Ergativity, agreement and alignment shift in Western Indo-Aryan

Abstract

The Western Indo-Aryan languages are known for their aspect-based split ergativity, where subjects in the perfective are marked with an ergative case and unmarked objects usually trigger verbal agreement. In this paper, we survey data from multiple languages in the area and identify patterns that indicate an ongoing ergative to nominative shift. We show that languages that initiate verbal agreement with differentially marked objects (DOM) start deviating and losing the ergative case. With the subsequent emergence of an auxiliary, the subjects also start to control agreement on T. These patterns, we claim, evolve when accusative objects trigger agreement at the vP-edge, forcing subjects to get a nominative case from T in the expanded clausal spine. Our study identifies a diachronic path, from a system where the v de facto licenses both arguments to another system with a clear division of labour between v that licenses the objects, and T that licenses the subjects.

Revisiting Syntactic Microvariation and Diachrony in the Dual Complementizer Systems of Upper Southern Italy1

“…This outcome is reached through the application of the idea, widely adopted in Germanic and Romance dialectology and neatly summarized by the motto Aus dem räumlichen Nebeneinander ein zeitliches Nacheinander (which can be roughly translated as “from geographical proximity (you get) a diachronic sequence,” Chandra & D'Alessandro 2022: 1), which maintains that synchronic microvariation can play an important role in reconstructing diachronic processes. Using the different USID complementizer systems which have been attested in the literature, we aim to model the diachronic development(s) from which they derive, and more specifically to understand if they constitute distinct stages of change along a single (or multiple) path(s).…”