A note on ergativity, S\u27, and S\u27\u27 in Karitiana

From the introduction: Ergativity has long been an important topic in linguistic research, from both a typological (Comrie 1978, Dixon 1979, Plank 1979) as well as a theoretical perspective (Levin 1983, Marantz 1984). The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the discussion of this phenomenon via a study of a fragment of the grammar of Karitiana, an Amazon language, focusing especially on its ergative-absolutive marking of affirmative particles and personal pronouns. The special features of the Karitiana (henceforth K) system are: (1) only absolutive marking need be stated by rule, ergative case being a default mechanism, and (2) K\u27s ergative marking offers interesting evidence in favor of the distinction between topicalization and WH-movement, along the lines first proposed by Chomsky (1977)

Euskararen ergatibitateaz

Lan honen helburua azken 30 urteotan euskal ergatibitatearen inguruan, batez ere gramatika sortzailearen barruan, plazaratu diren ideia eta hausnarketen sintesi kritikoa egitea da. Bai euskal hiztunok eta bai gramatika deskriptibo batzuek (EGLUk 1991, A grammar of Basque-k 2003, de Rijk-ek 2008 eta Sareko Euskal Gramatikak) euskara ergatibotzat hartu izan dute, baina adituen artean ikuspegi ezberdinak daude ergatibitatearen nondik-norakoak definitzerako orduan. Alde batetik, ergatibitatea egiletasunarekin lotzen dutenak daude. Levinek (1983) euskararen NOR Aditzen Hipotesiaren bidez euskararen ergatibitatea egile rolarekin lotzen du, eta euskara hizkuntza aktibotzat hartzen. Ortiz de Urbinak (1989) hizkuntza ergatibo-absolutibotzat du euskara, eta gainerakoan, Levinen (1983) proposamenarekin bat egiten du. Baina hori bai: azken honek azaldu ezin duen subjektutasunaren arazoari azalpena topatzen dio Ortiz de Urbinak (1989). Laka (2006) ere bat dator Levinen (1983) ikuspegiarekin, baina horretaz gain, ergatibitatea berezko kasuari lotu beharrekoa dela aipatzen du. Bertzetik, ergatibitatearen ikuspegi formalaren alde egiten dutenak daude; hau da, ergatibitatea argumentu kopuruarekin edo egiturazko kasuarekin lotzen dutenak. Lakak (1993a) ergatibitatea Nahitaezko Kasuaren Parametroarekin erlazionatuta dagoela erraten du, eta ondorioz, ergatiboa agertzeko absolutiboa ere egotea ezinbertzekoa dela. Fernándezek (1997) ere Lakaren (1993a) azterbidea jarraitzen du, baina horretaz gain, aditz ezergatiboen analisi xeheago baten berri ere ematen du. Rezac, Albizu eta Etxepareren (2014) erranetan, ergatibitatea ez dago derrigorrez egiletasunari lotuta: Denbora kategoriari loturiko egiturazko konfigurazio batzuen menpe dago. Bada goiko bi ikuspegi multzoen tartekorik ere. Oyharçabalen (1992) iritziz, hizkuntza ergakusatiboa da euskara: ergatiboa berezkoa du eta absolutiboa egiturazkoa. Horretaz gain, aipatzen du absolutibo kasua osagarriari zein subjektuari lotuta egon daitekeela. Bertzalde, aldakortasun dialektala eta ergatibitatea uztarturik, Levinen (1983) Nor Aditzen Hipotesiak ez du euskararen funtzionamendu orokorra azaltzen, mendebaldeko eta erdialdeko kasu-sistematik hurbilago baitago ekialdekotik baino. Lakak (2006) ere ez ditu ekialdeko hizkerak kontuan hartzen, baina irakurlea horretaz ohartarazten du. Oyharçabalek (1992), iparraldekoa izaki, kontuan hartzen ditu iparekialdeko hizkera horiek. Horretaz gain, Berrok eta Etxeparek (2017) aditz motak eta subjektuak hizkerekiko erlazioan jartzeko sailkapen bat proposatzen dute. Aldaik (2010), bere aldetik, euskalkien arteko aldeak aurkitzeko asmoz, aditz inergatibo bakunen gaineko azterketa bat egiten du. Ergatibitatearen gaineko ikuspegiak eta aldakortasunaz errandakoak kontuan harturik, honelaxe definituko nuke euskararen ergatibitatea: batetik, euskara morfologikoki ergatiboa eta sintaktikoki akusatiboa da; bertzetik, egiletasunari lotuta agertzen zaigu mendebaldeko hizkeretan batez ere, baina salbuespenak topatzen ditugu ipar-ekialdeko hizkeretan; azkenik, ergatiboa berezkoa dela erratea ezinezkoa egiten zait horren kontrako argudioak ugari baitira; baina, aldi berean, egiturazkoa dela errateak ere arazoak sortzen dizkit, absolutiboak beti ez baitu ergatiboa agertzea baldintzatze

Building a Natural Language Interface to Expert Systems

The primary goal of this research is to build a general semantics that will allow the mapping of user statements and questions into facts and goals of the underlying expert system. The semantic interpreter we propose to build will impose a structure on the underlying expert system, while being linguistically based and to some extent transportable. This last criterion requires that it separate domain dependent and independent information. Some of the main features of our semantic approach include linguistically based, hierarchically structured verb categories, a parsing algorithm that is encoded directly into the hierarchies and a mechanism to deal with semantically incomplete input. All of these features are discussed in detail later in the paper. A secondary contribution of this work is to build an inference engine, Director, for expert systems that meets the requirements imposed by a natural language interface. Figure 1-1 shows an overview of the total system as we envision it

Compte rendu de "The history of Basque" de R. L. Trask (1997)

Lapurdum Revue d'Etudes Basques III pp. 317-333R. L. Trask. "The history of Basque" (1997). L'ouvrage dont nous rendons compte ici, intitulé "L'histoire de la langue basque", a pour objectif premier d'offrir aux comparatistes et linguistes non spécialistes du basque l'information indispensable concernant son histoire interne, laquelle, observe l'auteur, se trouve le plus souvent tout simplement ignorée, ou inexplicablement négligée, en dehors des bascologues, alors même que la langue basque depuis deux siècles a donné l'occasion à de multiples reprises à des rapprochements et comparaisons génétiques. Mais il va sans dire que les spécialistes liront également avec profit ce travail, très riche en informations et suggestions diverses, souvent stimulantes

Hybrid subjects in Spanish and Catalan: Halfway between agents and patients

We analyze an intransitive construction involving verbs like Spanish matarse ‘kill’ whose subjects appear to have both internal and external argument properties. Examples include Juan se mató en un accidente de coche ‘Juan got himself killed in a car accident’, in which the subject’s referent shows hybrid behavior between agent and patient as it needs to be engaged in an action leading to its accidental death. We propose that the subject’s internal and external argument properties can be accounted for if subjects can bear two semantic roles by virtue of being associated with more than one distinct head in the syntax (Pineda & Berro 2020). We argue that such intransitive uses involve a distinct argument structure from transitive reflexives despite sharing the same surface form, cf., El sospechoso del homicidio se mató al estar rodeado por la policía ‘The suspect killed himself when he was surrounded by the police’. The present account provides evidence that agents and external arguments do not always correlate since some verb classes can have identical surface form, despite involving underlyingly distinct argument alignment.Ausensi was supported by the project PID2022-136610NB-I00 (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE). Bigolin was supported by the grant FPI PRE2018-085396 (AEI/European Social Fund), and projects PID2021-123617NB-C41 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) and 2021SGR00787 (AGAUR-Generalitat de Catalunya)

Lexical causatives and causative alternation in Basque

Lexical causative alternation in Basque occurs with verbs which express a change in the form, location or psych-state of the subject. Aside from certain idiosyncrasies associated with specific roots, this kind of lexical alternation is highly regular is Basque. We encounter three main types of decomposition, all characterised by a Cause head which selects a VP that denotes a change of state or place. In one type, the verb BECOME selects and incorporates an adjective or noun, with no further overt morphology, e.g. edertu "become beautiful", handitu "become big", haurtu "become a child" (cf. eder "beautiful", handi "big", haur "child"). In the second type, the predicate GO selects an allative PostpP or adverb which inherently expresses direction, e.g. atera "go out", etxeratu "go home", hurbildu "come close" (cf. ate-ra "to (the) door", etxe-ra "to (the) house", hurbil "near"). In the third type, the same underlying verb selects a PostpP whose underlying head incorporates the head of its complement. This formation is typical of psych-causatives, e.g. ahalketu "be ashamed", beldurtu "be afraid", poztu "be happy" (cf. ahalke "shame", beldur "fear", poz "happiness"). Like English, Basque conflates the head that expresses causation, which we have called Cause, and that which bears an external argument, here called Voice

Jon Ortiz de Urbina. Parameters in the grammar of Basque

Reseña bibliográfica de Parameters in the grammar of Basque, de Jon Ortiz de UrbinaBasque languag

LITTLE v IN INUKTITUT: ANTIPASSIVE REVISITED

This paper provides an in-depth examination of the distribution of the Antipassive morpheme -si- in Mittimatalik, a dialect of !nuktitut spoken in North Baffin. It is demonstrated that the occurrence of the overt Antipassive marker in Mittimatalik correlates with the argument structure of the verb. The analysis of the Antipassive takes into account the fact that only inherently transitive verbs and causativized verbs require the Antipassive marker in the Antipassive construction. It is proposed that the Antipassive morpheme -si- occupies v and is responsible for accusative assignment to the patient argument. Assuming that v is the focal point of transitivity, the differences in argument structure lie therefore in the feature make-up of v. The proposal accounts for the fact that the distribution of the Antipassive morpheme coincides with the argument structure of the verb. Moreover, the analysis is able to predict the occurrence of the Antipassive morpheme in Mittimatalik