LINGUIST List 5.221

Thu 24 Feb 1994

Sum: Burushaski

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1. , Sum: Burushaski

 Thanks to everyone who responded to the request for
information on Burushaski posted on LINGUIST by Dr. Farrell.
Here is a list of the references I have found so far.
I have included summaries of the articles in my possession,
to the extent that I have understood them. If anyone is
interested, I can update this list with compendia of other
works as they become available to me.--Justin Spence

Bashir, Elena. 1985. "Toward a Semantics of the Burushaski
 Verb." In: Proceedings of the Conference on Participant
 Roles: South Asia and Adjacent Areas. Arlene K. Zide,
 David Magier, Eric Schiller (Eds.), 1-32. Bloomington,
 Indiana: IULC.
>> Bashir ascribes some predictable features of Burushaski
 nominal and verbal morphology to semantic parameters such
 as degree of activity (of verbs and of actors), relative
 affectedness (of actors), and state/process- vs. actor-
 oriented verbal conceptions.

Benveniste, E. 1947. "Remarques sur la classification
 nominale en Burushaski." Bulletin de la Societe de
 Linguistique de Paris. 64(128):64-71.

Berger, Hermann. 1974. "Das Yasin Burushaski." Wiesbaden:
 Otto Harrassowitz.
>> Frequently cited by Bashir, Tiffou, and Morin.

Bleichsteiner, R. 1930. "Die werschikisch-burischkische
 Sprache im Pamir-Gebiet und ihre Stellung zu den
 Japhetitensprachen des Kaukasus." Wiener Beitr. z.
 Kulturgeschishte u. Linguistik. I:289-331.

Borgstrom, Carl. 1945. "The Categories of Person, Number,
 and Class in the Verbal System of Burushaski." Norsk
 Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap. 13:130-47.

Klimov, G.A. and D.I. Edelman. 1970. "Jazyk burusaski."
 Nauka, Moskva.

Lorimer, D.L.R. 1932. "A Burushaski Text from Hunza."
 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
 4:505-31.
_____. 1935 and 1938. "The Burushaski Language."
 (3 vols.) Oslo: Instituttet for Sammilignende
 Kulturforskning.
>> To my knowledge the only reference grammar for
 Burushaski until Berger's (1974) study of the Yasin
 dialect. OOdles and oodles of morphology comprise
 volume one ("Introduction and Grammar"). In volume two
 ("Texts and Translations"), phonetic transcriptions of
 texts appear on the even-numbered pages with English
 translations facing on the odd. Volume three
 ("Vocabularies and Index") is mostly a (Hunza)
 Burushaski-English dictionary, but it includes short
 Werchikwar (Yasin?)-English and English-Burushaski
 sections. Note that Tiffou and Morin have found
 Lorimer's work to be somewhat inaccurate, particularly
 for analyses of phenomena for which vowel length and
 stress, inconsistently recorded by Lorimer, are
 contrastive.

_____. 1936. "Nugae Brurshaskicae." BSOS. 8:627-36.
>> This reference came out of Bashir's (1985) list of
 works cited. I'm not exactly sure what "BSOS" stands
 for, but I suspect it is the "Bulletin of the School of
 Oriental Studies," not to be confused with the
 aforementioned "Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
 African Studies."

_____. 1937. "Burushaski and its Alien Neighbors."
 Transactions of the Philological Society. 1937:63-98.

Morgenstierne, Georg. 1935. Preface to Lorimer, op.cit.,
 VII-XXX.
>> Discussion of some of the interesting facts of
 Burushaski grammar, including phonolgy, and a summary
 of arguments for considering Burushaski an isolate.

_____. 1945. "Notes on Burushaski Phonology." Norsk
 Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap. 13:67-95.

Morin, Yves-Charles. 1976. "Naissance d'une constrainte de
 structure morphematique en bourouchaski." Recherches
 linguistiques a Montreal. 7:157-62.

Morin, Yves-Charles and Etienne Tiffou. 1983. "Les
 tournures passives en Bourouchaski." In: Proceedings of
 the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists. Shiro
 Hattori and Kazuko Inoue (Eds.). Tokyo.

_____. 1988. "Passives in Burushaski." In: Passive and
 Voice. Masayoshi Shibatani, (Ed.), 493-524. Amsterdam/
 Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
>> Affirmation and description of passive voice in
 Burushaski. Most ergative verbs have a passive
 counterpart. Identification of a pathetive
 construction. LFG analysis for both phenomena.

_____. 1989. "Dictionnaire complementaire du Bourouchaski
 du Yasin." Paris, SELAF.

Tiffou, Etienne. 1977. "L'effacement de l'ergatif en
 bourouchaski." Studia Linguistica. 31:1.18-37.
>> My understanding of this article is shaky, at best. As
 far as I can tell, Tiffou maintains that ergativity is
 no longer "bi-directional" between verbs and their
 arguments, although it probably once was. So there is
 a diminution of the scope of ergativity in Burushaski.

Tiffou, Etienne and Yves-Charles Morin. 1982. "A Note on
 Split Ergativity in Burushaski." Bulletin of the School
 of Oriental and African Studies. 45:88-94.
 >> Data regarding stress and vowel length, phonological
 aspects often missed by Lorimer in his transcriptions,
 reveal that the ergative split in Burushaski is much
 narrower (at least for the Hunza dialect) than
 Lorimer believed it to be. Ergative case is the norm
 for transitive subjects, but first and second person
 pronouns show a split in the future tense.

Tiffou, Etienne and Jurgen Pesot. 1989. "Contes du Yasin:
 introduction au bourouchaski du Yasin avec grammaire et
 dictionnaire analytique." Paris: Peeters.

Tiffou, Etienne et al. 1993. "Hunza Proverbs." Calgary:
 University of Calgary Press.

Varma, Siddheshwar. 1931. "Burushaski Texts." Indian
 Linguistics. I:256-82.

Vogt, Hans. 1945. "The Plural of Nouns and Adjectives in
 Burushaski." Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap. 13:96-
 129.

Willson, Stephen R. 1990. "Verb Agreement and Case Marking
 in Burushaski." M.A. Thesis, University of North Dakota,
 Grand Forks.

Zarubin, II. 1927. "Vershikoe narechie kaudzutskogo
 Yakiza. Leningrad.