Referential Hierarchy Effects on Grammar: Toward a Unifying Functional Approach

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 unclear whether they should be treated as an alignment type The first approach, i.e. treating such systems as a separate alignment type, embraces the fact that hierarchical systems are not based on semantic roles, but on reference properties of event participants. However, it conceals the fact that they show traces of basic aligment types, such as ergative-absolutive, and it excludes the treatment of intransitive clauses. The second approach, i.e. viewing these systems in terms of voice, points out the diachronic development and links inverse grammatical systems to passives. This functional perspective highlights the fact that inverse grammatical marking may fulfill similar functions to passives in other languages. The third approach emphasizes that each system is unique and best described based on its particular properties. In this paper, I examine referential hierarchy effects on grammatical marking in forty languages. My aim is to show that all hierarchical systems can be explained in terms of subjectivity, politeness, and topicality, and that in different languages these functions are fulfilled in structurally distinct ways conditioned by genetic inheritance and contact-induced change, as proposed by Bickel (2008). Consequently, this paper supports the idiosyncratic approach arguing against a search for structural correlates. Rather, I propose a functional approach whereby structure is conditioned by the functions it fulfills.