Conference Alan Dench - lundi 20 octobre 20008, 16h30-18h

[pcaudal at LINGUIST.JUSSIEU.FR]

Cher(e)s collègues,

L'UFR de Linguistique et le Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle ont le plaisir
de vous annoncer que le Professeur Alan Dench (University of Western Australia,
Perth) donnera prochainement une conférence intitulée

"Ergative to accusative alignment shift in the Pilbara languages of Western
Australia"

(voir résumé ci-dessous)

Cette conférence aura lieu le lundi 20 octobre 2008 de 16h30 à 18h, à l'UFR de
Linguistique de Paris 7, 30 rue du Château des Rentiers, 75013 Paris, 1er
étage, salle 124. (Métro Porte d'Ivry / Olympiades.)

Avec toutes mes excuses pour d'éventuels doublons !

Bien cordialement,

P. Caudal

-------------------------
Ergative to accusative alignment shift in the Pilbara languages of Western
Australia


Alan Dench
Professor of Linguistics
Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Western Australia


This paper discusses a set of morphosyntactic changes that have taken place in a
group of languages in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. In a language
family which is well known for the complexity of its case marking systems, the
immediately striking thing about the Pilbara languages is that a number of them
have innovated a consistent nominative-accusative case marking pattern. This
sets them apart from the great majority of Australian languages, which show
ergative or split-ergative case alignment.

It is argued here that the shift in alignment of the Pilbara languages is a
consequence of a relaxation of the distinction between independent and
dependent clauses in these languages. Dependent non-finite clauses have become
independent and ultimately finite and thus  modern finite clauses in the
accusative languages have the morphosyntax of original non-finite clauses; the
case marking pattern is an original nominative-dative pattern, there has been a
loss of person/number agreement in the verb, and clauses have a relatively fixed
constituent order. In addition, object relative clauses have allowed the
innovation of passives.

The paper compares patterns in conservative languages of the Pilbara group,
including Nyamal and Jiwarli, with patterns in innovating languages, including
Panyjima and Martuthunira. Categories of tense, aspect and modality in these
latter two languages are the specific subject of current work (*) and it is
reasonable to expect that the semantics and discourse functions of the modern
TAM inflections in these languages may reflect something of this history.


*: Projet de recherche sur conventions internationales du CNRS: Formal treatment
of aspectual, temporal and modal phenomena in two Aboriginal languages of the
North West of Australia; Martuthunira and Panyjima (CIs Caudal [Paris VII],
Roussarie [Paris VIII], Ritz [UWA], Dench [UWA])

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