11.1 Proposal In analysing the Tongan data, we proposed the following hypothesis. First, based on the fact that ergativity is manifested also at the level of syntax, we argue that ERG is a structural case. Second, following Bobaljik (1993), we assume that the difference between ergative case marking and accusative case marking is fundamentally the choice of active Agr. If a language chooses Agr...

Person-based split-ergativity is one of a number of linguistic phenomena which reflect the general tendency, first noted in Silverstein 1976, for the hierarchy of grammatical functions to be “aligned” with hierarchies of other linguistic substance, such as person. A diachronic, usage based explanation is offered both for the existence of personbased split-ergative systems and for the absence of...

In this paper, I argue that German shows a phenomenon formally akin to an ergative split. While transitive verbs as in (1a) show a NOM/ACC case pattern with the external argument marked nominative and the internal argument marked accusative (cf. 1b), it can be shown that with reflexively marked anticausatives as in (2a) the nominative theme is base-generated in a position c-commanded by the acc...

Linguistic cues may be considered a potent tool for focusing attention on causes or effects. In this paper, we explore how different cues affect causal assignments in German and Tongan. From a larger screening study, two parts are reported here: Part 1 dealt with syntactic variations, including word order (agent vs. patient in first/subject position) and case marking (e.g., as ergative vs. non-...

I wish to present a codiication of syntactic approaches to dealing with ergative languages and argue for the correctness of one particular approach, which I will call the Inverse Grammatical Relations hypothesis. 1 I presume familiarity with the termèrgativity', but, brieey, many languages have ergative case marking, such as Burushaski in (1), in contrast to the accusative case marking of Latin...