Ditransitive verbs in Nepali: Overview

Abstract
Although there is some literature on compound and complex verbs (Boyé. 1999, Pokharel 1999, Lohani 2003), finite verbs (Genetti 1999), no work has been done on ditransitive verbs and the ways they code three arguments in Nepali. This paper presents the first complete description of ditransitive and double object constructions in Nepali. The linguistic data for this paper was mostly collected following the Questionnaire on Ditransitive Constructions (Malchukov et al. 2007). It describes and analyses the coding properties and different types of syntactic alignment. It also addresses the effect of animacy and definiteness in differential object marking in Nepali.1

Introduction
Nepali is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. It is the major Lingua Franca in Nepal. It is also spoken in some parts of India, Bhutan and Burma. Many linguists (e.g. Turner 1931, Abadie 1974, Verma 1992, Klaiman 1987, Masica 1991, Li 2007, and Butt & Poudel 2007) have described it as an ergative or a split ergative language. A general look shows that there is a tense/aspect split in the distribution of ergative case in Nepali.2 The agent (A) of a transitive verb is always marked with ergative marker when it is in perfective or in past tense. However, it is not only restricted with in the past and perfective domain, it is further extended to (Masica 1991, Li 2007) certain non-past forms as well. According to Li, the ergative marker is optionally used with the simple present tense, the present progressive tense, the past progressive tense, the past habitual tense, and with the simple future tense. In the same way, it also appears with few intransitive subjects (S).

Most of the grammatical operations like agreement, case assignment, reflexivization, subject raising, object raising and one of the nominalization strategies are controlled by the subject or the agent (Kärkkäinen 1994).

Syntactic alignment
Nepali ditransitive patterns are primarily encoded by case marking and clearly follow the indirective alignment. In other words, there is indirect object alignment in Nepali where the recipient (R) is treated differently from the monotransitive patient (P) and theme (T), i.e. T = P R. The theme (T) is encoded in the same way as P; it usually bears unmarked nominative case. Nepali is similar to German and other Indo-European languages in this regard. The basic syntactic pattern is A S = P.
There is no effect on indexing the full NP or the independent personal pronoun.

Case and agreement
The table in (1) shows the summary of the Nepali case paradigm. There are very few core cases like -le for Ergative, -lai for dative, and -ko for genitive. The most of the grammatical relations are shown by postpositions which mark obligue arguments. As shown in the table (1), -ma is used for locative, bata for ablative, le for instrumental and sãga for comitative. The A arguments of the transitive clauses are obligatorily marked with the ergative marker -le when it is in perfective, while the S argument of an intransitive clause remains unmarked. The dative marker -lai is used on both the patient (P) and Recipient (R) arguments of monotransitive and ditransitive verbs only when the P and R arguments are animate, and definite.

There is no object agreement in Nepali. In standard Nepali, the verbs usually agree with subject in person, number, gender and honorific hierarchy. However, the gender and honorific agreement is gradually vanishing in the modern varieties of Nepali.

The summary of case marking is as follows: with transitive and ditransitive verbs a definite animate P and R are dative marked and the T is in the nominative. In the case of primary object, the animate P and R are in the dative while the T is in the instrumental. In the direct object constructions, the case is rather different--both the animate and inanimate P and T are nominative, but the R or the most goal like argument gets the locative case.

The following examples illustrate the ergative, dative and nominative marking in the A, the P and the R.

The most basic neutral order of arguments in a ditransitive or a double object construction in Nepali is the Recipient (R) preceding theme (T).

a. mai-le gita-lai kalam di-ẽ
1s-ERG G-DAT pen[-NOM] give-PST.1s
‘I gave Gita a pen’.