Raising to ergative: remarks on applicatives of unaccusatives
Amy Rose Deal
October 2017
 

Applicatives of unaccusatives provide a crucial test case for the inherent case view of ergativity. If ergative is assigned only to external arguments, in their theta-positions, there can be no ``raising to ergative'' in applicative unaccusatives; an internal argument subject can never receive ergative case. In this paper I present evidence from Nez Perce (Sahaptian) that this prediction is false. In Nez Perce applicative unaccusatives, the theme argument raises over the applicative argument and is accordingly marked with the ergative case. Nez Perce thus demonstrates raising to ergative. Building on Baker's (2014) study of similar phenomena in Shipibo (Panoan), I argue that apparently nonlocal movement of the theme in the raising-to-ergative pattern involves not a covert adpositional structure, but rather a response to independently motivated constraints on antilocal movement and remnant movement.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003024
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Linguistic Inquiry 50(2): 388-415. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00310
keywords: ergative, inherent case, dependent case, unaccusative, applicative, locality, antilocality, remnant movement, nez perce, shipibo, niuean, ergativity, syntax
previous versions: v6 [October 2017]
v5 [August 2017]
v4 [July 2016]
v3 [June 2016]
v2 [June 2016]
v1 [June 2016]
Downloaded:2462 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]