From ergative to comparee marker

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

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. ...

Interlanguage Ergative Constructions and Learnability

A certain group of English verbs, the ergatives, is consistently mis-passivized in Chinese-speakers' interlanguage. Comparison of the ergative construction in Chinese and English shows that they share similar properties. However, this does not seem to facilitate learning of the target English construction. Furthermore, the passive ergatives are not attributable to exemplification in either the ...

From discourse to syntax and back: The lifecycle of Kuuk Thaayorre ergative morphology

The ergative inflection of Kuuk Thaayorre nouns is remarkably irregular. More than 15 distinct ergative forms are attested, none of which is phonologically predictable. This ergative inflection is also remarkable for its optional use. In spite of its primarily syntactic function, it may also be used to mark pragmatically ‘unexpected’ intransitive subjects, or be omitted where the referent of a ...