Reviewed by Michael W. Morgan, Mumbai, India
Marathi, the official language of the state of Maharashtra, ranks numerically fourth in India and fifteenth in the world, but until relatively recently it lacked a comprehensive reference grammar in English. This volume is the second such grammar.
Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (1–8), gives a brief description of the language and its speakers, a history of Marathi literature and of previous treatments of Marathi grammar, and a brief introduction to the Marathi script. Ch. 2, ‘Sound system’ (9–37), covers Marathi phonology, including phonotactics, syllable structure, accent and accent rules, and a range of phonological processes, all accompanied by extensive examples. The chapter closes with a presentation of the five main intonation patterns.
Ch. 3, ‘Morphology’ (39–127), discusses noun, pronoun, adjective, and verb inflection, as well as all the non-inflecting word classes. Although this chapter deals with morphology, most sections include copious example sentences that demonstrate the functions of the forms introduced. Ch. 4, ‘Word formation’ (129–77), proceeds with an exhaustive treatment of derivational morphology and word formation, which is extremely productive in Marathi, involving both prefixes and suffixes. Roots and affixes alike derive from several source languages: Sanskrit, Perso-Arabic, and even English. The discussion continues with a treatment of compounds and reduplication, intensifiers, and finally diminutives and cranberry morphemes, of which Marathi has an extensive inventory.
The next six chapters discuss Marathi syntax. Ch. 5, ‘Subject and agreement’ (179–93), presents two prototypical morphosyntactic features: ergative and dative subject constructions, both South Asian areal features. Marathi manifests typical Indic split-ergative agreement: nominative-accusative marking and subject agreement are used with intransitive and non-perfective transitive verbs, while ergative marking and patient agreement with perfective transitives. In addition, obligative-desiderative forms show ergative patterning for both transitives and intransitives. Non-third person pronouns show a mixed agreement pattern, ergative in verb agreement and nominative-accusative in case marking. Dative subject constructions typically occur with psychological (experiencer) subject predicates. Important grammatical properties of ergative and dative subject constructions, e.g. control (of reflexives, in transitive passive verbs, and with relative participials), are also examined. This chapter concludes with a presentation of direct and indirect object marking.
Ch. 6, ‘Simple sentences’ (195–207), Ch. 7, ‘Complex sentences’ (209–30), and Ch. 8, ‘Compound sentences’ (231–40), discuss word order, simple sentence types and structures, complement clauses and correlative structures, and coordination. Ch. 9, ‘Interrogative sentences’ (241–48), discusses questions, including those with reduplicated and multiple interrogative words. Ch. 10, ‘Negation’ (249–62), examines negative structures.
Ch. 11, ‘Lexical anaphors and pronouns’ (263–74), the final chapter of the grammar proper, deals with a variety of pronominal phenomena of theoretical interest, e.g. reflexives, reciprocals, and joint vs. disjoint reference of personal pronouns.
Ch. 12, ‘Sample texts’ (275–86), presents a wide range of written and spoken Standard Marathi texts. Appendix A, ‘The language of women: A historical perspective’ (287–90), is a short essay by a feminist writer, and Appendix B, ‘Acquisition of Marathi: A case study’ (291–325), discusses a longitudinal study of L1 acquisition with detailed data.
Although concerned with modern Standard Marathi, occasional reference is made to dialectal and archaic variants (e.g. in poetry). The Marathi writing system is introduced, but all examples are given only in transcription.