Die Fragesatze im Rgveda.

• Author: Insler, Stanley

Despite the interesting position that question sentences occupy in most languages, it is remarkable that no comprehensive study of them in Sanskrit has been undertaken before the current study. The book under review helps to remedy the need by investigating in detail all the question sentences in the oldest text of Indic. Its ambitious contents begin with a discussion of question sentences and their form in linguistic systems and the general problems of questions in the Rigveda. Then follows the main body of the book that examines direct questions and indirect questions in the RV. The work concludes with a treatment of the peculiar kuvid sentences, followed by a group of helpful appendices: a list of all the question words of the RV and their textual references, the verb forms found in questions, bibliography, index verborum, index locorum, subject index. An English summary is appended. Thus, the work offers any interested reader complete and easy access to all the data concerning questions in this complex linguistic text.

The section on direct questions is the most aspiring part of the book in that Etter discusses a variety of topics that play a role in the formal aspects of question sentences. After mentioning the different linguistic means (phonological, syntactic, lexical, etc.) languages employ in forming questions. Etter focuses on the lexical interrogative elements of Vedic insofar as they play a predominant role in questions within a literary text like the RV, where dialogue pieces are infrequent. She surveys the different interrogative pronouns, adverbs, and particles in both their historic and synchronic settings, and then launches into a philological analysis of the direct questions of the RV. This portion contains three main sections. The first two treat separately those sentences containing a "semantic" question word like 'who?' 'what?' 'where?', etc. from those marked only by a question particle like kim 'est-ce que?', and each of these parts further subdivides the material into sentences containing or lacking verbal predicates. The final section of the chapter discusses the formal aspects (tense and mode, aspect, and Aktionsart) of the verbs encountered in Rigvedic questions.

In the development of the material, Etter is forced to make many linguistic and philological judgments owing to the comprehensive aims of the book, and one admires her awareness in recognizing the contingent problems in most analyses, although one is not...