1. Introduction. The growing documentation and analysis of American indigenous and other understudied languages has revealed several unique grammatical systems based on referential hierarchies 1 , some of which overtly express event direction 2 , triggering a recent surge in typological work on the topic Such grammatical systems pose many challenges for typologists. For instance, it is still un...

This paper analyzes the argument structure of Yucatec Mayan. In line with traditional assumptions but in contrast to more recent proposals, we show that Yucatec has ergative morphology but not a split-ergative system. For intransitive verbs there is a strict correlation between aspect and the type of linker: they take ergative clitics in the imperfect, but nominative suffixes in the perfect. Mo...

This dissertation proposes an Optimality-Theoretic [OT] (Prince and Smolensky 1993) account of case systems and explores its typological scope, with a particular focus on four accusative languages, Korean, Japanese, Icelandic, and Imbabura Quechua. There are three major claims to be made here. First, the typological variation of case systems is derived from re-ranking of a small number of indiv...

This article uses data on Mayan applicative constructions to demonstrate the use of a comparative method for language acquisition research. Mayan languages express indirect objects through an applicative su‰x on verbs, a prepositional phrase, or the possessor of the direct object. Mayan children must also acquire language specific lexical constraints on the applicative su‰x. Learners cannot res...

The linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH; a.k.a., Whorfian hypothesis) is reconsidered with respect to second language (L2) acquisition. With ebbs and flows over time, the notion of LRH went through dismissal and resurgence in linguistics, psychology, and anthropology. Empirical evidence gleaned from the pseudo-linguistic domains, such as color categorization, time perception, spatial cognitio...

Basque weak quantifiers optionally agree with the inflected verb in number. This papers’ main aim is to study the dialectal variation shown by this phenomenon. The study will show that it is necessary to differentiate at least three systems: the western-central system, one that we will call the transition system, and the eastern system (souletin). The western-central system allows the presence ...

Switch-reference has recently been argued to be the result of clausal functional heads entering into Agree with two nearby noun phrases, creating pointers those phrases but not actually copying their morphosyntactic features. Instead, semantic component interprets as referential dependency holding between pointed-to phrases. This article applies this analysis reflexive voice constructions in wh...

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In this paper, I discuss the case and agreement system of Nias, a language that has been described as a marked-absolutive system by various authors (Donohue and Brown, 1999; Corbett, 2006; Cysouw, 2005; Handschuh, 2008; Wichmann, 2005). I shall argue in particular that the ergativity of this language is highly superficial in nature, showing that hypothesised marked-absolutive arguments fail to ...

We argue that argument encoding systems that seem to involve three syntactic core cases (nominative/absolutive, ergative, accusative) are actually common ergative or accusative systems syntactically, with overt case markers for each of the two cases that disappear in intransitive contexts. Based on evidence from Kham, Djapu, Nez Perce, Upriver Halkomelem, Dyirbal, and Pitjantjatjara, we show th...