Rara #38

Legacy number: 38

 Number  38
 Phenomenon  absolutive (marking intransitive subject and transitive direct object) as the morphologically marked case vis-à-vis (zero-marked) ergative (marking transitive subject),
(a) on NPs which are not focused or topicalized and then are not case-marked at all,
(b) on NPs which are focused
 Found in  (a) Nias (Sundic, Western Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian)

(b) Yukaghir (isolate or Uralic); dialects of Komi (Permic, Finno-Ugric, Uralic) Old Wardaman (Australian) (?); Kabardian (Northwest Caucasian) (?)
 Domain  morphology: inflection — markedness: case
 Type  rarissimum
 Keywords  absolutive, ergative, focus
 Source  Donohue, Mark & Lea Brown (1999). Ergativity: Some additions from Indonesia. Australian Journal of Linguistics 19: 57-76.
Irina Nikolaeva (p.c.) for Yukaghir and Komi
 Violates  <a class="innerLink" href="../../archive/nav/browse.php?entry_id=6"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0">

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