DRAFT Basque spatial cases and the ergative - absolutive synchretism

This paper has as its aim to connect two seemingly disparate phenomena: the structure of Basque adpositional phrases and the synchretisms arising in plural DPs between ergative and absolutive arguments in some of the dialects of Basque. This synchretism, which can be found in western and central dialects of Basque, resolves in favour of absolutive marking, and has been taken to be the product of relatively shallow historical morphophonological processes. If the approach held here stands a reasonable chance, there may be a different way of looking at those synchretisms, by putting them in the context of diachronic processes related to the expansion of number morphology, and by capitalizing on the incompatibility of number with a particular kind of syntactic object: the so called axial part (Jackendoff, 1996), an integral part of locative constructions cross-linguistically, if recent work on the structure of those constructions is on the right track (see Kayne, 2005; Svenonius, 2006; Pantcheva, 2011, among many others). Before going into any detail about the things which are purportedly connected, I must warn the reader about the generous amount of hand-waving behind this paper. It will surely disappoint syntacticians of the most strict synchronic obedience, as many of the obvious issues arising from the analysis of adpositional phrases as entertained here remain deliberately ignored. It will be even more disappointing for linguists working on the history of Basque, since most of the paper is concerned with the structure of adpositional phrases in Basque from a purely synchronic perspective. Although the potential diachronic connections emerging from the analysis are, I think, relatively clear, their materialization in terms of actual historical discussion is outside the scope of this paper. The merits of the paper, if any, will lie in its ability to uncover a plausible syntactic motivation for a dialectal fact whose existence has been traditionally attributed to other factors. When set against the background of the diachronic development of both number and ergative marking in Basque, the analysis may contribute alternative ways of thinking about them.