[Lingtyp] languages with accusative/ergative alternation

Tue Jul 2 21:47:51 UTC 2024

Dear all – I’m finding this discussion very interesting but super-confusing. Can we clarify what it means for a language to have “two transitive constructions”? By what properties may these differ from one another, and why, in what sense, and perhaps for whom would it be a problem if there are languages that have them?

Fwiw., the two Urdu case frames I cited both occur in clauses that are syntactically transitive, even though the one involving an instrumental-marked agent/force involves verb forms that are morphologically intransitive. The criterion for syntactic transitivity is in this case simply that the P NP remains a prototypical object.

(Martin suggested that the instrumental case in this case acts as a sort of alternative ergative. That’s true as far as core argument alignment is concerned. But the same case is also used with prototypical instruments.)

So why not say that Urdu has two transitive clause constructions distinguished by case frame and the semantic property of intentionality/control on the part of the highest-ranked argument?

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Matthew Dryer via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 2, 2024 at 14:55
To: Martin Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>, LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages with accusative/ergative alternation
Addressing the more general question of whether there can be two constructions both of which are transitive, but ignoring the fact that Martin is apparently only interested in his query in cases where there is argument flagging, I argued in Dryer (1994) that in Ktunaxa (aka Kutenai), both the direct and inverse constructions are transitive, though the direct is about three times as frequent. I believe that there are even stronger arguments for the analogous contrast in some Algonquian languages. While the obviation systems of Ktunaxa and Algonquian indirectly function to some extent like a flagging system, I doubt that Martin would count them as such.

I argued in a conference talk I gave in 1995 that the closer in frequency two alternative constructions are, the more likely that both constructions will exhibit transitivity.

Matthew

Dryer, Matthew S. 1994. “The discourse function of the Kutenai inverse". In Voice and Inversion, edited by T. Givon, pp. 65-99. John Benjamins.

Dryer, Matthew S. 1995  “Explaining the intransitivity of passive clauses”.  Invited plenary talk at Conference on Functional Approaches, Albuquerque.

From: Martin Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
Date: Tuesday, July 2, 2024 at 1:34 AM
To: Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu>, LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages with accusative/ergative alternation

On 01.07.24 19:00, Matthew Dryer wrote:
Martin,

I don’t understand why you say “by definition, a transitive pattern is a dominant one (occurring in more than two thirds of the cases)”. Why can there not be two transitive patterns, neither of which is dominant?

Matthew

I'm not entirely sure (which is why I posted the query), but it seems to me that the definition of "transitive" requires that there be a single transitive pattern. In English, for example, (i) is dominant over (ii), so we do not say that both are transitive, and that "at" is an accusative preposition. Instead, we say that "at" is an oblique marker.

(i) They shot the bear.

(ii) They shot at the bear.

Lazard (2002) explains how the notion of transitivity can be grounded in the notion of "the major biactant construction" of a language. He does not say explicitly that there can only be one such construction, but it seems to be presupposed. In my (2011) paper (on S, A, P, T, R), I rely on Lazard, and I also mostly assume that there is just one transitive construction. I was unsure what to do with cases like Yupik (mentioned by Tony Woodbury in this thread), so I mostly ignored them (but I briefly mentioned Tagalog in n. 12).
Angute-m(A)    nayiq(P)         ner-aa
man-ERG.SG     seal.ABS.SG  eat-IND.3SG.3SG
’The man is eating /has (just) eaten the seal’

Angun(S)       nayir-mek(P)   ner’-uq.
man.ABS.SG   seal-ABM.SG     eat-IND.3SG
’The man is/has (just) eaten a/the seal’

It seems to me that the way Tony labels the arguments here is not well-motivated: Why is ergative-marked "angute-m" an A in the first sentence, but absolutive-marked "angun" an S in the second sentence? Why is 'seal' a P in both sentences?

It's logically possible to say that both these sentences are transitive, each with an A and a P, but do we actually want to say that? Do we want to say that the Yupik ABM ("ablative-modalis") is an accusative case? I'm not sure, so I asked whether any language had been described in this way (does Miyaoka 2012 say that?). Maybe one problem is that making a distinction between a pattern with a dominant member (as in English (i) and (ii)) and a pattern where there is not clearly a dominant member (as in Yupik) boils down to frequency, and linguists are often reluctant to make such decisions on the basis of frequency of use.

Denis Creissels cites the example of Balinese (from Udayana 2013):

Cang n-yemak baju ento.
I ACT-take shirt DEM
'I look the shirt.' (Actor Voice, accusative alignment(?))

Baju ento jemak cang.
shirt DEM PAT.take I
'I look the shirt.' (Patient Voice, ergative alignment(?))

However, there is no argument flagging here (so the "alignment" concerns only word order), and the Actor Voice is characterized by a voice prefix, so it's not an uncoded alternation (unlike the English indirective/secundative alternation, and unlike the Yupik alternation cited above).

Perhaps the issue boils down to how exactly we individuate the relevant constructions. For example, Creissels (2024) often talks about "variants of the transitive construction", which seems to be in line with Lazard's (2002) presupposition that there is one "major biactant construction", but do we want to say that the two Yupik sentences cited by Tony Woodbury are "variants of the Yupik transitive construction"? I'm not sure.

Thanks for the discussion!

Martin

References

Creissels, Denis. 2024. Transitivity, valency and voice. Oxford: Oxford University Press (to appear).
Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment typology. Linguistic Typology 15(3). 535–567.
Lazard, Gilbert. 2002. Transitivity revisited as an example of a more strict approach in typological research. Folia Linguistica 36(3–4). 141–190. (doi:10.1515/flin.2002.36.3-4.141<https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2002.36.3-4.141>)
Miyaoka, Osahito. 2012. A grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Udayana, I Nyoman. 2013. Voice and reflexives in Balinese. Austin: University of Texas at Austin. (PhD dissertation.)

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Monday, July 1, 2024 at 2:00 AM
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] languages with accusative/ergative alternation

Thanks for the comments on my query!

I was thinking of a contrast between (i) ALTERNATIONS and (ii) SPLITS, where an alternation is a pair of related patterns with overlapping distributions, while a split is a set of patterns that complement each other. Thus, the TAM splits in languages like Pitta-Pitta (Peter Austin) and Kopar (Bill Foley) do not count here.

Misha Daniel is right that it is not clear how to even identify "accusative/ergative alternations", and for this reason I had asked about languages which have been "described as exhibiting" such an alternation.

It seems to me that one needs to specify that by definition, a transitive pattern is a dominant one (occurring in more than two thirds of the cases), so that if there are two competing patterns none of which is dominant, one cannot identify a transitive pattern – and as a result, there is no way to identify "accusative" or "ergative". A well-known case of a language with no dominant agent-patient pattern (and hence no transitivity) is Tagalog.

(This is different for ditransitive constructions, which need not be dominant in this sense, because the comparison is with monotransitive P, aas Misha notes.)

Jürgen Bohnemeyer's example from Hindi-Urdu seems more like an alternation between two ergative patterns (one in which the ergative is "instrumental"), but it also illustrates the difficulty of matching language-particular phenomena with comparative concepts if the latter are not very clearly defined.

Best,

Martin

On 30.06.24 16:07, Michael Daniel wrote:
Martin,

I am not sure how to operationalize the notions of accusative and ergative in this context. Assuming one uses the standard procedure of comparing the bivalent pattern to the intransitive one, I guess some unmarked antipassive constructions would qualify. Thus, in Mehweb Dargwa, East Caucasian, which lacks regular antipassive derivation, the verb 'carry' has two alternative valencies:

Agent-Erg carries Theme-Nom (ergative pattern on the basis of comparison with X goes)
Agent-Nom carries Theme-Erg (accusative pattern on the bases of comparison with X goes)

But, on the basis of comparison with other transitive verbs, the second pattern is intransitive, so this would not qualify as accusative in the usual sense. Yet, I do not clearly see what would be possible other grounds to identify an ergative / accusative alternation, even in the presence of a TAM or animacy based split, because in your requirement these variables should be controlled for.

This is different from the situation of secundative / indirective alternation, which is possible to identify in a language because they are identified on alignment-independent grounds (comparison to the encoding of P). Maybe I am missing something, but I do not see how this is done in the case of the putative ergative / accusative uncoded alternation.

Misha

вс, 30 июн. 2024 г. в 14:48, Peter Austin via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>:
Assuming you do not mean TAM-based split ergativity, e.g. Pitta-Pitta.

Best
Peter

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2024 1:41:54 PM
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Subject: [Lingtyp] languages with accusative/ergative alternation

Dear typologists,

Does anyone know of a language that has been described as exhibiting an
accusative/ergative alternation, i.e. where verbs with meanings like
'break' or 'chase' can occur in two constructions such as (1) and (2)
(which are schematic examples, not English)?

(1) the dog-NOM chased the cat-ACC

(2) the dog-ERG chased the cat-NOM

Such an alternation would be analogous to indirective/secundative
alternations, as in the schematic examples (3) and (4).

(3) they provided food-ACC us-DAT ('they provided food to us')

(4) they provided us-ACC food-INS ('they provided us with food')

While indirective/secundative alternations have been described
repeatedly, accusative/ergative alternations are little-known, and seem
to be quite rare. Is this impression correct?

Thanks,

Martin

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Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Martin Haspelmath

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Deutscher Platz 6

D-04103 Leipzig

https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/

--

Martin Haspelmath

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Deutscher Platz 6

D-04103 Leipzig

https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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