1367260110.5528Understanding Syntax

184Understanding syntaxexamples show that in Pitta‐Pitta, the two main case-marking systems – the ergativesystem and the accusative system – partially intersect.Another kind of split ergative system is illustrated in Section 6.4.4.6.3.5 Marked and unmarked formsAt this point, we can discover why linguists often just use the terms ‘ergative’ or‘accusative’ to describe the two systems: it is common for just this one member ofeach system to be the only NP that is overtly case marked, while the other member ofeach system is unmarked, i.e. has no special inflection for case at all. Instead, we findthe ordinary root of the noun or pronoun (the form with no inflections).In an ergative system, the form lacking overt marking is the absolutive NP, whilethe ergative NP does have a special inflection. This is true of all the ergative systemsillustrated so far, Lezgian, Basque and Dyirbal. Please confirm this by looking at theDyirbal examples in (24): the absolutive forms are not inflected; the ergative form is.In an accusative system, the form lacking overt marking is the nominative NP,and the accusative form has a special inflection. This is confirmed by (25): thenominative pronouns are not inflected, while the accusative one is.In fact, we can make a generalization which works for both case systems:whichever case is used for the S argument (either absolutive or nominative), thatwill generally (with a few exceptions) be the NP that lacks any overt marking (Dixon1994: 56f). Not only is the case used for S generally formally unmarked (= lackingspecial marking), as in the Dyirbal examples in (24) and (25), it’s also functionallyunmarked. This means it’s more widespread in occurrence and more basic in termsof usage. For instance, the absolutive or nominative form is typically used as thecitation form of a noun, generally the form given in a dictionary.6.4 Agreement and cross-referencing6.4.1 What does verb agreement involve?Case-marking and verb agreement (also termed concord) are in fact two alternative(and sometimes overlapping) ways to represent the same information. Recall thatthe relationship between a head verb and its dependent NPs can be morphologicallyindicated either by dependent‐marking (case) or head‐marking (agreement).As we saw in Chapter 4, it’s very common for a language to have both verbalagreement with a subject and also case-marking on the core NPs: see example (1)from Latin. This is an instance of case and agreement overlapping.In Section 6.4, we see that ‘an accusative system’ doesn’t necessarily imply thatthe language has nominative/accusative case; the same applies to ‘an ergativesystem’. The relationships between verb and core NPs may instead be shown by verbagreement, either following the accusative pattern or the ergative pattern. In otherwords, the verb agrees with certain of its dependents and not others.Agreement, or cross‐referencing, means that a head verb is formally markedto reflect various grammatical properties of its NP arguments. To take a simple