Deconstructing Ergativity

Nominative-accusative and ergative are two common alignment types found across languages. In the former type, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are expressed the same way, and differently from the object of a transitive. In ergative languages, the subject of an intransitive and the object of a transitive appear in the same form, the absolutive, and the transitive subject has a special, ergative, form. Ergative languages often follow very different patterns, thus evading a uniform description and analysis. A simple explanation for that has to do with the idea that ergative languages, much as their nominative-accusative counterparts, do not form a uniform class. In this book, Maria Polinsky argues that ergative languages instantiate two main types, the one where the ergative subject is a prepositional phrase (PP-ergatives) and the one with a noun-phrase ergative. Each type is internally consistent and is characterized by a set of well-defined properties.
The book begins with an analysis of syntactic ergativity, which as Polinsky argues, is a manifestation of the PP-ergative type. Polinsky discusses diagnostic properties that define PPs in general and then goes to show that a subset of ergative expressions fit the profile of PPs. Several alternative analyses have been proposed to account for syntactic ergativity; the book presents and outlines these analyses and offers further considerations in support of the PP-ergativity approach. The book then discusses the second type, DP-ergative languages, and traces the diachronic connection between the two types.
The book includes two chapters illustrating paradigm PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: Tongan and Tsez. The data used in these descriptions come from Polinsky's original fieldwork hence presenting new empirical facts from both languages.

Maria Polinsky is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She investigates the syntax of natural languages, with a particular emphasis on language universals and the range of variation in sentence structure. She has produced detailed syntactic analyses of a number of lesser-studied languages and has a long-standing interest in the ways different grammatical models can be used to analyze syntactic phenomena.

PrefaceAbbreviationsPart I: Two types of ergatives
1 Introduction1.1 Setting the stage 1.2 Syntactic ergativity 1.2.1 The phenomenon 1.2.2 The range of the phenomenon 1.2.3 The relevance of syntactic ergativity1.3. The importance of starting small 1.3.1 Syntactic ergativity broadly defined 1.3.2 Not all A-bar movement phenomena are created equal 1.3.3 Some methodological odds and endsAppendix: Compensatory strategies under syntactic ergativity
2 Proposal2.1 Crucial empirical observations 2.1.1 Diachronic pathways to ergativity 2.1.2 Oblique subjects2.2 The proposal: Two classes of ergative languages2.3 From PP specifier to syntactic ergativity2.3.1 The relationship between the verbal functional head and ergative P 2.3.2 Ergative P and P-stranding 2.3.3 Ergative P and pied-piping 2.3.4 From a PP subject to syntactic ergativity2.4 Basic clausal structures in the two types of ergative languages 2.4.1 PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: transitive clauses2.4.2 PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: unergative clauses2.4.3 PP specifiers everywhere? Preventing overgeneration2.4.4 Compatibility between the ergative and the passive2.5 Summary
3 Prepositional phrases: Establishing the diagnostics3.1 PPs have distinct extraction and subextraction properties3.2 Restrictions on PPs as pivots of clefts3.3 PPs have resumptive proforms and may have special modifiers3.4 PPs are less accessible to agreement probes than DPs are3.5 PPs and binding3.6 PPs and A-movement3.7 PPs and control 3.8 Summary
4 Ergative as a PP: Take One4.1 Ergative expressions can be PPs 4.2 Subextraction out of the ergative expression 4.3 Ergative cannot extract leaving a gap 4.4 Ergative and agreement 4.5 Ergative and depictives4.6 Ergative and quantifier float4.7 Taking stock4.7.1 Silent P head4.7.2 Overt P head4.7.3 The nature of the operator
5 Ergative as a PP: Take Two5.1 Binding: Reflexives and reciprocals5.2 Raising 5.2.1 No true raising 5.2.2 Ergative is not preserved under raising-at least in Tongan 5.3 control 5.3 Summary
6 Cross-linguistic landscape: Correlates of PP-ergativity6.1. Word order correlates6.2 Expletive subjects 6.3 Non-canonical (quirky) subjects
7 The other ergative: A true DP7.1 Extraction of the ergative with a gap7.2 Subextraction from the ergative and the absolutive7.3 Agreement7.4 Binding7.5 Control and raising7.6 Word order7.7 Summary
8 The relationship between the PP-ergative type and the DP-ergative type: Phylogeny and ontogeny 8.1 Diachronic relationship between the PP-ergative type and the DP-ergative type8.2 Caught in transition: Niuean8.3 Caught in transition: Adyghe8.4 PP-ergatives and DP-ergatives in language acquisition
9 Alternative accounts of variation across ergative languages 9.1 Comp-trace vs. P-trace9.2 Criterial freezing9.3 Phase boundaries and high/low absolutive languages9.4 Non-syntactic explanations for variation across ergative languages9.5 Summary
Part II: Paradigm languages 10 A paradigm PP-Ergative language: Tongan10.1 Tongan basics 10.1.1 General remarks10.1.2 Predicates 10.1.3 Case marking 10.1.4 Word order: Preliminary remarks 10.1.5 Questions 10.2 Subject and possessive marking: Clitics 10.2.1 Subject clitics 10.2.1.1 Basic facts about clitics 10.2.1.2 Accounting for Tongan clitics 10.2.1.3 Clitic doubling 10.2.2 Possessive clitics and possessive markers 10.3 Deriving Tongan clause structure 10.3.1 Word order: Deriving V1 10.3.2 Word order: The right periphery 10.3.2.1 The definitive accent 10.3.2.2 VOS is not due to scrambling 10.3.2.3 VOS as rightward topicalization 10.3.3 Basic clause structures 10.3.3.1 Intransitives: Unaccusatives 10.3.3.2 Intransitives: Unergatives 10.3.3.3 Transitive clauses 10.3.4 Tongan ergativity and split ergativity 10.4 A-bar movement 10.4.1 Relative clauses 10.4.2 Wh-questions 10.4.3 Focus: Exceptive constructions 10.4.4 Ko-Topicalization 10.4.5 Interim summary 10.5 Raising and control 10.5.1 The status of ke-clauses 10.5.2 "Raising" 10.5.2.1 Raising-like verbs and their structures 10.5.2.2 What moves in ke-clauses and where? 10.5.2.3 What is the nature of the operator in ke-clauses? 10.5.2.4 The transparency of finite ke-clauses 10.5.3 The verb lava 10.5.3.1 Monoclausal structure with lava: Restructuring 10.5.3.2 Biclausal structures with lava 10.5.4 Control 10.5.4.1 Basic facts 10.5.4.2 No obligatory control 10.5.4.3 The internal syntax of control ke-clauses 10.5.5 Interim summary 10.6 Binding 10.6.1 Anaphoric binding 10.6.2 Reciprocals? Just pluractionality 10.6.3 Other binding contexts 10.7 Summary
11 A paradigm DP-Ergative language: Tsez11.1 Tsez basics 11.1.1 Preliminaries 11.1.2 Unergatives and unaccusatives 11.1.3 Clauses with two or more arguments 11.2 Discontinuous noun phrases 11.3 Non-finite forms 11.3.1 Infinitival and masdar clauses 11.3.2 Event nominalizations 11.4 A-bar movement 11.5 Raising and control 11.5.1 Raising 11.5.2 Complement control 11.5.2.1 Forward control 11.5.2.2 Backward control 11.5.3 Infinitival relative clauses 11.6 Binding 11.6.1 Anaphoric binding 11.6.2 Depictives 11.7 Interim summary 11.8 Deriving Tsez clauses 11.8.1 Two possible analyses 11.8.1.1 A single vP 11.8.1.2 Layered functional heads in the verb phrase 11.8.2 Single heads or layered structure: Which analysis is superior? 11.9 Summary
12 Taking stockReferencesindex