Questions tagged [morphosyntactic-alignment]

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9 votes
1 answer
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Are all "Ergative Languages" split-ergative?

I've noticed that in a lot of examples of "ergative languages," there is some piece of the language that does not fit the pattern we call "ergativity." For example, Basque does not mark ergative case ...
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4 votes
1 answer
328 views

Do different alignments restrict what kind of word order a language can have?

I've read somewhere that all known ergative languages are either verb-initial, or verb-final. I find this surprising, but I don't know of any counter-examples. I've seen plenty of nominative ...
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3 votes
0 answers
82 views

Languages with direct-inverse verbal inflection or hierarchical alignment but no verbal inflection for person

Some languages have direct-inverse marking on verbs or hierarchical alignment. I'm wondering whether there are any attested examples of minimal direct-inverse systems where the verb is obligatorily ...
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2 votes
1 answer
106 views

Configurational assignment of accusative case?

I'm an undergraduate linguistics student, and I'm currently reading this chapter by Coon & Preminger (2015) (http://ling.umd.edu/assets/publications/Coon-Preminger-17-SplitErgativity.pdf), which ...
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2 votes
0 answers
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Does Subject vs Object matter in languages with ergative absolutive marking

If a language has an ergative absolutive alignment in which subjects and objects of clauses are marked for absolutive marking does the distinction between subject and object ever get difficult to ...
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2 votes
0 answers
313 views

Direct–inverse marking on the noun, or the possiblity of inverse alignment

A direct-inverse language, Wikipedia claims, is one which involve[s] different grammar for transitive predications according to the relative positions of their "subject" and their "object" on a ...
1 vote
1 answer
54 views

What is the nominal attribute in Milewski's typology?

The wikipedia page on Milewski Typology gives 6 divisions: Milewski proposed a division of languages into 6 groups, based upon consideration of 4 main syntactic relationships; these were: the ...