Course Outline: Topics in Dravidian Linguistics
SARS 319/519, LING 319/519, Spring Semester 2005
Tuesday-Thursday 3:00--4:30, Room WILLIAMS 1
H. Schiffman, Instructor
Office hours
The focus of this course will be on the topic of Grammaticalization
both
as a general phenomenon in various languages of the world, and in the
Dravidian
languages of South India. Many examples will be drawn from
Tamil, the Dravidian language with the oldest literary history, but data
from other languages, including western languages, African languages, and
others will also be examined.
The languages of the Dravidian family have been known to be
separate genetically since the latter half of the 19th century, and serious
linguistic analysis exists from both pre-historic periods (the oldest Tamil
text Tolkaappiyam is in fact a grammar of Tamil, dating from the
early centuries of the C.E.) and from the period of missionary-grammarians,
early applications of Bloomfieldian linguistics (especially the work of M. B.
Emeneau), and finally the post-independence period revival of interest in
Dravidian matters, much of it inspired by the so-called Rockefeller Project,
and Title 6 funding.
Textbooks:
- Hopper, Paul and Elizabeth Closs Traugott: Grammaticalization
, Cambridge 1993. ISBN 0 521 36684 4 (ppr).
- Schiffman, H. A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil,
Cambridge UP 1999. ISBN 0 521 64074 1 (hbk)
Reading materials will be on reserve in Van Pelt Library,
Rosengarten Reserve. Monographs on the bibliography will be on reserve;
articles and chapters will either be distributed in class as handouts, or
made available as a coursepak or *pdf files on Blackboard.
General Plan of Attack
This course will be run like a seminar, with all participants exploring
the subject of grammaticalization in general (with examples from many
languages) and with particular attention to the phenomenon in Tamil, a
diglossic language whose spoken form differs radically from its written
form. Spoken Tamil (ST) exhibits many examples of grammaticalization,
such as verbal aspect marking, a reorganization of the case/postposition
system, and other kinds of verbal affixation and reanalysis. Students
will present material on topics of interest to them, either in Tamil or in
other languages.
Research Paper:
The major part of a grade for this course will be
based on a research paper, on a topic relevant to the course. It need
not focus on a Dravidian language. See this
page for a schedule of deadlines for submissions of drafts, etc.
Week-by-Week Schedule, Spring Semester 2005
- Jan. 11-13: Introduction Read:
- Jan. 18-20:
- Jan. 25-27: Reanalysis and Analogy.
- Feb. 1-3: Pragmatic Inferencing
- Feb. 8-10: Unidirectionality
and Generaliza tion
- Feb. 15-17: Introduction to Tamil Syntax, and Grammaticalization
issues:
- Feb. 22-24:
Tamil aspectual verbs: How do they fit the model of
Grammaticalization that Hopper & Traugott present? What role does
metonymy and/or metaphor play in the grammaticalization of aspect?
- Mar. 1-3: Problem of negation and its effect on aspectual
verbs, modal verbs, defective verbs, and its unusual
morphology.
- Mar. 7-11: Spring Break!
- Mar. 15-17:
Clause-internal Grammaticalization, a.k.a.
Morphologization
- March 22-24: Summing Up
- March 29-31: Student Presentations TBA
- April 5: Boyland's
article on grammaticalization or morphologization of would+have.
(which comes out sounding like [wuda].) And of course there's also 'shoulda, 'coulda'
and 'sposeta'.
- April 7: Material in Heine, Claudi and Huennemeyer (1991) on Metaphor and other conceptual processes.
- Apr. 12: Guest Lecture by Gillian Sankoff,
on grammaticalization in
pidgins and creoles.
April 19: More from Heine, Claudi and Huennemeyer, Chapter 3: Context-induced Reinterpretation
- Apr. 23-25: Discussion of two Herring
articles.
- April 22: More Student presentations
- Link to Tamil Grammar quotative particle
sections, and grammaticalization thereof.
- Apr. 24: Summing Up.
Some other resources:
