Ergativity

[J. Clancy Clements (Kapil)]

On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Jon Aske wrote:

> My main reason for being skeptical I guess has to do with the fact that
> non-human direct objects are for the most part excluded from being treated
> (coded the same way) as indirect objects (both for the purpose of adding the
> A or of having the "dative" LE clitic as opposed to the LO/LA "accusative"
> clitic).  If the syncretism was due to grammatical relation "congruence" (to
> give it a name), I would expect it to apply to all direct objects, not just
> to those with human referents.

If you look at Klein Andreu's data, just this seems to be the case.  For
example:

Rural speakers of Castilian:    Animate masc. DOs 100% le
                                Inanimate masc. DOs 76% le
St. Teresa                      Animate masc. DOs 98%
                                Inanimate masc. DOs 88%

This is pretty high for inanimates, and points to an ever-increasing
dominance of LE for DOs.  Marcos Marin (1978:283) points to LE "invading
the domain of the fem. DO".  But I'm repeating myself.

Jon asks:
> This still leaves the mystery of why LE wasn't extended as readily to
> masculine accusatives as to feminine ones, even while the "personal A"
> extended equally to accusatives of both genders.

It's not being extended equally to both genders.  Rather, LE has taken
over first masc. animate DOs, then masc. inanimate DOs, and now animate
(and inanimate?) feminine DOs, according to Klein-Andreu and Marcos
Marin's data.  It's a gradual process, apparently.

Saludos,

Clancy