Themes and Tasks in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan Linguistics

The present volume contains twelve of the sixteen papers presented at the Linguistics Section of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference (Helsinki, Finland, 13-18 July, 2003). The papers span a wide range of topics and time depth, extending from Common Indo-Iranian all the way to Modern Indo-Aryan. The problems and tasks addressed in these contributions pertain to the historical phonology of Sanskrit, Vedic morphosyntax, the evolutionary morphosyntax of Indo-Aryan, the syntax of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Old Indo-Aryan etymologies, Iranian loanwords in Sanskrit, ancient Central and South Asian language contacts, the Sanskrit translation of the Avestan Haoma Liturgy, Gandhari lexicography, and the computer processing of Sanskrit. A trend which can be discerned in some of these papers, as well as in present-day Sanskrit studies in general, is the ever-increasing impact of modern linguistic theories on, in particular, phonology and syntax. Computational linguistics, which has much to offer in terms of utility and challenges, is a newcomer in the field.