Split ergativity

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Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology — usually accusative — in some contexts. In fact, most of the so-called ergative languages are not pure but split-ergative.

The split is usually conditioned by one of these:

1. The presence of a discourse participant (a first or second person) in the proposition. The Australian language Dyirbal behaves ergatively in all morphosyntactic contexts, except when one of these is involved. When a first or second person pronoun appears, however, it is marked according to a nominative-accusative pattern (with the least marked case when it is the agent or intransitive, and with the most marked case when it is the patient). This can be explained in terms of the high animacy of a first or second person speaker in the animacy hierarchy.
2. The use of certain tenses and/or aspects in the verb. The Indo-Iranian family, for example, shows a split between the perfect and the imperfect aspect. A verb in the perfect aspect causes its arguments to be marked using an ergative pattern, while the imperfect aspect triggers accusative marking. (Related languages and others always tend to associate past tense and/or perfect aspect with ergativity.)
3. The type of marking involved. Some languages (including various Austronesian languages of New Guinea, such as Sinaugoro) exhibit an ergative-absolutive pattern with respect to case marking, but a nominative-accusative pattern with respect to agreement.
4. The agentivity of the intransitive subject. In languages like Dakota, arguments of active verbs such as to run are marked like transitive agents, as in accusative languages, while arguments of inactive verbs such as to stand are marked like transitive objects, as in ergative languages. Languages with this kind of marking are known as split-S languages, and are formally a subtype of active languages.

[edit] Examples

An example of split ergativity conditioned by tense/aspect is found in the Urdu and Hindi languages, that have an ergative case on agents in the perfective aspect for transitive and ditransitive verbs, while for other cases agents appear in the nominative case. Example sentences for Urdu and Hindi are:

लड़का किताब ख़रीदता है

laṛka kitāb kharedtā hai

boy-NOMINATIVE book-NOMINATIVE buy-IMPERFECT be-PRESENT ¹

"The boy buys a book."

लड़के ने किताब ख़रीदी

laṛke ne kitāb kharīdī

boy-ERGATIVE book-NOMINATIVE buy-PERFECT ¹

"The boy bought a book."

(¹) The grammatical breakup has been simplified to show the features relevant to the example.