ERGATIVITY: TOWARDS A THEORY OF A HETEROGENEOUS CLASS

• Main Authors: Maria Bittner, Ken Hale
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1996
• Subjects: Case; agreement; A′-binding; scope; Inuit; Warlpiri. Contents 1. Syntactic and morphological ergativity 3; Hale; inuit
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.405.2576; http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mbittner/bittner--hale-96b.pdf

The theory of Case and agreement presented in Bittner and Hale 1996 reduces the traditional distinction between syntactic and morphological ergativity to a structural difference — namely, opacity or transparency of VP to government from C. This hypothesis is tested against detailed evidence from Inu...