НИКОБАРСКИЕ ЯЗЫКИ И ДРЕВНЕКХМЕРСКИЙ: ФОРМЫ ЗАВИСИМОЙ ПРЕДИКАЦИИ

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show that Nicobarese languages Car and Nancowry, which are modern vernacular idioms of the indigenous population of the Nicobar Islands, and Old Khmer — the language of epigraphic inscriptions of 7th–15th A.D., possess a considerable fragment of grammatical system, which coincides in almost every detail. That is the system of forms of dependent predication, i.e. synthetic forms with allomorphs of labial and dental infixes and analytical forms with the marker ta. This fact is somewhat challenging since Nicobarese and Khmer are distant relatives, typologically different, they have different status and temporal affiliation. Data analysis shows that forms with ta in Nicobarese and Old Khmer are used in the same types of dependent predications, i.e. in verb, adjective, noun, pronoun, numeral modifiers, in relative clauses and clauses of time and reason, as well as in sentences with rheme shift. Infixed forms in the languages under comparison underwent lexicalization. However, as a relic they are still used in dependent predications of some types. In the languages compared we find similar examples of variation and dubbing of means marking dependent predication which successively replaced one another on the diachronic scale, i. e. infixed forms and forms with ta, forms with ta and conjunctions. Coincidence of the functional domain of forms of dependent predication in Nicobarese and Old Khmer is unique and cannot be found anywhere else all over the Austroasiatic phylum. In other Austroasiatic languages those forms are either extinct, or preserved as lexicalized units, or else are found in odd relic functions, e.g. the possession suffix ta in Santali.