Syntactic ergativity: analysis and identification

What is it about?

Ergativity is a pattern seen in many languages around the world, where a special marker is used for subjects of transitive clauses (e.g. "Ali" in the sentence "Ali helped Maria"). Languages showing ergativity include Hindi/Urdu, Basque, Warlpiri, West Greenlandic, Nez Perce and Chuckchi. In some languages, the special behavior of transitive subjects doesn't end with special marking; these subjects also behave specially for grammatical rules. In many Mayan languages, for instance, a special construction is needed to ask a question about the transitive subject, such as "Who helped Maria?" I discuss the analysis of these constructions and how they can be told apart from other grammatical patterns that are not specialized for transitive subjects.

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Why is it important?

The analysis of syntactic ergativity is closely connected with the analysis of ergativity in a broader sense. Recent years have brought renewed attention to dependent-case analyses of ergative phenomena. I show how this type of analysis can extend to a theory of syntactic ergativity in a way that improves on the empirical predictions of earlier accounts. An important consequence is that apparent bans on ergative extraction in head-marking languages might be better analyzed as part of the phenomenon of wh-agreement/anti-agreement. This phenomenon affects both ergative and absolutive arguments, depending on the language; in accusative languages, it affects both nominative and accusative. Therefore there is no loss of generalization in treating Mayan/Salish type patterns in ergative head marking without a ban on ergative extraction.