Provided there is actancy variation in terms of tense, accusative constructions will always be found in the future/present/imperfective while ergative constructions occur in the perfect/past/perfective tenses.
Standardized
Provided there is actancy variation in terms of tense, accusative constructions will always be found in the future/present/imperfective while ergative constructions occur in the perfect/past/perfective tenses.
1. Note the general “actancy-framework“ discussed in Lazard 1985: 8-13, Lazard 1991: 6-11, Lazard 1995 and Lazard 1998: The actants of a sentence are the NPs (and/or clitics or affixes) which have privileged relationships to the verbal predicate. These properties characterize them in contradistinction to other NPs, which are called circumstants.2. Trask (1979: 385): It is very common for ergativity to be confined to certain tenses or aspects of the verb; in such cases, it is always the past tense or the perfective aspect which is ergative while the non-past or imperfective forms show accusative constructions.3. Cf. a similar statement by Moravcsik (1978): #603. And by many others.
1. Note the general “actancy-framework“ discussed in Lazard 1985: 8-13, Lazard 1991: 6-11, Lazard 1995 and Lazard 1998: The actants of a sentence are the NPs (and/or clitics or affixes) which have privileged relationships to the verbal predicate. These properties characterize them in contradistinction to other NPs, which are called circumstants.2. Trask (1979: 385): It is very common for ergativity to be confined to certain tenses or aspects of the verb; in such cases, it is always the past tense or the perfective aspect which is ergative while the non-past or imperfective forms show accusative constructions.3. Cf. a similar statement by Moravcsik (1978): #603. And by many others.