Time, tense and aspect in early Vedic grammar
Subtitle: exploring inflectional semantics in the Rigveda
By: by Eystein Dahl
Series: Brill's studies in Indo-European languages & linguistics -- v. 5,
Publisher: Brill
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Leiden; Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 475
ISBN-13: 9789004178144
Subjects: Etymology; Vedic language; Grammar; Historical Semantics
Description: This book takes a fresh look at the relationship between asepct, tense and mood in Early Vedic, the language of the Rigveda. Although numerous studies have examined the functional range of individual verbal categories in this language, this work is the first attempt to approach this problem from an overall, systemic perspective. With insights from formal semantics and linguistic typology, the author demonstrates that aspect represents a grammatically relevant semantic dimension on a par with tense in the Early Vedic verbal system, which indicates that the language has preserved an aspectual opposition similar to the one found in Homeric Greek. Apart from these general findings, the book provides a theoretical framework designed for exploring inflectional semantics in dead languages --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.