converb (gerund) in Vedic texts

[Asko Parpola]

For the converb in the earliest Vedic texts, see:

Tikkanen, Bertil, 1987. The Sanskrit gerund: A synchronic, diachronic and 
typological analysis. (Studia Orientalia 62.) Helsinki. 378 pp.
	Reviewed: Gillian R. Hart, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1988 
(2): 439-440; Alain Christol, Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de 
Paris 83, 1988: 137-139; Stephanie W. Jamison, Journal of the American 
Oriental Society 109 (3) 1989: 459-461; Hans Henrich Hock, Kratylos 37, 
1992: 62-68; Annemarie Etter, Indogermanische Forschungen 95, 1990: 262-265; 
Jared S. Klein, Language 66 (1), 1990: 210-211.

Tikkanen, Bertil, 1991. On the syntax of Sanskrit gerund constructions: A 
functional approach. In: Hans Henrich Hock (ed.), Studies in Sanskrit 
syntax: A volume in 	honor of the centennial of Speijer's Sanskrit syntax 
(1886-1986): 197-207. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

There is also an edited volume on converbs in general, where Bertil Tikkanen 
has written a paper on the Burushaski converbs:

Tikkanen, Bertil, 1995. Burushaski converbs in their South and Central Asian 
areal context. Pp. 487-528 in: Haspelmath, Martin, and Ekkehard Konig, 1995. 
(Ed.) Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective: Structure and meaning of 
adverbial verb* forms -- adverbial participles, gerunds. (Empirical 
approaches to language typology, 13.) Berlin and New York: Mouton de 
Gruyter. 

He has a general paper on converbs as well:

Tikkanen, Bertil, 2001. Converbs. Pp. 1112-1123  in: Haspelmath, Martin, 
Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible, 2001. (Ed.) Language 
typology and language universals: An 	international handbook, volume 2. 
Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 

Best regards, Asko Parpola


Quoting Gregory Bailey <Greg.Bailey at LATROBE.EDU.AU>:

> Dear list,
> 
> A colleague has made the following request. Any replies would be
> helpful.
> 
> Cheers
> Greg Bailey
> 
>  I'm looking for evidence of linguistic convergence with respect to
> clause chaining via converbs (=conjunctive participles) in South Asia. It
> would be useful to establish if this was a feature of the earliest Vedic
> texts. If it wasn't, then this suggests that clause chaining may have
> developed through contact with unrelated languages of the subcontinent,
> and especially if it is attested in later Sanskrit texts. My suspicion
> that this may be the case is raised by the fact that extensive clause
> chaining via converbs is not a feature of IE languages of Europe, but
> seems to be extremely common in the modern IA languages. Do you know
> where I can find some interlinearised and glossed Vedic texts to prove or
> dispel my suspicions?
>  
>  
> ---
> Alec Coupe, PhD
> ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
> Linguistics Program
> La Trobe University
> Victoria 3086 
> Australia
> Tel  +61 3 9479-3297
> Fax +61 3 9479-1520
> web page: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/linguistics/staff/Coupe.html
>  
> 


Asko Parpola
Institute for Asian and African Studies
POB 59 (Unioninkatu 38 B)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland