Ergativity correlations

[Matthew S Dryer]

Anna Sierwierska had a paper on the relationship between word order type
and ergative case marking in STUF (Sprachtypologie und
Universalienforschung) in 1996.

As for ergative-patterning word order, I discuss cases of this in "On the
six-way word order typology" in Studies in Language in 1997.  In some of
these cases, the word order is pragmatically determined, the pragmatic
factors leading to a statistical pattern that is ergative.  But it is also
important to distinguish ergative-patterning word order from split
intransitive patterning word order, where the position of subjects
relative to the verb is pragmatically governed in such a way that there
are major differences among particular intransitive verbs that also
correlate with their semantics, where it is particularly common for the
subjects of certain intransitive verbs to occur in a position normally
associated with objects.  This is apparently true of many European
languages.

Matthew Dryer