Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

focus, clause-linkage and rhetorical devices of one kind or another, much of the inner
workings of the dissertation deal with a pair of relatively circumscribed issues: (i)
definiteness in relation to topic and focus and (ii) the role of possessive constructions in
the development of the animacy opposition and ergativity in Sumerian.
Chapter 5 introduces several theories that others have proposed to explain the
development of ergativity in Sumerian and the differentiation of the two postpositions
that share the form *-e: namely, the locative-terminative postposition and the ergative
postposition. I argue that several distinct stages led to the development of ergativity in
Sumerian and that the correct analysis of the Sumerian phenomena is similar to both
Garrett’s description of the development of ergativity in Hittite (1990) and Zólyomi’s
description of the history of four-participant verbs in Sumerian (1999).
At a somewhat more mundane level, the organization of chapters 1 through 5 can be
thought of as a series of related distributional classes held together by the hypothesis
outlined above.
Chapter Distributional class Interpretation
1 BNBV inal Absolutive/oblique case-marking
2 *bi-√ Achievement lexical aspectual class
3 *mini-√ Topic and definiteness
4 *XP nam bi-√ Focus and indefiniteness
5 *-e (LocTerm and Erg) Possession and the rise of ergativity
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