1 Ergativity and Transitivity
Ergative case is said to mark transitive subjects, and it is widely assumed that this is true under the ordinary notion of transitivity, where all and only clauses with a direct object in syntax are transitive. However, Bittner and Hale 1996 propose that languages with ergative case fall into two ty...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.693.9787 http://people.umass.edu/ellenw/Woolford+Ergativity+and+Transitivity+2014+ms.pdf |
| Summary: | Ergative case is said to mark transitive subjects, and it is widely assumed that this is true under the ordinary notion of transitivity, where all and only clauses with a direct object in syntax are transitive. However, Bittner and Hale 1996 propose that languages with ergative case fall into two types, neither of which is based on this ordinary notion of transitivity. In one type, often called active ergative, a direct object in syntax is not necessary for ergative case to be used: any verb with an external argument counts as transitive under the definition in Hale and Keyser 1993 (e.g. Warlpiri). In the second type, a direct object in syntax is necessary but not sufficient: the subject gets ergative case only when the object moves out of the VP (e.g. Inuit). This paper provides additional support for the existence of this second type based on data from Niuean, Dyirbal and Nez Perce, and proposes a formal account of this correlation between object shift and ergative case which builds on the observation in Chomsky 1995 that object shift should create a violation of the Minimal Link Condition. Under this proposal, ergative case can be used as a ‘last resort ’ to prevent a MLC violation. No clear counterexample to Bittner and Hale’s hypothesis was found in the research for this paper among languages with overt ergative case, although there remain many languages for which published data is not yet sufficient to conclusively determine whether or not they conform to Bittner and Hale’s two types. The only languages that clearly conform to the stereotype that ergativity is governed by ordinary transitivity are ones where only the agreement pattern is ergative, e.g. the Mayan languages. Covert ergative case is commonly postulated for these languages, but these languages are unlike languages with overt ergative case in other ways. 1. |
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