Ergativity and depth of analysis

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that “depth of analysis” does not deserve the prestige that it is sometimes given in general linguistics. While language description should certainly be as detailed as possible, general linguistics must rely on worldwide comparison of languages, and this cannot be based on language-particular analyses. Rigorous quantitative comparison requires uniform measurement, and this implies abstracting away from many language-particular peculiarities. I will illustrate this on the basis of ergative patterns, starting out from I.A. Mel’čuk’s (1981) proposal for Lezgian. This proposal was not successful, but why not? And why is Baker’s (2015) theory of dependent case likewise unsuccessful? By contrast, quantitative worldwide research has found striking similarities of ergative coding patterns, which can be explained by the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding. I will argue that this success is due to a more cautious approach to understanding Human Language, which does not rely on the Mendeleyevian vision for grammar (that all grammars are made from the same innate building blocks).

The structural uniqueness of languages and the value of comparison for language description

“…It is not admissible to use different criteria for different languages, which would lead to the kind of cherry-picking or diagnostic-fishing that Croft (2009Croft ( , 2010 called "methodological opportunism". This also means that the kind of "in-depth analyses" that are often emphasized in generative grammar and that are based on diverse languagespecific considerations cannot play a role in rigorous comparison as discussed here (Haspelmath 2019). Some linguists think that large-scale comparison as in the world maps of WALS (Haspelmath et al 2005;Dryer & Haspelmath 2013) is "superficial" and not very telling, but in fact it is the only way of comparing languages with their structurally unique features in a systematic and objective way.…”

Las construcciones de fingimiento de inglés y urdu: el caso de las construcciones incoativas y medias

“…In accusative languages, the subjects of intransitive (Si) and transitive verbs (St) behave similarly, assigning special marking to the object (O). In ergative languages, Si behaves as the O of a transitive verb, and the St is given special ergative case marking (Dixon, 1994;McGregor, 2009;Polinsky, 2016;Haspelmath, 2019). These alignments are not clear-cut because some languages that mix nominative-accusative and absolutive-ergative types of marking.…”