Alignment and Ergativity in New Indo-Aryan Languages

The book provides an overview of the alignment patterns found in modern Indo-Aryan languages. The analysis of the patterns of case marking and agreement leads to a balanced view on the concept of ergativity and evaluates its value for typological linguistics. The book offers an extensive discussion of previous approaches to ergativity. It analyzes four Indo-Aryan languages– Asamiya, Nepali, Rajasthani and Kashmiri– on the basis of text corpora. Examples from other Indo-Aryan languages are also adduced. The book is a thorough synchronic study of alignment patterns in Indo-Aryan languages.