PCC and Ergative Case: Evidence from Neo-Aramaic

Practically in all examples found in the literature, the oblique intervener Y in (1) is an argument marked with dative Case, either a dative indirect object (e.g. Romance) or a dative subject (Icelandic, Basque). Could the intervener be ergative? Under current received accounts of ergativity, this is predicted to be impossible. For simplicity we demonstrate it for H=v: In some theories of ergativity, ergative Case is inherent (Marantz 1991, Woolford 1997, Legate 2002, Aldridge 2004). But since an inherentmarked argument is transparent for structural Case/Agree checking (Rezac 2008), an ergative-marked Y does not count as an intervener in the agree relation between v and X. In other theories of ergativity, ergative Case is structurally assigned by T (Bobaljik 1993, Laka 1993), but then Y is not in the domain of v, and cannot intervene in the relation between v and X. Thus these views of ergativity preclude an ergative intervener.