Ergativity in Basque*  

Oleh:

BOSSONG, GEORG

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of The Language Sciences vol. 22 no. 3 (1984), page 341-392.

Ketersediaan

Perpustakaan PKBB Nomor Panggil: 405/LING/22 Non-tandon: tidak ada Tandon: 1

Lihat Detail Induk

Isi artikel

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.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali