ИСТИНА

This paper aimes at describing the origin and development of debitive constructions (DC) in Western New Indo-Aryan languages of India. The work is based on the functional method of linguistic analysis. The data were obtained from the narrative texts by Jain authors in Old Rajasthani and Old Gujarati starting from the 15th century and the earliest prose texts in Punjabi (Janam Sakhi) belonging to the 17th - 18th centuries. The study of Modern languages involved two methodologies: corpus analysis and elicitation. The paper will demonstrate that the increasing frequency of the Dative instead of the Instrumental Agent marking in DC was part of gradual destruction of ‘passive syntax’ (Comrie 1978) typical for the climactic stage of ergative development.