Saikia, Pori & Camilleri, Maris: Assamese Case Alignment Shifts in Progress
This paper looks at case alignment in Assamese from both a synchronic and diachronic point of view. We take the task of tracing the development of the ergative case marker from the language’s proto-period, and see how it evolved. This study, for the first time, provides a comparison of adult and child language data. Beyond the account of Assamese as a split ergative language, our study’s results show that the semantic factor guiding this split is changing. From an ergative system based on split intransitivity determined by agentivity, thus realizing a split between unergative and unaccusative SUBJs, ERG marking is emerging on the ANIMATE subjects of unaccusatives. Interestingly, we also find that there are already traces of evidence of Assamese having had possibly the onset of an ANIMACY-based subject marking distinction in its proto-period.
December 22, 2022 |
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