The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland

Dixon, R. M. W.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139084987

Cited by 670 publications

(227 citation statements)

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“…Then one would expect that some natural languages would make use of exactly the opposite association, in which the agent is associated with the VP-internal object position, and the patient/theme is associated with the structural subject position, thereby having prominence over the agent. Marantz (1984) and Levin (1983) claim that this logical possibility is attested in so-called "deep ergative" languages, including Dyirbal (Dixon 1972) and a dialect of Inuktitut. Similarly, Dowty (1991:581-82) suggests that the basic rules for associating semantic arguments with grammatical functions are reversed in some ergative languages, 6 pointing out that if so, "this provides an extremely strong reason why we should not try to collapse the notion of P[roto]-Agent with grammatical subject and P[roto]-Patient with grammatical object .…”

Section: Ergativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Significantly, if the verb in the embedded clause is transitive, the missing NP must be the absolutive theme, not the ergative agent. Thus, Dyirbal can express the equivalent of (9a), but not (9b), whereas the facts in English are the opposite (see Dixon (1972) for the actual Dyirbal examples): (9) a. The man i climbed up in order --i to see the bird.…”

Section: Ergativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Thematic Roles and Syntactic Structure

Baker¹

1997

Kluwer International Handbooks of Linguistics

367

121

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Section: Ergativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ergativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Thematic Roles and Syntactic Structure

Baker¹

1997

Kluwer International Handbooks of Linguistics

367

121

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“…phonological conditioning of plural allomorphs in English: Lass, 1984, p. 13-14), and syntax (e.g. semantic conditioning of noun classes in Dyirbal: Dixon, 1972; sociolinguistic and syntactic conditioning of copula/auxiliary BE in Bequia: Meyerhoff, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eliminating unpredictable variation through iterated learning

2010

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Human languages may be shaped not only by the (individual psychological) processes of language acquisition, but also by population-level processes arising from repeated language learning and use. One prevalent feature of natural languages is that they avoid unpredictable variation. The current work explores whether linguistic predictability might result from a process of iterated learning in simple diffusion chains of adults. An iterated artificial language learning methodology was used, in which participants were organized into diffusion chains: the first individual in each chain was exposed to an artificial language which exhibited unpredictability in plural marking, and subsequent learners were exposed to the language produced by the previous learner in their chain. Diffusion chains, but not isolate learners, were found to cumulatively increase predictability of plural marking by lexicalising the choice of plural marker. This suggests that such gradual, cumulative population-level processes offer a possible explanation for regularity in language.

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“…Some researchers, most notably Dixon (1972;, Bok-Bennema (1991), Kazenin (1994), and , use a broader notion of syntactic ergativity that incorporates the contrast between absolutive arguments (S and O) and the ergative argument with respect to A -movement, coreference across clauses, and coreferential deletion, scope, binding, quantifier float, raising, control, and possibly other dependencies. On the basis of these criteria, a number of languages could be characterized either as comprehensively syntactically ergative or as "mixed pivot" languages .…”

Section: A Broader Notion Of Syntactic Ergativity?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic Ergativity

Polinsky

2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition

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This chapter presents the phenomenon of syntactic ergativity (SE), defined as the grouping of the absolutive subject and absolutive object into a natural class, to the exclusion of the ergative argument, with respect to A′‐movement. Two families of approaches to SE can be distinguished: those which place the explanatory burden on the derivation of the absolutive, and those which invoke the properties of the ergative expression to explain SE. For the first family of approaches, which include explanations based on locality and A′‐movement for case, the exclusion of the ergative from A′‐movement is a side effect of satisfying Case‐licensing needs of the absolutive. In the second type of approach, the restriction on A′‐movement of the ergative follows either from criterial freezing or from the adpositional‐phrase nature of the ergative. The approaches converge on the notion that ergative is an inherent case, assigned either by a verbal head or by an adposition selected by a v head.

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The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland

Cited by 670 publications

References 0 publications

Thematic Roles and Syntactic Structure

Thematic Roles and Syntactic Structure

Eliminating unpredictable variation through iterated learning

Syntactic Ergativity

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