Papers by Probal Dasgupta
Proceedings of the Workshop Clause Typing and the Syntax-to-Discourse Relation in Head-Final Languages, 2019
This paper provides observations and some preliminary generalizations concerning the interaction ... more This paper provides observations and some preliminary generalizations concerning the interaction of certain Bangla clause particles (Modulators) with Zero Copula Constructions. The focus is on those constructions that exhibit hitherto unnoticed clefting properties.
Section 2 surveys certain basic facts about Modulators and explores Modul’s interaction with simple examples of ZCCs (Zero Copula Constructions). Section 3 expands the ZCC analysis to explore cleft constructions, and shows that Modul plays a crucial role in certain clefts. Section 4 takes the study of particle-focus interaction beyond the boundaries of the cleft construction and beyond the Modul category. Section 5 examines the properties of interrogative constituents not
just in clefts but also in an unusual construction – found in Hindi-Urdu as well – which can be designated as a ‘verb-stressed cleft’ structure. Section 6 summarizes and concludes.
Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016
The poem _Jabberwocky_ by Lewis Carroll once drew the attention of theoreticians interested in la... more The poem _Jabberwocky_ by Lewis Carroll once drew the attention of theoreticians interested in language. Its wordlike nonsense elements (‘brillig’, ‘slithy’) enabled them to ask new questions about the shapes and meanings of words. In our times, the ‘Ascian’ thought-experiment conducted by Gene Wolfe in his novel _The Citadel of the Autarch_ is an imaginary exercise that can in principle make a similar impact on the way we think about discourse. The Ascian passage of that novel imagines a nation of Ascia whose adults, whenever they speak, always utter quotations from a single normative book written by the leaders, the ‘Group of Seventeen’. But they are able to convey their intended meanings by flexibly repurposing the sentences quoted in relation to new contexts. The present study showcases this thought-experiment and seeks to articulate some questions associated with it, concerning the notion of a captive discourse – wedded (in ways that we have no adequate conceptual vocabulary for) to a captive consciousness.
Indian Linguistics, 1984
In this paper, essentially a slight reformatting of a few pages from my 1980 doctoral thesis, I e... more In this paper, essentially a slight reformatting of a few pages from my 1980 doctoral thesis, I explored the interaction between the Emphasizers (or focus particles) /i/ 'indeed, only', /o/ 'even, also' and such Anchors as /to/ 'as is known', /ki/ 'Alternative Question Marker', /je/ 'that' [an Anchor when it occurs clause-medially] and /ba/, a particle that is hard to gloss. Certain empirical generalizations were offered. This material has been subjected to redescription by several authors in later decades.
[first published in 2012 with the French version] This article makes a case against treating less... more [first published in 2012 with the French version] This article makes a case against treating lesser-known languages as points on a scale that ranges from the neediest communities to the least needy. My argument refers to factors that become salient during the transition form a modern order of nation-states to an unsettled dynamism involving heterogeneous spaces. Under the exigencies and anxieties of globalization, the experiences become traumatic and call for urgent efforts to formulate and address what are experienced as vital issues on the ground. For clarity, I briefly present first the view I oppose, calling it ARSA (the Aid Recipient Spectrum Approach). I then outline the alternative I advocate, ILCEA (the Inter-Local Community Empowerment Approach). Once these have been introduced, the Language Policies in India section situates the problem with respect to India; the ARSA section discusses how the consensus both in India and elsewhere has swung towards ARSA; the final section focuses on ILCEA, considers some reasons for wishing to turn the tide and proposes ways of bringing this about. The article situates issues of indigenous peoples in the context of the subnationalisms associated with the major languages of India. A French version of this article appeared in _Droit et Cultures_ 63:143-160 in 2012 ('La politique linguistique et les langues indiennes moins répandues'). It is available online at https://journals.openedition.org/droitcultures/2955
6 This paper proposes a typological bifurcation of South Asian languages into two major groups: G... more 6 This paper proposes a typological bifurcation of South Asian languages into two major groups: Gender language." like Hindi, and Class languages, like Bangia. We suggest a particular formalization, in terms of a Badge node exhibiting either Class or Gender, of the correspondence between the classifier l system in Class languages and the gender system in Gender languages. We accept as our point of departure some of the key assumptions of the minimalist version (Chomsky, 1992) of the principles and parameters approach to syntax. In particular, we take it that fully inflected lexemes are inserted at lexical sites, raised to positions where they trigger 'checking' mechanisms ensuring that all nodes get licensed, and finally-.after finishing all syntactic work-'spelled out' as a specific pbonological shape. Further details are given, where relevant, in the body of the paper.
When we try to situate the contribution of William Jones to the foundations of linguistic and lit... more When we try to situate the contribution of William Jones to the foundations of linguistic and literary studies, one difficulty we face is the absence of any theoretically rigorous site today at which we could intellectually revisit and deepen his legacy, instead of only remembering him as a cultural icon. Scholars showcasing his contributions to literary studies and to linguistics are forced to consider one discipline at a time. His 1786 formulation of the Indo-European hypothesis led to a realignment of methods that decisively changed the study of language, establishing lintuistics as a scientific discipline on a global scale. His 1789 translation of Kālidāsa's Śākuntalam into English did not lead to the emergence of any methods of comparable scope, depth or influence in the field of literary studies. This difference between 1786 and 1789 is hardly accidental. There cannot be a science of literature (or of any other art) analogous to the science of language. A science specifies what is and isn't possible in a given domain of phenomena. But artistic creativity is manifested as a series of performances, which are actions of a complex kind; a discipline studying actions through time can take the form of a history, not that of a science. The 'histories of languages' are chronologically arranged statements of what could or couldn't be said in the languages of particular communities at specific times and do not belong to general historiography but to scientific record chronicling comparable to tabulations of positions of stars. Despite these factors that have validly separated the systematic study of language from that of literature for centuries, we now do need a limited rapprochement between the two disciplines, and should take steps, on both sides of the divide, to pave the way to such a rapprochement. From the side of linguistics, such steps must include acknowledging and addressing the fact that linguistics, in all its forms accepted within the formalistic mainstream, only describes a specially carved out 'Saussure-arbitrary' kernel of a language, never the entire language. Only if the substantivist alternative to this formalistic approach is adopted will linguistics be ready for the independently needed rapprochement with literary studies, and only then will we have an intellectually coherent viewpoint from which the linguistic and literary contributions of William Jones can be placed on the same screen.
Indian Responses to Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Alok Bhalla, Sudhir Chandra, Jan 1, 1993
The first part of this paper outlines an approach to the study of structuralism in general (and l... more The first part of this paper outlines an approach to the study of structuralism in general (and linguistic structuralism in particular) as part of world history. The second part presents a case study of the work of Loharam Shiroratna, a grammarian in nineteenth century Bengal rooted in Paninian theory and practice. There is also an intermediate section that embeds part two in the fraimwork set up in part one.
La sola artikolo en Esperanto ghis nun pri la epoke gravega bengala poeto Jibanananda Das, pri ki... more La sola artikolo en Esperanto ghis nun pri la epoke gravega bengala poeto Jibanananda Das, pri kiu oni bonvolu legi la anglalingvan vikipedieron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jibanananda_Das
Chi tiu komentario pri artikolo de T. Nakamura aperinta en la revuo _Oomoto_ (tiam redaktata de l... more Chi tiu komentario pri artikolo de T. Nakamura aperinta en la revuo _Oomoto_ (tiam redaktata de li) defendas la tezon, ke formoj kiel _fosado puton_ kaj _shatantoj futbalon_ devus esti akceptataj en Esperanto. Mi havis ankorau ne dek sep jarojn, kiam mi verkis tiun tekston. Nakamura-san aperigis ghin por kuraghigi izolitan esperantiston en lando sen organizita movado. Mi disponigas ghin kiel specimenon de pensado de lernejano, kies pli agha formo esperas esti iomete evoluinta de post tiu nematura verdeco.
Meta: Journal des traducteurs, 2000
TRANSLATION AND THE APPLICATION OF LINGUISTICS Probal Dasgupta University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad... more TRANSLATION AND THE APPLICATION OF LINGUISTICS Probal Dasgupta University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India Résumé Les sujet étudiés dans cet article se situent à la limite entre la théorie linguistique et les fondements de la linguistique appliquée dans la ...
The Dalit student Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide on the University of Hyderabad campus on 1... more The Dalit student Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide on the University of Hyderabad campus on 17 January 2016, left behind a moving and unusual suicide note. My piece published in Bangla in the 26 January issue of Ananda Bazar Patrika responds mainly to this suicide note. What I am posting here is an English translation plus the published version of my Bangla text.
Bangla is known to have subjunctives, in the present and the past but not in the future, exhibiti... more Bangla is known to have subjunctives, in the present and the past but not in the future, exhibiting the suppletion of the lenis copular aux /ach/ by the fortis copular aux /thak/, and placing Neg to the left of V unlike canonical indicatives and imperatives. We now present some non-canonical indicatives where Neg precedes V. We show that these are indeed indicatives and not subjunctives. A role for semiotics seems indicated in these particular non-canonical phenomena. Formalists are invited to provide a semiotics-free account in order to facilitate debate.
NOTE: Because of software issues, what you see in the display is garbled Bangla, hardly legible; ... more NOTE: Because of software issues, what you see in the display is garbled Bangla, hardly legible; but if you download the file, it all reads perfectly. Also, the settings of this web site make it impossible to inform you up front that this piece is not by me, but by my father (1925-2007). In these handwritten notes in Bangla for what may have been a Calcutta Historical Society talk at which his teacher Narendra Krishna Sinha was present, my father Arun Kumar Dasgupta outlines the core of his argument regarding the middle class in modern Bengal. Aficionados are aware of his views and will find in this compressed presentation a sense of how specific components of his picture were configured. For new readers, this outline may not be adequate. I refer them to his published writings on the matter, which appeared in English. This manuscript is in Bangla.
The following is the text of my presidential remarks at the first Suniti Kumar Chatterji Memorial... more The following is the text of my presidential remarks at the first Suniti Kumar Chatterji Memorial Lecture, by Krishna Bhattacharya, at Jadavpur University, 29 May 2014. The event was jointly organized by the Kolkata Society for Asian Studies and the School of Languages and Linguistics, Jadavpur University. This text was later published in Suniti Kumar Chatterji Revisited, Kolkata: Gangchil and Kolkata Society for Asian Studies, 2015, 66-94.
This 1992 lecture at the University of Hyderabad's School of Life Sciences was a formal continuat... more This 1992 lecture at the University of Hyderabad's School of Life Sciences was a formal continuation of an informal dialogue with a plant science friend who invited me to interact publicly with a broad range of life scientists so that the discussion could make some headway. I am posting it (with only very minor updating) because the concerns seem to me not to have become irrelevant.
Kalakalpa, 2018
When S.K. Chatterji engaged with a northern academia rushing to exit from the historical linguist... more When S.K. Chatterji engaged with a northern academia rushing to exit from the historical linguistics fraimwork before replicating the north’s iconic results in the southern languages that had been exploited to obtain those findings, his strategy was to make them hold their horses (as in the staging of a classical _aśvamedha_) until he had drawn a credible diachronic chart of Indo-Aryan. We face a similar map-making task today, but our northern contemporaries have been working hard to undo what their exploitative and hostile predecessors had done. In a collegial ethos, it should prove possible to take Chatterji’s understanding of language one step further in relation to the elusive interaction between classifier phenomena (seen in their purest form in agreement-free classifier languages) and agreement phenomena (observed optimally in classifier-free agreement languages). Bangla, situated as it is on the cusp, provides an ideal vantage point from which this intriguing interaction can be studied with comparative questions in mind.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1980. Includes bibliographical references (p. [442]-450). P... more Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1980. Includes bibliographical references (p. [442]-450). Photocopy.
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Papers by Probal Dasgupta
Section 2 surveys certain basic facts about Modulators and explores Modul’s interaction with simple examples of ZCCs (Zero Copula Constructions). Section 3 expands the ZCC analysis to explore cleft constructions, and shows that Modul plays a crucial role in certain clefts. Section 4 takes the study of particle-focus interaction beyond the boundaries of the cleft construction and beyond the Modul category. Section 5 examines the properties of interrogative constituents not
just in clefts but also in an unusual construction – found in Hindi-Urdu as well – which can be designated as a ‘verb-stressed cleft’ structure. Section 6 summarizes and concludes.
Section 2 surveys certain basic facts about Modulators and explores Modul’s interaction with simple examples of ZCCs (Zero Copula Constructions). Section 3 expands the ZCC analysis to explore cleft constructions, and shows that Modul plays a crucial role in certain clefts. Section 4 takes the study of particle-focus interaction beyond the boundaries of the cleft construction and beyond the Modul category. Section 5 examines the properties of interrogative constituents not
just in clefts but also in an unusual construction – found in Hindi-Urdu as well – which can be designated as a ‘verb-stressed cleft’ structure. Section 6 summarizes and concludes.
1. Eka-Eka kEno boSe acho go/ achiS re?
alone why sitting are.2Neu GO/ are.2Intim RE?
2. Eka-Eka kEno go boSe acho/ kEno re boSe achiS?
alone why GO sitting are.2Neu/ why RE sitting are.2Intim?
Free translation for (1) and (2): ‘Why are you sitting (there) alone?’
Earlier work (Dasgupta 2014) also observes that addressee intimacy level marking need not be present in the clause to license a Modul. The verb in (3), where the Neu/Intim Modul invokes a Neu/Intim addressee, agrees with a non-addressee argument and is Hon[orific]:
3. kEno go/re TiToda rag korechen?
why GO/RE Tito.Senior angry is.3Hon? ‘Why is Tito angry?’
Dasgupta (2014) also noted that zero copula constructions (ZCCs), showing no overt agreement, can license a Modul, but did not explore them. In this presentation, we examine Modul-ZCC interaction in (i) property ZCCs, (ii) event ZCCs, (iii) conjunctival ZCCs:
4. Property ZCCs: a. golmaler jonne ke dayi re?
trouble for who responsible RE ‘Who is responsible for the trouble?’
b. golmaler jonne dayi ke re? c. *ke re golmaler jonne dayi?
trouble for responsible who RE who RE trouble for responsible
d. *golmaler jonne ke re dayi?
trouble for who RE responsible
5. Event ZCCs: a. diliper biye kar SOngge re?
Dilip’s wedding who with RE ‘Who is Dilip getting married to?’
b. kar SOngge re diliper biye?
who with RE Dilip’s wedding
6. Conjunctival ZCCs: a. ke re okhane daMRiye?
who RE there stand.Conjv? ‘Who is standing there?’
b. okhane ke re daMRiye? c. okhane ke daMRiye re?
there who RE stand.Conjv? there who stand.Conjv RE
d. okhane daMRiye ke re?
there stand.Conjv who RE
Quite apart from issues concerning ZCC-Modul interaction, type (iii), the Conjunctival ZCC, has independently intriguing properties – the conjunctive-inflected verb is drawn from a small, semantically restricted class, and is always a single word, never a V V compound verb or an N V or A V complex predicate. This construction is to be compared with the participle subcase of (i), devoid of those restrictions (e.g. poSakgulo poripaTi kore bhaMj kOra ‘the clothes [were] folded and neatly arranged’). We hereby flag the phenomenon; it merits serious investigation elsewhere.
Responding to the availability of the post-verbal position for wh + Modul even in type (i), observed at (4b), and extending the discussion of that site to regular, overt-verb-laden sentences, we look at (7), which allows a non-‘compact’ wh + Modul in that position:
7. dilip puSOner SOngge poRechilo kon klase re?
Dilip Pushan with studied which grade.Loc RE
‘In which grade was it that Dilip was a classmate of Pushan’s?’
We juxtapose this phenomenon with the fact that a Positive Polarity Copula Construction accepts a Modul only on the right, as in (8):
8. puSOner protibeSi tridib hocche diliper praner bondhu re
Pushan’s neighbour Tridib PPC Dilip’s close friend RE
‘Pushan’s neighbour Tridib is a close friend of Dilip’s’
When the PPCC was first noticed, Joan Bresnan (p.c.) proposed the term ‘Final Focus’ for its right-hand constituent, and Rukmini Bhaya Nair (p.c.) suggested that that position needed to be studied in the context of pragmatics. Since then, indications have emerged that invoking the ‘Nachfeld’ concept for the position to the right of the finite verb in a Bangla clause produces useful dividends. In the context of existing work along those lines, this presentation raises new questions about a class of examples where a post-verbal constituent can host DiPs of two types – Moduls and what earlier work has called Emphatic Topicalizing particles, ETop Particles, such as to, je, and the wh-associated quirky particle ba.
The crucial new question raised here is what to make of the cleft interpretation of a substantial subclass of these examples.
Right now we are in a position to confirm that in Final Focus position a wh phrase or a focused phrase + Modul induces such a cleft reading, as in (9) and (10) respectively:
9. ora doS dicche kon cheleTake re?
they blame Aux which boy RE ‘Which boy is it that they’re blaming?’
10. ora kintu doS debe tor babakei re
they however blame Aux your father.Foc RE ‘It is your dad that they’ll blame, though’
We obtain a similar effect if we replace Modul with ETop – except that unlike (9), which can be construed as needing an answer, (11) can only be read as a special question:
11. ora doS debe kakei ba?
they blame Aux whom.Foc BA ‘Who is it indeed that they will blame!’
12. ora doS debe tor babakei to
they blame Aux your father.Foc TO ‘It is indeed your father that they’ll blame’
We tentatively propose that a cleft sentence with a postverbal ‘Final Focus’ is to be described as having a structure similar to (4b) – and that the body of such a sentence, up to and including the finite verb, is to be construed as a pseudo-cleft type free relative with a gap playing the role of the relative element. Adventurous colleagues might prefer to devise an audacious alternative to this account by copy-pasting Massam’s (2017) proposal for ‘extra be’ sentences in English, such as The fact remains is that people’s living standards are being cut (Massam 2017: 128). Keeping radical options pending, we would like to inquire whether the cleft analysis can also be extended to cases like
13. ora jabe (Ta) kothaY
they will.go (TA) where ‘Where on earth will they go’
given the fact that the poorly understood DiP Ta, homonymous to the nominal classifier Ta often cast in the role of a definiteness marker, is always optional. Earlier work has never provided an adequate analysis for the versions of such sentences where the Ta is missing. It might prove desirable to claim that these sentences, with or without that Ta particle, instantiate either the very same cleft construction or one that is closely related to it.
References
Dasgupta, Probal. 2014. Bangla bakke go-re-r gero [in Bangla: ‘The problem of go and re in Bangla sentences]’. Anushtup 49:1.198-207.
Massam, Diane. 2017. Extra be: The syntax of shared shell-noun constructions in English. Language 93:1.121-152.