Benglish Verbs: A Case of Code-mixing in Bengali

Benglish Verbs: a Case of Code-Mixing in Bengali* Shishir Bhattacharja Institute of Modern Languages, University of Dhaka Ramna, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh shishir.bhattacharja@gmail.com Abstract: In this article, we show how grammar can account for Benglish verbs, a particular type of complex predicate, which are constituted of an English word and a Bengali verb (e.g. /EksiDenT kOra/ ‘to have an accident’, /in kOra/ ‘to get/come/put in’ or /kOnfuz kOra/ ‘to confuse’). We analyze these verbs in the light of a couple of models (e.g. Kageyama, 1991; Lieber, 1992; Matsumoto, 1996) which claim that complex predicates are necessarily formed in syntax. However, Benglish verbs like /in kOra/ or /kOnfuz kOra/ are problematic for these approaches because it is unclear how preposition in or flexional verb confuse can appear as the arguments of the verb /kOra/ ‘to do’ in an underlying syntactic structure. We claim that all Benglish verbs can be satisfactorily handled in Morphology in the light of Whole Word Morphology (Ford et al., 1997 and Singh, 2006). Keywords: Benglish, Code-mixing, Complex predicates, Loan-verb Accommodation, WWM. 1 Introduction As in many other languages (Butt, 1995, 2010; Dasgupta, 1977, 2003; Hook, 1974; Masica, 1976; Mohanan, 1993, 1994; Moravcsik, 1975, 1978 and Wohlgemuth, 2009 among others) there exists a particular type of complex predicates in Bengali constituted of two items, one chosen from among various categories of words: noun, verbal forms, adjective, preposition, adverb, onomatopoeic word, etc., and the other, a duly inflected verb. The first item is usually called a pole and second one a vector. These predicates are generally put into two different groups on the basis of the syntactic category of their pole: i) Compound verbs (1) that categorically involve a verb (usually a non-inflectional verbal form such as participle, absolutive or past gerund), and ii) Conjunct verbs (2) that involve categories other than the verb. The main characteristic of compound and conjunct verbs is that they must denote one single action. 1. Rik eshe poreche (Rik-having come-has fallen) ‘Rik has just come.’ 2. Rik bajar kore (Rik-market-does) ‘Rik does shopping.’ _______________________________ * I am grateful to Professor Peter Hook and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. I thank Professor Taro Kageyama, my post-doctorate research supervisor in Japan for the thought-provoking discussions I had with him concerning complex predicates and word formation. I thank my senior colleague Dr. Dil Afroze Quader who read several versions of this paper, gave comments, and tightened up my prose. Usual disclaimers apply. For financial support, I gratefully acknowledge the beneficence of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, while for logistic support, I am indebted to the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo, Japan. Copyright 2010 by Shishir Bhattacharja PACLIC 24 Proceedings 75 As in other South Asian languages there is a particular type of complex predicate in Bengali in which the pole is a word of English origin chosen from among various types of nouns (3-6), adverbs (7), adjectives (8), prepositions (9) and verbs …

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