Third person arguments in Inuktitut
Previous accounts of ergativity in Inuit languages have assumed that the ergative case is a structural case. This assumption was primarily based on the fact that agreement morphology that refers to the ergative marked argument is always overt and absent when there is no argument that is marked ergat...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.491.117 http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~bspreng/WSCLA10paper.pdf |
| Summary: | Previous accounts of ergativity in Inuit languages have assumed that the ergative case is a structural case. This assumption was primarily based on the fact that agreement morphology that refers to the ergative marked argument is always overt and absent when there is no argument that is marked ergative. This paper provides evidence that the ergative case in Inuktitut is not a structural case in some variants of the language. It provides a preliminary account as to why the Antipassive/ergative alternation corresponds to aspectual splits in many ergative languages. Furthermore, it can be shown that the shift towards more nominative/accusative case systems in some variants of Canadian Inuktitut relates to person features on the arguments and Aktionsart properties of the verb roots. 1 |
|---|