Local Case, Cyclic Agree and the Syntax of Truly Ergative Verbs

In this paper, I argue that German shows a phenomenon formally akin to an ergative split. While transitive verbs as in (1a) show a NOM/ACC case pattern with the external argument marked nominative and the internal argument marked accusative (cf. 1b), it can be shown that with reflexively marked anticausatives as in (2a) the nominative theme is base-generated in a position c-commanded by the accusative reflexive pronoun (cf. 2b), i.e. they involve an ACC/NOM case pattern. The alternation between causative verbs as in (1) and reflexively marked anticausatives as in (2) is then, from a formal, morpho-syntactic perspective, an instance of an ergative split: the external argument of the construction in (1) and the internal argument of the construction in (2) show the same case morphology as the sole argument of intransitive verbs.