Split Absolutive *

This paper has two goals. The first is to provide an analysis of split ergativity in Warlpiri using standard mechanisms of structural case and agreement licensing. The task is of theoretical interest, both due to the nature of the split (ergative-absolutive case marking, nominative-accusative agreement), and due to the implications for the non-configurationality debate. While Warlpiri split ergativity has been taken as evidence for a non-configurational syntactic structure (Jelinek 1984), recent work has argued that Warlpiri is in fact configurational (Legate 2002b). This paper supports the latter position by demonstrating that even the split ergative pattern is best analysed through configurational means. The second goal is to clarify the possible roles of the “absolutive” in case systems, towards the elimination of absolutive as a distinct case. It is now recognized that for a subclass of ergative-absolutive languages, absolutive case can be reduced to nominative case. However, for other ergative-absolutive languages, including Warlpiri, this is far more problematic. I demonstrate that absolutive case in Warlpiri must be reduced to both nominative case (on intransitive subjects) and accusative case (on intransitive objects). This is required on empirical grounds, and allows for a restrictive typology of possible ergative case systems. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the split ergative pattern in Warlpiri. Section 3 examines the grammatical subject position in Warlpiri, and demonstrates that it is occupied by the highest argument in the clause. Section 4 presents evidence that morphological absolutive case in Warlpiri masks structural nominative and accusative case. Section 5 considers the implications of the analysis for Warlpiri nonconfigurationality, and section 6 considers the implications for the phenomenon of ergativity crosslinguistically.

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