Split ergativity — Part 1
(This section ended up taking more time than I expected, so I’ll publish it in two or more parts. This part focuses on the foundations of split ergativity, as well as active-stative systems; the next part(s) will focus on the other different types of split ergativity.)
Introduction to split ergativity
In previous chapters, I briefly mentioned
split ergativity. This term refers to a situation in which an ergative alignment is only used in some situations — there is a ‘split’ between ergative-absolutive alignment and some other alignment. The other alignment will usually be nominative-accusative, although more complex splits can include tripartite and direct alignments. (If you don’t remember what these terms mean, refer to the earlier post
What is ergativity?.) For instance, although Dyirbal is an ergative language (refer to earlier posts for examples), it uses nominative-accusative alignment in its pronouns:
- ŋana-∅
- 1p-NOM
- banaga-nʸu
- return-NONFUT
We returned
- ŋana-∅
- 1p-NOM
- nʸurra-na
- 2p-ACC
- bura-n
- see-NONFUT
We saw you all
- nʸurra-∅
- 2p-NOM
- banaga-nʸu
- return-NONFUT
You all returned
What is odd about split-ergativity is not that it exists (there are many other weird and wonderful alignment systems out there), but just how common it is: almost every known ‘ergative’ language has some sort of split in alignment. This is a notable asymmetry between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive systems — there are very many languages with an entirely nominative-accusative system (although these often have the occasional ergative construction as an exception), but almost all languages with an ergative-absolutive alignment have some sort of obvious split. I have no idea why this is, although I would very much like to know.
There are several different varieties of split found across split-ergative languages:
- Splits by the nature of the verb (split-S and fluid-S systems, collectively known as active-stative)
- Splits by the nature of the argument (animacy hierarchy-based systems)
- Splits by tense, aspect or mood
- Splits by clause type (main or subordinate)
- Combinations of the above
Each of these will be covered in the following sections.
The basis of split ergativity
Before understanding the details of how each variety of split ergativity works, it is often very useful to understand the underlying motivations behind why split ergative systems exist. There exist several different phenomena which can underlie split ergativity, and these will be dealt with in this section.
Recall that in the first chapter (
What is ergativity?), I said the following about A and O:
bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:06 am
The A relation represents the argument which prototypically controls the event, while the O relation represents the argument which prototypically does not control the event.
(To clarify, here I use the phrase ‘controls the event’ to mean ‘most relevant to the success of the activity’, or ‘could initiate or control the activity’ (Dixon); other synonyms are ‘volition’ and ‘agentivity’ (the opposite being ‘patientivity’).)
Now, recall that the unmarked case in a nominative-accusative system is the nominative (ignoring marked nominative systems), which covers A, whereas the unmarked case in an ergative-absolutive system is the absolutive, which covers P. But, as the quote above states, A is the argument which is prototypically in control, whereas P is the argument which prototypically is not in control. Combining these two observations leads to the following fact, which is highly relevant for a split ergative system:
In a nominative-accusative system, the agent or controller is unmarked, whereas in an ergative-absolutive system, the patient or undergoer is unmarked.
This fact is the basis of many split ergative systems: accusative alignment will be used for arguments which are more likely to be agentive, whereas ergative alignment will be used for arguments which are more likely to be patientive.
Another factor which can motivate a split is the status of S. Based on the above statement about the volition of A and O, we might attempt to determine whether S should most naturally be grouped with A or with O on semantic grounds. But it becomes clear very quickly that this fails: with some verbs, such as ‘speak’, the S argument is in control of the activity, whereas with other verbs, such as ‘break’, the S argument is not in control of the activity. Even worse, there are verbs such as ‘laugh’, in which S is sometimes in control and other times not (you can make a forced, voluntary laugh or you can laugh involuntarily). And there are still other verbs, such as ‘move’, with which some choices for S are interpreted as being in control (e.g. ‘I move’) while other arguments are interpreted as being out of control (e.g. ‘it moves’). Clearly S cannot be identified conclusively as being either the controlling agent or the controlled patient. But as we saw earlier, nominative-accusative alignment groups S with agentive A, whereas ergative-absolutive alignment groups S with patientive P. Thus, in some split systems, accusative alignment will be used when S is more agentive, but ergative alignment will be used when S is more patientive. Note that, as with the previous conclusion, nominative-accusative alignment ends up associated with agentivity, whereas ergative-absolutive alignment ends up associated with patientivity.
A third factor which can motivate a split is the structure of discourse. In some discourse structures, the S argument and A argument naturally go together; in others, the S argument and O argument naturally go together. This can lead to a split between nominative-accusative alignment for the former types of discourse, and ergative-absolutive alignment for the latter types. Dixon argues that this is the motivation behind splits on tense/aspect/mood, although I personally find his reasoning doubtful.
Splits by the nature of the verb
Probably the simplest variety of split to understand is a split by the nature of the verb. As discussed above, an intransitive verb may have a more agentive S or a more patientive S. Thus it is impossible to group S consistently with either A or O. So-called
active-stative systems solve this problem in an obvious way: grouping S with A when S is more agentive, but grouping S with O when S is more patientive. There are two main systems used to accomplish this: Split-S systems and Fluid-S systems.
Split-S systems
Split-S systems divide intransitive verbs into two groups: some intransitive verbs mark S the same as A, and others mark S the same as O. As outlined above, the former marking is generally used for verbs where S is typically in control of the action, whereas the latter marking is used for verbs in which S is typically not in control of the action or which represent a state, although of course there are differences between languages in exactly which verbs go into which group. I will call the former group ‘S=A verbs’, and the latter group ‘S=O verbs’, and their arguments ‘S=A NPs’ and ‘S=O NPs’ (giving four different types of verbal argument, namely A, O, S=A, S=O), although terminology differs: for instance, Dixon calls the verbs and arguments S
a and S
o instead. (I would use this notation as well, but BBCode makes it particularly inconvenient to type, so I will stick with S=A and S=O.) Other terms include ‘active’ for S=A and ‘stative’ for S=O.
It may be useful to elaborate on exactly how such a system works. As we will see below, the majority of languages using a split-S system use verbal agreement affixes rather than case markers. A typical split-S system uses two sets of agreement affixes: one set of affixes is used for both S and A, while the other is used for both S and O. Using the names of the corresponding case markers, we might term the first set ‘nominative’, and the second set ‘absolutive’ (although curiously enough I actually don’t think I’ve seen those names used anywhere else). For a normal transitive verb, A is signalled using the nominative set and O is signalled using the absolutive set; for instance, ‘I hit you’ would be expressed as some variant of ‘hit-1s.NOM-2s.ABS’ (although of course the affixes could be in different places depending on the language). However, for an intransitive verb, the argument could be marked with either set, since they overlap for the S argument; S=A verbs are those which use the nominative set for agreement, whereas S=O verbs are those which use the absolutive set for agreement. For instance, if ‘enter’ is an S=A verb, then ‘I enter’ would be expressed as ‘enter-1s.NOM’; if ‘weep’ is an S=O verb, then ‘I weep’ would be expressed as ‘weep-1s.ABS’.
Now going back to the verbs themselves, note that the exact semantic basis for S=A vs S=O verbs can differ from language to language, although it is always some variant of the volitionality distinction described above. For instance, Mithun (1991) (cited in Dixon) describes the semantic basis of S=A vs S=O in Lakota, Caddo and Mohawk by saying that prototypical S=A arguments ‘perform, effect, instigate and control events’, whereas prototypical S=O arguments are ‘affected; things happen or have happened to them’. (Mithun also investigated the changes in this distinction over time, although Dixon doesn’t go into any detail on these changes.) McGregor (1997) has proposed that verbs appear in a hierarchy, starting from verbs of cognition and speech, and extending through violence, causation, states, and ending at existentials; he suggests that verbs to the left of the hierarchy usually show accusative marking, whereas verbs to the right usually show ergative marking. Cultural differences can also play a role in assigning intransitive verbs to groups, with Dixon giving the example of the word ‘vomit’: some cultures see this as an involuntary activity, while in others it may be induced volitionally as a cultural activity. And, as with all linguistic distinctions, there are always a few exceptions to the general rule, often through borrowing or phonological change: for instance, Guaraní borrows all Spanish intransitive verbs as S=A, leading to unexpected S=A verbs like
avuři ‘to be bored’ (although the native Guaraní verb
kaigwá ‘to be/become bored’ is S=O, as expected). The sizes of the two classes can also vary greatly: according to Merlan (1985) (cited in Dixon), Arikara has a small closed S=O class and a large open S=A class, whereas Dakota has a small closed S=A class and a large open S=O class, while Guaraní treats both classes as open.
To give some concrete examples, Dixon lists some representative verbs for three languages:
- For the Siouan language Mandan, S=A verbs include ‘break camp’, ‘enter’, ‘arrive’, ‘think it over’, ‘go’, while S=O verbs include ‘fall’, ‘be lost’, ‘lose balance’; S=O also includes adjectival verbs such as ‘be alive’, ‘be brave’, ‘be strong’.
- For the Tupí-Guaraní language Guaraní, S=A verbs include ‘go’, ‘remain’, ‘continue’, ‘follow’, ‘fall’ (which was S=O in Mandan), while S=O verbs include those with adjectival meanings, but also ‘remember’, ‘forget’, ‘tell a lie’, ‘weep’. Interestingly, although the personal affixes for S=A verbs are exactly the same as the A affixes for transitive verbs, the personal affixes for S=O verbs are only similar — but not identical — to the O affixes for transitive verbs.
- For the Siouan language Hidatsa, the two classes are not quite as distinct as in the two previous examples: S=A includes ‘talk’, ‘follow’, ‘run’, ‘bathe’, ‘sing’, but also ‘have hiccups’, ‘forget’ and ‘die’, whereas S=O includes ‘yawn’, ‘err’, ‘cry’, ‘fall down’ but also ‘stand up’, ‘roll over’, ‘dress up’.
In some languages, the distinction between S=A and S=O verbs goes further than just marking. For instance, in the Athabaskan language Slave, ‘causatives can be based on S
o, but not on S
a; passive on S
a but not on S
o; noun incorporation can involve O or S
o, but not S
a; and so on’ (Rice 1991, cited in Dixon). (We might justify this by saying e.g. passives are mainly used to background an agent, so must be used on verbs which have an agent, and noun incorporation is used to background a patient, so can only be used on verbs which have a patient, and so on and so forth, although this feels suspiciously like a
post hoc rationalisation.) As another example, Guaraní ‘imperative inflection’ can occur with transitive verbs and S=A verbs, but not S=O verbs. Conversely, some languages have constructions in which S=O and S=A arguments are combined as a unitary S class: for instance, in subordinate clauses, many Tupí-Guaraní languages use O agreement affixes for all S arguments. As another example, the Caddoan language Wichita normally has a distinction between S=A and S=O intransitive arguments, but it has several constructions which group a unitary S argument with either A or O: for instance, A and S behave the same with respect to word order, and O and S behave the same with respect to noun incorporation.
There is a very strong tendency for split-S languages to mark their alignment using verbal agreement rather than noun case: all of the languages described above use verbal agreement. This isn’t too surprising: since the split is dependent on the nature of the verb rather than the nature of the noun, it makes sense for the split to be marked on the verb rather than the noun. Typically, there are two sets of affixes — one for A, and one for O — and intransitive verbs use affixes either from the A set or the O set depending on the verb being used. However, there are a few more unusual systems in use:
- The Papuan language Yawa has a set of verbal agreement prefixes, but only for O and S=O; A arguments are marked with a postposition, which is placed after the argument and inflects for person, number and (in third person) gender. For S=A verbs, this postposition has developed into a verbal prefix, which is used in addition to the postposition. Thus transitive sentences contain A (marked with a postposition), O and a verb (agreeing with O), intransitive sentences with S=O contain S=O and a verb (agreeing with S=O using the O agreement markers), and intransitive sentences with S=A contain S=A (marked with a postposition) and a verb (agreeing with S=A using an agreement marker derived from the postposition). (Note that I don’t know the exact word order; I’m simply listing the constituents in each type of sentence, but not necessarily in order.)
- The Austronesian language Tolai (mentioned in an earlier post) has an unusual system, working solely through word order. The word order in transitive clauses is AVO; in intransitive sentences, the word order is SV for S=A verbs, and VS for S=O verbs. This makes Tolai a rare example of an ergative language where the ergativity is signalled only via word order.
- The Arawak language Waurá has a similar system to Tolai, but the verb also contains an agreement marker: for transitive verbs and S=A verbs, the verb agrees with A or S=A, while this marker is absent with S=O verbs.
I would also like to briefly mention the system of Tongan. According to McGregor, Tongan has an unusual alignment system in which different types of verbs use different case-marking techniques:
McGregor wrote:
A different type of split in case-marking is found in languages such as Tongan (Austronesian, Tonga), where bivalent verbs show different patterns in case-marking. For instance, verbs of violence have an ergative marked Agent and an unmarked Undergoer; verbs of feeling have an unmarked experiencer and a second argument in the locative or dative; the ‘have’ verb takes two unmarked NPs; various other patterns exist (Tsunoda 1981: 405–406). Thus in Tongan, ergative patterning in case-marking is restricted to higher transitivity event types, events that are more effective (Tsunoda
1981).
This sort of pattern could be thought of as an unusual variety of split-S marking, albeit one which varies on bivalent words rather than univalent ones.
Fluid-S systems
Split-S systems are certainly an improvement on having one unitary S class which is not distinguished for agentivity. But they still have a problem: the verb itself may not be sufficient to predict the agentivity of the S argument. Above, the example of ‘vomit’ was given as a word whose agentivity is dependent on culture, but there are less contrived examples too: for instance, a sentence like ‘the box moved’ could either be agentive (maybe it’s slipping down a slope) or patientive (maybe I’m pushing it).
So-called
fluid-S systems avoid these problems. These fascinating systems are a bit like a more extreme version of split-S systems: in split-S systems, the choice of verb consistently determines whether S is marked like A or O, but in fluid-S systems, S is marked like A or O depending on the agentivity of S
in that particular sentence. Fluid-S systems could be considered to be a combination of ‘syntactic-based marking’ (for A and O) and ‘semantically-based marking’ (for S), as the terms were defined in
the introductory chapter.
Perhaps an example might help illustrate how this system works. The most commonly-referenced fluid-S language is probably Tsova-Tush (also known as Bats or Batsbi), from the Northeastern Caucasian family. In Tsova-Tush, the S argument may be marked with either the nominative case (like A) or the absolutive case (like O), depending on the agentivity of S:
- ∅-txo
- ABS-we
- naizdrax
- to.ground
- kxitra
- fell
We fell to the ground (and this was unintentional on our part)
- a-txo
- NOM-we
- naizdrax
- to.ground
- kxitra
- fell
We fell to the ground (and we caused this somehow)
(From McGregor; glosses and translations have been altered slightly, but should still be correct.)
Note that this alternation only applies to intransitive verbs; fluid-S languages are the same as split-S languages (and indeed the vast majority of languages with verbal agreement) with regards to transitive verbs, in that transitive verbs always have A and O marked distinctly and in a consistent manner. (Although this by no means precludes such a contrast being expressed in some other way: for instance, the fluid-S language Acehnese has a special ‘uncontrolled’ verbal prefix
teu- used with transitive verbs to denote an action which is normally controlled but in this instance happens by chance.)
As with split-S languages, fluid-S languages can certainly contain intransitive verbs which are only ever used with one type of marking. However, unlike in split-S languages, this is not due to any inherent property of those words, but rather due to semantic, pragmatic and cultural considerations, as this quote (from Dixon) about Tsova-Tush illustrates:
Dixon wrote:
The results Holisky obtained were determined partly by speakers’ world-view and by other pragmatic factors. She mentions ‘when I constructed the first person form for the verb “get poor” in Tsova-Tush using Sa [i.e. S=A, agentive] marking, my consultant did not say categorically that it wasn't possible. She said it isn't possible because you would never want to be poor’ (Holisky 1987: 115).
As the Tsova-Tush examples above illustrate, fluid-S languages are not nearly as restricted as split-S languages are in terms of marking. Tsova-Tush uses case markers, as does the Eastern Pomo language (from northern California), but the Tabassaran and Crow languages use verbal agreement instead. By contrast, most split-S languages use verbal agreement to identify S with A or O, and few (if any) use case-marking.
One intriguing consequence of fluid-S marking is that a lesser number of verbs may be needed, due to the existence of pairs of verbs which only differ in volition. For instance, English has two words ‘slip’ and ‘slide’, which have the same meaning, but differ in volitionality (I am in control for ‘slide’, but not for ‘slip’). However, languages like Tsova-Tush and Eastern Pomo need only one verb encompassing those two meanings: a sentence like
I-NOM slip/slide would mean ‘I slide’, whereas
I-ABS slip/slide would mean ‘I slip’.
Finally, I would like to note that, although split-S and fluid-S constitute two separate systems, it is also possible to combine them. For instance, it is not uncommon for a split-S system to contain a set of verbs which are fluid between S=A and S=O. For instance, in Guaraní,
che-karu (with S=O) means ‘I am a big eater’, whereas
a-karu (with S=A) means ‘I am eating’ (although Dixon notes that this contrast ‘is not productive’, i.e. it can only be applied to a limited set of words).