[Lingtyp] languages with accusative/ergative alternation

[Martin Haspelmath]

Yes, all this is confusing:

On 02.07.24 23:47, Juergen Bohnemeyer wrote:
>
> 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?
>
For this reason, Creissels (2024) spends many pages in his forthcoming 
book explaining how the notion of "transitive construction" is defined 
(https://global.oup.com/academic/product/transitivity-valency-and-voice-9780198899570).

There is no consensus yet, though Creissels builds on Comrie, Lazard and 
Haspelmath for defining the notions of S, A and P, and this seems to be 
becoming the leading approach.

I have a recent paper where I define "ergative", "absolutive", 
"accusative" and "nominative" in this general perspective 
(https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006883), but the terms rely on first 
identifying S, A and P.

According to Creissels, the instrumental-marked construction would not 
count as transitive because it exhibits a "decrease in semantic 
transitivity" – but Lazard and Haspelmath do not make use of a notion of 
"semantic transitivity".

Instead, I have been (implicitly) relying on the idea of the "major 
construction" being "dominant" in the sense of Dryer (2005, in WALS): If 
it occurs two thirds of the time or more often, it is THE transitive 
construction, and the transitive construction must be dominant. If there 
is not one single dominant transitive construction, the language lacks A 
and P (and thus cannot have ergative or absolutive case etc). I 
recognize that this may be perceived as too unusual, so I am unsure 
which direction to take.

However, in the case of word order, Dryer has firmly established the 
idea that some languages simply lack a dominant order. Before 1992, many 
linguists thought that if a language has flexible order, this must 
somehow relate to a single "underlying" order, but there was no 
agreement on how to identify that order. So I think that Dryer's 
approach to word order (where a dominant order is identified by 
frequency of use, and where a language does not have to have a dominant 
order) constituted conceptual progress.

Best,

Martin

-- 
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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