We examine the ban on Ā-movement of the external argument of a transitive verb that holds in many morphologically ergative languages. We argue that the prohibition against movement of the ergative subject should not be derived from restrictions on the movement of the ergative DP. Rather, we suggest that movement of the ergative argument is per se unproblematic, but if it applies, it applies too...

In this paper we examine the ban on Ā-movement of the external argument of a transitive verb that holds in many morphologically ergative languages. We argue that the prohibition against movement of the ergative subject should not be derived from restrictions on the movement of the ergative DP. Rather, we suggest that movement of the ergative argument is per se unproblematic, but if it applies, ...

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 ...

In this paper we propose a unified account of ergativity in two unrelated languages with very different systems of marking grammatical relations. Both Chol (Mayan, Mexico) and Mẽbengokre (Jê, Brazil) have what appear to be aspect-based ergative splits. However, while in Mẽbengokre ergativity is found in verb stems which are formally nominal, ergativity in Chol is found in what can be shown to b...

As far as the transitivity of AF verbs is concerned, there are two conflicting hypotheses in the Austronesian literature. In the ergative hypothesis (Starosta 1997), AF verbs are uniformly identified as antipassive/intransitive; in the symmetrical-voice hypothesis (Kroeger 1993), AF verbs are claimed to be able to occur as transitive on a par with NAF verbs. In this paper, we address the issue ...

While most Mayan languages show an ergative-absolutive pattern of agreement in all main clauses, Chol shows what has been described as an aspect-based split (Quizar and Knowles-Berry 1988; Vázquez Álvarez 2002; Law et al. 2006): perfective clauses show an ergative-absolutive pattern, as in (1), while non-perfective clauses show what appears to be a nominative-accusative pattern, illustrated in ...

This paper discusses ergative case assignment in Hindi and its interaction with aspectual verb complexes or complex predicate constructions. It is shown that ergative case is assigned by the last head in the aspectual verb complex and that ergative case on the subject of intransitive verbs denoting bodily-functions is associated with a counter-to-expectation meaning. It is then shown that aspec...

Introduction        A dialect is a variety of a language used by group of people whose lexicon, syntax, phonetics and phonology are different from those of other people. The existence of many geographical, economic and social barriers among the speakers of a language cause the emergence of many dialects. As such, each language has many dialects and accents and each dialect has many different ac...