NICOBARESE LANGUAGES AND OLD KHMER: NOUN PHRASE MARKER TA

Nicobarese languages Car and Nancowry, which are modern vernacular languages of the indigenous population of the Nicobar Islands, and Old Khmer — the language of epigraphic inscriptions of 7th–15th A.D, possess a considerable fragment of grammatical system, which coincides in almost every detail. That is functional domain of the marker ta, which has two functions: marker of dependent predications of different types and marker of noun phrases with different syntactic and semantic roles. This fact is somewhat challenging since Nicobarese and Khmer are distant relatives, typologically different, they have different status and temporal affiliation. The present article deals with the second function of ta, which is called case marking function. Ta in the function of dependent predication marker was described in detail in [Погибенко, 2020б]. In Nicobarese and Old Khmer languages dependent predication marker ta has left vestiges in the form of prefix in deverbal nouns, adjectives and adverbials. In Nicobarese it is also found in adjectives derived from nouns. In the present article it is suggested that the case marker ta has also left vestiges in the form of suffix in verbs of location and dislocation and in prepositions. In Old Khmer ta marks indirect object and circumstantial noun phrases covering several semantic roles: location, addressee, recipient, deprivative, temporative. In Nicobarese it is also found in instrument and comitative noun phrases and, in contrast with Old Khmer, in direct object and displaced agent noun phrases, the latter in passive VPA sentences. In the compared languages case marking ta is gradually replaced by prepositions via the strategy of dubbing. It is suggested that the case-marking function of ta could have evolved during syntactic compression of a subordinate clause with the dependent predication marker.