The Anatolian " ergative " (To appear in: Alwin Kloekhorst (ed.), proceedings of 'The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European') (original) (raw)
The Anatolian languages are unique among the Indo-European languages in having a suffix for neuter nouns in the agent position, hereafter referred to as the agentive suffix. There exist several theories concerning the grammatical analysis of this suffix (Melchert 2007). In this article I expand on research by Goedebuure (2013) by testing these theories for all languages in which this construction is attested. It turns out that the agentive was originally a personifying suffix *-ont-, a function still present in Old Hittite and Luwian. This suffix was grammaticalised into a grammatical suffix already in Proto-Anatolian. This suffix could only occur in the common gender nominative. In Neo-Hittite, the construction-ant-s/-ant-es was reanalysed as case endings-anza/-anteš of a new ergative case appearing only in the neuter gender. A similar reanalysis was happening in Lycian. The suffix *-ont-was grammaticalised in order to be able to form neuter agents, which was impossible in Proto-Indo-European. The non-Anatolian Indo-European languages filled this gap by extending the function of the neutral subject/patient ending *-Ø and *-om to the agent function. This shared innovation constitutes an argument in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.
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Evaluating Anatolian 'Ergativity'
An evaluation of whether the special endings that appear on Anatolian neuter gender nouns in Agent-function reflect split-NP ergativity or an 'animatising' derivative. Appendix includes an exploration of why the Anatolian 'animatising' derivative may have emerged.
In the surface expression of agency within passive constructions, languages behave in different ways with regard to the humanness of the agent. Indo-European languages can mark the surface agent through a) 'agentive' morphemes (i. e. morphemes whose primary function is to indicate a high degree of control over the action expressed by the verb), and b) 'instrumental' morphemes (i. e. morphemes whose funetion in active contexts is to indicate an instrument). After an examination of the data offered by various lndo-European languages, a typology of agent noun phrases is proposed. Languages are divided into three groups: Type A languages mark human agents with a type a) morpheme and non-hurnan agents with a type b) morpheme; Type B languages mark both human and non-human agents with a type a) morpheme; and Type C languages mark both human and non-human agents with a type b) morpheme. Languages of type A bring to the surface a semantic bipartition in the deep structure. Languages of type B give a major relevance to agentivity, while languages of type C stress the demotion of the deep structure agent from the syntactic role of subject.
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 44/4, 2008
Since Uhlenbeck's seminal article ("Agens und Patiens im Kasussystem der indogermanischen Sprachen", 1901) many scholars have accepted the hypothesis of an ergative case in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) given the light it could shed on obscure facts discovered by the comparatist school inside the IE family. The Soviet linguistic school has been particularly active on ergativity in relation with their interests for living languages of the Caucasus and for ancient languages of the Middle East. More recent works on ergativity have shifted the focus to Australian languages. When the theory of language universals took ergativity into consideration, scholars began to seek an explanation of the so-called "split ergativity" in relation with Silverstein's animacy hierarchy. A sequel of this was that the kind of split ergativity demonstrated by PIE seemed contrary to the accepted universals and, consequently, discarded. This paper challenges the way language universals have been used to refute the PIE ergativity hypothesis. Indeed, the influence of the animacy hierarchy is known to be effective in many languages, but more as a tendency than as an absolute universal. Also, PIE is not a fully-fledged language, but rather a field of experimentation. I also present the viewpoint that PIE could have had no split at all, but solely a semantic impossibility to use inanimate noun phrases in an agent role, which seemed backed up by similar "embarrassments" in modern languages and by the so-called "Hittite ergative".
On the origin of grammatical gender
Nominal adjuncts such as demonstratives and adjectives were probably uninflected at an early stage of Proto-Indo-European. Nominal agreement apparently started from nouns in apposition and was then extended to adjuncts. This explains the creation of the nom.sg. endings of athematic adjectives masc. *-s and fem. *-iH2. After the rise of the singulative predicative in *-om and the collective predicative in *-H2 and after the rise of the new agreement of neuters with the former and denominal abstracts and female animates with the latter, the creation of thematic adjectives involved a choice between *-iH2 and *-H2 as a feminine marker. It now appears that Tocharian and the remaining Indo-European languages went different ways. It appears that the thematic adjectives originated by the creation of a predicative in *-os on the analogy of the formations in *-om and *-H2 and the introduction of these forms as adjuncts. When the thematic endings *-os and *-om merged into *-e < *-o in Proto-Tocharian, the generalization of *-iH2 as a distinct feminine marker was more logical than the introduction of the predicative ending *-H2, which was also found as a neuter plural ending and would render the agreement rules more complex. In the other languages, the three-way gender distinction was firmly established in the agreement between subject and predicate and independent of the inflection classes.
The paper discusses various constructions of ancient Indo-European languages that have been described as featuring a dative of agent. The occurrence of the dative can be explained either through its beneficiary meaning, or as indicating an experiencer. A number of passages that have been taken as evidence for the reconstruction of a dative of agent do not contain agent phrases at all. Thus, while different constructions have parallels in two or more ancient languages, it is impossible to reconstruct a dative of agent as a unified category for PIE, except than in the case of nominal verb forms denoting obligation.
Proto-Indo-European verbal syntax
Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1983
I. In 1901 CC Uhlenbeck concluded from the identity of the nominative and the accusative of the neuter in the Indo-Euro-pean languages that the differentiation of these cases is second-ary. For an early period of the proto-language he assumes the existence of an agentive ...
Talk presented at the conference "Historical-Comparative Linguistics in the 21st century" (Pavia, September 2011)
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