[Lingtyp] case suffix is "homonymous" with personal pronoun form

Fri Mar 27 13:16:00 UTC 2026

Dear Christian,

I’m only aware of such an identity of pronouns and case markers for ergative case (not necessarily an ergative form of the pronoun - which is not unexpected because of split ergativity based on referential status).
I’ve pasted below the one relevant paragraph that I have written about this for Jaminjung-Ngaliwurru (Mirndi), which also includes references to the phenomenon in other Australian languages (I think these are all that I am aware of, or was in 2016/17).
I’d be interested to hear about any other overlaps of pronouns and case marking, or switch-reference marking for that matter.

All the best,
Eva

“There is however some intriguing evidence that the diachronic origin of the Ergative marker =ni is more directly related to marking expectedness in discourse than it is to marking the semantic role of agent. The origin of the Ergative marker in Jaminjung/Ngaliwurru is, in all likelihood, a third person pronoun/demonstrative; compelling comparative evidence for this claim is gender agreement of ergative case in the related languages Nungali and Jingulu (Chadwick 1976b; Pensalfini 1999; McGregor 2008). Synchronically, in Jaminjung/Ngaliwurru, the pronominal ni is retained in 3SG>3SG verbal prefix gani- and is a plausible origin for the verbal enclitic =ni marking switch-reference across finite clauses (see section 44.3 for discussion and examples). Plausibly, a discourse use of a third singular pronoun to disambiguate reference in the case of a switched or new subject/agent could be the origin (via distinct pathways of grammaticalization) for both the switch-reference construction and the Ergative marker (the latter by an association of switched or new subjects in apposition with the pronoun with the role of transitive agent, a scenario discussed in more detail by McGregor (2008: 311– 316)). For a number of other Australian languages, too, there is evidence that markers of a special discourse status have been reanalysed as ergative markers, or vice versa (Jingulu, Pensalfini 1999; Kuuk Thaayorre, Gaby 2010).”  (Schultze-Berndt 2017: 1112)

References:

Chadwick, Neil. 1976. Ergative, Locative and Instrumental Suffices in Djingili. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, edited by R. M. W. Dixon. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (= Linguistic Series 22).

Gaby, Alice. 2010. ‘From Discourse to Syntax and Back: The Lifecycle of Kuuk Thaayorre Ergative Morphology’. Lingua 120 (7): 1677–1692.

McGregor, William. 2008. ‘Indexicals as Sources of Case Markers in Australian Languages’. In Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses, edited by Folke Josephson and Ingmar Söhrman. Benjamins.

Pensalfini, Rob. 1999. The Rise of Case Suffixes as Discourse Markers in Jingulu—a Case Study of Innovation in an Obsolescent Language. Australian Journal of Linguistics 19 (2): 225–240.

Schultze-Berndt, Eva. 2017. Interaction of ergativity and information structure in Jaminjung (Australia). In J. Coon, D. Massam & L. Travis (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Ergativity, 1089–1113. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Prof Eva Schultze-Berndt (she/her) | Linguistics and English Language

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures | The University of Manchester, UK

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Friday, 27 March 2026 at 10:30
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] case suffix is "homonymous" with personal pronoun form

Dear colleagues,

I dimly remember that in one or more languages of Australia, case suffixes look like forms of a pronoun declined for the case in question.

Could someone with relevant expertise or a better memory than me please help me out? Name of the language(s) in question would be sufficient; a reference would be even better.

Thanks in advance,

Christian

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