The structural ergative of Basque and the theory of Case

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 1273 - 1330
• Main Authors: Rezac, Milan, Albizu, Pablo, Etxepare, Ricardo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01-11-2014; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agreement (Grammatical); Alignment; Argument structure; Basque; Case marking; Expletives; Gerunds; Grammatical clauses; Infinitives; Linguistics; Morphology; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Philosophy of Language; Predicates; Social Sciences; Syntactics; Syntax; Theoretical linguistics; Verbs; Agree; Basque; Structural/inherent Case; Raising; ECM; Ergativity
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1007/s11049-014-9239-7

We investigate the nature of morphological ergativity through the ergative/split-S system of Basque. We show that in Basque ergative case and agreement reflect structural rather than inherent Case: Agree/Move rather than selection. Evidence comes from the core distinctions between these dependency types, including ergative-absolutive alternations due to absolutive Exceptional Case Marking of external arguments and raising-to-ergative of internal arguments. In consequence, structural Agree/Case systems cannot be reduced to a nominative-accusative basis with an inherent ergative, as has been proposed. Our investigation sheds light on the nature of structural ergativity in Basque. First, ergativity like nominativity comes from the T-system, whereas absolutivity and accusativity are in the v-system. Second, ergative agreement can occur under unbounded c-command through Agree, like nominative, accusative, and absolutive case and agreement, but ergative case requires movement to Spec, T, bearing out the ergative as a 'marked' structural Case. Third, structural Agree/Case systems are parametrizable to give both ergative and accusative alignments and islands of exceptionality within each. We develop a theoretical account of these results in the Agree framework of the Principles-and-Parameters approach, building on previous theories of structural ergativity.