Nominal types in Gitksan split-absolutive agreement
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Nominal types in Gitksan split-absolutive agreement Clarissa Forbes1
Received: 1 November 2018 / Accepted: 22 November 2020 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper presents a study of a split absolutive-nominative agreement pattern in Gitksan (Tsimshianic) which co-occurs with ergative agreement. The split is conditioned on the basis of nominal type: alongside ergative agreement, a second type of agreement targets absolutives (S, O) when the subject is a participant or thirdsingular pronoun, or nominatives (S, A) when the subject is a full DP or third-plural pronoun. This results in what appears to be construction-dependent variation in the applicability of the Activity Condition, as some transitive subjects receive both ergative and nominative agreement. It is proposed that DP arguments and third-plural pronouns are able to receive multiple instances of agreement by virtue of bearing D-features; in contrast to the situation with typical pronouns, these D-features remain active for agreement even if prior ergative agreement has already deactivated the argument’s φ-features. Both ergative and nominative agreement may target a single argument because different groups of features are targeted during the two operations. The D-feature property is ultimately linked to a structural DP/non-DP distinction amongst arguments, providing some insight into the role of D in pronominal systems. This analysis, which crucially relies on an approach to activity that explicitly allows incremental deactivation of an argument, accounts for the empirical facts in Gitksan more readily than a purely morphological approach or an approach that considers distinctions between φ-features alone. Keywords Syntax · Agreement · Activity Condition · Ergativity · Nominal structure · Pronouns · Tsimshianic This research was supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Jacobs Research Funds.
B C. Forbes
[email protected]
1
Department of Linguistics, The University of Arizona, P.O. Box 210025, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
C. Forbes
1 Introduction The empirical focus of the paper is an unfamiliar nominal-type split in Gitksan (Tsimshianic; Canada), a language with predominantly ergative/absolutive agreement. It is well known that ergative languages frequently display a split in their grammar, with the ergative alignment of agreement or case commonly shifting to nominative or neutral in some context (Moravcsik 1978; Dixon 1994). However, the nominal-type split which I here explore instead affects absolutive agreement: it is an example of an absolutive-nominative split, illustrated below in (1). Morphemes instantiating the agreement paradigm under investigation are bolded below, and the argument each one indexes underlined in the gloss. (1)
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Neediit iileni’y. nee=dii=t hilen-’y NEG = FOC =3. I chase-1 SG . II ‘She didn’t chase me.’ Neediit iilendiit ’nii’y. nee=dii=t hilen-diit ’nii’y NEG = FOC =3. I chase-3 PL
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