Nominal Constructions and Split Ergativity in Chol (Mayan)

When Ergative = Genitive: Nominals and Split Ergativity

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 ...

Split ergativity in Nepali and its typological significance

Nominalization and Predicate-Fronting: Two Sources of Ergativity

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...

Subject preference and ergativity

This paper presents the first-ever processing experiment on relativization in Avar, an ergative language with prenominal relatives. The results show no processing difference between the ergative subject gap and the absolutive object gap. The absolutive subject gap, however, is processedmuch faster. We propose a principled explanation for this result. On the one hand, Avar has a subject preferen...

Nominal head-marking constructions: two case studies from Luiseño