Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

2.7 The link between the BNBV construction and the rise of ergativity
There are, in my view, two possible analyses of a BNBV construction: these two
structures seem to correspond to the alienability of the absolutive noun that forms a
component of the compound verb and they may also correspond to two distinct phases in
the history of the development of ergativity in Sumerian. The older of these two
structures, which corresponds to BNBV constructions in which the nominal component is
inalienable, is analogous to an English existential sentence in which the post-copular
noun is modified by a secondary/adjectival predicate.
(101) [ ∃ (en aratta ki .ke 4) gig.e igi √du 8] √bi
There is [ ∃ an eye (of the Lord of Aratta) opened up on the wheat]
Within the structure outlined in (101), the ergative case-marked noun is the inalienable
possessor of igi and is non-agentive, while the apparent main verb, √du 8, is actually an
adjective modifying igi just as secondary predicates typically modify the direct object in
secondary predicate environments. The actual main verb in such a construction is the
verbal prefix *bi-√. As Pylkkänen predicted for low applicative morphemes, the low
applicative takes three arguments: the lexical verb (√du 8), the direct object (igi) and the
indirect object (gig.e).
In contrast, the second of the two structures, in which the nominal component of the
compound verb is alienable, would have resulted from the grammaticalization of the
possessive construction as a new ergative construction (Trask 1979; see below, chapter 5,
188