CAREER: The Emergence of New Indo-Aryan--Tense, Aspect and Modality

印度-雅利安语言为我们提供了丰富而连续的历史语言记录，持续了三千多年。但是，这些记录的大部分，特别是中期印度-雅利安人和早期新印度-雅利安人的记录，在语言上仍未得到探索。该项目将通过调查从中晚期印度-雅利安时期到新印度-雅利安时期（公元500年-公元1500年）的语言过渡的性质来填补这一空白。Ashwini Deo博士的研究将集中在研究新印度雅利安语言中时态、语体和情态系统的演变。这项研究建立在两个子项目上。第一个子项目旨在将公元500年至公元1500年之间的一组历时文本数字化，从而为感兴趣的时期创建一个可电子访问和可搜索的语料库。第二个子项目包括更仔细地研究印度-雅利安中部和南部亚群中未被记录的成员的当代语言状况，以寻找关于母体中印度-雅利安系统结构的线索。这两个在方法上截然不同，但在主题上却统一的子项目协同进行，将产生一幅印度-雅利安人历史状况的图景，其清晰度远高于单独进行的任何一个子项目。此外，这些数据对于回答关于语义变化的系统性质、变化机制和自然语言时态/方面系统的演变路径等更广泛的理论问题至关重要。该项目从一开始就旨在创建一个平台，通过一个专门的网站使更广泛的研究界可以访问经过处理的文本和现场数据（元数据）。一个相当大的电子文本语料库以及一个关于中期和新印度雅利安人的综合书目数据库将向公众开放。此外，将为所进行的实地工作保存完整的文件材料档案。因此，该项目产生的智力基础设施可以更广泛地用于未来对中期和新印度雅利安人的研究。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

The Indo-Aryan languages provide us with a rich and continuous historical linguistic record for over three thousand years. But a large amount of this record, especially for the Middle Indo-Aryan and Early New Indo-Aryan period, remains unexplored linguistically. This project will contribute to filling this gap by undertaking an investigation of the nature of the linguistic transition from the Late Middle Indo-Aryan period to the New Indo-Aryan period (500 CE--1500CE). Dr. Ashwini Deo's research will focus specifically on studying the evolution of tense, aspect, and modality systems in the New Indo-Aryan languages. This research builds on two subprojects. The first subproject aims to digitize a set of diachronic texts created between 500CE and 1500CE, thus creating an electronically accessible and searchable corpus for the period of interest. The second subproject involves taking a closer look at the contemporary linguistic situation for under-documented members of the Central and Southern subgroups of Indo-Aryan for clues about the structure of the parent Middle Indo-Aryan system. Undertaken in concert, these two methodologically distinct, but thematically unified subprojects will yield a picture of the Indo-Aryan historical situation of much higher resolution than either of them undertaken in isolation. Further, these data will be crucial to answering broader theoretical questions about the systematic nature of semantic change, the mechanisms of change, and paths of evolution in tense/aspect systems in natural languages.The project aims, from the very outset, to create a platform for making the processed textual and field data (metadata) accessible to the broader research community via a dedicated website. A sizeable corpus of electronic texts as well as a comprehensive bibliographic database of material on Middle and New Indo-Aryan will be made publicly available. Further, a complete archive of documented materials will be maintained for the fieldwork done. The intellectual infrastructure generated by the project can be thus employed more generally for future research on Middle and New Indo-Aryan.This award is co-funded by NSF's International Science and Engineering office.