accusative and ergative languages

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

> pardon the intrusion, but this has always been a great question in
> my head: Has the passive interpretation of the ergative really been
> disproved? Does it not still provide a smooth and unproblematic
> answer? And are not passive circumlocutions known to underlie some
> of the cases of ergative structure arising in the light of
> historical records, as e.g. in Indic?

There are two separate issues here, the synchronic one and the
diachronic one.

(1) Is a particular ergative construction "really" passive in nature?

(2) Does a particular ergative construction descend by reanalysis from
an earlier passive?

For the diachronic question (2), the answer "yes" has been defended in
some particular cases, including Indo-Iranian.  But a passive origin for
the Indo-Iranian ergative constructions has also been disputed, and I am
not aware that there exists a consensus among specialists.

Since Indo-Iranian is a rare case in which we have millennia of
documentation of the intervening stages, and since the right answer to
the question is still not obvious, then it must be very much harder to
answer the question in respect of other cases for which little history
is available.  At present, there appear to be few cases in which the
origin of an ergative construction is fully understood and beyond
controversy.

It is interesting to note that, in Bob Dixon's classic 1994 book
`Ergativity', the chapter on the appearance and disappearance of
ergativity is the briefest and most diffident.

Dixon states, on p. 189, the following: "It is certainly the case that
*some* ergative constructions have arisen through reinterpretation of a
passive." [emphasis in the original]  He cites Indic and Iranian as
cases in point, but admits, correctly, that this majority view has been
seriously questioned by some scholars.  Dixon also notes Polynesian,
frequently also cited as an instance of passive-to-ergative, but
concludes that the evidence is conflicting and that the interpretation
is not secure.

But Dixon also cites examples of ergative constructions which, in his
view, have very clearly *not* developed from passives, but from other
constructions.  His examples are Hittite and Pari.

For the synchronic question (1), I may again quote Dixon, arguably the
leading specialist in ergativity on the planet, again from p. 189:

"There are very few people who would, today, seriously promote the view
that ergative constructions are `really passives'."

I can endorse this statement.  In all the cases I know of, there exists
no evidence supporting the view that an ergative is a passive, and there
is often plenty of evidence against it.

>    A truly innocent question for information: Are there other avenues that
> are _known_ to have led to the creation of an ergative than the one
> starting from an old passive?

See Dixon on Hittite and Pari, and see also my article in the Frans
Plank volume `Ergativity' (AP, 1979).

While I'm here, I will note that Dixon also cites what he regards as
clear examples of languages in which ergativity has partly or wholly
disappeared after being very prominent at an earlier stage.  His
examples are Australian, Sino-Tibetan and Mayan (p. 193 ff.)

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk