Nouns and nominalisations in assamese a microlinguistic study

Abstract

The INTRODUCTION presents a brief survey of the Assamese language including its ethnographic and demographic features, origin, principal dialectal divergence, etc. This is followed by a brief discussion of earlier studies on the language, the aims of the study and theoretical orientation, sources of data, and the system of data representation adopted. The INTRODUCTION concludes with a discussion on the grammatical units of Assamese. Chapter One (THE ASSAMESE NOUN: A GENERAL SURVEY) provides an overview of the Assamese nouns carried out on the basis of morphological and syntactic criteria, and with reference to their correlatable grammatical categories such as number, gender, case, determinative and person. This chapter also provides a comprehensive discussion on Assamese nominal compounds and reduplicatives. Chapter Two (PRONOUNS AND PRONOMINALIZATIONS) takes up for discussion the pronouns of Assamese. The characteristics of this subclass and further sub-classifications are presented here. The chapter concludes with a discussion of reduplications and ellipsis in the language. Chapter Three (THE ASSAMESE NOUN PHRASE) is devoted to the treatment of the Assamese noun phrase - its indefinite complexity, constituent structure and a scrutiny of the modifying elements of noun phrases. The canonical order of constituents is also considered here. Chapter Four (NOUN PHRASE SYNTAX AND NOMINALISATIONS) begins by considering the syntax of the noun phrase as evident in complementation, apposition, coordination, concord and government etc. Subsequently, this chapter examines the phenomenon of nominalisation - the important process of using clauses in place of nominal words along with their construction subtypes and uses. Chapter Five (NOUN DERIVATIONS AND MORPHOPHONEMICS) embodies a study of the type of derivational operations beyond compounding (already discussed in Chapter One),.and looks at the derivation of nouns by the processes of prefixation, suffixation and conversion. The phonological changes attendant on these...