संस्कृत—Syntactic Symmetry, Coordination, and Phrasal Fission

Previous Proposal: On Syntactic Symmetry and Coordination in Sanskrit

1. Introduction. Sanskrit has an amazingly flexible way of syntactic coordination.  Given that the ternary/flat nature of syntactic coordination breaches the binary-branching axiom (where merge/adjoin has to apply between two chunks), “we [have to] fake flat trees with right-branching binary trees.” (Bender 2005) An unmarked cross-linguistic system of (conjunctive, additive, coordinative, cumulative) coordination would therefore be something like like (1). I shall, however, make no distinction between nominal (NP) and verbal (VP) coordination. Determiner Phrases (DPs) are therefore employed to arbitrarily mark the coordinated contituents.

(1)

The syntactic nature of such coordination refracts a (simple compositional) logical form of (2).

(2)   λP . λP [ λx.λy [P(x) & Q(y) ] ]

The boldfaced coordination reflects the default ‘logical’ symmetry of coordination. Should be eliminate the obvious medial-symmetric principle, we could paraphrase the boldfaced symbol into a coordinative operator of quazi-predicative nature (3).

(3)   λP . λP [ λx.λy [AND ({P(x)},{Q(y)}) ] ]

It is the logical form of (3) that will apply to the quirky phenomenal distribution of Sanskrit.

2. Sanskrit च. Although Sanskrit च as a conjunction is enclitic, it shows marked movement features of coordination. As shown in (4), the conjunction does not have to coordinate a pair of DPs (in ternary image) but stands outside of the local DP/ConP string shown in (5), and c-commands a maximal DP. Note that this seems to the only syntactic analysis that compositionally satisfies the LF of (3).

(4) जिवति पशयति च
live-3rd prs, sg, pres. see-3rd prs., pres. and-conj.
‘He lives and sees.’

(5)

In an unmarked (i.e. cross-linguistically “normal”) systems, the conjunction seems to coordinate the second coordinated constituent

(6) [DP1 He [VP1 lives] [Conj and [VP2 rejoices]]

(7) Conj c-commands VP2

In Sanskrit, however, the c-commanding domain is greater.

(3) जिवति पशयति च
live-3rd prs, sg, pres. rejoice-3rd prs., pres. and-conj.
‘He lives and rejoices.’

(8) [[DP1 [VP1 जिवति] [VP2 पशयति]] [Conj च]]

(9) Conj c-commands both VPs, i.e.  everything below it.

One could claim in favour of Conj raising to Specifier position which is (interestingly) on the right. I assume one of two should be valid assumptions:

• Movement of Conj into [DP, Spec] position;
• Conj in situ in [DP, Spec] position.

New Proposal: Evidence from Phrasal Fission

Under a theoretically less-expensive analysis, one could postulate an English-like binary model of coordination for Sanskrit by adding a linearisation principle as Sanskrit coordinatives may appear in clause-final position. Please note that the clause-final position (3) is deemed as the only grammatical arrangements (not only in the texts but also) by Indian Brahmin Paṇḍits.

Let us now see a peculiar fissile behaviour of Sanskrit coordination whereby a coordinated phrase may be split (11).

(10) गितम् गयमि चयम् पिवमि [ च ] ।
song-sg.acc. sing-3rd.pres. yea-sg.acc. drink-3rd.pres. and-conj.
‘I sing a song and drink tea.’

(11) गितम् गयमि [ च ] चयम् पिवमि  ।
song-sg.acc. sing-3rd.pres. yea-sg.acc. and-conj. drink-3rd.pres.
‘I sing a song and drink tea.’

In (11), the conjunction splits the coordinated VP. A syntactic analysis of this phenomenon at a pre-PF level does not cross my mind. Given phenomena like this one, most of Sanskrit syntax should be given post-syntactic accountability.

Copyright © 2008 Moreno Mitrovic

See pdf file of an earlier working draft …