Basque unergatives have long been held as evidence that
\nunergatives have an implicit object (Hale & Keyser 1993). Recently, I
\nhave argued that the presence of absolutive agreement-morphology in
\nBasque is by no means an indication of an agreement relation being
\nsuccessfully established with a nominal target (Preminger 2009, LI).
\nBuilding on this, I present two new arguments (and one old one) that
\nBasque unergatives systematically lack an implicit object.<\/P>
\n
Since the single argument of these predicates is nonetheless
\nmarked with ergative Case, these facts furnish an argument against
\nergative in Basque adhering to a Case-competition logic (i.e., against
\nergative in Basque being “dependent Case”; Marantz 1991). At first
\nglance, this seems to favor an account of ergative as inherent Case
\n(Woolford 1997, Legate 2008, among others). However, there is evidence
\ninternal to Basque which casts doubt on such an account: (i)
\nraising-to-ergative constructions (Artiagoitia 2001), and (ii) the
\nexistence of ergative Theme arguments (Etxepare 2003, Holgu\u00edn 2007,
\namong others).<\/P>
\n
In response to these facts, I propose a slight variation on the
\ninherent Case theory of ergativity: ergative Case is still assigned in
\n[Spec,vP], but [Spec,vP] is not unambiguously a base-generation site;
\nit can be the target of movement, as well. If a DP is base-generated
\nin [Spec,vP], it will receive not only ergative Case, but also an
\nAgent theta-role; but if a DP moves into [Spec,vP], it will get
\nergative Case but retain whatever theta-role it already had. <\/P><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Please join us for Ling-lunch this week: Speaker: Omer Preminger Time: Thurs 11\/19, 12:30-1:45 Place: 32-D461 Title: On the nature of ergativity: New and old evidence from Basque Basque unergatives have long been held as evidence that unergatives have an implicit object (Hale & Keyser 1993). Recently, I have argued that the presence of absolutive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1121,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}