"SUMMARY: APABHRAMSA SYNTAX

[gor05]

Last week, I sent out a message here on INDOLOGY asking for help on a 
question of Apabhamsa syntax. I got altogether 6 responses, so here is a 
short summary for those who are interested.

First of all, many thanks to all those who responded.They are:

S. Insler
Madhav Deshpande
James Gair
Jakub Cejka
Michael Shapiro
Peter Hook

Suggested literature:

Ram Adhar Singh's: Syntax of Apabhramsa, Simant Publications.

Peter Hook's: On identifying the conceptual resturcturing of Passive as 
Ergative in Indo-Aryan, in: Paninian Studies, S.D. Joshi Felicitation 
Volume, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1991

S. Jamison's: The case of the agent in Indo-European, Die Sprache 15 (1979)
, 129-143.

And suggestions for contact with various people (if anyone is interested, 
he/she can contact me directly) as well as the observation that the 
femine declensions, where the oblique cases rapidly converge to form one 
single oblique case, undoubtedly led to a certain laxity in the masculine 
and neuter declensions in the use of instrumental or genitive/dative.

Interestingly enough, most of those who responded were just as interested 
in the summary and in finding contact with others interested in Indo-Aryan 
syntax. One suggestion was that we should perhaps begin our own news 
exchange on the subject - as I am now leaving for India for four weeks, I 
will try to find out how one does that when I get back in April. For now I 
would like to make the suggestion that we start our dialogue here on 
Indology and see if there is enough interest. Unfortunately, although I am 
very interested in seeing how this works out, I will not be able to see the 
results until April. Hopefully there are enough of you out there interested 
in this so that it catches on.

And also, my apologies to Jakub Cejka: I tried answering your question and 
sending it to you, but for some reason it come back to me. Sorry. Maybe we 
could discuss it here on the net?

John Peterson, Kiel, Germany
email: gor05 at rz.uni-kiel.d400.de