Universität zu Köln

Coenen, Pascal ORCID: 0000-0003-2885-1336 (2024). The Functions of Vedic cid, íd, īm, ī and sīm. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This book is concerned with a group of Vedic forms which etymologically are to be analyzed as pronouns but which synchronically have been analyzed as particles, or as fulfilling both functions. These forms are cid, íd, īm, ī and sīm. They are most productive in, or even restricted to, the Rigveda, the oldest Vedic text. Therefore, the Rigveda serves as the corpus for this investigation, even though the overall interpretation of numerous Rigvedic text passages is exceedingly difficult. As for cid and íd, previous works have described them as focus particles or discourse particles and the present book builds on these insights. However, these analyses are mostly based on and illustrated by isolated examples and no systematic analysis which is based on all attestations of the respective form (691 for cid and 809 for íd) has been published to this day. Especially due to the fact that on the one hand, particles may have a wide range of functions but on the other hand, these functions are often subtle and difficult to identify, especially in a challenging corpus like the Rigveda, such an investigation is necessary. The present book differs from earlier analyses not only in the amount of data that are considered but also in the way the data are approached: Not only does it consider the Rigvedic data and theoretical literature on focus particles but it also draws heavily on typological literature as well as studies on particles in individual languages in order to identify parallel behavior. This approach makes it possible to systematically analyze data in a corpus which raises many interpretational problems, even apart from the forms under investigation. Moreover, it is possible to identify the entire range of functions that the particles have, to refine previous analyses considerably and also to exclude certain functions that have been assigned to the particles in previous works. In the literature, there is great discord with respect to the analysis of īm, ī and sīm, with respect to their form, their function and their relation to each other. Even though analyses including all attestations of the forms (208 for īm, 11 for ī and 52 for sīm) have been conducted, several questions remain unanswered or at least debatable. The most important question is whether they are used as pronouns or as particles. As a result, the first goal of the investigation is to establish strict formal criteria in order to determine in which cases they are most probably used as object pronouns, when they are clearly used as particles and when they are ambiguous. The subsequent investigation is based only on the clearest cases. The first issue that is addressed after the application of these criteria is the distribution of the pronominal forms īm, ī and sīm. The analysis makes use of the innovative concept of prominence according to the definition that has been established by the CRC 1252 “Prominence in Language” at the University of Cologne. This allows for new insights into the delicate matter of determining the distribution of the three forms. After treating the pronominal function of the forms, the particle functions of īm and ī (for sīm there is no clear attestation as a particle) are investigated. In the previous literature, they have been described as functionless several times but it is argued that they do in fact fulfill functions that are comparable to focus particles like íd or cid. Therefore, systematically analyzing these particles, albeit attested scarcely, in light of the theoretical and typological literature on focus particles utilized in the previous chapters constitutes an advancement to previous studies.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Coenen, Pascal UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0003-2885-1336 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-727359
Date:	2024
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 1: Kunstgeschichte, Musikwissenschaft, Medienkultur und Theater, Linguistik, IDH > Institut für Linguistik > Historisch-Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Subjects:	Language, Linguistics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Particles English Pronouns English Information structure English Epistemic modality English Prominence English Sanskrit English Rigveda English
Date of oral exam:	6 May 2021
Referee:	Name Academic Title Hill, Eugen Prof. Dr. Hellwig, Birgit Prof. Dr. Kölligan, Daniel Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/72735