Semantic domain of falling in three related Indo-Aryan languages: Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati

The paper defines cognitively relevant aspects of falling situations that obtain their specific lexical coding in three Western Indo-Aryan languages: Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati. The study employs the methodology proposed by the Moscow Lexical Typology Group implying description and comparison of lexical items through their combinability properties. This method demands resorting to a number of sources and tools: dictionaries, fiction, on-line resources and specially designed questionnaires used in fieldwork. The paper reveals the main parameters and frames that govern the lexical choice in the domain of falling in Western NIA. The dominant lexemes of the domain — h.-u. girnā, p. ḍignā, g. paṛvuⁿ — cover the largest share of all relevant frames. Meanwhile certain situations of falling can lie within the scope of both the dominant lexeme and a lexeme with more specific semantics, e.g. homophonic cognates: h.-u. ṭapaknā, p. ṭapakṇā, g. ṭapakvuⁿ ‘to drip, to knock’ describing falling of rape fruits. There are also contexts where the usage of the dominant lexeme is prohibited; in these cases, using a specialized word is the only way to lexicalize the situation (e.g. falling of precipitations in Punjabi). Special attention is paid to metaphorical shifts — both shared by Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati and attested only in one or two languages. It is shown that the cognates h.-u. paṛṇā, p. paiṇā, g. paṛvuⁿ develop the most extensive sets of figurative meanings. Besides metaphorical shifts, the verbs h.-u. paṛṇā, p. paiṇā, g. paṛvuⁿ undergo grammaticalization processes and acquire inceptive, resultative and some other grammatical usages. Presumably, the verbs paṛṇā and paiṇā occupied diachronically the dominant position in the field of falling, in Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi, respectively, while the verb paṛvuⁿ in Gujarati still preserves this status.