Morphosyntactic alignment
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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically, with morphemes that mark grammatical case or verb agreement, syntactically, or both.
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[edit] Semantics and grammatical relations
Transitive verbs have two core arguments, which in a language like English are subject (A) and object (O). (The symbol P is sometimes used for the latter role.) Intransitive verbs have a single core argument, which in English is the subject (S). Note that while the grammatical role labels S, A, and O/P are originally short for "subject", "agent", and "object/patient", the concepts are distinct both from "subject" and "object" (the terms that S, A and O supersede) and from "Agent" and "patient" (which indicate semantic roles, not grammatical roles: an A need not be an agent, a O need not be a patient).
Of the three types of core argument (S, A and O), different constructions within a language often treat two the same way and the third distinctly.
- Nominative-accusative alignment treats the S argument of an intransitive verb like the A argument of transitive verbs, with the O argument distinct (S=A; O separate) (see also Nominative-accusative language). In a language with morphological case marking, an S and an A may both be unmarked or marked with the nominative case, while the O is marked with an accusative case as e.g. occurs in Latin: Julius venit "Julius came"; Julius Brutum vidit "Julius saw Brutus". Languages with nominative-accusative alignment can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the A argument, and promoting the O to be an S (thus taking nominative case marking, etc.); this is called the passive voice.
- Ergative-absolutive alignment treats an intransitive argument like a transtive O argument (S=O; A separate) (see also Ergative-absolutive language). An A may be marked with an ergative case (sometimes formally the same as the genitive or instrumental case or some other oblique case), while the S argument of an intransitive verb and the O argument of a transitive verb are left unmarked or sometimes marked with an absolutive case. Ergative-absolutive languages can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the O and promoting the A to an S, thus taking the absolutive case; this is called the antipassive voice.
- Fluid (or semantic) alignment (see Active-stative languages) treats the arguments of some intransitive verbs in the same way as the A argument of transitives, and the single arguments of other intransitive verbs the same as transitive O arguments (Sa=A; So=O). The reason for assignment to one class or another usually has a straightforward semantic basis. For example, in Georgian, Mariamma imğera "Mary sang", shares the same narrative case ending as the transitive clause Mariamma c'erili dac'era "Mary wrote the letter", while in Mariami iq'o Tbilisši revolutsiamde "Mary was in Tbilisi up to the revolution", Mary shares the same case ending (-i) as the object in the transitive clause. Thus the class of intransitive is not uniform in its behavior. The particular criteria for assigning verbs to one class or the other vary from language to language, and may either be fixed lexically for each verb, or chosen by the speaker according to the degree of volition, control, or suffering of the verbal action by the participant, or the degree of sympathy the speaker has.
- The Austronesian languages of the Philippines, Borneo, Taiwan, and Madagascar are well known for having both alignments, called voices. These are the Austronesian-alignment or Philippine-type languages. The alignments are often misleadingly called "active" and "passive" voice, but both have two core arguments, so increasingly the terms such as "actor focus" or "agent trigger" are used for the accusative type, and "undergoer focus" or "patient trigger" for the ergative type. Undergoer focus is the default alignment in these languages. For either alignment two cases are used, but the same morphology is used for the nominative and the absolutive, so there is a total of just three core cases: nominative-absolutive (usually called nominative), ergative, and accusative. Many Austronesianists argue that these languages have four alignments, with voices that mark a locative or benefactive with the nominative case, but others believe that these are not basic to the system.
A very few languages make no distinction whatsoever between agent, patient, and intransitive arguments, leaving the hearer to rely entirely on context and common sense to figure them out. Some others, called tripartite languages, use a separate case or syntax for each argument, which are conventionally called the accusative case, the intransitive case, and the ergative case. Certain Iranian languages, such as Rushani, distinguish only transitivity, using a transitive case, for both A and O, and an intransitive case.
Furthermore, a single language may use nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive systems in different grammatical contexts, sometimes linked to animacy (Australian Aboriginal languages) or aspect (Mayan languages). This is called split ergativity.
Another popular idea (introduced by Anderson 1976[1])is that some constructions universally favor accusative alignment while others are more flexible. In general, behavioral constructions (control, raising, relativization) are claimed to favor nominative-accusative alignment, while coding constructions (especially case constructions) balance the odds for accusative vs. ergative alignment more evenly. This idea underlies early notions of ‘deep’ vs. ‘surface’ (or ‘syntactic’ vs. ‘morphological’) ergativity (e.g. Comrie 1978[2]; Dixon 1994[3]): many languages have surface ergativity only, i.e. ergative alignments only in their coding constructions (like case or agreement) but not in their behavioral constructions, or at least not in all of them. Languages with deep ergativity, i.e. with ergative alignment in behavioral constructions, appear to be less common.
[edit] Ergative vs. accusative
Ergative languages contrast to nominative-accusative languages (such as English), which treat the objects of transitive verbs distinctly from other core arguments.
These different arguments can be symbolized as follows:
- O = most patient-like argument of a transitive clause (also symbolized as P)
- S = sole argument of an intransitive clause
- A = most agent-like argument of a transitive clause
The S/A/O terminology avoids the use of terms like "subject" and "object", which are not stable concepts from language to language. Moreover, it avoids the terms "agent" and "patient", which are semantic roles which do not correspond consistently to particular arguments. For instance, the A might be an experiencer or a source, semantically, not just an agent.
The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following:
| Ergative-absolutive | Nominative-accusative | |
|---|---|---|
| O | same | different |
| S | same | same |
| A | different | same |
The following Basque examples demonstrate ergative-absolutive case marking system:
-
Ergative Language Sentence: Gizona etorri da. Gizonak mutila ikusi du. Words: gizona-∅ etorri da gizona-k mutila-∅ ikusi du Gloss: the.man-ABS has arrived the.man-ERG boy-ABS saw Function: S VERBintrans A O VERBtrans Translation: 'The man has arrived.' 'The man saw the boy.'
In Basque, gizona is "the man" and mutila is "the boy". Gizona has a different case marking depending on whether it is the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. The first form is in the absolutive case, marked here by a null morpheme (-∅) and the second form is in the ergative case, marked by a -k suffix. The subject of the intransitive sentence and the object of the transitive sentence both have the same absolutive case, while ergative case appears only on the transitive subject.
To contrast with a nominative-accusative language, Japanese marks nouns with a different case marking:
-
Accusative Language Sentence: Otoko ga tsuita. Otoko ga kodomo wo mita. Words: otoko ga tsuita otoko ga kodomo wo mita Gloss: man NOM arrived man NOM child ACC saw Function: S VERBintrans A O VERBtrans Translation: 'The man arrived.' 'The man saw the child.'
In this language, the subject otoko of intransitive and transitive sentences is marked with the same nominative case ga. However, the object of transitive sentence kodomo is marked with the accusative case wo. (Note that these particles are optional and not true case markers.)
[edit] External links
- Dave's Language Creation Notebook: Ergativity
- Case Marking and Ergativity - an article on Jiwarli with a clear explanation of nominative-accusative, ergative-absolutive and tripartite systems
[edit] References
- ^ Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 1-24). New York: Academic Press.
- ^ omrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language (pp. 329-394). Austin: University of Texas Press.
- ^ Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge University Press.
[edit] Bibliography
- Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 1-24). New York: Academic Press.
- Anderson, Stephen R. (1985). Inflectional morphology. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (Vol. 3, pp. 150-201). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
- Comrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language (pp. 329-394). Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity. Language, 55 (1), 59-138. (Revised as Dixon 1994).
- Dixon, R. M. W. (Ed.) (1987). Studies in ergativity. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
- Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge University Press.
- Foley, William; & Van Valin, Robert. (1984). Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge University Press.
- Kroeger, Paul. (1993). Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog. Stanford: CSLI.
- Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Agent and patient marking. Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax (Chap. 2, pp. 39-120). North-Holland linguistic series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
- Plank, Frans. (Ed.). (1979). Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations. London: Academic Press.
- Schachter, Paul. (1976). The subject in Philippine languages: Actor, topic, actor-topic, or none of the above. In C. Li. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 491-518). New York: Academic Press.
- Schachter, Paul. (1977). Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In P. Cole & J. Sadock (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Grammatical relations (Vol. 8, pp. 279-306). New York: Academic Press.
