The aim of the project is a systematic description and analysis of the valence-changing categories (causative, passive, intransitive) in Indo-Aryan.
The main tasks of the research are:
(i) creation of an online free-accessible data base of Old Indo-Aryan verbs;
(ii) a description of the diachronic development and balance of the different intransitivity markers in Indo-Aryan;
(iii) a systematic analysis of causatives and transitivity markers in Vedic and their reflexes in Middle and New Indo-Aryan;
(iv) a description of the valence-changing function of the middle voice and other means of valecy reduction (passive);
(v) a systematic analysis of the labile forms (i.e. forms that can be used both transitively and intransitively) in Vedic;
The planned data base is the first available for Old Indo-Aryan verbs, and provides a template for annotation of valence-changing categories in other texts. The diachronic analysis of the valence-changing categories in Indo-Aryan provides a basis for the typological study of these categories in a new perspective, particularly, for uncovering the stability of some categories and the expansion of some others, and thereby for determining what is constant in dynamic processes.
The innovative and challenging character of the research is determined by its threefold perspective: (i) provide freely accessible resources for research on valence-changing categories in Old Indo-Aryan in their synchronic and (partly) diachronic aspects; (ii) create synergies with similar works on other ancient Indo-European languages and offer a basis for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European syntax; (iii) evidence from Indo-Aryan offers a possibility to study different features and developments within a group of related categories (passive, causative,etc.), being of particular relevance for a typological diachronic study of these categories.
