Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 62: Issue 3
Ergative case, aspect and person splits: Two case studies
Authors:
M. Rita Manzini Università di Firenze

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Leonardo M. Savoia Università di Firenze

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Ludovico Franco Universidade Nova de Lisboa

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Pages:
297–351
Online Publication Date:
Sep 2015
Publication Date:
01 Sep 2015
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2015.62.3.3
Keywords:
ergative case; oblique case; aspect; person split; Indo-Iranian
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Ergativity splits between perfect and imperfective/progressive predicates are observed in languages with a specialized ergative case (Punjabi) and without it (Kurdish). Perfect predicates correspond to a VP projection; external arguments are introduced by means of an oblique case, namely an elementary part–whole predicate saying that the event is ‘included by’, ‘located at’ the argument. A more complex organization is found with imperfective/progressive predicates, where a head Asp projects a functional layer and introduces the external argument. Our proposal further yields the 1/2P vs. 3P Person split as a result of the intrinsic ability of 1/2P to serve as ‘location-of-event’.

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Cover Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Print ISSN:
1216-8076
Online ISSN:
1588-2624

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Acta Linguistica Hungarica
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