Noun phrase accessibility hierarchy in Nagpuri Marathi: a bilingual perspective on Hindi-Marathi convergence

Abstract

Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) is one of the most discussed topics in syntactic typology. Masica (1991a. The Indo-Aryan languages . New York: Cambridge University Press), Subbarao (2012. South Asian languages: A syntactic typology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), and Pandharipande (1997. Marathi . London: Routledge), among others, have examined it in South-Asian languages. NPAH has also been analysed by Hook and Pardeshi (2015. Prenominal participial phrases in Marathi, the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy, and picture nouns. Lingua Posnaniensis 55(2). 77–89), who claim a violation of hierarchy in the marking of the - nar - non-past participial construction in Marathi. Hindi and Marathi are two major Indo-Aryan languages that differ in the accessibility of participial constructions. Notably, oblique participial construction is not possible in Hindi, but it is attested across the hierarchy in Marathi. Nagpuri Marathi has undergone phonological and structural convergence with Hindi (Pandharipande 2003. Sociolinguistic dimensions of Marathi: Multilingualism in central India . Muenchen: Lincom Europa). This presentation explores the NPAH scenario in the bilingual context of Hindi and Marathi, as reflected in Nagpuri Marathi. The analysis reveals that oblique participial construction is permissible in Nagpuri Marathi, whereas it is not allowed in Hindi. This finding indicates that Nagpuri Marathi follows NPAH patterns similar to Marathi and is not significantly influenced by Hindi in this respect.