Little-v0Agreement and Templatic Morphology in Ch'ol

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4238293
AutoresJessica Coon (0000-0002-7875-8116, McGill University 1085 Ave. Dr. Penfield, 111 Montreal QC H3A 1A7 Canada, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen20
Número2
Páginas101-137
Fecha de publicación2017-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSyntax (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1368-0005 • E-ISSN: 1467-9612
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/synt.12135
OpenAlexW2608540995
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas26
Referencias citadas40

This paper addresses typological differences in subject-verb agreement and provides evidence that transitive subject agreement need not always involve a high functional head, namely T0, but may instead be the result of a local relation between the subject and a low functional head, v0. In Mayan languages, grammatical relations are head-marked on the predicate through two series of morphemes, known as "Set A" (ergative/possessive) and "Set B" (absolutive). I argue that Set A morphemes reflect a local relationship of agreement between v0and the transitive subject in its low base position and, in an analogous structural configuration in the nominal domain, between a possessive n0head and the possessor. Crucially, I show that no higher functional projection is involved. This is important in light of proposals that ergative agreement systems are epiphenomenal, resulting from standard nominative agreement from T0which is blocked from agreeing with morphologically case-marked ergative subjects (Woolford). In this paper, I examine the morphologically ergative Mayan language Ch'ol to show that true ergative agreement is possible even in the absence of morphological case. This paper has implications for the typology of ergative case and agreement systems and contributes to our understanding of the nature of agreement and clitic doubling

Agreement · Biology · Combinatorics · Dative case · Ergative case · Genitive case · Head (geology · Linguistics · Morpheme · Noun · Possessive · Predicate (mathematical logic · Subject (documents · Transitive relation · Verb · Computer Science · Mathematics · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation