This study delves into the case system in Hawrami dialect as a pivotal grammatical phenomenon within generative grammar framework. theoretical framework applies universally to all natural languages, sentence phrases must adhere rules and principles of this theory, however, it is important note that specific markers may differ among each language handles marker according its own unique character...

This book is a revised version of Christopher Manning's 1994 Stanford University dissertation. As a syntactician who is not an expert on ergativity I enjoyed the book, finding it clearly written and carefully argued. While a large amount of data is included to back up the empirical claims made, it is carefully presented not to overwhelm the reader. Also, while one of the central thrusts is a th...

Cross-linguistic studies of the recent decades have discovered a variety of split case marking systems, which mix nominative-accusative (S=A vs. P) and ergative-absolutive (A vs. S=P) groupings of core participant roles. The range of factors known to condition such splits in different languages includes the semantic nature of NP, its actual semantic role in the situation, tense/aspect/mood, and...

In the present study, we investigate how early and late L2 learners process L2 grammatical traits that are either present or absent in their native language (L1). Thirteen early (AoA = 4 years old) and 13 late (AoA = 18 years old) Spanish learners of Basque performed a grammatical judgment task on auditory Basque sentences while their event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The sen...

11.1 Proposal In analysing the Tongan data, we proposed the following hypothesis. First, based on the fact that ergativity is manifested also at the level of syntax, we argue that ERG is a structural case. Second, following Bobaljik (1993), we assume that the difference between ergative case marking and accusative case marking is fundamentally the choice of active Agr. If a language chooses Agr...

Person-based split-ergativity is one of a number of linguistic phenomena which reflect the general tendency, first noted in Silverstein 1976, for the hierarchy of grammatical functions to be “aligned” with hierarchies of other linguistic substance, such as person. A diachronic, usage based explanation is offered both for the existence of personbased split-ergative systems and for the absence of...

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 acc...