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Hans-Jurgen Sasse (1978)
SUBJEKT UND ERGATIV: ZUR PRAGMATISCHEN GRUNDLAGE PRIMÄRER GRAMMATISCHER RELATIONEN, 12
Edith Moravcsik (1978)
On the distribution of ergative and accusative patternsLingua, 45
Van Valin (1977)
Ergativity and the universality of subjects Chicago Linguistic On the distribution of passive and antipassive constructions in universal grammar Role and reference grammar In Syntax and Semantics Current Approaches to Syntax New YorkSociety Papers Lingua, 13
(1977)
Zur funktionalen Erklärung des Ergativsystems
(1979)
Comparaison typologique des systemes verbaux du tcherkesse et
K. Heger (1976)
Monem, Wort, Satz und Text
A. Kaye, Charles Li (1979)
Subject and topicLanguage, 55
Dixon (1972)
The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland Cambridge Cambridge University Press Ergativity ed Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages CanberraLanguage, 55
(1979)
Typological characteristics of Basque
(1975)
Le sujet comme fonction linguistique et l'analyse syntaxique
(1976)
On the notion of subject in ergative languages
Comrie Bernard (1982)
Language Universals and Linguistic Typology
(1977)
Gramätica de los cuatro dialectos de la lengua euskara
(1956)
Gramätica vasca
Georg Bossong (1979)
TYPOLOGIE DER HYPOTAXE, 13
(1982)
Abereen etxaldea [Animal Farm], Juan Martin Elexpuru (trans.)
(1977)
On the viability of the notion
The currently held view that Basque, like many other ergative languages, is ergative only in morphology but accusative in syntax is shown to be superficial. On the morphological level, Basque represents the rather rare type of both nominal and verbal ergativity without any split. Syntactically, it functions ergatively as far as overt marking of grammatical relations reaches. Beyond, there is no grammaticalized ergative or accusative syntax. What is unmarked is neutral. The semantic interpretation of neutral constructions depends largely on pragmatic probability. In narrative texts, in fact, pragmatic probability leads to a statistical predominance of 'accusative' sequences. But in contrast to languages like English, in Basque such statistical preferences never have crystallized into rigid syntactic patterns. The conclusion can be drawn that speculations about 'deep' accusativity of most, if not all, ergative languages are premature. 1. Introduction In recent years, ergativity has become one of the most intensely discussed topics in general linguistics. Like a kind of antiworld, it continues to fascinate a great many linguists whose mother tongue is some Western Indo-European, and therefore accusative, language. Relationships seem to stand on their heads; most basic grammatical categories look like the exact mirror-images of that to which a
Linguistics - An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences – de Gruyter
Published: Jan 1, 1984
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