The pieces of Indo-Aryan aspectual adverbs

Abstract

We examine a subset of aspectual adverbs in Hindi & Nepali and provide an account of their meaning which captures the inter-relations signalled by their compositional morphology. Specifically we examine Hindi phir (ambiguously ‘then, after that’ or ‘again’) and phir bhī (‘still’,both temporal and concessive), as well as their Nepali counterparts pheri and pheri pani. Though in languages like English, still, then, again have no obvious connection, in Hindi & Nepali they do, and thus ideally the morphological compositionality of these items can be related to a (at least partially) compositional semantics. Likewise, items like English then have a variety of interpretations which are not always available to their crosslinguistic counterparts. Such considerations drive this investigation of possible decompositions of aspectual adverbs into more basic pieces.

Benjamin Slade

Associate Professor of Linguistics

My research interests include formal semantics and syntax, historical linguistics, South Asian and Caribbean languages, and the use of computational concepts in formal linguistics.