web statistics


Readings for Ling 640X(2)---The Syntax of Ergative Languages


I. Transitivity and Ergativity

Week 1
8/27/02 (Tuesday): Organizational Meeting
8/29/02 (Thursday):
Manning, Christopher D. 1996. Ergativity: Argument structure and grammatical relations. Dissertations in Linguistics. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). Pp. 1-77 (Chapter 1).

Week 2
9/3/02 (Tuesday):
Hopper, Paul J., and Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56 (2):251-299.
9/5/02 (Thursday):
Gibson, Jeanne D., and Stanley Starosta. 1990. Ergativity east and west. In Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology, ed. by Philip Baldi, 195-210.  Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Week 3
9/10/02 (Tuesday): Lexicase Dependency Grammar
Starosta, Stanley. 1997. Formosan clause structure: Transitivity, ergativity, and case marking. In Chinese languages and linguistics IV: Typological studies of languages in China, ed. by Chiu-yu Tseng, 125-154.  Taipei: Academia Sinica.
9/12/02 (Thursday): Lexicase Dependency Grammar
Starosta, Stanley. 1998. Ergativity, transitivity, and clitic coreference in four Western Austronesian languages. In Case, typology and grammar, ed. by Anna Siewierska and Jae Jung Song, 277-307.  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.


II. Case Study: Philippine Languages

Week 4

9/17/02 (Tuesday):
Guest Lecture: “Viewing Philippine Languages in Focus and Out of Focus”, by Professor Lawrence A. Reid.
9/19/02 (Thursday): Relational Grammar
Gerdts, Donna B. 1988. Antipassives and causatives in Ilokano: Evidence for an ergative analysis. In Studies in Austronesian Linguistics, ed. by Richard McGinn, 295-321.  Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for Southeast Asia Studies.

Week 5
9/24/02 (Tuesday): Relational Grammar
Blake, Barry J. 1988. Tagalog and Manila-Mt Isa axis. La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics 1:77-90.
9/26/02 (Thursday): Discourse Analysis
Cooreman, A., B. Fox, and T. Givon. 1984. The discourse definition of ergativity. Studies in Language 8 (1):1-34.

Week 6
10/1/02 (Tuesday): Discourse Analysis (general, not Philippines)
Du Bois, John W. 1987. The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63 (4):805-855.
10/3/02 (Thursday): Discourse Analysis (Philippines)
Mithun, Marianne. 1994. The implications of ergativity for a Philippine voice system. In Voice: Form and function, ed. by Barbara Fox and Paul J. Hopper, 247-277.  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Week 7
10/8/02 (Tuesday): Principles and Parameters
Maclachlan, Anna E. 1996. Aspects of ergativity in Tagalog. Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, Montreal. Pp. 1-149 (Chapters 1-4).
10/10/02 (Thursday): “Fluid” Voice System
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1988. Voice in Philippine languages. In Passive and voice, ed. by Masayoshi Shibatani, 85-142.  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.


III. Split Ergativity

Week 8
10/15/02 (Tuesday):
Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics No. 69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 70-110 (Chapter 4).
10/17/02 (Thursday):
DeLancey, Scott. 1981. An interpretation of split ergativity and related patterns. Language 57 (3):626-657.


IV. Syntactic Ergativity and Subjecthood

Week 9
10/22/02 (Tuesday):
Keenan, Edward L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of "subject". In Subject and Topic, ed. by Charles N. Li, 303-333.  New York: Academic Press.
10/24/02 (Thursday): Localist
Brainard, Sherri. 1996. Why the 'focused NP' is not the subject in Philippine languages: Evidence from Karao. Philippine Journal of Linguistics 27 (1-2):1-47.
Brainard, Sherri. 1997. Ergativity and grammatical relations in Karao. In Grammatical relations: A functional perspective, ed. by T. Givon, 85-154.  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Week 10
10/29/02 (Tuesday):
Anderson, Stephen R. 1976. On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In Subject and topic, ed. by Charles N. Li, 1-23.  New York: Academic Press.
10/31/02 (Thursday): Role and Reference Grammar
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 1977. Ergativity and the universality of subjects. Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 13:689-705.
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 1981. Grammatical relations in ergative languages. Studies in Language 5 (3):361-394.

Week 11
11/5/02 (Tuesday): Holiday: Election Day
11/7/02 (Thursday):
Schachter, Paul. 1976. The subject in Philippine languages: Topic, actor, actor-topic, or none of the above? In Subject and Topic, ed. by Charles N. Li, 491-518.  New York: Academic Press.

Week 12
11/12/02 (Tuesday):
Payne, Thomas E. 1982. Role and reference related subject properties and ergativity in Yup'ik Eskimo and Tagalog. Studies in Language 6 (1):75-106.
11/14/02 (Thursday): Lexical Functional Grammar
Kroeger, Paul. 1993. Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog. Dissertations in Linguistics. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.  Pp. 19-56 (Chapter 2).


Week 13
11/19/02 (Tuesday): HPSG
Wechsler, Stephen, and I Wayan Arka. 1998. Syntactic ergativity in Balinese: An argument structure based theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16:387-441.
11/21/02 (Thursday): Guest Lecture: “Syntactic ergativity in Tongan,” by Professor Yuko Otsuka.
Otsuka, Yuko. 2001. Syntactic ergativity in Tongan. Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics 6: 189-214.


V. The Origin of Ergativity

Week 14
11/26/02 (Tuesday):
Anderson, Stephen R. 1977. On mechanisms by which languages become ergative. In Mechanisms of syntactic change, ed. by Charles Li, 317-363.  Austin: University of Texas Press.
11/28/02 (Thursday): Holiday: Thanksgiving Day

Week 15
12/3/02 (Tuesday):
Estival, Dominique, and John Myhill. 1988. Formal and functional aspects of the development from passive to ergative systems. In Passive and voice, ed. by Masayoshi Shibatani, 441-491.  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
12/5/02 (Thursday):
Trask, R. L. 1979. On the origins of ergativity. In Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations, ed. by Frans Plank, 385-404.  London and New York: Academic Press.

Week 16
12/10/02 (Tuesday): Term paper presentation
12/12/02 (Thursday): Last class.  Term paper presentation and general discussion.