A diachronic study of locative postpositions in Hindi

Abstract

Language evolves over the passage of time, and this is also true of locative expressions – their present forms are a result of a series of systematic linguistic changes. The study traces their historical development in the Hindi language. The paper diachronically investigates the course of evolution and varied forms of locative expressions in Modern Standard Hindi (MSH). For that, a diachronic account of locative postpositions, starting from the Hindi of the 16th century till Modern Standard Hindi (MSH), has been compiled to highlight the gradual change in distinct forms of locatives in select Hindi texts. Locative expressions are determined as closed-class items in the Hindi language, which identify the spatial and temporal relationship between two or more entities within the clause structure. The paper traces the syntactic as well as semantic changes that have occurred over a period of time in the locative expressions, specifically /me/ ‘in’ and /pər/ ‘on’.