Pre-Proto-Indo-European ergativity and the ‘neuter agent gap’ in typological perspective

A number of features of the morphosyntactic alignment systems of Indo-European languages suggest that an early stage of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) originally had an ergative case-marking system. Opponents of this hypothesis have said that this reconstruction of PIE is typologically impossible, since it does not follow the allegedly universal Silverstein hierarchy, and that PIE thus cannot have been ergative. A concept related to the theory, which may solve the problem that Silverstein’s hierarchy poses, is the hypothesis that this stage of (pre-)PIE had a ‘gap’ in its alignment system: i.e. neuter nouns could not be used as agents of transitive verbs. In my thesis, I weigh the pre-PIE ergativity hypothesis and the ‘neuter agent gap’ against typological data regarding alignment systems and their diachronic development, to see if opponents’ arguments are valid and whether an ergative system and a neuter agent gap can be reconstructed to account for the case-marking systems...Show moreA number of features of the morphosyntactic alignment systems of Indo-European languages suggest that an early stage of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) originally had an ergative case-marking system. Opponents of this hypothesis have said that this reconstruction of PIE is typologically impossible, since it does not follow the allegedly universal Silverstein hierarchy, and that PIE thus cannot have been ergative. A concept related to the theory, which may solve the problem that Silverstein’s hierarchy poses, is the hypothesis that this stage of (pre-)PIE had a ‘gap’ in its alignment system: i.e. neuter nouns could not be used as agents of transitive verbs. In my thesis, I weigh the pre-PIE ergativity hypothesis and the ‘neuter agent gap’ against typological data regarding alignment systems and their diachronic development, to see if opponents’ arguments are valid and whether an ergative system and a neuter agent gap can be reconstructed to account for the case-marking systems found in Indo-European languages. I argue that the reconstructed alignment system does not violate Silverstein’s hierarchy, and that an earlier stage of PIE had an ergative system in both common and neuter nouns. Then, I argue that it is not necessary to assume a ‘neuter agent gap’, although a semantic dispreference for neuter agents does help to explain the development of alignment in the Anatolian languages. I then discuss two different hypotheses on what shape the neuter ergative ending may have had, and I will propose for both of them a diachronic pathway along which the Indo-European alignment system may have developed.Show less

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Pre-Proto-Indo-European ergativity and the ‘neuter agent gap’ in typological perspective