Mar 15, 2020
In this episode, Matt and Rowan talk about all sorts of ergative phenomena, and how to use them for conlanging. We will cite our sources by section they are first relevant towards, and also length.
0:14 Intro
Ergativity by R. M. W. Dixon - a book compiling the data
and theories of the man who made Ergativity popular in modern
linguistics - long
Linguitect 'Accusativity' episode -
http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-6-accusativity
'Ergativity Handbook' by Amy Rose Deal -
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ardeal/papers/Deal-ergativity-handbook.pdf
- of the many things in here, one is about how the "ergative"
property is not the same as the "absolutive" property - medium
length
'Ergativity and Depth of Analysis' by Martin Haspelmath -
https://www.academia.edu/41122863/Ergativity_and_depth_of_analysis
- defends "ergativity" as a single category as being useful for
cross-linguistic comparison - short
4:02 My Problems with the naïve definition
'Blue Bird of Ergavity' by Scott Delancey -
http://celia.cnrs.fr/FichExt/Documents%20de%20travail/Ergativite/3dDelancey.htm
- an overview of why the unitary definition of "ergativity" does
not explain linguistic data - short
Linguitect 'Non-Default Cases' episode -
http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-8-non-default-case-marking
'Ergativity as Transitive Unaccusativity' by José-Luis
Mendívil-Giro-
https://www.academia.edu/905847/Ergativity_as_Transitive_Unaccusativity
- medium length
'Split Ergativity is not about Ergativity' by Jessica Coon & Omer
Preminger -
http://ling.umd.edu/assets/publications/Coon-Preminger-17-SplitErgativity.pdf
- medium length
21:01 - History and Context
Google N-Gram search showing how recently linguists started talking
about "ergativity" -
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ergative%2Cergativity%2Cabsolutive&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgative%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgativity%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cabsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Babsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAbsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BABSOLUTIVE%3B%2Cc0
23:54 - What langauges do Ergativity
https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/image/141437592433
'Manifestations of Ergativity in Amazonia' by Francesc Queixalós
and Spike Gildea -
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b70/b7024341e6f051cefe87bd3ccc377ee272d0.pdf
- medium length
26:31 - marginally ergative phenomena
36:38 - Ways to be Ergative
Valpal - http://valpal.info/
WALS chart that could help you make European non-Basque Ergativity
- https://wals.info/chapter/62
Ergativity in Amazonia edited by Francesc Queixalós and
Spike Gildea -
https://amerindias.github.io/curso2015/referencias/gilque10ergativityamazonia.pdf
- long
'A Movement Theory of Ergativity' by Mark Campana -
https://research.uni-leipzig.de/lomo/ergativity/Campana1992.pdf -
explains raising ergativity in depth, including giving examples of
the extraction asymmetry I talked about - long
'The rise of ergativity in Hindi' by Saartje Verbeke & Ludovic De
Cuypere - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55760161.pdf - ergativity
arising in Hindi - short
55:07 - Ideas for how to implement ergativity
A few example sentences used in this episode:
Warlpiri
[ngatyu] ka -(rna) purlami
[I (abs)] tense - (1sg.nom) shout
I shout
[ngatyu-lurlu] ka -(rna)-ngku nyuntu nyanyi
[I (erg)] tense -(1sg.nom) -2sg.acc you(abs) see
I see you
Samoan
perfective
na va’ai-a [A e le tama] [P le i'a]
pst look.at-prfv [ERG the boy] [the fish]
‘The boy spotted the fish.’
imperfective
na va’ai [A le tama] [P i le i'a]
pst look.at [A the boy] [P OBL the fish]
‘The boy looked at the fish.’
Bhojpuri
agentive
ham phuul mahaknii
I-NOM flower-ACC smell-1S-PST
‘I smelled the flowers’
non-agentive
hamraa gais mahakal
I-DAT gas-NOM smell-3S-PST
‘I smelled gas’