[Lingtyp] incipient ergativity conditioned by number of A

Thu Jun 1 09:19:05 UTC 2023

Hi all,
it could be both -- attributing agency to a collective (typically non-agentive) referent. If I remember correctly, Hebrew also uses the instrumental prefix for what E. König and others have called "adverbial-exclusive intensifier", as in "He fixed the computer himself" (be-atsm-). These expressions emphasize agency. From that point of view treating this prefix, in combination with a subject, as something like an ergative marker makes sense to me.

Silvia's examples seem to imply what J. van der Auwera and others have called 'impersonalization'. This typically de-emphasizes agency. I wonder to what extent Silvia's examples are comparable to those given by David.

Best,
Volker

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-----Original Message-----
From: Silvia Luraghi <luraghi at unipv.it>
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: Thu, 01 Jun 2023 9:56
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] incipient ergativity conditioned by number of A

Dear David,
I agree with Chrsitian and Sebastian, this is a way of deindividualizing
the agent and rather than with number it is connected with
collective/institutional referents. In Italian you find the same,
especially in journalistic discourse, e.g.
Nel PD ci si interroga sulla linea da tenere
in_the PD one REFL asks on_the line to keep
"In the Democratic Party they wonder what line they should adopt"
Interestingly, this is ok with collective nouns that are morphologically
singular but with nouns that are morphologically plural you cannot use
plural articles, you must treat them as if they were not count plurals:
Nella Lega ci si interroga ... OK
in_the(SG)  Lega(SG) ...
*Nei Fratelli d'Italia ci si interroga... (impossible)
in_the(PL) Fratelli(PL) d'Italia
In Fratelli d'Italia ci si interroga... OK (here the preposition in comes
without the article)
Silvia

Silvia Luraghi
Università di Pavia
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Linguistica
Strada Nuova 65
I-27100 Pavia
tel.: +39/0382/984685
Web page personale: https://studiumanistici.unipv.it/?pagina=docenti&id=68

Il giorno gio 1 giu 2023 alle ore 09:18 Sebastian Nordhoff <
sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de> ha scritto:

> Dear David,
> in both Sinhala and Sri Lanka Malay, institutional actors (government,
> board, committee, police) are marked with the instrumental. I suppose
> that your Likud examples would get the instrumental as well in those
> languages.
>
> You write that [number] seems to be the relevant factor. But if you have
> "one baker" and "thirteen bakers", you would probably not get the
> difference. So it might be more the feature [+institutional] or
> [+collective], as you say.
>
> When looking into the instrumental in the Sri Lankan languages, I was
> wondering whether British English agreement ("The committee have
> discussed ... ") and Dutch feminine institutional reference ("het
> kabinet en haar beleid" 'the cabinet[N] and her[F] policies') are
> actually triggered by the same semantics. I found that interesting since
> this is a grammatical fact that relies on the society having some kind
> of bureaucracy, which poses interesting questions with regard to
> innateness.
> Best wishes
> Sebastian
>
>
>
>
> On 6/1/23 06:43, David Gil wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Is anybody familiar with a case of split ergativity in which the
> > conditioning factor is the number of the Agent NP?
> >
> > My reason for asking:in Hebrew, especially in a journalese register, in
> > a transitive A V P construction, when the A is semantically plural,
> > typically denoting a collective entity, it is often marked with the
> > locative proclitic /b-/ while the verb takes plural subject agreement in
> > an apparent impersonal construction.For example, in a sentence about the
> > Likud political party:
> >
> > balikud muxanim lidħot et hamahapexa hamišpatit ...
> >
> > LOC-Likud prepare:3.PLM INF-postpone ACC DEF-revolution
> > DEF-legislative.F ...
> >
> > idiomatically: 'The Likud is willing to postpone the legislative
> > revolution ...'
> >
> > literally: 'In the Likud they're willing to postpone the legislative
> > revolution ...'
> >
> > Such constructions are extremely widespread in journalistic writing.The
> > above example, part of a newspaper headline, is followed by a string of
> > several clauses all exhibiting the same construction, each beginning
> > with a semantically plural agent marked with locative /b-:/ 'in the
> > ruling party', 'in closed rooms', 'in the other side', etc.
> > [https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bk5kubsin#autoplay]
> >
> > In the above construction, the locative proclitic /b-/ seems to be
> > approaching the function of an ergative marker, albeit a rather atypical
> > one: in particular, when the P is definite, as in the above example, it
> > is marked with the definite direct object, thereby retaining accusative
> > alignment.
> >
> > I wonder whether anybody has come across similar constructions, in which
> > an incipient or apparent ergative case marking system is licensed by
> > number (rather than by more commonly-cited features such as aspect or
> > person).
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > David
> >
> >
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