Diachronica - Volume 38, Issue 3, 2021

This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives.

With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.

This paper employs phylogenetic modeling to reconstruct the alignment system of Indo-European. We use a data set of categorical morphosyntactic features, which take states such as ‘nominative-accusative’, ‘active-stative’, or ‘ergative’. We analyze these characters with a standard Bayesian comparative phylogenetic method, inferring transition rates between character states on the basis of a phylogenetic representation of the languages in the data. Using these rates, we then reconstruct the probability of presence of traits at the root and nodes of Indo-European. We find that the most probable alignment system for Proto-Indo-European is a nominative-accusative system, with low probabilities of neutral marking and ergativity in the categories lower in grammatical hierarchies (nouns, past). Using a test of phylogenetic signal, we find that characters pertaining to categories higher in hierarchies show greater phylogenetic stability than categories lower in hierarchies. We examine our results in relation to theories of Proto-Indo-European alignment as well as to general typology.

This paper reassesses the rise of ergative alignment in Anatolian and Indo-Aryan, two branches of the Indo-European linguistic family. Both of these branches acquire split-ergative morphosyntax in the course of their history but via different grammaticalization paths and with different results. In the Anatolian language Hittite, a denominative derivational suffix develops into an ergative case marker, which is restricted to so-called neuter nouns. In Indo-Aryan, on the other hand, a new ergative category with anterior aspectual semantics emerges in Middle Indo-Aryan originating from a P-oriented resultative construction in Old Indo-Aryan.

Non-finite forms constitute an important component of the verbal system of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages. On the one hand, some of them, such as e.g., converbs, have already received proper attention in historical linguistics and typological literature, with regard to Old Indo-Aryan (OIA), Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) and New Indo-Aryan (NIA) (cf. Tikkanen 1987; Peterson 1998; Subbarao 2012 among others). Other forms, such as participles, have usually been analysed in the wider context of reorganisation of a finite verbal system which led to alignment change (for recent discussion see Dahl and Stroński 2016). On the other hand, adverbial participles or infinitives have so far been under-studied (cf. Sigorski 2005), particularly within early NIA. This period in the history of IA languages witnessed several important morphosyntactic developments and still requires in-depth study, particularly due to the lack of well-edited corpora. The aim of the present paper is to partly fill this gap by highlighting major trends in the development of constructions based on various non-finite forms in early NIA. We focus on main argument marking in converbal chain constructions and its interplay with the animacy hierarchy. We demonstrate a relative stability of differential case marking (DCM), focusing mainly on conditions on differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). In addition, we compare converbal chain constructions with participial absolute constructions (AC). Finally, in order to give a holistic view of converbal constructions, we verify the type of linking instantiated by them, focusing on three scopal parameters in converbal constructions (Tense, Illocutionary Force and Negation) and using the apparatus of Role and Reference Grammar and Multivariate Analysis.