Aaditya Kulkarni

The diachronic nature of Indo-Aryan compound verbs has been a matter of debate. Scholars like Hook (1991, 1993) and Slade (2013) consider light/vector verbs to have emerged as a resultant of diachronic change; whereas Butt and Lahiri (2002, 2013) opine that light verbs are historically stable and resistant to change. In the light of these views, I look at Marathi compound verbs across time (13th century CE to 21st century CE) to  i. show that their pattern is indicative of gradual emergence rather than historical stability, and ii. affirm Butt and Lahiriís (2013) observation that once established, they show little change in terms of their semantics and morphophonology. Additionally, by looking at the semantic contribution of the light/vector verbs to a compound verb construction, I show that there exists a split between the light verbs which mark telicity and the ones which don’t. Looking at the Indo-Aryan landscape and considering Hook’s (2001) tripartite classification of Indo-Aryan compound verb systems, I suggest- pending a more thorough investigation- that there is a reason to assume that the class of light verbs in Marathi that mark telicity might slowly be becoming more Hindi-like in terms of aspectual (=telicity denoting) properties.

Versions of this study focusing mostly on the diachronic & quantitative aspects without much of a critical discussion have been published at a couple of venues (including here). A version summarizing the entirety work along with the critical discussion remains in preparation.