Download Accusative subjects in Avestan

Accusative subjects in Avestan:
‘errors’ or non-canonically marked arguments?*
Serena Danesi
University of Bergen
Abstract
In Avestan, especially in Young Avestan texts, there are occurrences of predicates where
the subject is marked with the accusative case. These attestations have never been
studied, presumably because they have been considered errors due to the complex
tradition of the Avestan texts. However, a detailed examination of the occurrences
shows that this is not the case. This article reconsiders the data reported in Avestan
grammars and adds further examples to the bulk of the relevant data. As a result, a new
interpretation based on both a linguistic analysis and an Indo-European comparison is
proposed. Thus, it is argued that the accusatives found in place of a nominative cannot
be taken as trivial mistakes since their distribution obeys certain principles. On the
contrary, Avestan accusative subjects represent a linguistic phenomenon, only
occasionally registered in the written texts and taking place under specific semantic and
pragmatic conditions.
Keywords: Accusative Subject Constructions, Lexical Semantic Verb Classes, Information
Structure, Non-canonically Marked Arguments, Manuscript Tradition, Young Avestan, Vendīdād.
1. Introduction
In Avestan, recurrent idiosyncrasies, mostly attested in the Young Avesta, are found in the case
marking system: one of the most frequent anomalies is the accusative used in place of the
nominative (Spiegel 1882, Reichelt 1909). This non-canonical marking of the subject is obviously
relevant both for the study of the Avestan language and for historical-comparative linguistic studies,
since accusative-marked subjects are found in several ancient Indo-European languages. Despite the
fact that this phenomenon is regularly mentioned by Avestan grammars, it has not been properly
investigated so far, either by philologists or by linguists. The reason for this lack of interest from the
scientific community is rather simple; it has been tacitly assumed that such anomalous accusatives
are errors due to the tortuous transmission of the Avestan texts. In contrast, the present article offers
a new analysis of the Avestan accusatives used in place of the nominative, arguing that such
occurrences cannot be classified as scribal errors but are, instead, true accusative-marked subjects.
Since our understanding of the Avesta is compromised by the small size of the corpus and by
the absence of an immediate descendent of the language (Gippert 2002: 183), I carry out a
philological analysis accompanied by both a linguistic analysis and a comparison with other ancient
Indo-European languages that exhibit similar structures. On the basis of this examination, I
conclude that the distribution of the occurrences found in the corpus is motivated by linguistic
principles related to notions such as transitivity, verbal class semantics and the information structure
* I
would like to thank Eystein Dahl, Tonya Kim Dewey, Thórhallur Eythórsson, Romano Lazzeroni for constructive
comments, remarks, and discussions on the topic of this article. I am particularly indebted to Jóhanna Barðdal: without
her guidance this article could not be written to its fullest. Of course, any remaining errors are mine. This research is
funded by the NFR grant nr. 205007.
1 of the clause. Moreover this distribution is, to a large extent, consistent with the distribution of
accusative subjects found in other languages of the Indo-European family.
In the following, I introduce the problem and briefly describe the Avestan language with the
problems related to the interpretation of the peculiarities registered in the texts (Section 2). Section 3
provides some terminological remarks and theoretical considerations relevant to the present study.
In Section 4, I present and analyse the occurrences of the accusatives used in place of the
nominative reported in the grammars and I present nine further examples of the type, not discussed
in the earlier literature. I show then that their distribution is coherent in several respects (on a
syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and textual level) and I suggest some principles governing their
distribution. Finally, I claim that the occurrences under analysis are accusative-marked subjects and
not trivial mistakes and I provide examples showing that non-canonical case marking of the subject
in Avestan is not confined to the accusative case. Section 5 places the accusative subject
construction in a wider perspective presenting an overview of accusative subjects in other ancient
Indo-European languages in order to show that Avestan is not an isolated case and that the
accusative marking of the subject is a well-attested linguistic phenomenon in the Indo-European
language family. Section 6 contains a summary of the content of the article.
2. Putting the problem in context
Old and Young Avestan, together with Old Persian, are the oldest Iranian languages known from
texts. Old Persian and Avestan represent two different Old Iranian varieties. Old Persian is the
language of the royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty, mainly of Darius the Great (521-486
BCE) and Xerses (486-465 BCE) and its immediate descendant is Middle Persian. The Avestan
language is the language of the Avesta, the sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, composed at
different periods in the second and first millennia BCE. Differently from Old Persian, it is not
directly linked to Middle Persian. Immediate descendants of Avestan are not attested among either
the Middle or the New Iranian languages. The study of the Avestan language is further complicated
by the textual transmission of the Avesta: the texts were orally transmitted for centuries and finally
written down only during the Sasanian period (224-651 CE). The earliest preserved manuscripts
date to the thirteenth century and most of them are even later (see Cantera 2012 for a
comprehensive study on the transmission of the Avesta). Such a complex textual transmission could
have allowed errors to enter the manuscript tradition so that one could classify the accusatives
examined in this article simply as errors. That these accusatives are errors is a reasonable hypothesis
but let us investigate first whether there is any systematicity found in the data set, as that would
speak for a different analysis, namely that they represent a specific linguistic phenomenon.
The problem under analysis is briefly the following. From a typological perspective, Avestan
is a typical Indo-European nominative-accusative language where the syntactic subject of both
transitive and intransitive sentences is marked with the nominative case and the syntactic object is
marked with the accusative case, as in (1). Nonetheless, there are cases where the accusative is used
for the subject, as in (2):1
(1)
at̰. rātąm.
zaraϑuštrō.
tanuuascīt̰.
then offering:ACC Zarathustra:NOM body:GEN+even
xvax́ iiā̊.
uštanəәm. dadāitī.
own:GEN energy:ACC gives:PRES.3SG
‘Zarathustra dedicates his own body’s energy as an offering’ (Y. 33, 14)
1 I adopt the following abbreviations: ABL = ablative; ACC = accusative; ADV= adverb; CONJ = conjunction; DAT
= dative; FUT = future; GEN = genitive; IMPF = imperfect; IMPV = imperative; INF = infinitive; INSTR =
instrumental; MID = middle; OPT = optative; PL = plural; PASS = passive; PF = perfect; PRES = present; PPP = past
passive participle; PTC = particle; REL = relative; SUBJ = subjunctive; SG = singular; VB.ADJ = verbal adjective;
VOC = vocative.
2 (2)
… gairinąm.
aš ̣axvāϑranąm.
āsəәnaoiti.
mountains:GEN granting.fortune.of.Aša:GEN reaches:PRES.3SG
miϑrəәm.
huzaēnəәm.
huuarəәxš ̣aētəәm. uziiōraiti.
Mithra:ACC well.armed:ACC shining.sun:NEUT rises:PRES.3SG
‘Well-armed Mithra reaches the mountains granting the fortune of Aša, the shining sun rises’
(V. 19, 28h-i)
Spiegel (1882) was the first to discuss occurrences of accusatives used in place of the nominative in
Avestan. Since these substitutions are especially frequent in the Young Avesta, he hypothesises that
they are motivated by the fact that at the time of composition, the distinction between nominative
and accusative was no longer clear. Accusatives in place of nominatives are also mentioned in
Reichelt’s grammar (1909: 226). Reichelt refers to Spiegel’s list and adds some examples of his own.
Even though Reichelt labels such occurrences as Fehler ‘errors’, he does not commit himself to a
particular claim about their origin. He observes that they could be either an idiosyncratic usage in
the younger language or trivial lapses made by the text compilers (1909: 350) but he also points out
that in those cases where the accusative-marked subjects follow the verb, it is doubtful that these are
errors (1909: 225) since this marked word order is highly frequent with accusative-marked subjects.
Given the complex transmission of the Avesta, it is not implausible that errors made by the
transmitters have corrupted the original text. But without a proper scrutiny of the occurrences this
remains a simplistic assumption. In fact, there are cases where the intervention of scribes is clear, for
example where glosses of exegesis are added to the text, when preverbs in tmesis are repeated, when
the ending of the first member of a compound is changed to -ō, or when non-sandhi forms are
rendered in sandhi (see Skjærvo 2009).
In many cases, however, it is difficult to determine whether some idiosyncrasies reflect the
state of the original text or they are interpolations due to redactors’ language or redactors’ mistakes.
The well-known story of the epenthetic i and u is eloquent in this respect. In the Avesta postconsonant i and u are transcribed with a sequence of double <ii> or <uu>. Such double vowels
were considered an erroneous transcription made by the Sasanian scribes, until Morgenstierne
(1942) showed that this orthography reflects a coherent system and signals the palatalization and the
labialization of the consonants following those vowels. Further investigation of this phenomenon
revealed, on the basis of metrical factors, that this feature can neither be regarded as an original one
nor as an error but rather reflects specific pronunciation, which emerged after the composition of
the texts. Furthermore, Hoffmann & Forssman (1996: 35-36) compare Young Avestan forms like
aniia- <*anịa- ‘another’ (ved. anyá-) and hauruua <*harụa ‘whole’ (ved. sárva) to Old Persian aniya-,
haruva-, and speculate that this feature entered the oral transmission through Old Persian speakers.
Hence the presence of epenthesis is now motivated but such positive outcome is quite unusual, since
most peculiarities of the Avestan corpus still await an explanation (see Gippert 2002 for an
overview).
The accusative in place of the nominative may be counted among such unexplored Avestan
quirks because, as far as I am aware, apart from sporadic observations proposed by grammarians,
there have been no attempts in the literature to solve the riddle of the origin of these unexplained
accusatives. Thus this article aims to start a discussion around this topic, by first trying to establish if
the anomalous accusatives should be classified as errors, or if they are true accusative-marked
subjects. In order to answer this question, a detailed examination of each occurrence is necessary
but before that, a few words about terminology and the theoretical approach are in order.
3. Terminological and theoretical remarks
With the label ‘subject’, I simply mean the argument that all scholars would agree is a subject if it
were in the nominative: given S/A and O, namely the nuclear arguments of the clause (according to
the well-established terminology by Dixon 1979), the subject is the A argument of transitive verbs
and the S argument of intransitive verbs.
3 In this article, each occurrence of an accusative-marked subject is analysed mainly in
relation to the notion of transitivity and on the basis of the verb class the accusative combines with.
Following Hopper & Thompson (1980), I assume that transitivity is a compositional
property of the sentence, determined by the interaction of a number of parameters related to the
characteristics of both arguments and predicates. The notion of transitivity, traditionally conceived
of as a sort of transfer of action from the subject to the object, is thus decomposed into several
parameters whose values determine the transitivity level. An event can vary from a high degree of
transitivity to a low degree of transitivity depending on the interaction of such parameters. Among
the parameters that determine the level of transitivity of a sentence, Hopper & Thompson, include
the number of participants, kinesis, telicity, punctuality, volitionality, affirmation (affirmative
sentence vs negative sentence), mode (realis vs irrealis), agency of the subject, affectedness and
individuation of the object. One of the implications of Hopper & Thompson’s theory is that atelic
sentences, durative sentences, negative sentences, modal sentences, or sentences where a nonvolitional event is described are low transitive sentences. Consequently, sentences with the opposite
values are high transitive sentences.
Furthermore, by adopting a constructional approach, I believe that a full understanding of a
non-canonically marked argument (with the accusative in our case) cannot be achieved without
looking at the whole construction in which it occurs. On this perspective, case markers constitute a
part of a construction, namely of argument structure constructions, and cannot be studied
independently of them (Barðdal 2001a, 2009, Fried 2005). In addition, two aspects are considered
decisive for argument realization: force dynamic relations and the verbal profile (Croft 1998, 2012,
Barðdal 2001b). The force-dynamic relations specify the transmission of force between participants
in the event and determine the assignment of subject and object. The verbal profile specifies the
conceptual structure and the causal chain (basically delimited by subject and object) associated with
the meaning of a certain verb. Needless to say, the notion of verb classes becomes crucial in order to
analyse a certain argument structure construction (Croft 2003, Barðdal 2004). In addition to the
relation holding between the referents and the event denoted, following Barðdal (2004), I assume
that the shape of the argument structure construction can also be determined by the speaker’s
subjective attitude toward the content of the proposition.
Given these theoretical assumptions, I analyse accusative-marked subjects not only making
reference to the thematic role they carry but also making reference to the lexical class of the verb
they combine with, to the information structure of the sentence and to the context in which they
appear. The choice of this method has the practical advantage of providing an exhaustive account
of the irregular uses of the accusative and allowing us to capture semantic connections between the
occurrences that would not otherwise be visible.
4. Data and analysis
The following analysis is based on the occurrences listed in the grammars, mainly on Spiegel’s
rather exhaustive list (1882: 410ff) as well as Reichelt’s (1909) list, integrated with occurrences,
which I have found through direct examination of the text and Bartholomae’s (1904) dictionary.2 In
the next sections all the occurrences are listed and translated with commentary. Along with the
linguistic analysis, the interpretation of the passages will be clarified, making reference to the context
when necessary. The examples collected and discussed are 26 in total (without taking into account
repetitions); in 22 cases the accusative marks the subject and in four cases it is in non-argument
positions.
Before examining the examples, it is worth noticing that, in theory, the analysis can lead to
two different results:
2 I have eliminated three of the cases discussed by Spiegel and one discussed by Reichelt, because in my view, for those
specific occurrences, it is not necessary to hypothesise an irregular use of the accusative in place of the nominative.
These four cases are found in the APPENDIX.
4 a) It can reveal that the distribution of the anomalous accusatives is unsystematic; in such a
case they are likely to be trivial errors made by the scribes.
b) It can show that the distribution is coherent and hence regulated by some principles; in
such a case the accusatives are likely to be instantiations of a real grammatical category.
4.1 Accusative subjects
In the following sections, I analyse the occurrences of the accusative marking the subject. The
accusative subjects are grouped on the basis of the verbal class they combine with.
4.1.1 Accusative subjects with verbs of change of location
The accusative is found with verbs denoting change of location, i.e. with forms of the root frā-pat‘fall upon’ (3), middle forms of uz-vaz- meaning ‘fly towards’ (4), middle form of vaz- meaning ‘fly’
(5)-(6), and forms of had ‘reach’ (7):
(3)
jąϑβō.tara …
more-deserving-to-be-killed:VB.ADJ
yaϑa. vā. vəәhrkąm.
azrō.daiδīm.
than or she-wolf:ACC prowling:ACC
gaēϑąm.
auui. frapataiti.
farm:ACC in
fall:PRES.3SG
yaϑa. vā. vazaγąm.
as
or
āpəәm.
hazaŋrō.hunąm.
she-frog:ACC with.thousendfold.brood:ACC.
auui. frapataiti.
water:ACC in
fall:PRES.3SG
’(These creatures) are to be killed more than the prowling she-wolf that falls upon the farm,
or than the she-frog that falls upon the water with her thousand-fold brood’ (V. 18, 65c-i)
This passage from the Vendīdād refers to the evil coming from the prostitutes who mix the seed of
several members of the same community. It is said that they deserve death even more than certain
pernicious animals like the she-wolf that ruins the farm or the she-frog that contaminates the water
with her offspring. The anomalous accusatives are the she-wolf vəәhrka and the she-frog vazaγa. They
occur with the predicate frapataiti, namely a 3rd person singular present form (Cheung 2007: 300) of
the root pat- ‘fall’ (< IE *peth1 ‘fall’, cf. skr. pat ‘fall’, LIV: 477), prefixed with the particle frā ‘forth’.
On the syntactic level, the sentence is intransitive and the single argument is marked with
the accusative case. On the semantic level, the participants are non-human and the event of ‘falling’
referred to by such a verb is basically an event of inherently directed motion (Levin & Rappaport
Hovav 1992, Levin 1993) in that it entails direction and a change of location. The location reached
as a consequence of motion is specified by the adpositional phrases gaēϑąm auui ‘on the goods’ and
āpəәm auui ‘on the water’. The action denoted by the verb is non-volitional and non-controlled.
Regarding the relation holding between the subject and the verb, the event is a motion event
but regarding the relation holding between the speaker (the poet in our case) and the content of the
sentence, the event is a happenstance-based event: indeed the wolf falling upon the goods and the
frog plunging into the water are depicted as unexpected and unavoidable misfortunes.
The next example is from a book of the Vendīdād treating the problem of contamination
from contact with dead matter. The strophe deals with an unfortunate happening: a bird eats a
dead body and defecates it on a tree, which is then used by an unaware man to light the sacred fire.
5 (4)
auui. jąfnauuō. raonąm.
in cavities:ACC valleys:GEN
ā.
tat̰. məәrəәγəәm. uzuuazaite
hither then bird:ACC flies.away:PRES.3SG.MID
haca. barəәš ̣nauuō.
gairinąm.
from tops:ACC mountains:GEN
‘A bird takes flight from the tops of the mountains down into the depths of the valleys’ (V. 5,
1c-e)
These verses describe the moment when the bird, having seen the corpse, takes flight to grab it. The
3rd singular person present middle uzuuazaite ‘take a flight’ used to describe this motion comes from
the root vaz- (< IE * ṷeĝh-, cf. Skr. váhati ‘transport (with a vehicle), drive, fly’, LIV: 661; Cheung
2007: 432), prefixed with us. This root, when used in the transitive pattern, refers to the action of
transporting something with a vehicle, or guiding something (usually horses or a chariot); when used
in the intransitive pattern, it refers to the action of travelling, driving, going by a vehicle, and finally
to the action of flying, as in example (4).
As in example (3), the sentence is intransitive and the single argument, i.e. məәrəәγəәm ‘a bird’,
is marked with the accusative case and denotes a non-human entity.3 The verb uzuuazaite describes a
directed motion event with a change of location specified by the adpositional phrase auui jąfnauuō
raonąm ‘into the depths of the vales’. But, with respect to the relation holding between the speaker
and the content of the sentence, the event is a happenstance-based event: a misfortune that happens
by chance is described.
The next passage comes from the Mihr Yašt, which is dedicated to Mithra, the god of
luminous space, truth and loyalty. The god is described as being on a chariot drawn by four stallions
while performing his daily journey around the world. On his right side flies a deity named Rašnu
and on his left side flies a deity named Razišta Cistā:
(5)
āat̰. hē.
hāuuōiia.arəәδe.
then
to.the.left.side:ADV
his
vazaite.
razištąm. cistąm.
flies:PRES.3SG.MID rightest:ACC Cista:ACC
barat̰.zaoϑrąm.
aš ̣aonīm.
offering.libations:ACC faithful:ACC
‘Then at his left hand flies the faithful one and libation-bearing Razišta Cistā’. (Yt. 10, 126df) [following Gershevitch (1959:137, 276)’s translation and interpretation; similarly Kellens
1984: 20]
(Reichelt 1909)
The accusative cistąm is the subject of the verb vazaite, a present middle form of the root vaz-,
meaning ‘fly’ (see the comment on example 4). It is not clear if Cistā is flying because she is
transported on Mithra’s winged chariot, because she is a winged deity, or because she is on her own
winged chariot. Indeed, given the context, it is possible that Cistā is described while she is travelling
transported on the same chariot by which Mithra travels. In this case, the middle morphology of the
3 Note that for məәrəәγa ‘bird’, Bartholomae’s dictionary gives both the masculine and the neuter form but specifies that
this would be the only neuter attestation. Given this uniqueness and the fact that few lines below (V. 5. 2e: upa. tąm.
vanąm. aēiti. yąm. hō. məәrəәγō ... iš ̣aiti ‘He comes to the tree(ACC) on which (ACC) the bird (NOM) is sitting’) the ‘bird’ is
clearly expressed by a nominative masculine form, it seems to me more natural to take this məәrəәγəәm as an accusative.
The fact that the accusative subject is not repeated in this passage is easily explained by the fact that there would have
been two accusatives close to each other and they would have created an ambiguous sentence.
6 verb could have a passive/anticausative meaning: ‘Cistā gets transported’ = ‘Cistā travels/flies’.4
However, an anticausative value is equally conceivable even under the two other interpretations,
because the middle morphology together with the meaning ‘fly’ (present also in the corresponding
Sanskrit form) suggest that a vehicle (either a winged chariot or the wings themselves, associated
with a vehicle) is presupposed, so that the entity ‘flies’ because it ‘is transported’ by such vehicle. In
this sense, the participant in this motion event can easily be connected with a patient and, as such, is
morpho-syntactically realised.5 At any rate, the event of Cistā’s flying is characterised by a lack of
agency and volition because the deity is accompanying Mithra in his daily journey around the
cosmos, and consequently she is doing a regular and automatic act, something that is regulated by
the natural order of the universe.
It is worth noticing that in this example the subject follows the verb. In Avestan, the default
SOV word order can be altered by various factors such as fronting the verb or fronting the object,
either for emphatic purposes or to define the topic (West 2011:116). Indeed, in our verse, the subject
final position is precisely determined by the information structure properties of the clause. The topic
of the sentence is Mithra’s left side and the poet’s purpose is describing it. Cistā’s flying is just an
aspect of the description; it is the focus of the information structure. Cistā has therefore been
displaced in final position despite the fact that it is the subject and it should be before the verb in an
unmarked word order.
An example similar to (5) is found in the following passage from the Tištr Yašt, which is
dedicated to the star Tištrya, a star that, according to Avestan mythology, controls the weather and
especially the rain. Here, again, the accusative subjects combine with a present middle form from
vaz- with the meaning ‘fly’:
(6)
aϑra. pascaēta.
here
vazaite.
afterwards flies:PRES.3SG.MID
darš ̣iš.
vātō.
mazdaδātō.
wind:NOM strong:NOM given.by.Maza:NOM
+vārəәmca.
maēγəәmca.
fiiaŋhumca.
rain:ACC+and cloud:NOM/ACC+and hail:ACC+and
‘Here afterwards flies the strong wind given by Mazda and the rain, the cloud and the sleet’
(Yt. 8, 33f-h).
(Spiegel 1882)
The event described is a non-volitional motion performed by inanimate entities. This example has
the peculiarity that the list of subjects correctly begins with a nominative but continues with
accusatives. Moreover the subjects are in post-verbal position: as with the previous example, this
depends on the fact that the topic of the sentence is something other than the post verbal entities
listed. The topic is the path that Haoma traverses and is introduced in the previous verses.
The next example is from a book of the Vendīdād talking about life after death. Ahura
Mazda explains that dead men’s souls are judged on the third night; at the crack of dawn, Mithra
reaches the mountains, and the sun rises:
Following Haspelmath (1987), with the label ‘anticausative’ I mean a structure in which the subject coincides with the
object of the corresponding transitive, in which the actor is not a part of the event structure, and the process is presented
as going on spontaneously.
5 Note that occurrences of accusative subjects of anticausatives derived from caused motion verbs are found in other
languages, for example in Old Norse (Sandal 2011):
(i) En hana
rak yfir fjörðinn (Snorra Edda, Skáld. 50)
4
but her.ACC
drove over fjord
‘But she drifted over the fjord’
7 (7)
…gairinąm.
aš ̣axvāϑranąm.
āsəәnaoiti.
mountains:GEN granting.fortune.of.Aša:GEN reaches:PRES.3SG.
miϑrəәm.
huzaēnəәm.
huuarəәxš ̣aētəәm. uziiōraiti.
Mithra:ACC well.armed:ACC shining.sun:NEUT rises:PRES.3SG
‘Well-armed Mithra reaches the mountains granting the fortune of Aša, the shining sun rises’
(V. 19, 28h-i)
(Spiegel 1882)
In these verses, the accusative subject is the solar deity Mithra depicted in his daily activity of
bringing the light, and it combines with the verb āsəәnaoiti ‘reaches’ (from the root had- prefixed with
ā and realised by the theme ā-snav- ‘approach, reach, ascend’, Bartholomae 1904: 1775; Reichelt
1911: 275). Hence the verb describes a directed motion entailing a change of location, which is
specified by the genitive gairinąm. aš ̣axvāϑranąm ‘the mountains granting the fortune of Aša’. The
accusative subject denotes a human-like entity since it refers to a deity. Nonetheless, the action
performed is not definitely characterised by agency or volition since, as in example (5), the poet
describes Mithra while the god is performing a regular and automatic act.
On a syntactic level, the order of the constituents is remarkable. Once again the subject
follows the verb and also in this instance the postponed subject is non-topical. In the previous
strophe Zarathuštra asks Ahura Mazda when the rewards will be given to the dead man’s soul. The
verse analysed here is part of the reply to that question. The topic of the sentence is Ahura Mazda’s
answer: ϑritiiā̊. xš ̣apō ‘on the third night’; Mithra’s reaching the mountains is a description of the
third night.
Moreover, the sentence has a low degree of transitivity; in fact even if there are two
arguments, i.e. the accusative subject and a genitive object, the genitive object does not represent a
prototypical patient but the goal of motion.
4.1.2 Accusative subjects with verbs of change of state
An accusative subject is also documented with forms of the root bauu- ‘be, become’ < IE *bhṷeh2- ‘be,
become’, cf. Skr. bhav ‘become, happen, come into being’ (Cheung 2007: 16; LIV: 98). In (8), the
accusative subject is found with an experience-based predicate describing a change in bodily state
(following Barðdal’s 2004: 116 classification):
(8)
paoirīm. upa.maγəәm.
frā.nasuš. narəәm.
bauuaiti.
first:ACC on hole:ACC free-from-nasav man:ACC becomes:PRES.3SG
‘At the first hole the man (ACC) becomes freer from the nasav’ (V. 9, 28)
(Spiegel 1882, Reichelt 1909)
This passage is from a book of the Vendīdād. A ceremony of purification from the Nasav, the
corpse demon, which enters dead bodies immediately after death, is described. The accusative
subject narəәm, the dead man, is low in control and volition since his becoming free from the nasav
does not depend on him but is a consequence of the ceremony of purification that someone else is
performing for him. It is the only argument of the intransitive predicate frā nasuš bauuati, where the
root bauu- ‘become’ is combined with the adjective frā.nasav- ‘free from the Nasav’, to designate the
transition from one state to another. Using Haspelmath’s terminology (1990: 34), it is a ‘fientive’
verb, namely a verb that expresses a process of becoming by means of a stative expression,
especially an adjective. Fientives have the peculiarity that in some languages, e.g. Uigur, Nimboran,
Mwera, Tahitian, or in Latin with deponent verbs, they can also mark the passive (Haspelmath
1990: 36).
The accusative subject of frā nasuš bauu- ‘become free from the Nasav’ is affected by the
event in the same way as prototypical objects of transitive verbs are. As Barðdal (2004: 116) points
8 out, this depends on the fact that experience-based predicates conceptualise their subject argument
as being influenced by external forces and events. These predicates reverse the causal structure of
transitive predicates in that they profile the affected endpoint itself instead of profiling a
transmission of force from an instigator to an endpoint. That is why, in languages like those
investigated by Barðdal (2004) and possibly in our example, the logical subject has a case form
typically used with objects.
4.1.3 Accusative subjects with verbs of gain
An accusative subject combined with a form of the root bauu- ‘become’ also appears in the next
passage, from the Tištr Yašt. Here the star Tištrya is described as follows:
(9)
taδa. aiiaoš. yaϑa. paoirīm.
such
old
vīrəәm.
as
for.the.first.time
yā̊.
auui.
bauuaiti
man:ACC PTC girdle:NOM/ACC becomes:PRES.3SG
‘So old like a man when for the first time receives the girdle’ (Yt. 8, 14ab)
(Spiegel 1882)
The neuter noun yāh- ‘girdle’ refers both to the object itself and to the particular ceremony of
investiture connected with the girdle, when a fifteen year-old man wears it for the first time.6
The accusative subject vīrəәm denotes the young man who receives the girdle for the first time
in his life (Bartholomae 1904: 932, 1291; Reichelt 1911: 121). The predicate auui yā̊ bauuaiti denotes
benefit and gain and is possibly an idiomatic expression. Its accusative subject is the recipient of the
action rather than the initiator. This is easily explained by the fact that verbs of gain, i.e. verbs
meaning ‘receive, benefit, have luck etc.’, resemble passives of ditransitive verbs, as they entail
giving or transfer of possession (Barðdal 2004: 117) and hence profile the goal of the transfer instead
of its source. The action here is non-volitional and non-agentive in that the poet depicts the receipt
of the girdle as a natural event in life.
The same analysis applies to the accusative subject found in the same strophe with another
verb of gain. The accusative subject occurs with the present middle adaste ‘receives’ (from ā-dā‘give, pay back, return the favour’; middle: ‘receive’ < IE *deh3- ‘give’, cf. Skr. dā ‘give’, Cheung
2007: 43; LIV: 105):
(10)
taδa aiiaoš. yaϑa. paoirīm.
such old
vīrəәm.
as
for.the.first.time
əәrəәzuš ̣ąm.
adaste.
man:ACC majority:ACC receives:PRES.3SG
‘So old as when for the first time a man gets maturity’ (Yt. 8, 14e-f)
Also here, the subject is neither an agent nor an effector, but rather an experiencer or a recipient.
On the one hand, the predicate could be classified as an experience-based predicate of bodily
change as the subject experiences the natural event of coming of age (see also Kellens’s 1984: 222
translation: “l’homme reçoit la source des testicules”). On the other hand, the poet represents the
event of growing as a specific achievement or acknowledgment that is given to the young man at a
certain moment in his life. In this sense the predicate is a happenstance-based verb of gain. Note
6 Spiegel (1882:412) takes yā̊ as a genitive from yār- ‘year’ and reads the verse differently: ‘So old as when for the first
time a man in the year comes’. Because such translation does not make sense in this strophe and because, at least to my
knowledge, he is the only one to read the passage in this way, I adopt Bartholomae’s (1904) and Reichelt’s (1911)
interpretation, which also considers vīrəәm as the subject. 9 moreover that in this attestation, the resemblance with the passive construction is further
substantiated by the middle/passive morphology on the verb.
4.1.4 Accusative subjects with passives
An accusative subject also occurs in a passive construction in the following passage:
(11)
yaoždāta.
ātrəәm.
purified :PPP
fire:ACC purified:PPP water:ACC
yaoždāta. ząm.
purified
yaoždāta. āpəәm.
yaoždāta. gąm.
earth:ACC purified
yaoždāta. uruuarąm.
cow:ACC purified
tree:ACC
yaoždāta. narəәm. aš ̣auuanəәm.
purified man:ACC
faithful:ACC
yaoždāta. nāirikąm. aš ̣aonīm.
purified
woman:ACC faithful:ACC
yaoždāta. strəә̄š. yaoždāta. mā̊ŋhəәm.
purified stars:ACC purified
moon:ACC
‘Purified shall be the fire, purified shall be the water, purified shall be the earth, purified
shall be the cow, purified shall be the tree, purified shall be the faithful woman, purified shall
be the stars, purified shall be the moon’ (V. 11, 2a-h)
(Spiegel 1882)
This passage, from the Vendīdād, contains a special formula for cleansing various objects: the things
to be purified are marked with the accusative and they are the subjects of a passive construction
realised with the past passive participle yaoždāta ‘purified’.7 The verb ‘be’ is omitted but the deontic
modality (rendered by the English ‘purified shall be …’) is clear from the context. It is worth
noticing that once again the accusative subjects occur in post-verbal position and that they are not
the topic of the discourse, which instead is the act of purification itself.
4.1.5 Accusative subjects in presentational contexts
A frequent case is that of accusative subjects occurring in presentational contexts where a list of new
entities is introduced in the discourse. Typically the subject is a heavy constituent, which is
extraposed from its canonical position to a position after the verb in order to receive new
information focus: (12)
təәm. iϑra. fracarəәṇta.
then there proceeded:INJ.3PL.MID
pasuuasca.
staorāca.
maš́ iiāca
flocks:ACC+and herds:NOM/ACC+and men:NOM/ACC+and
‘Then there moved/proceeded/wandered flocks and herds and men’
(V. 2, 11de= 2, 15; 2, 19)
(13)
pasuuasca.
staorāca.
flocks:ACC.PL+and herds:NOM/ACC+and
upairi. ząm.
vīcarəәṇta
upon
wandered:INJ.3PL.MID
earth:ACC
maš́ iiāca.
bizəәṇgra
men:NOM/ACC+and two-legged:NOM/ACC
7 This form is considered ungrammatical by Bartholomae (1904:1234). In fact, the ending could be either a nominative
masculine plural or a nominative/accusative neuter plural (see Hoffmann & Forssman 2004: 120-121 for the possible
endings of a-stems), thus there is no agreement with the accusative nouns modified by this participle.
10 ‘Flocks and herds and two-legged men move themselves/wander upon the earth.’
(Yt. 5, 89g-i)
Here the accusative subjects are pasuuasca.staorāca.maš́ iiāca. In this sequence, pasuuas (< pasav- m.
‘kine’, cf, Skr paśvas (ACC.PL)< paśu-) is a masculine accusative form (Reichelt 1909:194) while staorā
and maš́ iiā are neuter plural forms.8 They combine with an injunctive 3rd person plural middle
from the root car- ‘come and go, wander’ < IE *kṷelH1- ‘move, turn, wander’, cf. Skr. car ‘move,
walk, wander, travel’ (Cheung 2007: 33; LIV: 386), prefixed with vī ‘to go here and there, wander’
(in 14) and with frā ‘to proceed, wander’ (in 15).
The same sequence, with other accusative subjects, occurs in an analogous context, always
in the Vendīdād, with an optative form of the prefixed root frā-i/ay- ‘pass through’ (cf. Skr. pra-i
‘proceed’). The list of accusative subjects includes pasuuas ‘flocks’, staorā ‘herds’, ātrəәm ‘fire’, barəәsma
‘grass’ and narəәm ‘man’:
(14)
kambištəәmca. aēte.
the.least
paϑā̊.
fraiiąn
these:NOM paths:NOM shall.pass.through:OPT.3PL
pasuuasca.
staorāca.
flocks:ACC+and herds:NOM/ACC+and
ahurahe. mazdā̊.
ātrəәmca.
fire.ACC+and Ahura:GEN Mazda:GEN
barəәsmaca.
aš ̣aiia.
frastarəәtəәm.
Baresma.grass:NOM/ACC according.to.the.rite strewn:NOM/ACC
narəәmca.
yim.
aš ̣auuanəәm.
man:ACC+and who:ACC keeping.within.the.rule:ACC.
‘These (are) the paths whereon the least flocks and herds, and the fire of Ahura Mazda, and
the Baresma grass, strewn according to the rite, and the man who acts according to the Law
shall pass through’ (V. 3, 15i-m = 5, 46; 7, 61; 8, 5; 9, 3).
(Spiegel 1882, Reichelt 1909)
In some cases the list of subjects is partly in the genitive and partly in the accusative:9
(15)
kat̰.
tā̊.
paϑā̊.
fraiiąn.
where these:NOM paths:NOM shall.proceed:OPT.3PL
pasuuąm. vā. staorąm. vā.
flocks:GEN and herds:GEN and
narąm. vā.
nāiriṇąm. vā.
men:GEN and women:GEN and
ātrəәm.
vā. ahurahe. mazdā̊.
puϑrəәm.
fire:ACC and Ahura:GEN Mazda:GEN son:ACC
barəәsma. vā. aš ̣aiia. frastarəәtəәm.
grass:NOM/ACC and according.to.the.rite strewn:NOM/ACC
The ending of staorā and maš́ iiā deserve some detailed explanation. I consider them neuter plural on the basis of the
following reasoning: The noun maš́ iiā comes from the masculine noun maš́ iia- ‘a man; people, mankind’. The regular
nominative plural form is mašiiā̊ŋhō but the form maš́ iiā is also documented. Following Hoffmann & Forssman (1996/I:
120) I take its ending -ā as the ending of collective nouns, namely the neuter plural < *IE -a-H2. If this hypothesis,
namely that maš́ iiā is an ancient neuter plural, is correct, then we should expect to find such form both in subject
position and in object position (in the neuter gender: NOM = ACC). And indeed our expectation is fulfilled in that
maš́ iiā is documented both in subject function (in our examples) and in object function (in Yt. 15, 12e, and in Yt. 19,
29b: yat̰. bauuāni. aiβi.vaniiā̊. vīspe.daēuua. maš́ iiāca ‘Then may I conquer all Daevas and men’). Thus, the hypothesis
that maš́ iiā is a collective/neuter plural is confirmed. The same holds for staorā (< staora- m.‘cattle’) whose
collective/neuter plural status is shown by the fact that this form is attested both in subject function (in our examples)
and in object function (in V. 9, 39).
9 Note that only plural nouns are found in the genitive, suggesting that a special reading, perhaps a generic one, is
associated with these forms. 8
11 ‘(Are) these the paths, where flocks and herds, and men and women, the fire and the son of
Ahura Mazda, and the Baresma grass, strewn according to the rite can proceed’ (V. 8, 14)
(16)
āat̰. mraot̰.
ahurō.
mazdā̊:
then answered Ahura:NOM Mazda:NOM
nōit̰. tā̊.
paϑā̊.
fraiiąn.
not these:NOM paths:NOM shall.proceed:OPT.3PL
pasuuąm. nōit̰. staorąm.
flocks:GEN not
herds:GEN
nōit̰. narąm. nōit̰. nāirinąm.
not men:GEN not women:GEN
nōit̰. ātrəәm. ahurahe.
mazdā̊. puϑrəәm.
not fire:ACC Ahura:GEN Mazda:GEN son:ACC
nōit̰. barəәsma.
not
frastarəәtəәm.
aš ̣aiia.
Baresma:NOM/ACC according.to.the.rite strewn:NOM/ACC
‘Then Ahura Mazda answered: “These (are) not the paths whereon flocks and herds, men
and women, the fire of Ahura Mazda, and the Baresma grass strewn according to the rite
can proceed”.’ (V. 8, 15)
(Spiegel 1882)
These examples occur in presentative contexts and the verbs describe the existence of the entities
that are their subjects.
Furthermore, note that in all these occurrences the subjects follow the verb and, as in the
previous examples, in all these cases the accusative subjects are not the topic of discourse. Their
presence is mentioned only in order to identify a certain place on the earth, in most cases a place
about which Ahura Mazda has been asked, and he then answers.
4.1.6 Accusative subjects of involuntary actions and events
The sequence pasuuasca.staorāca is the intransitive subject of a non-agentive verb of bodily function,
maēz- ‘urinate’ (cf. Skr. mih ‘to urinate’):
(17)
āat̰. mraot̰. ahurō.
mazdā̊:
then said
Ahura:NOM Mazda:NOM
yat̰.
bā. paiti. fraēštəәm. maēzəәṇti.
this:NEUT PTC where mostly
urinate:PRES.3PL
pasuuasca. staorāca.
flocks:ACC+CONJ herds:NOM/ACC+and
‘Then Ahura Mazda said: “It is the place where mostly flocks and herds release urine”.’
(V. 3, 6)
In this passage from the Vendīdād the accusative subjects denote non-human entities, while the
predicate denotes a non-volitional action. Moreover, the subjects follow the verb and, like the
previous examples, they are not the topic of the sentence. Instead the topic is the place about which
Ahura Mazda is talking and where the animals’ urination takes place.
The sequence pasuuasca. staorāca. maš́ iiāca. is attested also in a transitive pattern. It appears
five times with the verb viṇdəәṇti (3rd person plural present) viṇdəәṇ (3rd person plural injunctive) < vaēd
‘to find; to partake of’ (< IE. *ṷind- ‘find’ cf. Skr. vid ‘to find’, Cheung 2007: 410; LIV: 686) always
in the Vendīdād (in V. 2, 8; = 2, 9; 12; 16; 17) and always in the same formulaic context:
(18)
nōit̰. hīm. gātuuō.
not
pasuuasca.
viṇdəәṇti.
indeed place:GEN find:PRES.3PL
staorāca.
maš́ iiāca.
12 flocks:ACC+and herds:NOM/ACC+and men:NOM/ACC+and
‘Indeed there is no room for flocks, herds and men’ (V. 2, 9)
This strophe explains that under the authority of Yima, three hundred winters passed, and the earth
was filled with flocks and herds, with men, dogs, birds and with red fires, so that there was no more
room for other flocks, herds and men. The object is the genitive gātuuō ‘place’. The genitive object
and the negation nōit̰ reduce the transitivity degree of the sentence. The predicate gātuuō viṇd- ‘find
room’ designates lack, a non-volitional and uncontrolled state, since the absence of space does not
depend on the subjects: they are only experiencers of such lack.
Furthermore, the subjects are non-topical (the topic is the earth, mentioned few lines above)
and they occur in a post-verbal position.
The sequence pasuuasca. staorāca. (maš́ iiāca) appears once again in a transitive pattern with a
predicate of emotion, namely with a form of the compound root paiti-(s)mar- ‘to long for’ (< *IE.
(s)mer- ‘remember’; cf. Skr. smar ‘remember’, Cheung 2007:137; LIV: 569):
(19)
tištrīm. …
Tištrya:ACC
yim.
paitišmarəәṇte.
pasuuasca.
staorāca.
maš́ iiāca.
who:ACC remember:PRES.3PL.MID flocks:ACC.PL+and herds:NOM/ACC+and
men:NOM/ACC+and
‘Tištrya … whom flocks and herds and men remember/long for’ (Yt. 8, 5a-d)
The verb is experience-based and the event denoted is non-volitional, uncontrolled and nonagentive. The accusative subjects are experiencers. They are post-verbal and are non-topical in that
the topic is represented by the relative pronoun introducing the sentence, which refers to the star
Tištrya.
Another case of accusative subject with an experience-based verb, namely with a verb of
perception, comes from a book of the Vendīdād concerned with the purity laws:
(20)
yaδōit̰. dim. bāiδištəәm. auuazanąn.
so.that indeed quite surely shall.perceive
sūnō.
vā. kəәrəәfš.xvarō.
dogs:ACC and corpse-eating:NOM/ACC
‘So that indeed corpse-eating dogs shall perceive (the dead body)’ (V. 6, 45d-f)
(Spiegel 1882)
In this verse, the accusative sūnō ‘dogs’ is the subject of the 3rd person plural subjunctive form
auuazanąn from the root auua-zan ‘perceive, become aware’ (derived from the prefix auua and the
root zan- < IE. * ǵneH3- ‘know’, Skr. jñā ‘to know’, Cheung 2007: 466ff, LIV: 168). The object is not
expressed but it is retrievable from the context: it is tanūm, a singular noun used in a collective sense
and referring to the bodies of dead men. Even here, due to the verb semantics (experience-based
verb), to the modal context and to the absence of an overt object, the transitivity level of the
sentence is particularly low. The action is performed by non-human entities and is characterised by
the absence of agency, volition and control. Moreover, the subject, which follows the verb, is nontopical: these verses are part of an answer and describe a place about which Ahura Mazda is asked.
The accusative subject also occurs with the root tap- ‘be, become hot’ < IE. *tep- ‘be warm,
hot’ cf. Skr. tap ‘give out heat, be hot, burn’ (Cheung 2007: 378; LIV: 632). This root can indicate
involuntary emission of heat proper for specific inanimate entities like the sun and the moon, or the
act of warming something up. In the next example the root has the first meaning:
13 (21)
āat̰. yat̰. mā̊ŋhəәm. raoxš ̣ne. tāpaiieiti.
then when moon:ACC light:INSTR warms:PRES.3SG
‘Then when the moon warms with its light’ (Yt. 7, 4a)
This passage comes from the Māh Yašt, which is dedicated to the Moon. It is said that when the
moon warms with its light, the plants grow. The event represented is a natural phenomenon. The
verb tāpaiieiti is a lexicalised causative form of tap-, which is employed intransitively and means
‘produce heat’ or, as an inchoative, ‘become/grow hot’.10 The only argument of such a predicate,
namely the accusative subject mā̊ŋhəәm ‘moon’, designates an inanimate entity. The event described
is characterised by the absence of volition and control.
A sequence of accusative subjects is documented with a verb of carrying (namely with a form
of the root karš- ‘drag’ < IE *kṷels- ‘plough’, cf. Skr. karṣ ‘pull, drag, plough’, Cheung 2007: 243;
LIV: 388) in a context that requires some explanation:
(22)
pasca. tūirīm.
nasāum. auua.karəәš ̣əәṇti.
then fourth.time corpse:ACC carry:PRES.3PL
spānəәm. vā. raožəәm. vā. vəәhrkəәm. vā.
dog:ACC and fox:ACC
and wolf:ACC and
‘Then the fourth time a dog, a fox and a wolf carry a Nasav/dead body’(V. 5, 5)
(Spiegel 1882)
This passage comes from a book of the Vendīdād, which discusses the problem of whether or not a
man is to be considered sinful if he, involuntarily and unconsciously, feeds the sacred fire with dead
matter. The strophe examines a specific case: when a man waters a field and the stream of water
transports the dead bodies of animals and contextually the Nasav, namely the evil energy that enters
dead bodies and is responsible for impurity. Here the transported corpses are simultaneously the
dead bodies of the animals designated by the accusative subjects spānəәm ‘dog’, raožəәm ‘fox’ and
vəәhrkəәm ‘wolf’. They carry a dead body because they themselves are dead. Verbs meaning ‘carry’
signify the causation of accompanied motion (Levin 1993: 136), thence they generally relate to
volitional and agentive action. But in this particular example the event described is undoubtedly
non-volitional, non-controlled and non-agentive because it is performed by inanimate entities,
which in fact are transported by an external force (the stream of water). In this sense the predicate
appears to be a happenstance-based one. In addition, the subjects are non-topical (the topic is the
dead body) and they follow the verb.
Accusative subjects also occur with the 3rd person plural subjunctive form bəәrəәjaiiā̊ṇti, from
bəәrəәj ‘welcome, honour’ (< IE. *bhergh- ‘honour’, Cheung 2007: 10-11; LIV: 79), hence a verb
expressing a positive judgment (following Levin’s 1993 verb classification):
(23)
bəәrəәjaiiā̊ṇti.
will.welcome:SUBJ.3PL
š ̣ē.
zaraϑuštra.
him:DAT/GEN/ACC Zarathustra:VOC
strəә̄šca. mā̊ŋhəәmca. huuarəәca.
stars:ACC moon:ACC
sun:NOM/ACC
‘(when he enters the Paradise) the stars, the moon, and the sun will welcome him, o
Zarathustra’ (V. 7, 52) [following Kellens 1984: 240]
10 Note that the accusative marking of the subject of inchoative/anticausative verbs expressing natural phenonena is not
typologically infrequent (for example in Icelandic the verbs birta ‘become bright, dawn’ and kvelda ‘become evening’ take
an accusative subject).
14 This passage from the Vendīdād relates to the soul of the dead man. When he enters Paradise, the
stars, the moon and the sun, expressed by accusative subjects, do homage to him. Given the modal
context and the verbal semantics, the sentence possesses a low degree of transitivity. Moreover the
subjects are inanimate entities and their welcoming is a non-agentive action, and perhaps also nonvolitional and non-controlled, because their simple presence is meant to be a tribute to the newly
arrived. In addition, these subjects are non-topical (the topic of the sentence is the action of greeting
the dead mean expressed by the fronted verb and its object bəәrəәjaiiā̊ṇti š ̣ē) and they follow the verb.
4.1.7 Accusative subjects with verbs of performance
The last occurrence of an accusative subject reported in the Avestan corpus is with a verb of
performance:
(24)
āat̰. tē.
aēuuō.
ahunō.
vairiiō.
then indeed one:NOM Ahuna:NOM Vairya:NOM
yim.
aš ̣auuanəәm. zaraϑuštrəәm. frasrāuuaiiat̰.
which:ACC holy:ACC
vī.bəәrəәϑβəәṇtəәm.
Zarathustra:ACC recited:INJ.3SG
āxtūirīm.
by.observing.the.pauses:ACC four.times
aparəәm. xraoždiiehiia. frasrūiti.
last.time louder:INSTR intonation:INSTR
zəәmarəәgūza.
auuazat̰. vīspe.daēuua.
beneath.the.earth:ACC drove.away all.demons:ACC
‘And the one prayer, the Ahuna Vairya, which the holy Zarathustra caused to be
heard/recited, observing the pauses for four times, the last time with louder intonation,
drove all the demons away beneath the earth’ (Yt. 19, 81)
(Reichelt 1909)11
This passage comes from the Zam Yazat Yašt, devoted to the earth and to Xvarəәnah ‘The Kingly
Glory’, a divine light possessed by the Iranian kings. The accusative subject zaraϑuštrəәm
‘Zarathustra’ combines with the injunctive frasrāuuaiiat̰ ‘recited’, a causative form from the root srav‘to hear’ (< IE. * ḱleu- ‘hear’, cf. Skr. śrav ‘hear’) prefixed with frā. The accusative subject has the
peculiarity that it occurs in a dependent clause introduced by the relative pronoun yim ‘which’
referring to the Ahuna Vairya prayer. This prayer is the subject of the main clause and the topic of
the discourse. The agent of the event described is this prayer and the relative clause describing
Zarathuštra’s performance functions as a predicate qualifying such prayer.
4.2 Accusative in non-argument position
Since this article deals with the replacement of the nominative with an accusative, it is worth
noticing that irregular accusatives are found also in non-argument position, in predicative function
(24), (25), and (26), or in apposition (27). They occur in the Afrīn-ī Zartošt, ‘the blessing of
Zarathuštra’, an Avestan benedictory prayer said at the conclusion of Zoroastrian ceremonies of
blessings. They appear in a recurrent formula translatable as ‘May you be … like …’ where a
predicative adjective and the second member of the comparison are expressed in the accusative:
(25)
yaϑa. mā̊ŋhəәm.
as
moon:ACC
saocinauuaṇtəәm. bauuāhi.
shining:ACC
may.you.be:SUBJ.2SG
yaϑa. ātarəәm.
as
fire:ACC
11
Mentioned as a case of scribal error by Hoffmann & Narten 1976/II: 600, fn. 15; Humbach 1998: 345.
15 tižinauuaṇtəәm. bauuāhi.
hot-burning:ACC may.you.be:SUBJ.2SG
yaϑa. miϑrəәm. huraoδəәm.
as
Mithra:ACC beautiful:ACC
vəәrəәϑrājanəәm. bauuāhi.
victorious:ACC may.you.be:SUBJ.2SG
…
‘May you be shining like the moon, may you be hot-burning like the fire, may you be
beautiful and victorious like Mithra’ (AZ. 6)
The same pattern is found in the Vištasp Yašt:
(26)
yaϑa. miϑrəәm. saokauuaṇtəәm. bauuāhi.
as
Mithra:ACC burning:ACC
may.you.be:SUBJ.2SG
yaϑa. mā̊ŋhəәm. raoxšnəәm. bauuāhi.
as
moon:ACC shining:ACC may.you.be:SUBJ.2SG
yaϑa. āϑrəәm. zaranumaṇtəәm. bauuāhi.
as
fire:ACC
golden:ACC
may.you.be:SUBJ.2SG
‘May you be burning like Mithra, may you be shining like the moon, may you be golden like
the fire’ (Vyt. 4c-e)
In examples (25) - (26), the accusative adjectives and the accusative nouns are unexpected. Indeed,
the adjectives saocinauuaṇtəәm ‘shining’, tižinauuaṇtəәm ‘hot burning’, huraoδəәm ‘beautiful’, etc., should
be in the nominative case because they are adjectives predicative of the omitted subject ‘you’.
Moreover, the nouns in the yaϑa-phrases should also be nominatives because, in the yaϑaphrase, the compared nominal is regularly expressed in the same case of the first member of the
comparison (Bartholomae 1904: 1242).
The accusative is found again in predicative position, in the following passage from the Mihr Yašt:
(27)
vəәrəәϑraiiā̊.
zaēna.
hacimnō.
hutāšta.
victorious:NOM weapon:INSTR armed:NOM well.manifactured:INSTR
təәmaŋhāδa. jiγāurum.
aδaoiiamnəәm:
in.the.darkness watchful:ACC undeceivable:ACC
aojištanąm.
asti.
aojištəәm.
most.powerful:GEN.PL is.PRES.3SG most.powerful:ACC
taṇcištanąm.
asti.
taṇcištəәm.
strongest:GEN.PL is.PRES.3SG strongest:ACC
‘The victorious one armed with a well-manufactured weapon (is) watchful in the darkness,
undeceivable. He is the most powerful among the most powerful ones. He is the strongest
among the strongest ones.’ (Yt. 10, 141)
(Spiegel 1882)
And finally the accusative is found in apposition in the Vendīdād:
(28)
auui. dim.
aiβi.raocaiieiti.
PTC this:ACC lights:PRES.2SG
āϑrō.
ahurahe. mazdā̊. puϑrəәm
fire:GEN Ahura:GEN Mazda:GEN son:ACC
‘He lights it [vanąm ‘tree’] in the fire, the son of Ahura Mazda’ (V. 5, 2jk)
(Spiegel 1882)
This passage comes from the fifth book of the Vendīdād. It is in the same context as above with the
accusative subjects related to impurity deriving by feeding the fire with dead matter. The accusative
puϑrəәm ‘son’ is in apposition to āϑrō ‘fire’, hence it is used in place of the genitive, not of the
16 nominative. However following Spiegel, I quote this example because it is a case of anomalous use
of the accusative and it occurs in non-argument position.
4.3 Accusative subjects and their distribution
A close examination of the accusatives found in place of the nominative in Avestan reveals that they
are coherently distributed within the corpus.
Firstly, regarding transitivity, we can observe that accusative subjects mainly occur in
intransitive patterns, perhaps also with anticausative verbs (with vaz- [middle] ‘fly, travel’ in Yt. 10,
126, and uz-vaz- [middle] ‘take flight’ can be seen as an anticausative expressing a change of
location). In one case an accusative is the subject of a passive structure (in V. 11, 2). Finally, in a few
cases, the accusative subject occurs in transitive patterns, which share the fact of being low in degree
of transitivity either because the verb possesses inherent low transitivity, because they occur in
negative or modal contexts, or because the object is not a prototypical patient.
As to the verb classes with which the accusatives combine, we can observe that accusatives
function as subjects with the following predicates:
− Bodily change predicates: the accusative denotes the entity undergoing a change of state (frā
nasuš bauu- ‘become free from Nasav’)
− Gain predicates: the accusative subject expresses the recipient/goal of the transfer of an
action (auui yā̊ bav- ‘receive the girdle’, əәrəәzuš ̣ąm ā-dā- ‘receive maturity; come of age’.
− Involuntary
actions:
the
accusative
marks
entities
performing
spontaneous/uncontrolled/unintentional actions (frā-pat- ‘fall upon’, tāpaiia- ‘emit heat’,
maēz- ‘urinate’, paiti-smar- ‘long for’, auua-vaz- ‘perceive’, auua-karš- ‘carry’, bǝrǝj- ‘welcome’,
vaz- [middle] ‘fly’ in Yt. 8, 33); or, the accusative marks entities performing non-agentive
activities expressed by motion verbs (vi-car- ‘wander’, frā-car- ‘wander’, frā-aii- ‘pass
through’), basically functioning as existential expressions.
− Lack predicates: the accusative subject denotes an entity experiencing the lack of something
(nōit̰ gātuuō vaēd- ‘not find room’)
− Change of location predicates: the accusative subject designates an entity undergoing a
change of location (ā-snav- ‘reach’, uz-vaz- [middle] ‘take a flight’, frā-pat- ‘fall upon’ [the last
one can be also classified as an involuntary action]).
− Anticausative verbs: vaz- [middle] ‘fly, travel’ in Yt. 10, 126, and possibly uz-vaz- [middle]
‘take flight’ can be taken as anticausatives expressing a change of location.
− Performance predicates: the accusative marks the entity that performs an activity,
specifically reciting a hymn (frā-srāuuaiia- ‘recite’).
Most of the occurrences have in common the fact of appearing when non-volitional and
uncontrolled events are described: either they are experiences or events. The accusative subject,
then, indicates an entity that is represented as inactive with respect to the situation.
In a prototypical transitive sentence, subject and object delimit the verb profile. The subject
participant acts on the object participant, which then undergoes a change of state. There is a direct
and controlled transmission of force from an initiator to an endpoint. In contrast, in our transitive
examples, none of the participants is a proper initiator. Instead, we have cases where the verb
profiles the endpoint of the transfer and the transferred object (with gain predicates), cases where
the transfer is uncontrolled (with the involuntary activities), or cases where there is no transfer at all
(in the case of the lack predicate).
In an intransitive sentence, the sole participant is both at the initial point of the verb profile
and the endpoint of the verb profile so that it can be linked either to the subject or to the object
depending on the intransitive verb type (Croft 1998: 51). In our examples, the intransitive verbs
17 combining with the accusatives describe inactive actions, bodily changes, or uncontrolled activities.
In all cases, the participant does not resemble the instigator of the prototypical transitive verb
profile. It is rather similar to an endpoint, when it undergoes a change of state or a change of
location, or it is unmarked in this respect, when it is neither an initiator nor an endpoint but it is
represented as an inactive entity with respect to parameters like volition and control over the action.
Therefore, the fact that such an atypical subject is non-canonically marked is not surprising. In
particular, the fact that it is the accusative is not unexpected, because atypical subjects resemble
objects in various respects (see also Barðdal 2004).
The accusatives extended into non-argument position are in line with this trend. The
prototypical accusative, which presupposes an inactive referent, comes to be extended to nonargument positions (like predicates) where there is no referent at all.
Another frequent characteristic of accusative subjects in Avestan is that they often follow the
verb. We showed that this fact correlates with the information structure of the sentence in which
they appear, precisely with topicality (i.e. what the sentence is about). Indeed, post-verbal accusative
subjects tend to emerge when they are linked to non-topical information. When they are postverbal, the topic is expressed by a fronted object, by a fronted verb, or by a fronted anaphoric
pronoun referring back to the previous sentence. In natural languages subjects tend to be thematic
and objects tend to be focal (Comrie 1978, Keenan 1976). In our cases, the opposite relation takes
place since the subject is the focus of the information structure. This deviation from the natural
pattern leads to a marked construction where the subject occupies a non-canonical position (it is
sentence-final) and it is non-canonically marked with the accusative case. Here the speaker’s
perspective is fundamental in order to determine the morpho-syntax of the constituents. The stream
of information naturally starts with the topical participant and ends with the focal participant so that
the topic is the initiator and the focus is the endpoint. But when the subject is the focus of the
information, then a mismatch occurs in that the logical subject is the endpoint. Such a mismatch
affects the morpho-syntactic realization of this argument with the result that the subject, being focal,
is associated with an object and is represented as such (see also Lazard 2001: 227). The hypothesis
that in Avestan, information structure plays a role in case assignment is confirmed by the fact that
there are some passages where the object is realised in the nominative case (instead of the
accusative) and they share the remarkable condition of being topics, e.g.:12
(29)
ciš.
aēš ̣a.
nāirika.
paoirīm. xvarəәϑanąm. xvarāt̰.
which:NOM this:NOM woman:NOM first
food.GEN
shall.eat:SUBJ.3SG
‘Which food shall the woman eat first?’ (V. 5, 50)
In this sentence the nominative marks the object but actually this is a wh-question, so the
nominative is sentence initial and is the topic of the sentence. I argue that the nominative is
triggered by the fact that, given these features, it is associated with an initiator rather than an
endpoint, and specifically it is the initiator of the information stream.
So far we have seen that a linguistic analysis of the accusatives in place of the nominative
reveals that there are principles governing their distribution. Therefore, the assumption that they
cannot simply be considered trivial errors becomes stronger and is supported by another element
that the occurrences have in common. Most of the accusative subjects are located in Young Avestan
texts, predominantly in the Vendīdād. There is a general agreement among scholars that Young
Avestan represents a late stage of the language and that Young Avestan texts were written down
when Avestan was no longer a living language (Skjærvø 2009). As regards the Vendīdād in
particular, most of the grammatical and syntactical problems are attributed to diachronic change
and to redactors’ lack of competence. In my view, however, there is another factor, usually
12
Spiegel (1882: 409) reports eight occurrences of the nominative used in place of the accusative.
18 neglected, that one must take into account whenever one attempts to explain the Young Avestan
language. This is the fact that the content of the Young Avestan texts is different from the content of
the Old Avestan texts. The Vendīdād, in particular, is a unique composition in the Avestan corpus.
Indeed it is not a book of prayers and sacred hymns but it is a law book: it consists of laws, mainly
laws of purification, regulations related to the ritual procedures and allusions to the punishments
inflicted on transgressors. In summary, it looks like an instruction manual for the members of the
religious community, and obviously a different purpose entails a different register.
With reference to the Ṛg Veda, it has been shown (Renou 1957, Lazzeroni 1985) that
linguistic differences between Old Vedic and Young Vedic are concomitant with differences in the
content. The diachronic difference must be reduced to a diastratic difference in that those parts of
the collection which are supposed to be more ancient, truly consist of eulogistic content: they are
written in a high and standardised linguistic variant. In contrast, those parts which are supposed to
be younger, consist of heterogeneous content, less constrained by the tradition and thus closer to the
spoken language. Such parts are likely to be even more conservative because they are unaffected by
the artifices of poetic style.
From this viewpoint, the peculiarities of Young Avestan should be read in a completely
different way from the one traditionally adopted. The accusative subjects, instead of being trivial
errors, are better interpreted as traces of a linguistic phenomenon suppressed in the formal and
orthodox sacerdotal language because they were perceived as a low and vulgar variant, but which
then surfaced in texts of more secular content.
This supposition is further supported by the fact that the non-canonical marking of the
subject argument is not a phenomenon limited to the accusative. In fact, in the Young Avestan
texts, other non-canonically marked subjects are attested with the genitive as shown in examples
(30)-(32), and with the dative in (33).
(30)
yat̰.
hē.
stārąm. baγō.dātanąm.
aiβi.raocaiiā̊ṇte.
when him:DAT stars:GEN given.by.gods:GEN shine.upon:PRES.3PL.MID
‘Then the stars given by gods shine upon him’ (V. 19, 23)
(31)
mišti. uruuaranąm. zairi.gaonanąm.
always plants:GEN
gold.coloured:GEN
zaramaēm. paiti.zəәmāδa.
uzuxš ̣iieiti.
spring:ACC PREP earth:ABL+PTC grows:PRES.3SG
‘Gold-coloured plants always grow on from the earth during the spring’ (Yt. 7, 4)
(32)
yat̰.
bā. paiti. fraēštəәm. bauuaiṇti.
where PTC PTC
most
are:PRES.3PL
aŋrō.mainiiauuanąm.
gəәrəәδąm.
belonging.to.the.creature.of.Angra.Mainyu:GEN.PL.burrows:GEN
‘It is the place wherein mostly are the burrows of the creatures of Angra Mainyu’ (V. 3, 10)
(33)
iδa. miϑnāt̰.
daēuua.
here shall.be.found.always:SUBJ.3SG
Daēvas:ACC to.slay:INF
nmāne.
aipi.jaiti.
aiŋ́hāi. guṇdaiiāi.
house:LOC this:DAT wheat:DAT
‘Here there shall always be this wheat in order to smite the Daēvas’ (V. 3, 32)
Without going into details regarding the specific readings conveyed by the use of one case rather
than another (see Dahl 2009 for a proposal on Indo-Iranian; Arnett & Dewey forthcoming, for an
analysis of Germanic), it is worth noticing that all the occurrences of non-canonically marked
subjects share the same semantic features of being non-volitional and non-agentive and show up
with low transitive verbs; specifically they combine with experience-based predicates of bodily state
19 and bodily change, and with happenstance predicates in existential contexts. This calls for the
possible existence, in Avestan, of a general oblique subject construction (namely a construction
where the subject is not in the nominative), of which the accusative subject construction should be
considered a subgroup.
Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient internal evidence for demonstrating this hypothesis.
It is particularly hard to ascertain the stage of the language the accusative subject construction
originates in. In principle it could be either an instantiation of an inherited construction or the
manifestation of an on-going collapse of the nominative accusative system. I leave the question open
as a suggestion for a future investigation but before concluding this paper, I would like to provide
the reader with one more piece of information, which can further improve our interpretation of the
anomalous accusatives and dispels more and more the doubt regarding their genuineness.
5. Accusative subjects in an Indo-European perspective
From a comparative-historical perspective, we may observe that accusative subjects are documented
in other Indo-European languages. Noticeably they are found in Old Persian, i.e. the language that,
together with Avestan, represents the earliest stage of the Iranian languages known from texts. The
Old Persian data are particularly significant for our investigation because the Old Persian we know
is the language reported in the royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty. Thus we are dealing
with a genuine attestation that cannot have been adulterated by later interpolations.
The accusative in place of the nominative is attested with verbs of cognition in a recurrent
expression where an accusative personal pronoun combines with vạrnavataiy, i.e. an indicative 3rd
person singular present form from the root var- ‘choose, convince’ (< IE. * ṷelH1- ‘want, wish’, cf.
Av. var- choose, convince; Skr. var ‘choose, pick’, Cheung 2007: 420-421, LIV: 677):
(34)
mām/θuvām naiy vạrnavataiy
me/you:ACC
not
believes:PRES.3SG
“I/you do not believe” (from Skjærvø 2009: 106)
Furthermore, an accusative subject is documented in the so-called mām kāma āha construction (Kent
1946). This is a recurrent expression meaning ‘I desire’ where the argument denoting the person
feeling the wish is expressed in the accusative and is the subject of the compound predicate kāma āha
(where kāma ‘desire’ is a nominative noun and āha ‘was’ is a perfect 3rd person singular from the root
ah- ‘be’ < IE. *H1es- ‘be’; cf. Av. ah- ‘be’, Skr. as ‘be’, Cheung 2007: 151-152, LIV: 241).
Kent (1946) lists 15 occurrences of such an expression.13 The accusative can be either a full
noun (like Ahuramazdām) or the personal pronoun mām ‘me’ (enclitic -mā), as in the following
example:
(35)
pasāvadiš :
Auramazdā :
manā : dastayā :
after.that+they:ACC Auramazda:NOM my
yaϑā : mām : kāma :
as
avaϑādiš :
akunauš :
hand:INSTR did:AOR.3SG
akunavam !!
me:ACC desire:NOM thus+they:ACC
(I)did:IMPF.1SG
‘Afterwards Ahuramazdā put them into my hand; as I desired, so I did unto them’ (DB4.3536)
13 Despite a possible on-going collapse of the case system in the vernaculars contemporary to the redaction of the Old
Persian inscriptions (Schmitt 1999), the accusative subject in this construction cannot be taken as a morphological
innovation. Indeed the argument of morphological corruption could justify a chaotic distribution of the cases, but not a
recurrent, fixed, and probably ancient expression like this one. 20 In order to explain this use of the accusative, Kent (1946) imagines that the phrase originally
contained a verb meaning ‘to come’, later replaced by ‘to be’. In any case, in the synchronic
grammar of Old Persian, such information is not available to the speaker and the accusative does
not express the goal of a motion event but it is simply the experiencer of an emotion.
Similar to the Avestan accusative subjects, as exemplified in section 4.1, the Old Persian
accusative subjects combine with non-volitional, non-controlled and non-agentive predicates. Thus
the distribution of accusative subjects in Old Iranian appears to be uniform and consistent. The
principles underlying such distribution seem to have an ancient origin because the same pattern is
found also in Vedic:
(36)
stríyaṃ
dr̥ṣṭvā́ya kitaváṃ
tatāpa
woman:ACC having.seen gambler:ACC burn:PF.3SG
‘The gambler suffers when he sees a woman’ (RV, X, 34, 11a)
(37)
ná mā
tamat
ná śramat
ná utá tandrat
not me:ACC may.be.exhausted not may.be.weary:SUBJ.3SG not also may.be.languid:SUBJ.3SG
‘May I not be exhausted, may I not be weary, may I also not become lazy.’ (RV, II, 7, 30a)
In Vedic, like in Old Iranian, the accusative subject appears with experience-based verbs, sharing
the same features of absence of volition, control, and agency (for a discussion of the Vedic
occurrences in an Indo-European perspective see Lazzeroni 2002).
This state of affairs becomes even more interesting in a broader Indo-European perspective.
Manifestations of accusative subjects are not lacking in other branches of the family. There is the
case of the well-known Latin experience-based predicates selecting for the accusative subject: me piget
‘I am annoyed’, me taedet ‘I repent’, me pudet ‘I am ashamed’ etc. But the similarity with the Avestan
accusative subjects is particularly striking in that the Latin accusative subjects are not confined to
the semantic area of experience. In Early Latin the so-called ‘extended accusative’ (Moravcsik 1978)
appears first with verbs denoting change of state/location (38), anticausative (39), equative clauses
(40) and passives (41), see Cennamo (2009):
(38)
Epafu
Victore cadant,
Epafus:ACC Victor:ACC let.fall:SUBJ.3PL
Lydeu
cadat …
Lydeus:ACC let.fall:SUBJ.3SG
‘Let Epafus, Victor fall, Lydeus fall …’ (Def. Tab. 287A 3-6; after Cennamo 2009: 316)
(39)
Superstianu … cadat, vertat …
Superstianus:ACC let.fall let.turn:SUBJ.3SG
servu
cadat
servant:ACC let.fall:SUBJ.3SG
‘Let Superstianus … fall, turn, the servant fall’
(Def. Tab. 283A 2-4; after Cennamo 2009:316)
(40)
nec unquam esse superbos
neither ever
be:INF arrogant:ACC
‘Neither to be ever arrogant’ (Commod. Instruct. II, XXII, 4; after Cennamo 2009: 316)
(41)
omnes
cibos
comedantur
all:NOM food:ACC must.be.eaten:SUBJ.3PL.MID.PASS
‘That all the food be eaten’ (Anthim. 1; after Cennamo 2009: 318)
21 The Latin data echo the Avestan data in various respects. From a syntactic perspective it is
significant that transitivity plays a crucial role: the Latin accusative subject is first documented
within intransitive/low transitive patterns. From a semantic perspective the fact that the Latin
accusative subject, since its first attestations, is distributed in both the experience-based semantic
area and the happenstance-based semantic area, is remarkable (see Barðdal 2011 on the semantic
distribution of accusative subjects in Old Icelandic). Besides, its selection depends on notions like
control and volition (Cennamo 2009) that very much resemble the notions at work in Avestan.
The construction is present also in Gothic (Delbrück 1900: 32ff.), for example:
(42)
jabai gredo
if
fijand
hungers:SUBJ.3SG enemy:ACC
þeinana,
mat
gif
imma
your:ACC food:ACC give:IMPV.2SG him:DAT
‘If your enemy hungers, give him food’ (Romans, 12:20)
And in general it is well attested in Early Germanic (Barðdal 2011, Eythórsson & Jónsson 2011,
Arnett & Dewey forthcoming).
Besides, accusative subjects have recently been found in Ancient Greek as well (Lazzeroni
2013). The attestations are sporadic but the situation exhibited by Ancient Greek is quite similar to
the Avestan one: the accusative marks an atypical subject both for the semantic role and for the
pragmatic role (Lazzeroni 2013: 12).
In summary, the phenomenon is broadly attested cross-linguistically, both synchronically
and diachronically (Plank 1985). Leaving aside the questions related to the extent to which the
construction is inherited from a common proto-stage and to what extent it has developed in the
individual languages, which exceed the scope of the present paper, what is important for our
investigation is that Avestan accusative subjects show characteristics consonant with the distribution
of such phenomena across other Indo-European languages. Therefore, I believe that the riddle
related to their origin can be reasonably solved if we consider them as an instantiation of the same
linguistic phenomenon, namely the accusative marking of the subject under particular syntactic,
semantic and pragmatic conditions.
6. Summary
The present paper has dealt with anomalous occurrences of the accusative used in place of the
nominative in the Avestan corpus. The conundrum to solve is related to their origin: are they scribal
errors or are they an instantiation of a specific linguistic phenomenon? The easiest answer to this
question would be the former one because Avestan has a tortuous manuscript tradition that could
have allowed incompetent redactors to corrupt the texts. I believe that redactors’ inaccuracy can be
invoked in order to explain things like interpolations, repetitions, and sporadic mistakes (accidents
from which no transmitted manuscript is safe). But I also believe that not all the anomalies that a
certain text presents can be catalogued as mistakes, at least not without scrutinising them first. With
this spirit, I have investigated such atypical accusatives.
Following Gippert (2002), I approached the problem with tools different from single internal
philological analysis. In particular I used the tools offered by Construction Grammar combined
with historical-linguistic comparison. As a result, I found that the distribution of such accusatives
obeys some principles.
First, accusatives are primarily attested as subjects of intransitive/low transitive predicates
characterised by the absence of volition and/or the absence of control. Thus these accusatives signal
semantic affectedness in relation to the events they inactively participate in/experience/are
subjected to. In fact, with regard to both the events profiled by the predicate and the information
structure profiled by the narrator, they resemble the endpoint rather then the initiator (of the event
in the former case, of the information stream in the latter case).
Second, all the anomalous accusatives are located in the Young Avesta, predominantly in
the Vendīdād. This fact seems to correlate with the diastratic linguistic variation exhibited by
22 Young Avestan texts; in particular, with the peculiarity of the contents and, consequently, of the
linguistic register used in the Vendīdād compared to the rest of the Avestan collection.
Third, the distribution of the accusative in place of the nominative is consistent with the
extended use of the accusative in other ancient Indo-European languages (both belonging to the
Iranian branch and to other branches of the family).
In conclusion, I have shown that it is simplistic and doubtful to take such accusatives as
errors and that they are better explained as instantiations of a specific construction, be it either
inherited or caused by a change in the Avestan alignment system.
APPENDIX
This section contains the occurrences listed in the grammars as examples of accusatives used in
place of nominatives that I have excluded from my analysis because in my view their interpretation
is questionable.
(i)
mā. aϑra. frakauuō.
mā. apakauuō.
not there gibbous.in.the.front:MOM not bulged.on.the.back:NOM
mā. apāuuaiiō.
mā. harəәδiš.
not stammering:NOM not lunacy:NOM
mā. driβiš.
mā. daiβiš.
not malicious.word:NOM not lie:NOM
mā. kasuuīš.
mā. kīzbāriš.
not deceit:NOM not lack:NOM
mā. vīmītō.daṇtārō.
mā. paēsō.
not one.with.decayded.teeth:NOM not leprosy:NOM
yō.
vītəәrəәtō.tanuš.
who:NOM extended.on.the.whole.body:NOM
māδa. cim.
aniiąm.
daxštanąm.
not any:ACC another:GEN.PL. marks:GEN
yōi.
həәṇti. aŋrahe. mainiiəә̄uš. daxštəәm.
which:NOM.PL are:PRES.3PL Angra:GEN Mainyu:GEN mark:NOM/ACC
maš́ āišca.
paiti.niδātəәm.
men:INST+and set.down:NOM/ACC
‘(There is) no one gibbous in front, none bulged on the back here; no one stammering, no lunacy;
no malicious word, no lie; no deceit, no lack; no one with decayed teeth, no leprosy which (is)
extended on the whole body, nor any (ACC) of the marks which are the mark of Angra Mainyu (and
placed in the mortal men)’ (V. 2, 29a-i)
(Spiegel 1882)
This strophe from the Vendīdād is reported by Spiegel (1882: 411). It would be similar to the others
on both a semantic and syntactic perspectives however I hesitate to include it among the cases of
accusative subjects. In this strophe there is only one possible accusative form: the indefinite pronoun
cim. But cim is a neuter form from the indefinite interrogative pronoun ka- (Grassmann 1873: 597; cf.
Skr. kim) and it agrees in gender with the genitive by which it is specified, i.e. daxštanąm < daxšta(neuter). I also reject Bartholomae’s (1904: 677) reading of this passage according to which
daxštanąm is a genitive partitive working as a subject. Actually the subject of the sentence is the
neuter pronoun cim and daxštanąm is only the genitive modifying it (cim … daxštanąm ‘any of the
marks’).
(ii)
ahmāi. raēšca.
xvarəәnasca.
him:DAT richness:ACC splendor:ACC
ahmāi.
tanuuō. druuatātəәm.
23 him:DAT body:GEN health:ACC
ahmāi.
tanuuō. vazduuarəә.
him:DAT body:GEN resistance:ACC
ahmāi.
tanuuō. vəәrəәϑrəәm.
him:DAT body:GEN victory:ACC
‘To him the richness and the splendour, the health of the body, resistance of the body, the victory of
the body’ (Y. 68, 11)
(Spiegel 1882)
These verses appear a number of times in the Avestan corpus. Since the main verb is omitted,
Spiegel supposes that this is a possessive construction: ‘to him belong the richness and the
splendour, the health of the body …’. Darmesteter (1882) instead, assumes that an imperative form
of a verb meaning ‘give’ is omitted, and given the context, this seems to me the most plausible and
natural interpretation: ‘[Give] unto that man brightness and glory, give him health of body, give
him sturdiness of body, give him victorious strength of body…’
(iii)
barəәzii[ā̊]. aš ̣auua.zarah[e]hī[m]. drujəәm.
superior:NOM righteous:NOM inferior:ACC Druj:ACC
‘The Righteous who is superior the Druj who is inferior’
(Reichelt 1909)
The passage comes from a fragment, the Pursišnīhā. Reichelt (1909: 225) considers drujəәm a subject
in the accusative but the fragment is very corrupted and hard to understand. For this reason, I refer
to Humbach & Jamaspasa’s (1971) edition and translation: “The Righteous who is superior (will
smite?) the Druj who is inferior” (1971: 39).
Finally, in V. 18, 26 there is a sequence of attributes referred to ātar- ‘fire’ (the son of Aura
Mazda) and the last one, namely haγδaŋhum is considered by Spiegel an adjective in the accusative
meaning ‘full’ but Bartholomae (1904: 1743) and Darmesteter (1880: 196) consider it an adverb ‘in
fulfillment to sb’s request, as it required’.
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