, which is poured through it. In (d) the
addressee of the hymn and referent of the clitic is Soma,
the divine Br
ahman: aspatih: . In (e) the strainer image is applied to
the rays of the sun, in (f) to the glow of the re. While the
strainer in (d) is manipulated by the priest, so that an adnominal,
or just possibly a benefactive reading would seem appropriate, (e)
and (f) make reference to natural events with which the forces of
sun and re are causally associated without however being
volitional agents. This suggests the spontaneous-anticausative
reading of the verb as in (a). If on the other hand Sun and Fire
were seen as free agents this would entail the conation of
possessor and agent which must have occurred with prototypical
transitive verbs. The potential structural ambiguity found here
provides the conditions for the reanalysis which interpretes the
genitive phrase as the transitive agent.
In (g), the rst verse of a hymn, the poet speaks of his work in
language which is thought to derive from the craft of weaving
BYNON
61
(Geldner31, Kulikov 2001:77). Two forms of the verb tan- are here
found in the same line, the past participle tatam and the -yapresent form t
ayate, which is the only nite -ya- present form
attested for this verb in the Rigveda. Being the main verb of its
clause, t
a yate is unaccented. On the evidence of the later language
it is generally interpreted as a passive, a reading which also
appears to nd support in the fact that the clause which follows
has a passive form in the corresponding position. If, however, it
were to be interpreted as a -ya-present with variable accent it
could just possibly be assigned an intransitive reading with a
raised possessor, implying that the poets art is a spontaneous
happening and does not involve deliberate agency. The broad
meaning of the line appears reasonably clear from the context: As
you can see, I have my work (?weavingritual act) at the ready
and here I go again.
c. tatra
me
na bhir
a tata.
there
1sg
navel
PV.stretch.PP.NOM.F
Bis dahin reicht meine Nabelschnur. (My umbilical cord reaches till there.)
(RV 1.105.9; Geldner)
?Bis dorthin ist/hat sich mir die Nabelschnur gespannt.
d. pavtram te
vtatam
bra hman: aspate.
strainer.N 2SG PV.stretch.PP.N Bra hman: aspati.VOC
Deine Seihe ist ausgespannt, o Bra hman: aspati. (Your
strainer is spread out, B.) (RV 9.83.1; Geldner)
e. tapos
pavtram vtatam
divas
pade
glowing.GEN
strainer.N PV.stretch.PP.N sky.GEN foot-print.LOC
s ocanto
asya
tantavo
vy
a`sthiran.
aming.NOM.PL 3SG.GEN
threads.NOM.PL PV
stand.3PL.AOR.MID
Die Seihe des Gluhenden ist an des Himmels Ort ausgespannt; seine
ammenden Faden haben sich ausgebreitet. (The strainer of the glowing
one is stretched out in the place of heaven; his aming threads have spread
out.) (RV 9.83.2; Geldner)
?Der Sonne hat sich die/ihre Seihe am Himmel ausgebreitet. Ihr sind die
gluhenden Faden aufgegangen. (The sun had its strainer spread in the sky.
It had its glowing threads come up.)
31
Der Dichter versucht sich nicht zum ersten Mal in seinem Fache. Er hat schon
fruher denselben Faden gesponnen. Das Bild ist vom Weben genommen, mit dem die
Dichtung wie jedes rituelle Werk ofters verglichen wird.
62
103, 2005
f. yat
te32
pavtram
arc:sy
which.N
2SG
strainer.N
ame.LOC
a
agne
vtatam
antar
Agni.VOC PV.spread.PP.N inside PRT
brahma
tena
punihi
nah
:.
prayer.N that.INS
cleanse.IMP 1PL
Die Seihe, die in deiner Flamme, o Agni, ausgespannt ist, mit der lautere
unsere feierliche Rede. (Purify our prayer with the strainer spread out in your
ame, o Agni.) (RV 9.67.23; Geldner);
?Deine Seihe, die sich dir ausgespannt hat. . . (. . .the strainer which you have
spread . . .)
g. tatam
me
apas
tad
u
t
a yate
:
span.PP.N 1SG
work.
that.N
and
stretch.3SG.PRES.PASS
punah
sv
a dis: :tha
dh tr
ucatha ya s asyate.
:
again
sweetest.NOM.F thought.NOM hymn.DAT utter.3SGPASS
My work is done and it is being done again. (RV 1.110.1; Macdonell 1958:329)
Mein Werk ward (fruher) ausgefuhrt, es wird aufs neue ausgefuhrt: die sueste
Dichtung wird zu einem Lobgedicht vorgetragen. (My work was carried out
(earlier) and is being carried out again: the sweetest poetry is being sung as a
hymn of praise.) (Geldner)
Getan ist mein Werk, und es wird wiederum getan. (Delbruck 1888:394)
My [poetic] work is performed, and it is being performed again. (Kulikov
2001:79)
??Mir hat sich meine Weberei gestrat und sie ist noch stra. (??I have seen my
weaving tense and it is still tense.)
Although some of these examples may seem more pertinent than

others it would appear to be the case that a sequence such as tapos
pavtram vtatam as in (73e) can potentially have three possible
analyses. The possessor is either adnominal, or it is raised, forming
an extra actant of the intransitive verb, or else it has merged with
the transitive agent. It is at this point that the construction becomes
available to prototypical transitive verbs, where as a modally
marked evidential it contrasts with a transitive past tense clause
with nominative subject and nite verb.
The data examined in this section show that a raised possessor is
found also with non-agentive intransitive verbs depicting spontaneous events. It is possible that the construction may in fact have
originated with this verb type. Through the intermediary of ergative
verbs capable of being construed both intransitively and transitively
the construction would have spread to transitive-only verbs, the
possessor lling the empty agent slot. Verbs such as sri- and tan-,
32
According to J.C.Wright (p.c.) the three-fold metric division of the verse (here
represented graphically) favours the adnominal reading of the clitic.
BYNON
63
which can in principle have either intransitive-spontaneous or

transitive-agentive construction could thus have created the conditions for the analogical spread of the structure. This admittedly
speculative sequence of events nds some support from the fact
that, with these intransitive verbs, genitive agents are not
conned to late books of the Rigveda as was the case with the
transitive past participles.
The surmised origin of the construction with non-agentive
intransitives has some cross-linguistic support. We have seen that
in German the ergative construction can only be formed from
non-agentive intransitive verbs, that in Sinhala the evidentialinvolitive of the transitive verb is formally identical with the
unmarked form of non-agentive intransitive verbs, and that in
Pashto, where the intransitive and the transitive of ergative
verbs are formally distinct it is only the intransitive which may
co-occur with the so-called accidental agent (Khattak 1988:127).
This latter is illustrated in (75), where (a) illustrates the simple
resultative adjective, (b) the intransitive perfective, (c) the
intransitive perfective with accidental agent, and (d) the
corresponding transitive. It will be seen that the verb in (c) is
morphologically identied as intransitive and that its accidental
agent is oblique-marked and followed by the postposition na (a
combination which also marks locative, experiencer and beneciary actants).
(75) a. da-piala mata-da.
this-cup broken-is
This cup is broken.
b. da-piala mataS wida.
this-cup break.3SGF.PAST.PFV
This cup broke [by itself].
c. Zalmi-na
piala mataSwa
Zalme.OBL-na cup
break.3SGF.PAST.PFV
Zalme (accidentally) broke the cup. (Khattak 1988:128)
d. peso
piala matakra
cat.OBL cup
break.3sgF.PAST.PFV
The cat broke the cup. (Khattak 1988:204)
e
64
103, 2005
7. INDO-IRANIAN
In this paper I have attempted to develop an alternative to the
derivation of the ergative construction from a passive by postulating as its source a modally marked evidential of Indo-Iranian
age. My analysis follows naturally from the fact that the nominal
constituents of this postulated source construction are referentially
identiable and that its past participle predicate, by origin a verbal
adjective which encodes the state resulting from a preceding action
or event, refers to the here-and-now of the speech act. The
grammatical coding thus reects the fact that either a state of aairs
was being identied as the result of an unwitnessed event inferred
from the circumstantial evidence, or it identies the message as
reported which, in the present context, means handed down in the
religious tradition. I have shown that an evidential category formed
part of the grammatical system of the Indian grammarians,
although only the inherited perfect was explicitly identied as an
evidential form. Evidentials with comparable semantic properties
are found in certain present-day Iranian languages, a fact which has
been ascribed to inuence from neighbouring Turkic languages,
and probably also in colloquial Sinhala. On the basis of their
morphology, however, it would seem that these are likely to be
innovations rather than retentions.
I have argued that, on both internal and comparative evidence,
the canonical marker of the agent of the pre-ergative source
construction was the genitive. It has been seen that in Vedic this
genitive-marked agent was licensed by an adnominal possessive
relationship, which made it analysable as a possessive modier
raised out of its noun phrase and promoted to clause level as an
extra actant of the verb. As a result the control inherent in the
possessor would extend beyond the possessee to the event depicted
in the pre-ergative clause, bestowing agentlike properties on the
possessive agent.
The reconstruction of a genitive agent is also supported by
systematic syntactic correspondences between Old Indic (Vedic and
Middle Indic, but not Sanskrit) and Old Iranian (Old Persian and
perhaps Avestan). On the Iranian side, in view of the limited data I
have examined, I have left open the question as to whether the
BYNON
65
construction still had evidential status or had already become a

plain past tense clause as was the case in Sanskrit. The highly
restricted and repetitive Old Persian data (Skjaerv 1985:219) seem
inconclusive,33 but in a case such as (76) it might possibly be argued
that the imperfect forms the unmarked counterpart of the still
evidential perfect.
(76) hatiy
xs aya rs a
xs a yahiya
vazraka
tya
mana krtam
king.NOM
great.NOM what.N I.GEN do.PP.N
says
Xerxes.NOM
id
a
ut
a
tyamaiy
apataram krtam ava
visam
do.PP.N that.N all.N
here
and
what.N+1sg far.o
vas n
a auramazda ha
akunavam.
will.INS Ahuramazda.INS do.1sgIMPF
Says Xerxes the Great King: what I did here and what I did afar, all that did I
through the will of Ahuramazda. (Cardona 1970:2)
According to the present hypothesis, the Sanskrit ergative

construction must be the result of a fundamental reanalysis which
led syntactically to its transitivisation and semantically to the loss of
its earlier modal meaning. The rst step would have been the loss of
the possessive relationship between the two noun phrases, possibly
under the inuence of the gerundive, which was the other
O-oriented modal form subsequently to lose its modality. No
longer motivated by the adnominal possessive relationship, the
genitive case would have become a poor indicator of agenthood.
Replacement of the agentive genitive by the instrumental would
reduce syntactic ambiguity and would at the same time contribute
to unambiguous agent marking (without however implying passive
voice!). For the instrumental was clearly becoming the canonical
marker of those agents for which the nominative was not available,
such as the agent of the gerundive and the intermediate agent (or
causee) of the new causative being formed from transitive verbs
(Hock 1981, 1990, 1991b).
The original genitive-marking nevertheless had a crucial eect on
the further development of the construction for, deriving from an
adnominal possessor which precedes its head, the possessive agent
preceded the O actant and was accordingly in subject position. This
33
I owe to Nicholas Sims-Williams the reference to Skjaerv 1985, who interprets
the construction as a new perfect contrasting with the (past tense) imperfect.
66
103, 2005
position would have facilitated, if not actually triggered, the

transitive reanalysis of the construction in Sanskrit. And the
attribution of subject role to the agent is clearly the single most
important innovation which characterises the ergative construction
of Sanskrit by comparison with the pre-ergative construction of
Vedic.
I have nally suggested, on the basis of distributional data from
Vedic and (admittedly rather limited) cross-linguistic evidence, that
the pre-ergative construction is likely to have originated with nonagentive intransitive (unaccusative and ergative) verbs. It would
then have spread to transitive verbs through the intermediary of
ergatives such as break, which could enter both intransitivespontaneous and transitive-causative constructions, the latter
allowing the possessor to be identied with the transitive agent.
Example (77) recalls the three possible analyses of the genitive
phrase in the context of an ergative verb. (In the translations I have
replaced the epithet the glowing one by its referent, the Sun, and
have added German renderings since their structure reects more
closely the Vedic original.) The evidential of (77iii) would in Vedic
contrast with the old-style transitive clause with nominative subject
and nite verb of (78) while in later language states it was to replace
it.
(77) tapos
pavtram
vtatam.
glowing.GEN strainer.N PV.stretch.PP.N
(i) Adnominal: Die Seihe der Sonne ist ausgebreitet. (The
Suns strainer is spread out.)
(ii) Intransitive with extra actant: Der Sonne hat sich die
Seihe ausgebreitet, cf.with an unaccusative verb Der Sonne
ist die Seihe aufgegangen (The Sun had its strainer spread.)
(iii) Transitive, extra actant merged with agent: [Sieh!] Die
Sonne hat ihre Seihe ausgebreitet. ([Behold!] The Sun has
spread its strainer.)
(78) v
pavtram
strainer.ACC
The priest spread the strainer.
PV
hot
a
PRIEST.NOM
atanuta.
stretch.3SG.IMPF
BYNON
67
The proposed analysis has opened up a diachronic pathway from

the syntax of lexical ergatives to the ergative morphosyntax of the
past tense/perfective aspect of Indic and Iranian languages.34 It
remains of course to be seen whether the postulated evidential
reading of the source construction will receive support from corpusbased work.
Lippitts End
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Loughton IG10 4AP
Email: jt.bynon@virgin.net
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103, 2005
(NON-STANDARD) ABBREVIATIONS
ERG, ergative; EVID, evidential; GER, gerund/converb; GVE, gerundive/future
participle; IMPF, imperfect; N, nominative/accusative singular of neuter noun; PFV,
perfective aspect; PP, past participle; PV, preverb/detachable adverbial verb prex;
PRT, particle; Q, question particle; QUOT, quotative.

Historical Source of Ergativity in Indo-Iranian

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Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 103:1 (2005) 172

EVIDENTIAL, RAISED POSSESSOR, AND THE

The Philological Society 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing,

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

In a substantial number of languages far too many for it to be

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

Given the wide distribution of split marking systems it is

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

second person pronouns, Pashto have an accusative marker so

(2) a. Intransitive imperfective

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

Syntactically, however, even in the transitive past perfective it is

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

In Indo-Iranian the historical origin of the split marking pattern is

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

past participle functioning as a nite verb, the patient is in the

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN (EPIC AND CLASSICAL) SANSKRIT

As outlined in Table 2 (adapted from Bubenik 1998:19) the Old

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

logical forms made increasing use of impersonal expressions and of

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

Nominal clauses are dened as lacking a nite verb or overt auxiliary.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

In this present section I have attempted to document, however

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

morphologically unmarked patient (which continues the old

While it is true to say that in the archaic language of the Vedic

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

construction was a modally marked form, a so-called evidential

The abbreviations are those of the standard handbooks and grammars.

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

3.1. The case of the transitive agent

It is important to note that these three possible encodings of the

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

instances of the instrumental and the compound types as against

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

3.2. The possessive agent with main-clause nite past participle

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

In (21) the genitive phrase has again a phrase level (adnominal)

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

who.INS+this.N.PL all.N.PL deed.PL do.PP.N.PL

3.5. Genitive and instrumental

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Leaving aside dative-subject verbs which are not at issue, the

Oertels statistical data are in themselves of course not indicative of

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

O-subject (passives included, see section 7) would reduce if not

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

It is possible that negative past participles indeed played a role in

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

In the case of the gerundive Oertel [1939] 1994:1111) noted a 4:1

TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

categorial system of the Indian grammarians. P

THE ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN INDO-IRANIAN

show that the correct derivation of the possessive agent is