Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

5.2 Possession and the development of ergativity
Theorists have long posited relations of one kind or another between ergative case-
marking and possession. One of the most insightful comments actually occurs in the
midst of a debate between Silverstein and Hale on the nature of ergative case-marking
systems: Hale had reasserted an ergativity-as-obligatory-passivization model that
harmonized in some respects with the aspirations of early generative theory (Hale 1970)
and Silverstein responded with one of the most important papers ever written about
ergativity (Silverstein 1976). As part of an argument to the effect that the early
generativists did not have a theory that could encompass the attested data, Silverstein
describes the ergative “type” as follows:
. . . possessors and ergators (or apparent agents) are frequently identified at the
surface at least (Eskimo [including the West Greenlandic examples (70), (71), and
(72) in section 1.8, CJ], Chinook, Tsotsil, Quiche); non-ergators (or apparent
patients) are incorporated into verb-complexes in the same way, whether they are in
transitive or in intransitive structures (Iroquoian, Tsimshian, Wichita);
mediopassives and reflexives are identical in syntax and sometimes in form (Dyirbal,
Chinook, Bandjalang); the ‘antipassive’ forms an ‘active intransitive’—in Sapir’s
(1922: 150-151, 153-154) felicitous phrase—with the underlying agent of the
transitive in nominative case (Chinook, Aleut), or it forms a nominative-dative
schema for inflectional purposes (Dyirbal, Georgian). (Silverstein 1976, 115)
Thus the relation between possession and ergative case-marking seems to have been—at
least in descriptive terms—quite clear. But Silverstein is hesitant to address the
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