Evolving Split Ergativity
Posted: 17 Oct 2021 07:36
First time posting, I hope I'm not breaking any rules! lmk if I am.
I'm working on a (supposedly) naturalistic conlang where one of the goals I set for myself at the beginning was to have split ergativity, where clauses with a first or second person subject would be treated as nominative/accusative and clauses with a third person subject would be treated as ergative/absolutive. I planned to mark the object in the former with an accusative case, and to mark the subject of transitive clauses in the latter with an ergative case (never marking the subject of an intransitive verb).
I later decided the language would be SOV and fairly strictly head-final. I decided that my noun cases would be suffixes that evolved from postpositions, which in turn evolved from verbs. Due to this, I ran into what I think might be a problem. Due to the SOV word order, it makes sense to me that the postpositions that evolved from verbs would be placed after the object in a transitive clause, rather than between the subject and object, and would thus be likely to evolve into suffixes attached to the object. If so, it seems like it would make sense to either replace the ergative case with an absolutive case marking the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive verbs, or to simply remove ergativity entirely from the language.
My question, then, is twofold. Firstly, is this even a problem? Or is there some reason that it would actually be perfectly naturalistic for an ergative case to evolve here, and somehow sneak its way past the object and onto the subject? Secondly, if this is indeed a problem, which of the two options seems more realistic? Does it seem plausible that a naturalistic language would mark an absolutive case and leave the ergative case unmarked, or should I, given the circumstances, give up on having ergativity in this language? (I wouldn't be all that heartbroken about that, at this point it no longer feels like a key feature of the language.)
I hope I was able to phrase this question in a way that wasn't too confusing, I'm not great with terminology.
Thanks!
I'm working on a (supposedly) naturalistic conlang where one of the goals I set for myself at the beginning was to have split ergativity, where clauses with a first or second person subject would be treated as nominative/accusative and clauses with a third person subject would be treated as ergative/absolutive. I planned to mark the object in the former with an accusative case, and to mark the subject of transitive clauses in the latter with an ergative case (never marking the subject of an intransitive verb).
I later decided the language would be SOV and fairly strictly head-final. I decided that my noun cases would be suffixes that evolved from postpositions, which in turn evolved from verbs. Due to this, I ran into what I think might be a problem. Due to the SOV word order, it makes sense to me that the postpositions that evolved from verbs would be placed after the object in a transitive clause, rather than between the subject and object, and would thus be likely to evolve into suffixes attached to the object. If so, it seems like it would make sense to either replace the ergative case with an absolutive case marking the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive verbs, or to simply remove ergativity entirely from the language.
My question, then, is twofold. Firstly, is this even a problem? Or is there some reason that it would actually be perfectly naturalistic for an ergative case to evolve here, and somehow sneak its way past the object and onto the subject? Secondly, if this is indeed a problem, which of the two options seems more realistic? Does it seem plausible that a naturalistic language would mark an absolutive case and leave the ergative case unmarked, or should I, given the circumstances, give up on having ergativity in this language? (I wouldn't be all that heartbroken about that, at this point it no longer feels like a key feature of the language.)
I hope I was able to phrase this question in a way that wasn't too confusing, I'm not great with terminology.
Thanks!