FROM ERGATIVE TO ACCUSATIVE

On Accusative First*

This paper explores the source of case patterns in various monadic and dyadic unaccusative constructions in Russian and Ukrainian in light of the tension between what we call “Nominative First” and nominativeless “Accusative First” case assignment strategies. Nominative First states that if nominative is available it must be used; Accusative First is then the assignment of accusative regardless...

PCC and Ergative Case: Evidence from Neo-Aramaic

Practically in all examples found in the literature, the oblique intervener Y in (1) is an argument marked with dative Case, either a dative indirect object (e.g. Romance) or a dative subject (Icelandic, Basque). Could the intervener be ergative? Under current received accounts of ergativity, this is predicted to be impossible. For simplicity we demonstrate it for H=v: In some theories of ergat...

The Acquisition of Ergative Languages

Turkish Indefinites and Accusative Marking

The paper addresses the issue of the effects of overt accusative (Acc) vs. zero (∅) marking on the interpretation of indefinite direct objects in Turkish. Previous attacks on the issue came up with various associations of the overt accusative case with certain semantic and pragmatic categories. A representative list goes as follows: Discourse-linking (Nilsson 1985; Enç 1991; Zidani-Eroğlu 1997)...

The Ergative System in Balochi from a Typological Perspective

For the Western Iranian languages the transition from the Old Iranian to the Middle-Iranian period is characterised by – among other things – the loss of word-final syllables. This loss had a far-reaching impact on the nominal and verbal systems since it caused the loss of categories which had been expressed by suffixes. The consequences include the emergence of the so-called ergative system. ...