Middle Indo-Aryan languages

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The Middle Indo-Aryan (Middle Indic) languages are the early medieval dialects of the Indo-Aryan languages, the descendants of the Old Indo-Aryan dialects such as Sanskrit, and the predecessors of the late medieval languages such as Apabhramsha or Abahatta, which eventually evolved into the contemporary Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindustani, Oriya, Bengali, and Punjabi. The term Prakrit is also often applied to these languages (prakrita literally means "natural" as opposed to sanskrita, which literally means "constructed" or "refined"). Modern scholars such as Shapiro follow this classification by including all Middle Indo-Aryan languages under the rubric of "Prakrits", while others emphasise the independent development of these languages, often separated from the Sanskrit by social and geographic differences.

The Middle Indo-Aryan stage is thought to have spanned more than a millennium between 600 BC - 1000 AD, and is often divided into three or four major subdivisions. The early stage is represented by the inscriptions of Asoka (c. 250 BC) and by Pali. The middle stage is represented by the various literary Prakrits, such as Maharashtri or Magadhi. The late stage is represented by the Apabhramsha dialects of the sixth century AD and later that preceded early Modern Indo-Aryan languages ^[1] (e.g. Brij Bhasha).

A Middle Indo-Aryan innovation are the serial verb constructions that have evolved into complex predicates in modern north Indian languages such as Hindi. For example भाग जा (bhāg jā) 'go run' means run away, पका ले (pakā le) 'take cook' means to cook for oneself, and पका दे (pakā de) 'give cook' means to cook for someone. The second verb restricts the meaning of the main verb or adds a shade of meaning to it.^[2] Subsequently the second verb was grammaticalised further into what is known as a light verb, mainly used to convey lexical aspect distinctions for the main verb.

[edit] References

Shapiro, Michael C. Hindi. Facts about the world's languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. Ed. Jane Garry, and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates, 2001.