Compound and Conjunct Verbs in Hindi1

J. Burton-Page

doi:10.1017/S0041977X00133580

Compound and Conjunct Verbs in Hindi1

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009

J. Burton-Page

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In a previous study I indicated that some verbal constructs in Hindi whose components were analysable, at the morphological level, as noun + verb could be considered as comprised in the overall category of verb at the syntactical level on account of their patterning in the participial forms, and suggested T. Grahame Baileys term ‘conjunct verbs’ as a convenient term of reference for this sub-category. The aim of the present study is to consider ‘conjunct verbs’ more closely, and to relate both these and what Bailey terms ‘compound verbsx2019; to each other and to the Hindi verbal system as a whole.

Type: Articles
Information: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , October 1957 , pp. 469 - 478

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00133580 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1957

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References

^{page 469 note 2} ‘The syntax of participial forms in Hindi’, BSOAS, XIX, 1, 1957, 94–104.Google Scholar

^{page 469 note 3} ibid., p. 99; the example quoted there, daan kərnaa, was considered as a verb rather than as noun+verb in the construction under discussion, although both daan and kərnaa have independent status as noun and verb respectively.

^{page 469 note 4} T. Grahame Bailey, Teach yourself Hindustani, 79 ff.

^{page 469 note 5} ibid., 71 ff.

^{page 469 note 6} cf. Burton-Page, op. cit., 95; Allen, W.S., ‘A study in the analysis of Hindi sentencestructure’,Acta Linguistica, VI, 2–3, 1950–1951,Google Scholar 68–86.

^{page 469 note 7} The transcription follows that of my previous article. The vocabulary of this table is: , n.masc.‘boy’;, n.fem.‘girl’; caay, n.fem. ‘tea’; laanaa ‘to bring’; piinaa ’to drink’. The form of the verb ending in -naa is the usual‘ dictionary entry’ form.

The choice of laanaa, as an ‘intransitive verb taking a direct object’, is intentional, as this enables a range of examples to be presented within the same sentence structure for the intransitive and transitive verbs—and, incidentally, illustrates the deficiencies of the traditional method of definition in notional terms (‘ an intransitive verb is one which does not take an object’) which must be qualified by many exceptions. The more usual sentence structure where V– is intransitive is N₁|V-.

^{page 470 note 1} cf. Bailey, op. cit., 58: ‘ … some [verbs] actually have three [causals]’.

^{page 471 note 1} cf. Bailey, op. cit., 71: ‘ When two verbs are so joined that they convey a single idea, they become one compound verb. But if the verbs both retain their own meaning, there are two verbs ’ [thereby excluding many of what are regarded here as ‘ compound verbs ’], and, p. 72: ‘ Compound verbs … are formed by prefixing the root of a verb to certain auxiliary verbs which lose their proper meaning ’.

^{page 471 note 2} rəhnaa has sometimes been described as a‘ marker of imperfective aspect’. This is unfortunate, since it leads to the use of ‘ aspect’ at two different levels of description, the grammatical and the semantic; this sort of description is, presumably, transferred from the terminology of description of such languages as Russian, where ‘ aspect’ is used primarily with a semantic significance, but may be readily associated with a formal criterion (e.g. the presence or absence of preverbs such as no-, Ha-, or of infixes such as -ba-, -uba-, etc.). In this paper ‘ aspect’ refers to the grammatical level of analysis only; the term Aktionsart is suggested for use at the semantic level.

^{page 472 note 1} (vəh) and (US ne) are regarded as tenses with no auxiliary rather than as tenses with zero auxiliary; zero does not commute within the A system, for example. where 0 is rəhaa ³.

^{page 472 note 2} cf. Burton-Page, op. cit., 94.

^{page 472 note 3} This is illustrated by the last example in group 7, p. 473.

^{page 472 note 4} Such forms as le jaayaa gəyaa ‘it was taken away’ probably indicate that le jaanaa s to be regarded as V- (i.e., ٭lejaanaa) rather than VO, in spite of the ‘space’ as written in modern Hindi.

^{page 473 note 1} cf. Platts, Hindustani grammar, § 205.

^{page 473 note 2} p. 470; cf. also Allen, op. cit., 73.

^{page 473 note 3} Allen, op. cit., 73–1 For my use of‘place’ and ‘order’, cf. BSOAS, XIX, 1, 95–6.

^{page 473 note 1} mujhe = mujh ko, = turn ko, use = US ko, etc. The selection of one or other of these may be stylistic where only one ‘object’ form is involved; where two ‘objects’ are involved, one being a pronoun, the ‘alternative’ form is used to avoid … ko … ko…

^{page 475 note 2} cf. examples on p. 470 above, and Allen's ‘definite’ forms, op. cit., examples on pp. 84–6.

^{page 475 note 3} i.e. where reference is implicit, depending directly on the context of situation, to masc. sing., fern, sing., masc. plur., and fern. plur. nouns respectively.

^{page 476 note 1} The terms ‘colligate’, ‘colligation’ have not always been used in this paper in the precise sense in which they were originally used by Simon, H.F. in ‘Two substantival complexes in standard Chinese’, BSOAS, XV, 2, 1953, 327–55;CrossRef Google Scholar there ‘colligation’ was applied to describe the syntactic juxtaposition of two or more categories, whereas here it is applied also to a relationship in terms of the ‘grammatical company ’ kept by particular words. It might indeed be possible to separate the two relationships by the use of such an expression as ‘word-colligation’; but my use of the one term here does not aeem likely to cause confusion, and I have not thought it necessary to add to the burden of technical terms.

^{page 476 note 2} Bailey, op. cit., 80.

^{page 476 note 3} The examples quoted above have been transitive. may also be intransitive, e.g:

mujhe raam yaad aataa hε; I remember Rām

vəh dUUr se dikhaaii diyaa It was visible from a distance

yəh əvsər haath aayaa This opportunity arose

^{page 476 note 4} op. cit., 80.

^{page 477 note 1} op. cit., 79–80.

^{page 477 note 2} The range of paradigmatic potentiality must also be taken into, account; e.g., since such a form as ٭kiyaa huaa does not occur, the ranges of the ‘first construction’ and the ‘second construction’ are not congruent, kərtaa huaa, however, does occur; but there seems to be no reason for dissociating this from the structure considered in frame 3, (c) (i), Burton-Page, op. cit., 98–9.