Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilAbstracta IranicaVolume 42-432. Linguistique2.1. Langues anciennesMaria Carmela Benvenuto, Flavia P...

2. Linguistique
2.1. Langues anciennes
10

Maria Carmela Benvenuto, Flavia Pompeo. Towards a Morphosyntax of Old Persian Cases: The Genitive

Harald Bichlmeier
Référence(s) :

Maria Carmela Benvenuto, Flavia Pompeo. Towards a Morphosyntax of Old Persian Cases: The Genitive. Hamburg: Baar-Verlag, 2020, 116 p. (Indogermanische Textlinguistik, Poetik und Stilistik 3)

Texte intégral

1The book provides a comprehensive description of the use of the genitive case in Old Persian. In particular, it focuses on the syntactic functions and semantic roles it expresses, but also furnishes an in-depth analysis of some related phenomena that have either not yet been explained or have not yet been explained convincingly.

2The authors apply to the analysis of the genitive syntax of Old Persian the concepts and methodologies developed in recent years in the framework of the functional-typological approach. Thus, this study is largely a synchronic account, although it includes a diachronic and/or comparative perspective where necessary.

3After a brief introduction (chapter 1) concerning the features of the transmission of corpus of Old Persian, the case system of Old Persian in general and the quantitative distribution of the various uses of the genitive, chapter 2 is devoted to the analysis of the Old Persian genitive as constituent of noun phrases and as constituent of adpositional phrases, examining both the word order within these phrases (§ 2.1.1) and the wide range of functions and roles of the adnominal genitive in general (§ 2.1.2).

4Chapter 3 elucidates the semantic roles (classifying them according to the type of construction) the genitive ending could be used for when it is a clausal constituent. After a brief overview of the word order in sentences with the genitive as a clausal constituent (§ 3.2), ample space is dedicated to its use as the second argument of a verb (§ 3.3) or as syntactic argument with three-place verbs (§§ 3.4, 3.5) and in constructions expressing predicative possession (§§ 3.7, 3.8). Conversely, the problem of the supposed split alignment of the so-called ‘manā kr̥tam’-construction (§ 3.6) is only touched on briefly, despite the rich literature on the topic. Following Hettrich (Der Agens in passivischen Sätzen altindogermanischer Sprachen, Göttingen 1990, pp. 92ff), the authors seem to consider this construction as a combination of the “genitive of agent” with a passive verb form. The usual passive agent construction with hacā ‘from’ + ablative (attested exclusively with the passive forms of the verb θah- ‘to say’) is regarded by the authors as a linguistic strategy to avoid the presence of a double genitive (genitive of agent and genitive of addressee) in the case of passivization of this ditransitive verb (showing the genitive of addressee in the active construction).

5Chapter 4 discusses specific Old Persian constructions that are particularly interesting from the perspective of case alternation such as the ditransitive construction. The use of either the genitive or the accusative as second argument in ditransitive constructions is explained by functional factors such as the degree of affectedness of the third argument: the predisposition for ‘obtaining’-verbs to occur with a double-accusative construction (rather than a genitive-accusative construction) can be related with the semantic role of animate source expressed by the third argument.

6Chapter 5 is devoted to syncretism of the Old Iranian genitive and dative which yielded the Old Persian genitive case. This phenomenon has traditionally been mentioned only cursorily. The chapter is mainly focused on the question which semantic changes can account for the death of the dative case. The authors suggest that the decay of the Proto-Iranian dative was not the result of sound change but was determined by the functional extension of the genitive at the expense of the dative, i.e. the type of syncretism obtained through a shift of extensions described by Meiser (‘Syncretism in Indo-European languages: Motives, process and results’, Transactions of the Philological Society 90 (2), 1992, pp. 187–218).

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Harald Bichlmeier, « Maria Carmela Benvenuto, Flavia Pompeo. Towards a Morphosyntax of Old Persian Cases: The Genitive »Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 42-43 | 2021, document 10, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2021, consulté le 15 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/55690 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abstractairanica.55690

Haut de page

Auteur

Harald Bichlmeier

Université de Halle & Académie des Sciences de Leipzig

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-SA-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-SA 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.

Haut de page
Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search