Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

1.2.2. Ergative Languages
There should be another more important and obvious parameter, to account for the
contrast between Nominative-Accusative languages (which this thesis deals with for the most
part and 0 is conceived for) and Ergative Languages (ELs). I will only consider one such case of
ergativity, which is perhaps not most typical: Basque.
In Basque, the situation seems to be that there is a Agreement for the EA (which appears
only when there is an EA) and an Agreement for the internal Argument, which is obligatory. The
latter (the so-called Absolutive agreement) has some distinctive properties w.r.t. the former
(Ergative agreement) and the also present Dative agreement. Apart from the obligatory presence
of ABS-AGR (as opposed to the optionality of ERG-AGR and DAT-AGR, which are present
only when there is an external/dative Argument), ABS-AGR is prefixal while the other two are
suffixal (with some exceptions in the past tense 52 ). In addition, the prefixal AGR-ABS is
apparently an older and more tightly attached affix than the other two, for which its clitic origin
is more obvious. 53
These facts suggest that AGR-ABS is the closest correlate of Nominative AGR in non-
ELs (in section 5. we argue that the behavior of AGR in non-ELs is due to its obligatory
presence in finite sentences). Therefore, we could argue, the parameter which allows the Basque
option is of the following nature:
52 Ortiz de Urbina (1989) characterizes this past tense
particularity as a case of morphological split ergativity: the
prefixal ABS-AGR takes on the role of ERG-AGR. In our terms, the
obligatory AGR-marker shifts from internal to EA, thus behaving
like a non-EL in these past tense forms. But these facts are
mere morphological and have no syntactic import.
53 Some of the Ergative/Dative suffixes (1st and 2nd plural)
are homophonous (abstracting away from stress) with the nonemphatic
independent pronouns.
1