An Interpretation of Split Ergativity and Related Patterns

Linguistic Society of America
An Interpretation of Split Ergativity and Related Patterns

Author(s): Scott DeLancey
Source: Language, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 626-657
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/414343 .
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AN INTERPRETATIONOF SPLIT ERGATIVITYAND RELATED
PATTERNS
SCOTTDELANCEY
University of Colorado
Nominative/absolutivecase and verb agreementare, in manylanguages,indicatorsof
a category which is here called VIEWPOINT: the perspective from which the speaker
describes the event. The order of NP constituents in a sentence encodes ATTENTION
FLOW, which is the order in which the speaker expects the hearerto attend to them.
Split ergative case-markingpatternsare shown to reflect conflicts between the most
naturalviewpointand attention-flowassignments.It is arguedthat the characterization
and grammaticalmarkingof an event as first-handor inferredknowledgefor a speaker,
and as intentionalor inadvertentfor an actor, can be describedin termsof whetherthe
entireevent or only its terminalphase is directlyaccessible to the conscious mindof the
speakerand the actor, respectively;and that these categoriescan also be describedin
terms of attention flow and viewpoint.*
The study of case-markingpatterns in language has aroused considerable
interest over the last decade, in the wake of attempts to describe grammarsin
termsof a set of underlyingsemanticcase-roles, and laterin termsof putatively
prime grammaticalrelations. Among the more recalcitrant,and hence more
interesting, case-markingpatternsencountered in naturallanguagesare those
in which the assignment of particularcase-markersis partly determined by
some factor other than semantic or syntactic role, so that choice of case-
marking is partly independent of the semantic case-role or the grammatical
function of the NP which receives the marking. In this paper I will discuss
three general types of split case-markingpatterns: the two so-called 'split
ergative' (SE) patterns, in which a transitiveagent is markedfor ergative case
or left unmarkeddepending on its position on the 'animacy' or 'empathy'
hierarchy, or on the tense/aspect of the clause; and the 'active/stative' split
pattern, in which the subject of an intransitiveverb is markedlike a transitive
agent or patient, dependingon whether or not it engages in the act described
on its own volition. All three patternsare discussed and exemplifiedin Comrie
1978aand Dixon 1979.
It is my purpose here to provide a unified, semantically-basedaccount of
these three patterns, and in doing so to introducea hypothesis concerningthe
organization of morpho-syntax which may eventually provide answers to a
numberof problemsbesides those addressedhere. In ?1, I describethe patterns
which are to be explained. In ?2, I deal in a general way with the significance
of the morphologicalalternationsobserved in ?1. In ?3, I describe two notions,
attention flow and viewpoint, in terms of which the data will be explained. In
?4, I present an analysis of SE patternsgoverned by the Empathy Hierarchy
* The ideas
presented in this paper were developed in the course of work done in collaboration
with LaRawMaranand Lon Diehl; creditfor any meritwhich the hypothesisadvancedhere may
possess is at least as much theirs as mine. The deficiencies of the paper are, of course, my own
responsibility.Part of this paper was presentedat the 1979WinterLSA Meetingunder the title
'Viewpoint,attentionflow, and subject-codingproperties'.
626

AN INTERPRETATION OF SPLIT ERGATIVITY 627
(EH), and of similarly governed direct/inverse systems, in terms of the hy-

pothesis presentedin ?3. In ?5, I extend the analysisto the aspectuallygoverned
SE pattern, and in ?6 to the active/stative alternation.
SPLIT CASE-MARKING PATTERNS
PATTERN.An SE language is one in which some
1.1. THE SPLITERGATIVE
transitive clauses, but not all, are ergative constructions. For the purposes of
this paper, we are concerned only with morphologicalmanifestationsof er-
gativity: I will define an ergative construction as a transitive clause in which
a special case-formor adpositionmarksthe semanticagent,' or verb-agreement
is with patient in preferenceto agent. This definitionis broad enough to class
agentive passive constructionsas ergative, and hence voice alternationsas SE
patterns. There are reasons for distinguishingvoice from SE alternations(see
Comrie 1978a for some discussion of their similarities and differences); the
distinction most relevant to my argumenthere is that voice alternationstypi-
cally reverse the order of the agent and patientNP's, while SE alternationsdo
not.2 For present purposes, however, the similaritiesbetween voice alterna-
tions and SE patternsare at least as relevantas the differencesbetween them.
In particular,we find not only that voice and SE patternsare morphologically
congruent, but also that they are often constrained by the same semantic
factors. Thus both types of alternation will be adduced as evidence for the
hypothesis presented in ?4.
Two apparentlydisparatefactors are attested as governing the distribution
of main-clause ergative and accusative constructions in SE languages: the
tense/aspect of the verb, and the person or semantic nature of the agent (or
of both agent and patient). Both factors, as we shall see, are also attested as
constrainingvoice alternations.3
1.2. THE EH-SPLIT PATTERN.The SE pattern which has received the most
recent attentionis one governedby the variously-calledhierarchyof 'animacy',
'agentivity', 'topicality', 'salience', or 'empathy',by which Ist and 2nd persons
(hereafter SPEECH-ACT PARTICIPANTS, or SAP's) outrank human 3rd persons,
' In much of this

paper, I will use the term 'agent' quite loosely, to include roles (such as that
of a perceiver) which are not analysed as being agentive in most versions of Case Theory, but
which in many languages pattern with true transitive agents with respect to the morpho-syntactic
patterns discussed here. The theoretical status of this broad use of 'agent' will be discussed in
?3.3; agentivity in the strict sense will be discussed briefly in ?6.
2
In the light of the discussion in ??3-4, this distinction might be considered criterial for distin-
guishing voice from SE alternations; however, it doesn't correlate perfectly with the standard
criterion, by which voice alternations are those marked with a special form of the verb associated
with one voice alternant. (Cf. the Sinhalese 'passive' discussed in ?6.1.)
3The most common factor governing voice alternations, both active/passive and ergative/anti-
passive, is of course the discourse-based thematicity or 'communicative dynamism' of one or both
of the two NP's in the transitive sentence. This factor clearly is related to the factors discussed
in this paper. The interaction between the 'empathy' or 'animacy' hierarchy and topicality has
long been known; and recent studies (e.g. Hopper 1979, Hopper & Thompson 1980) have shown
an interaction between information structure and aspect. However, the questions implied here are
beyond the scope of this paper.

628 LANGUAGE, VOLUME57, NUMBER 3 (1981)
which outrank non-human animates, which in turn outrank inanimates. In the

EH-governed split, which is almost universal in Australian languages and well-
attested elsewhere (in North America, and in some Siberian and Tibeto-Burman
languages), there is a cut-off point somewhere along the EH; agents which
rank above that point are not marked for case, while those below it are marked
for ergative case. The most common pattern distinguishes SAP's from all other
NP's, including 3rd person pronouns. This pattern occurs in Kham, a Tibeto-
Burman language of Nepal (Watters 1973):
(1) nga: nan-lay nga-poh-ni-ke.
I you-OBJIA-hit-2P-PERF 'I hit you.'
(2) nan nga-lay na-poh-na-ke.
you I-OBJ 2A-hit-IP-PERF 'You hit me.'
(3) nan no-lay na-poh-ke.
you he-oBJ 2A-hit-PERF 'You hit him.'
(4) no-e nan-lay poh-na-ke-o.
he-ERGyou-OBJhit-2P-PERF-3A 'He hit you.'
The morphemes glossed 1A, 2P etc. are subject and object agreement-markers;
they will be discussed in ?4.2. Case-marking on the agent NP clearly follows
an SE pattern: ergative case is marked on 3rd person agents, but not on SAP
agents. Note, however, that none of the sentences given here is morphologically
ergative according to the standard definition of an ergative construction as one
in which the patient (but not the agent) shares the same case-marking as an
intransitive subject. In Kham, intransitive subjects are not marked with -lay:4
(5) no: thala-tin zo:-ke.
he roof-ABLjump-PERF 'He jumped from the roof.'
For our purposes, and perhaps in general, a definition of 'ergative construction'
based solely on transitive agent-marking is more useful than the standard def-
inition in terms of identity of marking for patient and for intransitive subject.
Thus, of the Kham examples, 4 is an ergative construction, because the tran-
sitive A is marked for ergative case; but 1-3 are not.
1.3. THE ASPECTUAL SPLIT.The other SE pattern is the aspectual split, in
which ergative morphology is associated with perfective aspect or past tense,
and accusative morphology with imperfective aspect, or with present or future
tense. Attested in a few Australian, Austronesian, and Mayan languages, this
pattern also occurs in an area extending from North India to the Caucasus-
including a number of Indo-Iranian languages, several Caucasian languages,
a few Tibeto-Burman languages, and Burushaski, a language isolate spoken in
northern Pakistan. A typical case is Gujarati (Mistry 1976):
(6) ramesh pen kharid-t-o ha-t-o.
(masc.) (fem.) buy-IMPF-MASCAUX-IMPF-MASC
'Ramesh was buying the pen.'
4 Not all
patients are marked with -lay; however, its distribution is not, as might appear, an
instance of the widely-reported pattern in which all and only patients high on the EH are marked
for accusative case. Rather, the -lay postposition is used generally with definite patients (Watters
1973:199-202).

(7) ramesh-e pen khdrid-y-i.

(masc.)-ERG buy-PERF-FEM
'Ramesh bought the pen.
In 6, with its imperfective aspect, the agent NP is not marked for case, and
governs verb-agreement; but in 7, which is perfective, the agent is marked for
ergative case, and agreement is with the feminine patient.
This pattern is reminiscent of the well-known morphological syncretism of
perfect and passive in Western European languages, where the same form of
the verb serves as both 'past' and 'passive' participle. A parallel can also be
drawn to the restriction on the co-occurence of passive and progressive in
Early Modern English, where sentences like 8-9, but not 10 were possible:
(8) He is building (of) a house.
(9) The house has been built.
(10) *The house is being built.
Here the distribution of voice alternants is constrained by an aspectual dis-
tinction similar to that which determines the distribution of ergative and ac-
cusative patterns in Gujarati.
1.4. THE ACTIVE/STATIVE SPLIT.A third type of split case-marking pattern,
sometimes rather misleadingly referred to as SE,5 is that found in 'active'-type
languages (Klimov 1973, 1974, Comrie 1976a). In SE languages, the A NP is
marked like the intransitive subject in some constructions, but differently in
others. In 'active/stative' languages, however, it is the case-marking of the
intransitive subject which varies, agreeing sometimes with the transitive agent,
sometimes with the patient. An example is the Northeast Caucasian language
Batsbi (Deseriev 1953; cf. Comrie 1978a, whose glosses I use here):
(11) txo naizdrax kxitra.
we (ABS) to-groundfell
'We fell to the ground (unintentionally, not our fault).'
(12) a-txo naizdrax kxitra.
ERG-weto-ground fell
'We fell to the ground (intentionally, through our own carelessness).'
Here the intransitive subject is marked like a transitive agent if the event
occurred as a result of the subject's action or inaction, but like a patient if the
causes of the event were entirely external to the subject. We shall see that this
pattern is better discussed in connection with the inferential interpretation of
perfect aspect than with the true SE patterns.
ON THE FUNCTIONS OF MORPHOLOGY
2.1. THE SIGNIFICANCE OFSPLITERGATIVITY. The patterns described above
are of particular interest because they are 'universal' in the weak sense that,
while they do not occur in all languages, only these patterns occur in any
5
By the standard definition of ergative and accusative patterns, which depends on whether
transitive agent or patient is marked like the intransitive subject, these languages are SE in a sort
of backward way; but they clearly represent a distinct type. A problem with the standard definition
is that it assumes a fixed marking for intransitive subject, with which either agent or patient marking
may then be identical.

630 LANGUAGE. VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3 (1981)
language. Inverse patternsof EH or aspectual split, with ergative morphology

associated with agents high on the EH, or with imperfective as opposed to
perfective aspect, apparentlydo not exist. Thus general linguistictheory must
account for the association of ergative morphology with, on the one hand,
perfective aspect, and, on the other, lower position of the agent on the EH;
and for the association of accusative morphologywith imperfectiveaspect and
high EH (especially SAP) agents.
2.2. CASE-MARKING.From the way that case-marking patterns vary with
grammaticaldistinctionsnot obviously relevantto semanticrole, it is apparent
that the presence or absence of case-marking,as opposed to its content, is
significantin these languages. The presence or absence of ergative case with
a transitiveagent (in languageswhere it occurs) has nothingto do with semantic
agentivity.6It is, however, related somehow to aspect and person. This situ-
ation contrasts with that in a languagewhere transitive agent is markedcon-
sistently in all constructions.Thus, in a consistentlyergativelanguage,ergative
case-markingcontrasts only with case-markerswhich indicate some semantic
role other than agent; and the only content of the ergative-markeris the notion
of agency. In an SE language,or a languagewith a voice alternation,transitive
agent is sometimes marked with ergative case (or some markerof agentivity
such as Eng. by), and sometimesnot. In such a language,ergativecase-marking
contrasts not only with case-markersindicatingother semantic roles, but also
with the zero-markingwhich occurs with some agents. My claim here is the
traditionalone thatthese representtwo distinctcontrasts,andthus thatergative
case in an SE language (or agent-markingin a passive construction) carries
two levels of information:the fact that it is present (i.e. its contrast with zero)
carries one message, and its identity (i.e. ergative as opposed to accusative or
some other marking)carries another. This implies the traditionalidea that the
maximally unmarkednominative or absolutive case has a special status as
opposed to other cases-and that, as Trubetzkoy 1939suggests, 'nominative'
and 'absolutive' are in some sense the same category. (As regardsthe discus-
sion immediately below, note that it is most often nominative or absolutive
NP's, ratherthan agent or patient NP's per se, which govern verb-agreement.)
2.3. VERB-AGREEMENT.A similar argument applies to verb-agreement.
There are languagesin which agreementis tied to one case-role-e.g. Nepali,
where case-markingfollows a complicatedSE pattern,sensitive to both aspect
and the EH (see Verma 1976bfor furtherdetails);but agreementis always with
agent in a transitive clause.7 Examples are from Bandhu 1973:
6 Even in the
loose sense of fn. 1.
7Nepali cannot easily be describedas requiringagreementto be with subject-since, in dative
subjectconstructions,agreementis NOTwith subject (examplefrom Abadie 1974):
ma-lai hachuw a-io.
I-ACCsneeze come-PAsT/3rd'I sneezed.'
This shows that, in termsof the analysisto be presentedbelow, Nepaliagreementis with semantic
Source ratherthan with starting-point.This seems to be a fairly unusualpattern.

(13) md hdri-lai kitap din-chu.

I Hari-oBJ book give-NONPAST/ist
'I give Hari a book.'
(14) mai-le hdri-lai kitap di-e.
I-ERG Hari-oBJ book give-PAST/Ist
'I gave Hari a book.'
More commonly, in a languagewhich allows agreementwith only one NP in
a clause, it may, in different constructions, be with agent or patient, or even
with dative (as in English) or benefactive Goal.
In some languages, case-role is completely overruled by the EH in deter-
miningagreement. In English and similarlanguages, agreementis with agent,
all other things being equal (i.e., active voice is the unmarkedvoice alternant).
We find a very different pattern in a number of Tibeto-Burmanlanguages,
where agreementmust always be with an SAP in preferenceto a 3rd person,
regardless of their respective semantic roles (DeLancey 1980).8 A striking
example is Tangut, an extinct Tibeto-Burmanlanguage, which has no 3rd
person agreementat all (Kepping 1980;cf. Comrie 1978b):9
(15) a. ni tin nga In Idia thi-nga,
you if I ACCindeed chase-ist
'If indeed you are chasing me,'
b. ku tha tsi vid-thi-na.
then her also chase-2nd
'then chase her too.'
(16) ni pha ngi-mbin ndi-siei-na.
you other wife choose-2nd
'You choose another wife!'
(17) mei-swen mana na khe-na.
formerlyyou hate-2nd
'Mei-swen formerlyhated you.'
Here 15a shows that if both agent and patient are SAP's, agreement is with
patient; while 15b and 16-17 show that, otherwise, person rather than role
determines agreement. (There is no agreement when both agent and patient
are 3rd person.) The interactionof person and role in determiningagreement
is clearly seen in the contrast between patient agreement in 15a, and agent
agreementin 15b.
Similarlyin Gujarati(exx. 6-7), thoughagreementis preferentiallywith agent
(Mistry 1976; cf. DeLancey 1979), it correlates more with case-markingthan
with case-role; agreement is always with an unmarkedNP if one is present.
X Dixon (1979:90) suggests that this is an unlikely situation, and it does seem to be rather rare.
Comparing this pattern with the data presented in Giv6n 1976 we find another point of contact
between viewpoint and topicalization phenomena.
9 It
is, of course, quite common for 3rd person 'agreement' to be 'realized' by zero-i.e., for
the verb to carry an agreement-marker when subject or agent is an SAP, but not when it is 3rd
person. It is debatable whether we should speak of 3rd person agreement in such a language: in
Tangut, at any rate, where person rather than role or grammatical function is the primary deter-
minant of agreement-marking, it is clear that the category of agreement applies only to SAP's.

632 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3 (1981)
Both case-markingand verb-agreementare, as we have seen, primarilyde-

pendent on aspect."' Once again, semantic role alone doesn't determineagree-
ment-which is to say that agreement, like case-marking,reflects more than
case-role. Gujarati(like English) is typical of a large numberof languages in
which agreementand lack of case-markingcoincide;" the patterntypified by
Nepali, in which they vary independently,seems less common. This suggests
that, in many languages, agreementand nominative/absolutivecase serve the
same or similarfunctions, and that their common function is specifically con-
nected with aspect and the EH.
VIEWPOINT AND ATTENTION FLOW
3.1. The explanation which I propose for the patterns described above is
based on two ultimately psychological notions, ATTENTIONFLOW (hereafter AF)
and VIEWPOINT. These notions are invoked within a view of semantics which
takes a significantpart of the semantic structureof a languageto be a list of
prototypescenes, each specifiedfor a canonicalset of participants(cf. Fillmore
1977a,b). A sentence describes a real or imagined event by invoking the
prototype scene of which it counts as an instance, and by identifying the
participantroles in the prototype with entities which exist in the universe of
discourse. In actual communication,not all aspects of the prototypeevent are
of equal interest, and all languageshave mechanismsfor markingthe relative
communicativeimportanceof the various entities and events in a sentence or
discourse. Viewpoint and AF are fundamentallyparameterswhich contribute
to determiningthe relative interest of various entities involved in an actual
witnessed event; but the terms are also applicable to linguistic mechanisms
which indicate values for these parametersin a sentence, thus allowing it to
be interpretedin a manneranalogousto that of an actualevent. I will distinguish
these two uses of the terms, where necessary, as NATURAL VS. LINGUISTIC AF
and viewpoint-the former referringto perceptualstrategies, the latter to lin-
guistic mechanisms. As we will see, case-marking,verb-agreementand voice-
marking, and constituent order (the mechanisms involved in SE, voice, and
other alternation patterns) are the chief markersof linguistic viewpoint and
AF.
3.2. ATTENTION
FLOWdetermines the linear order of NP's. The NP's in a
sentence are presented in the order in which the speaker wishes the hearerto
attend to them. Alternate NP orderings, as found in voice alternationsand
topicalizing shifts, are mechanismsfor managingAF.
Events have an inherent naturalAF, which recreates the flow of attention
involved in actually witnessing the event. The basis of this naturalAF is the
'o Mistry argues that agreement is dependent on case-marking; but without an explanatory
account of the case-marking pattern, this cannot be considered an explanation for either. Mistry's
evidence suggests that, in fact, case-marking and agreement are independently governed by aspect,
rather than one being contingent on the other (cf. fn. 11, below).
" Gujarati has a 'split accusative' case-marking pattern (cf. fn. 4), with the result that, in perfect
clauses with animate patients, both agent and patient are marked for case. In such clauses, agree-
ment is still with patient, which suggests that agreement and case-marking are independent of one
another, though subject to some of the same governing factors (in particular, aspect).

temporalorderingof phases of the event; other thingsbeing equal, the ordering

of NP's in a sentence will reflectthis temporalordering.Comparethe following:
(18) I drove from Bloomingtonto Philadelphia.
(19) 1 drove to Philadelphiafrom Bloomington.
Here 19 is a perfectly good English sentence, but it is clearly less naturalthan
18, i.e., it requires more context to make it a likely utterance. To say that it
'requiresmore context' is to say that the speaker must have a special reason
to make Philadelphia the starting-pointof linguistic AF, in order to outweigh
the naturaltendency to place it in a position reflectingits place in the physical
structure of the event. In other words, special motivation is required if one
chooses a sentence patternin which linguisticAF does not recapitulatenatural
AF.
In fact, Philadelphia cannot be the actual linguistic starting-pointin a sen-
tence describing this event. In both 18 and 19, the starting-pointof linguistic
AF is neither the Source nor the Goal, but rather the subject, which is se-
mantically (among other things) the Theme.'2 In English, as in many other
subject-forminglanguages,'3 subject is ordinarilythe linguistic starting-point
(and this fact constitutes part of the definition of subject-cf. MacWhinney
1977);but it needn't be. Consider the following:'4
(20) From BloomingtonI drove to Philadelphia.
(21) *To PhiladelphiaI drove from Bloomington.
Of the two locational prepositionalphrases used in describingthe event, the
one which representsthe semantic Source can be frontedand made the starting
point of linguistic AF; but the one which represents the Goal cannot. This is
because the Source represents the actual starting-pointof the event, and is
thus a naturalcandidate for linguistic starting-point.
3.3. ATTENTIONFLOWINTRANSITIVE
SENTENCES.
Like motion events, dative
and transitiveevents define space/time vectors; they prototypicallyare events
which begin at one point in space, and subsequentlyterminateat another. Just
as unmarkedlinguistic AF in a sentence describing a motion event is iconic,
following natural AF from Source to Goal, so unmarkedlinguistic AF in a
dative sentence is from giver to receiver, and in a transitive sentence is from
agent to patient."5Thus it is not an arbitraryfact that SO is the most common
12
The terms Source, Goal, and Theme are taken from the work of Gruber (e.g. 1976): in a
motion event, they refer to the onset point, the terminal point, and the moving entity,
respectively.
In other words, the prototype motion event involves a Theme which moves from Source to Goal.
'3 The term 'subject-forming language' is from Anderson 1979; like Li & Thompson's (1976)
'subject-prominent language' and Hale & Watters' (1973) 'subject-object language', this term im-
plies the claim that 'subject' is not a relevant category in all languages.
14 I owe these
examples to Lon Diehl.
'5 There is considerable evidence for considering that Agent and giver are subcategories of a
fundamental case-category which also includes Source, and that Patient and receiver constitute
a single category with Goal (see Anderson 1971, 1977, Diehl 1975, Fillmore 1977a). I will use
Source and Goal to refer to these broader categories (as in fn. 7), as well as in their narrower
spatial sense.

word-order type in human languages.16There is some evidence (cited and

discussed by MacWhinney, MS,who points out that the evidence is far from
conclusive) that young children tend to interpretthe first NP in a transitive
sentence as agent, disregardingmorpho-syntacticcues to the contrary; this
suggests that children expect linguistic structure to recapitulate perceptual
structure.
Further evidence that unmarkedlinguistic AF is that which recapitulates
naturalAF can be found in the study of voice alternations.Voice alternations,
like the order alternationsin 18-20, are mechanismsfor managingAF. Cross-
linguisticstudies of voice alternationsshow that unnaturalAF is highlymarked.
This is reflected in the fact that, althoughpassives in which the agent is men-
tioned are impossible in some languages, we find no languageswhich permit
agentivepassives but exclude agentless ones (Eckman1974).Even in languages
like English, which allow agentive passives, they seem much less frequentthan
the agentless type (Giv6n 1979a,esp. 59-60). Moreover, there is evidence that
in English, at least, agentless passives are acquiredwell before agentive pas-
sives (cf. Maratsos 1978). All this suggests that passives in which the agent is
mentioned are considerably less naturalthan agentless passives. This is con-
sistent with the AF Hypothesis, since an agentive passive constructionreverses
naturalAF-but if the agent is not mentioned, then the passive sentence pre-
sents only one end of the event, and there is no unnaturalpatient-to-agentAF.
In most languages which have an ergative or agent case-marker,it does not
indicateagentivityin the strict sense of the term(referringto the self-controlled
deliberate initiation of an action), but ratherthe starting-pointof naturalAF.
In a transitive event, this is by definitionthe first entity in the scene to move.
Consider this sentence:
(22) The driver's chest was crushed by the steering column.
Here (or in the active counterpart)the steering column counts as agent for all
morpho-syntacticpurposes. This explains the extremely common syncretism
of ergative or passive agent case with instrumental;the case-form does not
refer to agentivity (on which supposition its use for non-agentiveinstruments
is anomalous), but rather to activity in the initial phase of the event, which
notion is equally applicable to agents and instruments.Similarlyexplained is
the common syncretism of ergative/agentcase with ablative (see, e.g., An-
derson 1971);both cases mark naturalstarting-points.
If no moving entity is involved, e.g. in events of perception, naturalAF will
take as starting-pointthe most salient object. Salience correlateswith position
on the EH; hence the perceiver, which must be animateand is prototypically
human, is selected over the perceived as naturalstarting-point.Thus in Che-
pang, a Tibeto-Burmanlanguageof Nepal, perceiveris always in ergativecase,
and agentivity on the part of the perceiver is markedby dative/accusativecase
on the perceived NP (Caughley 1978):
(23) ngaa- i waa saay -naa-ng.
I-ERG bird hear-PRES-st
'I hear a bird.' (non-agentive)
16
I have no explanation for the fact that SO is not the universal pattern.

AN INTERPRETATION
OF SPLITERGATIVITY 635
(24) ngaa- Piwaa 2-kaay? saay 2-naa-ng.

I-ERG bird-DAT hear-PRES-1st
'I listen to a bird.' (agentive)
Clearly, ergative case in Chepang does not reflect agentivity, but rather natural
starting-point. Hence Case Theory has no particular problem in languages like
Tibetan, where some dialects (e.g. Lhasa) mark perceivers with ergative case,
while others (e.g. Balti) mark them as dative. The two dialects are not assuming
radically different semantic analyses of the prototypical perceptual event;
rather, Balti marks perceivers for their case-role, i.e. as Goal (as would be
predicted by the analysis of perception in, e.g., Fillmore 1968, Anderson 1971,
or Gruber 1967), while Lhasa assigns case-marking on the basis not of semantic
role but of natural AF.
3.4. VIEWPOINT. Since linguistic AF is strongly tied to the semantic (and
cognitive) structure of the event being described, while non-natural AF is (at
least in many languages) highly marked, we must explain what motivates the
existence of mechanisms for reversing it. Many if not all of the relevant
motivating factors are included in the category of viewpoint.'7 We are accus-
tomed to think of a sentence as describing an event from an external, objective
point of view;'8 but this is not always true. Novelists, film-makers, and lan-
guage-users are all aware that a scene may be described from a number of
points of view. Prototype scenes have, at most, three participant roles which
can be filled by human actors-and ordinarily no more than two.'9 (Note how
difficult it is to construct a simple sentence with even three human participants.
The only real productive possibilities are causative and benefactive construc-
tions; and it is significant that, in many languages, one or both of these can be
expressed only in syntactically complex sentences.) Thus there are, a priori,
several possible viewpoints from which such a scene can be described: the
external viewpoint of a disinterested observer, and a viewpoint associated with
each participant. Recent work (e.g. Fillmore 1977a,b, Kuno & Kaburaki 1977,
DeLancey 1978, Maran 1978, Zubin 1979) has shown that languages allow-
or require-a speaker to specify which of these viewpoints he is taking in
reporting an event, and that grammatical and lexical mechanisms exist, pre-
sumably in all languages, for specifying the viewpoint of a sentence.
The notion of viewpoint is most easily exemplified with simple motion events.
When we speak of movement from one point to another, we generally specify
whether or not it is toward the location of the speaker and hearer-i.e. whether
the viewpoint from which the motion is described is the terminal point of the
motion. If it is, an English speaker uses the verb come rather than the unmarked
17
As suggested in fn. 3, there are grounds for supposing that the complex of factors called
topicality or thematicity may be analysable in terms of the viewpoint category.
l' This is perhaps in part because linguists have become accustomed to analysing artificial
sentences having no pragmatic connection to any actual event or discourse context. It is interesting
that linguists' examples very seldom involve 1st or 2nd person participants.
'9 Cf. the discussion by Tesniere 1959 of valence, and of causativization as an increase in
valence-in which it is pointed out that all three-place verbs can be considered, at least seman-
tically, as causative versions of two-place verbs; thus give is equivalent to cause to have.

alternativego. This is the most concrete possible instance of viewpoint spec-

ification: the speaker describes an event from a particularlocation, which is
his actual location in space. Of course, Eng. come and its equivalentsin many
other languages are not limited to this concrete use as markers of natural
viewpoint. For various social and narrativepurposes(cf. Fillmore 1966, 1975),
a speaker will often take some contextually recoverable location other than
his own as his linguisticviewpoint, and marka motionevent as orientedtoward
that point by the use of come.
In English and many other languages, the markingof viewpoint for simple
motion events is entirely lexical. Motion verbs which are semantically more
complex than come/go and bring/takeare not specified for viewpoint orien-
tation, though many of them have lexical alternatives, built on go and come,
which are used if viewpoint specification is necessary. It is worth noting that
these specified alternates, e.g. go/come back or go/come out, are much more
colloquial than their neutral counterparts,return and exit; this reflects their
much greaterfrequency in actual pragmaticallyconstrainedspeech. Some lan-
guages use morphologicalor syntactic, ratherthan lexical, mechanismsfor this
function.20For example, in Jinghpaw, a Tibeto-Burmanlanguageof Yunnan
and northernBurma,the deictic orientationof sentences like 25-26 is provided
not by the motion-verbsequence sa wa, which is identicalin the two examples,
but by the r- and n- morphemeswhich precede the agreement-markers:
(25) MaGam gat de sa wa n-u 2 ai.
market to go n-3rd IND
'MaGam{is going/has gone} to market.'
(26) MaGam gat de sa wa r-u? ai.
market to go r-3rd IND
'MaGam{is coming/willcome} to market.'
Here the r- morpheme specifies terminalviewpoint; i.e., the speaker's view-
point is the terminal point of the motion. The n- morpheme, like Eng. go,
permits either onset or external viewpoint interpretation.(This and my other
Jinghpawexamples are discussed at greater length in DeLancey 1978, 1980;
see also Maran 1978, 1979.)
Viewpoint considerationscan provide the motivationfor alternativeorder-
ings of spatial Source and Goal, as in 18-19. One possible motivationfor the
Goal-first order in to Philadelphiafrom Bloomington would be that Philadelphia
was the location of the speech act. This distributionof sentence alternantswith
respect to speech situationsis parallelto that of go and come. The more marked
lexical alternantcome is used when the actual location of the speech act, or
the contextually established viewpoint, is the Goal of the motion event; the
same conditions can motivate the more marked Goal-Source order of con-
stituents. Such a use in 19 represents the sacrifice of naturalAF to natural
viewpoint.
20
A few languageshave no specific mechanismfor indicatingviewpointwith verbs of motion;
Russianis a well-knownexample.

3.5. VIEWPOINT INTRANSITIVE SENTENCES. The notion of viewpoint, like AF,

can be profitably extended from concrete motion to dative and transitive
events. Some languages provide strong evidence for such an extension. In
some dialects of Jinghpaw, for example, the n- and r- morphemes of sentences
25-26 alternate with (among others) two morphemes, d- and m-, which specify
a less concrete subcategory of viewpoint:
(27) nang shi-hpe ndaijaw d-it dai.
you he-DATthis give d-2nd IND
'You gave him this.'
(28) nang shi-hpe ndaijaw m-uV ai.
you he-DAT this give m-3rd IND
'He was given this by you.'
This suggests that dative and motion viewpoint may be varieties of a single
category. Similarly in Sizang Chin (Stern 1963) and Tiddim Chin (Henderson
1965), two closely related Tibeto-Burman languages of western Burma, a mor-
pheme -(h)ong-,2' between the prefixed subject agreement-marker and the verb,
indicates that a motion event is hither-directed-i.e. that it is described from
the terminal point of the motion vector (examples from Stern):
(29) kei ka-pai hi.
I Ist-go IND 'I go/went.'
(30) kei k-ong-pai hi.
I lst-ong-go IND 'I come/came.'
This morpheme can also specify the orientation of a dative or benefactive
sentence:
(31) hong-pe-tu hi.
give-FUT IND
'(She/He) will give it to me.'
(Third person subject is 'marked' by zero.) Here the recipient of the gift is not
explicitly mentioned, but is recoverable from the (h)ong-prefix, which specifies
that the event is being described from the viewpoint of the Goal, i.e. the
recipient, who must therefore be the speaker who is describing the event. (Cf.
Eng. Give it here!, which is likewise unambiguous as to the identity of the
intended recipient.)
The parallelism between motion and dative sentences is hardly surprising,
in view of the obvious and long-noted grammatical and semantic parallelism
of the two types. The dative scene is, after all, prototypically a motion event,
in which an object physically moves from one location to another. Even when
no concrete motion is involved, the identity of marking of giver and Source,
and of receiver and Goal, is widespread:
(32) I got my rotten temperament from my grandfather.
(33) He sold his house to the University.
21 This is
etymologically a grammaticalized verb 'come'. F. K. Lehman (p.c.) points out that
ex. 31 can also mean 'He will come and give it.'

638 LANGUAGE. VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3 (1981)
The extension of such a localist analysis to transitivity is somewhat more

controversial, but much the same sort of evidence can be adduced for it. In
particular,the syncretism of ablative with ergative, and of accusative with
dative and/or allative, is extremely frequent (see Anderson 1971, Diehl 1975).
For our purposes it is sufficient to note similarityof behavior with respect to
viewpoint-switching.For example, compare the following:
(34) a. She gave me a check.
b. I got a check from her.
(35) a. She kicked me. (cf. She gave me a kick.)
b. I was/got kicked by her.
Here the (b) sentences differ from the (a) alternantsin two significantways:
Goal ratherthan Source has been selected as subject,22and the Source (giver
in the dative sentences, and agent in the transitive)is prepositionallymarked
to indicate its role.23 In English dative and transitive sentences, one NP is
ordinarilyselected to be both linguisticviewpoint and linguisticstarting-point;
this double selection is the basis of the category of subject. The (b) sentences,
by selecting Goal as viewpoint-and thus starting-point-reverse naturalAF;
therefore Source must be markedfor its role.
There is an importantdifference between the interpretationsof viewpoint
in these examples vs. the simple motion cases of ?3.4. In the motion examples,
viewpoint has an extremely literal interpretation:the viewpoint is an actual
point, a spatial location. The prototypical viewpoint is the location of the
speech act, and motion events are specified as being directed (or not) toward
that locus-or a contextuallyestablishedsubstitute.In the dative and transitive
examples, however, viewpoint is associated not with a location as such, but
with a participant(althoughtypically the location of each participantdoes in
fact markan endpoint of an actual spatialvector defined by the event). View-
point is still a fundamentallydeictic notion, however; and if an SAP is also a
participantin the event being reported, then the most naturalviewpoint for
the sentence is with the SAP. This is the explanation for the difference in
naturalnessbetween passive sentences such as these:24
(36) I was flunked by Prof. Summers.
(37) Mary Summerswas flunked by me.
The reason for forsakingnaturalAF in a passive is to place the viewpoint NP
first, i.e. to make it the starting-pointof linguisticAF.25But I, as an actor in
22
Goal and Source are here used in the extended sense of fn. 15.
23
The vagueness of sentences like 34b, with regard to whether the Source was actually a willing
giver, is irrelevant here-though it is relevant to a complete discussion of the choice of give or
get as natural or inverted AF. I suspect that get sentences in which Source is not mentioned are,
like the analogous agentless passives, far more common than sentences like 34b in which AF is
aztually reversed.
24
This has sometimes been claimed to be a difference in grammaticality, but it certainly is not
(see Kato 1979).
25
The interaction between these and other factors in determining linguistic starting point in
English is discussed in illuminating detail in MacWhinney 1977.

an event, am a much more naturallocus of viewpoint in a sentence which I

utter than any 3rd person. The difference in inherenteligibility for viewpoint
status is in itself sufficient to motivate the choice of 36 in preference to its
active alternant,but it makes 37 a highlyunlikelychoice (thoughnot impossible,
at least in English).
We thus have the high end of the EH, i.e. the split between SAP's and all
other NP's, reflected in what we might, in currentterminology, call 'relative
availabilityfor demotion'. This distinction between SAP's and other NP's is
simply an instance of the fundamentallyspeech-act-centerednature of view-
point-the distinction between here, where you and I are, and everywhere
else, where everybody else is. (The deictic nature of the distinction between
SAP's and other NP's has long been noted; cf. Kurylowicz 1964,and especially
Benveniste 1946, 1956). This is exactly the split reflected by Sizang/Tiddim
(h)ong-, discussed above (exx. 29-31). This prefix can indicate orientationof
an event toward either SAP, as in the Tiddim sentence (Henderson):
(38) k-ong-mat-sak hi.
st-ong-catch-BENEFIND
'I've caught it for you.'
Here again the unspecified Goal is unambiguous,since ong- requireseither 1st
or 2nd person Goal, while k- identifies Ist person as subject and hence Source.
THEEH-SPLITPATTERN
4.1. SUBJECT-CODING PROPERTIES.As noted in the previous section, most
English sentences select the same NP as both the viewpoint and the starting-
point of AF. This NP is then the leftmost NP, the NP unmarkedfor case, and
the NP which governs verb-agreement.Leftmost position is, by definition, a
propertyof the starting-pointof linguisticAF. Nominative/absolutivecase and
(in many languages) verb-agreementare properties of the viewpoint NP (cf.
Zubin).Thus, if there are languagesin which viewpoint and starting-pointneed
not coincide, we would expect that these three 'subject' properties might be
distributedbetween two differentNP's.26This is precisely what we find in the
SE languages, where agreementand nominative/absolutivecase are sometimes
associated with the leftmost NP, dependingon whether naturalviewpoint and
naturalstarting-pointare the same NP.
4.2. THESAP/3RD PERSON
SPLIT.Consider again Kham sentences 1-4:
(1)' nga: nan-lay nga-poh-ni-ke.
I yOU-OBJ IA-hit-2P-PERF 'I hit you.'
(2) nan nga-lay na-poh-na-ke.
you I-OBJ 2A-hit-IP-PERF 'You hit me.
(3) nan no-lay na-poh-ke.
you he-OBi 2A-hit-PERF 'You hit him.
(4) no-e nan-lay poh-na-ke-o.
he-ERGyou-OBJhit-2P-PERF-3A 'He hit you.
In all these examples, the leftmost NP-the starting-pointof linguistic AF-
26 A
split may also occur when, for example, agreement codes neither viewpoint nor starting-
point, but a deep case-role, as in Nepali (?2.3).

is also the agent, i.e. the natural starting-point.When it is also an SAP, i.e.
a natural viewpoint locus, it is so marked by being in the nominative case.
Otherwise,it must be markedfor ergativecase, which identifiesit as the natural
starting-point.
Since the Kham verb agrees with two NP's, agreementcannot be associated
with viewpoint in the same straightforwardmanneras in English or Gujarati
(cf. ?6.1). Nevertheless the Khamagreementpatternreflects naturalviewpoint,
and in a particularlyinterestingway. SAP patient-markers(glossed 1P, 2P) are
suffixed directly to the verb root; there is no 3rd person patient-marker.SAP
agent-markers(IA, 2A) are prefixed (as in exx. 1-3). The 3rd person agent-
marker,however, occurs to the rightof all other suffixes (includingthe patient
suffixes), as in 4. Thus unmarkedconstituent order places natural starting-
point first,27regardlessof naturalviewpoint;but the orderof agreementaffixes
places naturalviewpoint first, regardlessof naturalAF. Note that this analysis
requires that 1st and 2nd persons count as equally naturalviewpoint loci, as
no rankingis reflected in affix order. This is what is predictedby the Viewpoint
Hypothesis, since both SAP's are prototypicallylocated at the deictic center
of the speech act.28Note that no rankingof the SAP's is indicatedby the case-
markingpattern either; exx. 1-2 show that either SAP, when it is the natural
starting-point,is markedas naturalviewpoint (by lack of case-marking),even
when the other SAP is present. The same patternis reflectedin the distribution
of Sizang/Tiddim(h)ong-, which can occur whenever there is an SAP Goal,
even when Source is the other SAP. These facts are amongthe data indicating
that the most natural situation is one in which viewpoint and starting-point
coincide.
The explanationgiven above for the Kham affixation patternreceives con-
firmationfrom an alteration of the pattern which occurs in the passive con-
struction. Here constituent order is reversed,29and the verb is marked with
an -o passive suffix (examples from Watters 1973):
(39) nga: ao zihmld nga-li-ke.
I this house lA-stay-PERF
'I stayed in this house.'
(40) ao zihmld nga: nga-li-o.
this house I lA-stay-PAss
'This house was lived in by me.'
27 The criticalreaderwill have noted alreadythat my remarkson Englishin ?4.1 do not consider
topicalizationphenomenasuch as those termed 'secondary'by Fillmore 1968or 'sentence-level'
by Foley & Van Valin 1977. In sentences like Him I won't listen to, the leftmost NP is marked
for case and does not controlagreement.Similarexceptionalinstancesoccur in Khamand in most,
if not all, of the other languagesdiscussed in this paper. The relationshipof such phenomenato
the primarytopicalizationphenomena(e.g. passivization)in termsof the frameworkproposedhere
remainsto be elucidated(see fn. 3).
28 There are
languageswhich rankthe SAP's in one or the other order(Silverstein 1976,Dixon
1979,and see ?4.3 below). I assume such rankingsto be arbitrary.
29The passive verb form also has several uses in which naturalconstituentorder is retained
(see Watters 1973, 1975).

AN INTERPRETATIONOF SPLIT ERGATIVITY 641
In this construction, the 3rd person agent-markeroccupies the same prefixed

slot as the SAP agent-markers:
(41) ao be:h ram-e o-jay-o.
this basket Ram-ERG3A-make-PAss
'This basket was made by Ram.'
Thus in all passive sentences, affix orderis agent-patient, regardlessof person.
This can be interpretedas compensatingfor the unnaturalAF in constituent
order:when linguisticAF is patient-agent, affix orderthen encodes the natural
AF which is not recoverable from constituent order, rather than encoding
naturalviewpoint as it does in active sentences.
4.3. DIRECTION-MARKING
ANDSPLITERGATIVITY.
A number of languages use
a differentmechanismfor markingthe identity or non-identityof naturalview-
point and natural starting-point-coding it directly on the verb, rather than
markingon NP's. This mechanism is best known from the Algonquian lan-
guages, but is also attested in Australia (Heath 1976), in Nootkan (Whistler
1980),and in Tibeto-Burman(DeLancey 1980).The structureof these direction-
marking systems is perfectly congruent to that of an EH-split system like
Kham, as Dixon 1979and Whistler 1980have pointedout. The essential feature
of a direction-markingsystem is that the verb in a transitive sentence is mor-
phologically markedwhen P is an SAP and A is not. This is called the inverse
configuration.Some direction-markinglanguagesalso mark the direct config-
uration, in which A is an SAP and P is not. Some also have distinct marking
for 1st person A -> 2nd person P, or for 2nd A - 1st P, or both; others class
one of these as direct, the other as inverse.
An example of a fairly simple direction-markingsystem is Nocte (or Nam-
sangia), a Tibeto-Burman language of easternmost Assam. Nocte marks agree-
ment on the verb in a pattern very similar to that of Tangut (?2.3). Agreement
is always with an SAP in preference to a 3rd person; unlike Tangut, Nocte
does have a 3rd person agreement-markerwhich occurs when no SAP is in-
volved. Like Tangut, Nocte marks agreement with 1st person patient when
agent is 2nd person; however, with 1st person agent and 2nd person patient,
agreementis for 1st person plural, thus avoiding commitmentto either of the
more or less equal-rankingSAP's. This distributionsuggests that Nocte ranks
1st person slightly above 2nd, and this supposition is borne out by the distri-
bution of the inverse marker.This is an h suffix placed between the verb and
the agreementsuffix in the 3A-2P, 3A--IP, and 2A--P configurations(data
from Das Gupta 1971):
(42) nga-ma nang hetho-e.
I-ERG you teach-lpl. 'I will teach you.'
(43) nang-ma nga hetho-h-ang.
you-ERG I teach-INv-lst 'You will teach me.'
(44) nga-ma ate hetho-ang.
I-ERG he teach-lst 'I will teach him.'
(45) ate-ma nga-nang hetho-h-ang.
he-ERGI-ACC teach-lNv-lst 'He will teach me.'

Given a language-specificrankingof Ist>2nd>3rd person, the distributionof

the h inverse suffix can be described in exactly the same terms as that of
ergativecase in Kham:when naturalviewpointand naturalstarting-pointagree,
there is no mark;when they conflict, the verb is markedwith h.30In a 3A->3P
configuration, there is no conflict, as neither participantis a more natural
viewpoint locus than the other; hence the inverse markerdoes not occur.3'
The facts concerningthe distributionof case-markingare far from clear. Sen-
tences 42-45, which were obviously elicited as a paradigmand hence must
count as artificialexamples, indicate consistent ergative marking,with an ac-
cusative split in which SAP's are markedas accusative when A is 3rd person.
In fact, neither pattern holds up consistently throughoutDas Gupta's data; in
particular,ergative markingis quite inconsistent, though its distributionsug-
gests a typical SAP>3rd split complicatedby some other unidentifiablefactor.
The existence of both regular EH-split markingand direction-markingin a
single language would seem to be redundant,and I know of only one clear
example. Jyarong, a Tibeto-Burmanlanguage of Szechwan, as described by
Jin et al. 1958, manifests both patterns;32and they reflect exactly the same
hierarchyin which 1st person slightlyoutranks2nd, while both stronglyoutrank
3rd:
(46) no-ks nga kd-u-nasno-ng.
you-ERGI T-INv-scold-lst 'You will scold me.'
(47) md-kd nga u-nasno-ng.
he-ERGI INv-scold-lst 'He will scold me.'
(48) nga ma nasno-ng.
I he scold-lst 'I will scold him.'
(49) nga no td-a-nasno-n.
I you T-A-scold-2nd 'I will scold you.'
(50) ma-kd no td-u-nasno-n.
he-ERGyou T-INv-scold-2nd 'He will scold you.'
Note that the distributionof the inverse prefix u- and the ergative postposition
ka is exactly the same;33both occur when and only when the more natural
30
In the perfective and negative paradigms,Nocte shows traces of an earlier direct-making
suffixwhichcame afterthe agreement-marker; unfortunatelythe tracesare not sufficientto indicate
its distribution(in particular,there is no evidence as to whether it markedthe lst->2nd or the
3rd-*3rdconfigurations).Availabledetails are given in DeLancey 1980.
31 In some North American
languages,3rd->3rdconfigurationsare marked.In the Algonquian
languages,proximateA --- obviative P counts as a direct configuration,and obviative A -> prox-
imate P as inverse. Whistlerdescribes a direction-markingsystem in Nootka which seems to be
sensitive to discourse-basedthematicitywhen two 3rd person participantsare involved;this pro-
vides furtherevidence for the relevance of the ViewpointHypothesis to the study of topicality.
32
The data as presentedin Jin et al. are under-analysed;the analysispresentedhere is justified
in DeLancey 1980.
33
It is not exactly the same when dual and pluralNP's are involved;accordingto the paradigms
presentedby Jin et al., the distributionof the ergativemarkerfollows a very complicatedpattern-
so that, for example, Ist persondual (but not singularor plural)agentstake ergativecase with 2nd
person dual or plural(but not singular)patients. The distributionof the inverse markershows no
such sensitivity, but 3rd--3rd configurationsare markedas inverse when agent is dual or plural,
but direct when agent is singular(the ergative markerremainsthroughout).

viewpoint is not the starting-point.Note furtherthat Jyaronghas another di-

rection-marker,34the a- prefix in 49. This occurs only with lst->2nd config-
urations. Now, 2nd->lst configurationscount as inverse, as shown by the
presence of the inverse and ergative morphemesin 46. Thus we should expect
49 to count as a direct configuration. But the present account of viewpoint
suggests that either or both of the configurationsinvolving both SAP's might
count as slightly ambiguous, even in a languagewhich imposes a rankingon
them. Thus the existence of a special markingfor one or both categoriescounts
as confirmingmy hypothesis.35
Also confirmatoryis the existence of languageswith 2nd> st rankingalong-
side languages with Ist>2nd and Ist=2nd; this demonstratesthat some uni-
versal principle determines the SAP>3rd ranking, but no such principle de-
terminesthe rankingof SAP's. The 2nd> 1st>3rd hierarchyis foundthroughout
the Algonquianfamily-where, typically, agreementprefixes index 2nd person
if there is one, 1st person otherwise, and 3rd person only if there is no SAP
participant.Potawatomi (Hockett 1966) can be taken as typical; the relevant
parts of the transitive animate paradigmare (V representsthe verb):
(51) 2-1 k-V 3->2 k-V-uk
1--2 k-V-un 1->3 n-V-a
2--3 k-V-a 3-> 1 n- V-uk
The prefixes are personal agreement-markers,k- 2nd, n- 1st. The suffixes are
direction-markers.Note that the distribution of agreement prefixes clearly
reflects a 2>1>3 hierarchy;but the direction-markers,as in Jyarong, reflect
the special statusof the 'local' SAP->SAPcategories.The directsuffix -a occurs
with the SAP---3rdconfigurations,but not with 2nd->lst; and the inverse -uk
occurs with 3rd->SAP, but not with lst->2nd, which has its own distinct suffix
-un. We may compare the Potawatomidirectionsystem with that of two other
Algonquianlanguages, ParryIsland Ojibwa(Rogers 1975)and Blackfoot (Tay-
lor 1969),36 as shown in Table 1.
POTAWATOMI OJIBWA BLACKFOOT
direct a a a
1->2 un ed o
2---1 0 i oki
inverse uk ego oki
TABLE1.
Both Blackfoot and Ojibwaassign agreementprefixes accordingto the same

system as Potawatomi;but again, the direction-markingsystem reflects a less
clear-cut hierarchy.Ojibwadistinctly markseach of the four categories, show-
34
On my analysis, Jyarong also has a direct morpheme, but it does not occur in the examples
cited here, and its explication would be irrelevant. It is described in DeLancey 1980.
35 The 2nd-,1st
configuration also has a separate mark. the substitution of kd- for ta-. One of
these occurs in every configuration, transitive or intransitive, which involves a 2nd person. This
series is discussed at greater length in Bauman 1975 and DeLancey 1980.
36
An earlier version of this paper, circulated by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, cited
Blackfoot forms from Uhlenbeck 1938 which were not correct. I am grateful to Allan Taylor for
pointing this out to me and furnishing the correct paradigm.

ing clearly that any rankingof the two SAP's is of a differentorder than the
rankingof SAP's over other NP's. Of particularinterestto the presentargument
is the Blackfoot system, which marks2nd-> st as inverse, so that the direction
system reflects a Ist>2nd ranking,ratherthan the 2nd> st rankingsuggested
by the order of agreementprefixes. Blackfoot thus presents evidence that the
rankingof 2nd>lst not only lacks universal validity (as suggested by Silver-
stein), but also lacks strongmotivationeven in those languageswhich manifest
it. We may conclude that both 2nd>lst and lst>2nd are possible variations
on the universal SAP>3rd theme.
4.4. VIEWPOINT ANDTHEEH. I have so far accounted for only the high end
of the EH-the distinctionbetween SAP's and all other NP's, which is equiv-
alent to the distinctionbetween the spatialdeictic center and everywhere else.
The EH also encompasses a ranking of various types of full NP's. A full
statement of the hierarchy, incorporatingall the widely-attested distinctions
with which I am familiar,is:
SAP's > 3rd pronouns > human > animate > naturalforces > inanimate
Only the two highest splits-SAP's over everything else and pronouns over
full NP's-are widely-attestedas governingSE marking;and so far as I khow,
only the SAP>3rd split ever governs direction-marking.Nevertheless, a num-
ber of other apparentlyviewpoint-relatedphenomenaare governed by the rest
of the EH. Consider, for example, the account given by Hawkinson& Hyman
1974of agreement in Shona, a Bantu languageof Zimbabwe. In Shona, as in
many African languages, the verb is markedwith a prefix reflectingthe noun
class of the subject. If the subject is a conjoined NP includingnouns of two
different classes, agreement will be plural, but noun-class agreementis with
the noun which is higher on the EH:
(52) murlumene imbwa va-ka-famba.
man and dog NC-PAST-walk
'The man and the dog walked.'
(53) *murume ne imbwa dza'-ka-fJmba.
man and dog NC-PAST-walk
The conjoined NP 'man and dog' can be cross-referencedonly by the plural
human prefix va, not by the animate plural prefix dza. Moreover, in such a
conjoinedNP, the noun higheron the EH mustbe the starting-pointof linguistic
AF:
(54) *imbwa ne murutmeva-ka-fdmbd.
Kuno & Kaburakiprovide a numberof examples of patternsin English which
reflect the EH; particularlyrelevant to my present concerns is its reflection
in the English voice alternation.Consider the following pairs of sentences:
(55) a. Many terroristsare motivated by patriotism.
b. Patriotismmotivates many terrorists.
(56) a. A woman was struck by lightning.
b. Lightningstruck a woman.
(57) a. My father was crippled by arthritis.
b. Arthritiscrippled my father.

In each case, the active alternantis considerablyless natural;i.e., it requires

considerablymore context, to make it a plausibleutterance,than the morpho-
logically more markedpassive alternant.Thus both English and Shona show
a tendency to make an NP higher on the EH the startingpoint, in preference
to one lower.
Clearly, distinctions between human and non-human,or animate and inan-
imate, are not susceptible to the same kind of deictic explanation as I have
suggestedfor the SAP>3rd split. Nevertheless there is abundantevidence that
higherposition on the EH counts as highereligibilityfor viewpoint placement.
Kuno & Kaburakisuggest the notion 'empathy' (whence the term 'Empathy
Hierarchy')as a solution to this problem.When the event being reporteddoes
not involve either SAP as a participant,viewpoint may be placed with either
participant.Kuno & Kaburakisuggestthat speakers,beinganimateand human,
are more likely to 'empathize with' (i.e. take the viewpoint of) humanbeings
than animals, and of animalsthan inanimates.(The same solution is suggested
by Zubin, who describes the EH as a scale of 'egocentrism'.)On this account,
then, the entire EH can be interpretedin terms of relative eligibilityfor view-
point placement.
4.5. THEEH ANDNATURAL
AGENTIVITY.
An explanation of the EH-split pat-
tern which has gained some currency in the past few years is based on an
interpretationof the EH in terms of a notion of naturalagentivity.This account,
proposed by Silverstein 1976and Comrie 1978a,and seconded by Dixon 1979,
maintainsthat each NP type is a more naturalagent than any NP lower on the
hierarchy, and a less naturalagent than any higher. This distributionof case-
marking is thus susceptible to a functional explanation, according to which
NP's that are inherently likely agents needn't be markedto show their role;
but those that are inherentlyless likely to function as agents must, when they
do occur as agents, be markedfor their role.
As we shall see in ?6.2, the interpretationof at least partof the EH in terms
of naturalagentivity is attested in languages. Nevertheless, a numberof ob-
jections must be raised to this hypothesis as an explanationof the SE pattern.
To begin with, it does not provide a convincing interpretationof the entire
EH. While it is intuitively clear that, in general, animate beings are more likely
first movers than inanimates-and, at least in the world of human discourse,
that humansare more likely agents than non-humans-it is far from clear that
any such ranking will operate between SAP's and human 3rd persons. Thus,
while the Natural Agentivity Hypothesis allows for a split at any point along
the hierarchy, we might expect the split in ergative-markingto occur more
commonly between humanand non-human,or between animateand inanimate
NP's, than between SAP's and other NP's. In fact we find just the opposite:
the majorityof attested SE patternsfollow the SAP>3rd split. The only other
widespread pattern is the split between pronouns and full NP's; other patterns
are attested only rarely. This is, of course, exactly what is predicted by the
Viewpoint Hypothesis, accordingto which SAP>3rd is the most naturalpos-
sible split.
A similar problem concerns the ranking of the SAP's. Presumably, if human

646 LANGUAGE. VOLUME 57. NUMBER 3 (1981)
linguistic ability or cognition, or the realities of existence, involve some uni-

versal ranking of likely agents, 1st and 2nd persons should be universally
ranked in one or the other order. Silverstein's markednessanalysis predicts
2nd>lst ranking;Dixon 1979, apparentlyon intuitive grounds, suggests that
lst>2nd is correct. Dixon notes that the questionis controversial,and suggests
the possibility that the SAP's constitute a single type on the hierarchy.This,
as we have seen, is correct; 1st and 2nd person do prototypicallyconstitute
a single deictic category, and hence a single viewpoint category.
A furtherobjection to the NaturalAgentivity Hypothesis as an explanation
of the SE patternis that it fails on two counts of insufficientgenerality:it can
explain neither all the manifestationsof the EH nor all the manifestationsof
the SE pattern. For example, no explanationin terms of inherent agentivity
will adequately account for the differences in naturalnessamong exx. 55-57.
It is true that the low-EH agents occur with the agent-markerby in the more
naturalpassive versions; but it is hardlyplausiblethat the function of passive
in such cases is to apply agent-markingto inherentlyunlikely agents. Indeed,
lightningand arthritisare very likely sources of transitiveevents. Clearly, the
significanteffect of the choice of the passive constructionis to place the more
animate NP in leftmost position; agentivity is not relevant.
The NaturalAgentivity Hypothesis not only fails to accountfor the full range
of manifestationsof the semantic aspect of the EH-split pattern(i.e. the EH);
it also fails to account for the range of manifestationsof its morphological
aspects, i.e. the variation in case-marking.Recall the suggestion in ?2.2 that
the absence of case-markingseems to have a functionof its own. The hypothesis
presented by Silverstein and by Comrie doesn't allow this interpretation;it
supposes simply that case-markingis present when it is likely to be needed,
and absent when superfluous.On this account, no connection exists between
the two attested SE patterns;it must be purely coincidentalthat the aspectual
and EH-split patterns manifest precisely the same morphologicalalternation.
But an account of the EH-split pattern which permits an explanationof this
parallelismis more satisfactory than one which does not. As we shall see in
the next section, my hypothesis can capture the parallelismbetween the two
patterns.
VIEWPOINT AND ASPECT
5.1. PERFECTIVE ANDIMPERFECTIVE.37 The aspectual SE pattern associates

what I have identified as viewpoint-marking morphology (i.e. nominative/ab-
solutive case and verb-agreement) with agent in imperfective aspect, and with
patient in perfective. Thus a unitary account of split ergativity requires a prin-
cipled association between terminal (patient) viewpoint and perfective aspect.
(If we assume that onset or agent is the unmarked viewpoint choice-i.e. that,
in the unmarked configuration, viewpoint and starting-point coincide-then
accusative morphology in imperfective requires no special explanation. Note
that this assumption is borne out in all the patterns discussed so far.)
37 The argument in this section is given in more detail and with further exemplification in
DeLancey 1979.

I have described naturalAF as reflectingthe temporalstructureof the event

described. This can, again, be most clearly illustrated with an example of
concrete motion. Compare ex. 18, 1 drove from Bloomington to Philadelphia,
with 58 as describingthe same event:
(58) I drove from 8 A.M. till 7 P.M.
At 8 A.M., I am in Bloomington;at 7 P.M., I am in Philadelphia.The space and
time vectors are co-extensive, and their endpoints coincident; physicists (and
perhaps young children-see Piaget 1946) would consider them two descrip-
tions of a single four-dimensionalspace/time vector. Clearly the same applies
to (at least prototypical) transitive events; the time elapsing from.onset to
terminationmay be so brief as not to be worth mentioning, but a transitive
event does indeed originatewith the agent at one point in time, and terminate
at the patient at a later point.
It therefore seems naturalto interpretaspect as the temporalanalog of the
spatial and transitive viewpoint specification discussed above,38and to view
perfective aspect as a specification of terminal viewpoint, analogous to the
passive (terminalviewpoint with respect to the transitivevector) and to 'come'
verbs (terminalviewpointwith respect to a purely spatialvector). The aspectual
SE languages, then (as I have argued in detail elsewhere, DeLancey 1979),
don't permit a conflict between aspect and viewpoint assignment:perfective
aspect requires that viewpoint be with the NP associated with the temporal
terminalpoint, i.e. the patient. Then the morphologicalalternationin Gujarati
(exx. 6-7) is precisely what we would expect; in the perfective, agreement,
markingviewpoint, is with patient,and the agentis markedfor case-indicating
that it is NOTthe viewpoint, even though it is the starting-point.The aspectual
and EH-split patterns are thus parallel:in both, viewpoint placement is con-
strained;and when the constraintspreventthe naturalstarting-pointfrom being
selected as viewpoint, it must be marked as starting-pointby ergative case-
marking.
5.2. PERFECT
ANDINFERENTIAL.
The account of perfective aspect given here
provides a naturalinterpretationof the distinctionbetween the categories PER-
FECTIVE
and PERFECT
(Comrie 1976b) as parallel to the difference between a
'loose' and a strict interpretationof a 'come' verb. Perfective views an event
from its terminalpoint, but there is no necessary relationbetween that terminal
point and the speech act. Perfect, by contrast, takes NOW,the temporallocation
of the speech act, as viewpoint. Thus it comes as no surpriseto find 'come'
verbs used as markersof the perfect, as in Thai:39
(59) khaw lap maa haa chuamooy le'w.
he sleep come five hour PERF
'He's been sleeping for five hours [now].'
This in turn allows an illuminatingaccount of the inferentialinterpretation
of perfect aspect discussed by Comrie 1976b. In a number of languages, a
38 For
present purposes, the term 'aspect' refers only to the perfective/imperfective distinction.
39
My understanding of various aspectual phenomena in Thai has benefited greatly from dis-
cussions with Sarojini Huvanandana.

perfect constructionis ordinarilyinterpretedas reportinginferenceratherthan

direct knowledge. Georgianhas such a constructionas part of a three-way SE
pattern(examples from Boeder 1967;the over-all patternof case-markingand
agreementis discussed in DeLancey 1979):
(60) kaceb-i cer-en ceril-s.
men-NOMwrite letter-DAT
'The men are writinga letter.' (imperfect)
(61) kaceb-ma da-cer-es ceril-i.
men-ERG AoR-write-3pl. letter-NoM
'The men wrote a letter.' (aorist)
(62) kaceb-s u-cer-ia-t ceril-i.
men-DAT3rd-write-PERF-PL
letter-NoM
'The men have [apparently]written a letter.' (perfect)
Here 62 would be used if the speakerhas inferentialreason to believe the truth
of the proposition-perhaps he finds a letter in the room which the men have
just vacated-but it does not reportan event whichthe speakerhas witnessed.40
Such a constructionis the temporalequivalentof an agentless passive, in that
both reflect a constraint on reversed AF. In a language which allows only
agentless passives, selection of the transitive terminal point (the patient) as
viewpointmakes it impossibleto includethe transitivestarting-point(the agent)
in the picture presented; speaker cannot ask hearer to 'look backward'down
the transitivity vector. Likewise, in languages which place an inferentialin-
terpretationon the perfect, the placement of viewpoint at or beyond the tem-
poral terminal point excludes an interpretationin which the onset point is
actually included in the picture presented. Again, we can interpretthis as a
constraint on directing the hearer's attention 'backward'against the flow of
the time vector.
This view of the structureof inferentialconstructionsfits well with Slobin
& Aksu's analysis of the Turkishperfect/inferentialparticlemi~; they accom-
modate a wide range of uses within a general definition according to which
mis indicates that a sentence reports an event known to the speaker only by
inference from a resultant state, with no first-handknowledge of the process
which has led up to that state. It is significant,for purposes of the argument
to be presented below, that the speakermay indeed have first-handknowledge
of the terminalpoint of the event, so long as it takes him by surprise, i.e. if
he is unaware of any phases of the event precedingits culmination.Thus the
sentence
(63) Kemal gel-mis.
come-mis 'Kemal came.'
This could be spoken if the speaker sees Kemal's coat, or has been informed
40
Some readers of an earlier draft of this paper objected, correctly, that since the inferred agent
in this construction is in dative rather than ergative case (note that Georgian has a distinct ergative
case), the perfect should not be considered an ergative construction. However, the important point
for my purpose is that the agent is marked for a case other than nominative, and thus is marked
as not being the viewpoint NP.

of Kemal's arrival, but has not yet seen Kemal himself; but it could also be
used if the speaker opens the front door to Kemal's knock and sees Kemal
standingthere, providingthat Kemal's visit comes as a surprise-i.e. if, until
he opened the door, the speaker had no idea that Kemal might be coming.
Syuwa, a Tibetan language of Nepal, has a similar semantic category, in
which an inferential construction 'is also used when the speaker reports an
event whose temporalorigin is inaccessible to him' (Hoehlig 1978:21):
(64) dang kongmu nuphela singha durbar nangla mei chii-du.
yesterday night midnight (place name) inside fire burn-PERF
'Yesterday evening in the middle of the night a fire broke out in
Singha Durbar[it seems].'
This is spoken by someone who had gone to watch the fire, and thus had first-
hand knowledgethat a fire had brokenout, but hadn'tbeen there to see it start.
VIEWPOINT, ATTENTION FLOW, AND AGENTIVITY
ANDINADVERTENCE.
6.1. INTENTION The Sinhala language (Gair 1976) has
a 'passive' construction,41the most common interpretationof which is that the
precipitatingof the event by the agent was inadvertent:42
(65) mam pingaan binda.
I(NOM) plate broke
'I broke the plate [on purpose].'
(66) man-atin pingaan binduna.
I(OBL)-byplate broke(P)
'I broke the plate [accidentally].'
There is an obvious analogy here with an inferential construction used when
only the terminal point of an event is directly perceived by the speaker: the
difference between an accidental and a purposefulact is precisely in whether
the actor is aware of all phases or only of the act's termination.In a deliberate
act, all phases, from inception to completion, are present to the consciousness
of the agent; but in an inadvertentoccurrence, only the terminationis present
(even though an objective phase-by-phase description of the two events might
be identical: the fingers relax, the plate falls ...) The pattern of case-marking
in the Sinhalaalternationcan thus be considered analogousto the SE patterns
discussed above: unmarked viewpoint is the onset point of the event; the
assignment of linguistic viewpoint to the terminalpoint is indicated morpho-
logically by markingthe naturalstarting-pointfor case. The interpretationof
the sentence as reportingan inadvertentevent, like the inferentialinterpretation
of a perfect, results from a constraint on reversed AF; the terminalphase of
41
The characterization of this verb form as 'passive' is quite misleading, as pointed out by Gair
1970. What Gair calls the 'P' form of the verb can occur with intransitive as well as transitive
verbs, with the same reading of inadvertence. This alternation of verb form in Sinhala is thus
functionally equivalent to the case-marking alternation in the 'active' languages discussed in ?6.3.
42
There is also a capabilitive interpretation, reminiscent of the use of the Ilocano passive
described by Schwartz 1976, the reading of which is that the agent is capable of or good at the act
described.

the event can be taken as the viewpointonly if earlierphases took place outside
the actor's awareness.
6.2. ATTENTION
FLOWANDCONTROL.
We noted in ?3.3 that considerable
cross-linguisticevidence exists for an association between agentivity and left-
most position. This association is predicted by the interpretationof agent as
the first mover in a transitive event, i.e. the startingpoint of naturalAF. In
?6.1, I have suggested an interpretationof the stricter sense of the notion of
agentivity, based on the AF concept. We find a most interestingconfirmation
of this latter interpretationin an EH-based constrainton word order in Navajo
transitive sentences.
Navajo has a now-famous alternation,in transitive sentences with full NP
actors, between a construction in which transitiveagent precedes patient and
a 'passive' in which patient precedes agent. The roles of the two NP's are not
markedon the NP's themselves, but are reflected in the choice of agent agree-
ment prefix on the verb; the 3rd person agent prefix yi- indicates that agent
precedes patient, bi- that patient precedes agent. The choice of order is fac-
ultative only when agent and patient are of the same rank on the Navajo
version of the EH (see, among others, K. Hale 1973, Creamer 1974,
Witherspoon 1977, Saville-Troike& McCreedy 1979). Otherwise it must op-
erate so as to place whichever NP is higher on the EH in leftmost position,
regardlessof semantic role:
(67) a. ti? dzaanez yi-ztat.
horse mule 3rd-kickedit
'The horse kicked the mule.'
b. dzaaneez t1i bi-ztal
mule horse 3rd-kickedit
'The mule got kicked by the horse.'43
(68) a. hastiin 1tf? yi-ztat
man horse 3rd-kickedit
'The man kicked the horse.'
b. *tii2 hastiin bi-ztal.
(69) a. */((? hastiinyi-ztat.
horse man 3rd-kickedhim
b. hastiinlti bi-ztal.
man horse 3rd-kickedhim
'The man got kicked by the horse.'
Now, it is clear from 67 that Navajo does not requirelinguistic AF to follow
naturalAF; a patientcan in some circumstancesprecedean agentin a sentence.
Thus the unacceptabilityof 68b must be connected with the higherrankingof
men than of horses on the EH. This conclusion is confirmed by the unac-
ceptabilityof agent-patient order in 69a; in both 68 and 69, the higher-ranking
NP must precede.
43 The 'passive' examples might well be glossed 'got himself V-ed', in order to approximate the
actual force of the Navajo sentences; cf. below and Witherspoon.

Accordingto Witherspoon,this is not simplyan instanceof naturalviewpoint

considerationsbeing given priorityin determininglinguisticAF, as in English
examples 55-57. Rather, it reflects a Navajo interpretationof the lower end
of the EH in terms of naturalagentivity. To the Navajo speaker, 67a traces
the origin of the event of the horse's volition, while 67b attributesthe kicking
to the mule's carelessness (or perhaps masochism) in allowing itself to be
kicked. In other words, the first NP is considered to have a causal role in
bringingabout the event. Thus 68a is better than 68b because, in this world,
men can kick horses if they like, without the victim's having much say in the
matter. But 69b is better than 69a because a man who gets kicked by a lower
animalcan be assumed to have let himself in for it; men with sense enough to
stay out of the way will never end up being kicked by horses.
This is a case of linguisticAF encoding what is perceived as inherentnatural
AF-but tracing naturalAF back, not to the literal first mover, but to what
is considered to be the first cause. This is the same interpretationof AF
discussed in ?6.1, where an event vector is considered to originate with an
actor who sets about causingthe event to occur, but not with an actor to whom
the event comes as a surprise.The parallelismof the Navajo and Sinhalacases
is pointed up by the report (cited by Saville-Troike& McCreedy)that many
Navajo speakers will accept a sentence like 'The man was riding a horse' in
the bi- form, with 'horse' preceding'man', if it is understoodthat the man was
drunkand thus not in control of the event. (Note that such exemptions vitiate
the notion of an absolute hierarchy of inherent agentivity; what is involved
here is not the abstract potential agentivity attributableto NP types, but the
actual degree of agentivity attributableto real entities in the universe of
discourse.)
6.3. THE 'ACTIVE'-TYPELANGUAGES.
This line of argument provides us with
an explanationfor the distributionof case-forms in the so-called 'active'-type
languages, such as Batsbi and Eastern Pomo (McLendon 1978).Eastern Pomo
is an EH-split languagein which pronounsare markedin transitive sentences
accordingto the nominative-accusativepattern:
(70) mi'p' mip-al sak'a
he(NOM) he-Acc killed 'He killed him.'
A pronominalsubject of an intransitiveverb which is necessarily volitional is
in the unmarkedagent-case:
(71) mip' kaluhuya 'He went home.'
But that of a necessarily non-volitionalintransitive(e.g. 'be burned', 'sneeze',
'forget', 'go crazy') is in the same case as a transitivepatient:
(72) mi'p-alxa bakutma.
he-Acc water fell 'He fell in the water.'
Some intransitive verbs can take either construction, depending on whether
they are to be interpretedas volitional or inadvertent(the 1st and 2nd person
sg. pronounforms are suppletive; here ha' is agent case, and wi patient):
(73) ha ba'tec'ki 'I got bumped [on purpose].'

(74) wi ba tec'ki 'I got bumped [accidentally].'

This alternationis parallel to the Sinhala example in that, when the event
is presented as accessible to consciousness only at its termination,the actor
takes the markedcase-form. Both Sinhalaand EasternPomo assign viewpoint
with respect to an event vector which has its origin not at the onset of the
perceptibleevent-i.e. at the inception of action on the part of the transitive
agent or intransitiveactor-but rather at the onset of a causal chain leading
to the occurrence of the event. In the event of a deliberateact, the onset point
of the event vector is with the actor at the point in time when he first intends
the act, rather than the point at which he initiates action. When an event
originatesin a decision on the part of the actor, then the actor is both starting-
point and viewpoint;this is reflectedin its unmarkedcase-form.Whenan event
originatessomewhere other than with a decision on the part of the actor, then
viewpoint (still associated with the actor) and starting-pointdo not coincide,
with the result that the actor is in markedcase. Thus case assignmentin these
languagesis parallelto what we have seen in SE languages:the unmarkedcase
indicates that starting-pointand viewpoint coincide, the markedcase that they
do not.
The use of patient case-markingfor the inadvertentactor in Eastern Pomo
is just what would be predicted by Case Theory, since the actor is the Goal
of an event generated elsewhere, ratherthan the Source (agent) of the event.
The content of the case-markingis thus analogous to the dative subjects of
verba sentiendi in South Asian languagesand elsewhere (includingmany 'ac-
tive'-type languages, according to Klimov 1974). Batsbi also has agent-case
subjects as volitional,44and patient-case subjects as inadvertent actors (cf.
Deseriev):
(75) ax so kottov.
I annoy
you(ERG) 'You're botheringme.'
(76) smiaki-ov xo vuic'no.
man-ERGyou fed 'The man fed you.'
(77) ax it'ax.
you(ERG)run 'You're running.'
(78) xo maisvar.
you(ABss) were hungry 'You were hungry.'
But in Batsbi (as can be seen more clearly from exx. 11-12), the agent case
is the more markedform-thus precludingan explanationin termsof viewpoint
assignment,as suggestedfor EasternPomo. The contradictionis only apparent,
however, since Batsbi, unlikeEasternPomo, is a consistentlyergativelanguage;
i.e.. all transitive agents are marked with ergative case.45 Since the ergative
44
This is not an ergative case in the strict sense of the word, since it also marks some intransitive
subjects.
45
However, ergative case-marking distinguishes animate from inanimate agents in that distinct
case-markers are used: one form marks animates, the other instruments and inanimate agents.
Thus Batsbi, like Navajo, recognizes a hierarchy of inherent agentivity. Note, however, that this
is not the sort of split predicted by the Natural Agentivity Hypothesis, since more plausible as
well as less plausible agents are marked as agents.

case-form doesn't alternate with a nominative form in sentences with two

possible viewpoints, its presence cannot be connected with viewpoint speci-
fication. The Batsbi ergative marker thus carries only its own semantic content,
which is the identification of an NP as starting point. We conclude that Batsbi
marks the volitional/inadvertent distinction just like Eastern Pomo, marking
a volitional actor as the starting-point of an event vector, and an inadvertent
actor as the terminal point, depending on whether the event has its origin in
the actor's intention or elsewhere.
CONCLUSION
7. All the variable case-marking patterns which we have examined can be
explained in terms of viewpoint and starting-point of AF. Ergative case-marking
labels the starting-point when it is not also the viewpoint; when viewpoint and
starting-point coincide, the NP is not marked for case. Leftmost position marks
starting-point, while verb-agreement, in many of the languages we have looked
at, indicates viewpoint.
The three major patterns of split case-marking which we have considered-
the EH-split, the aspectual split, and the active pattern-differ from one
another in what aspect of the event vector is paramount in assigning view-
point and AF values. The two endpoints of an event vector are simultaneously
points in space, points in time, and entities in the universe of discourse. The
EH-split pattern assigns viewpoint on the basis of the identities of the occu-
pants of the two endpoints of the event vector; the typical pattern is one in
which viewpoint placement is deictically constrained,46 so that it must be
placed at the endpoint occupied by an SAP if possible. The aspectual split pat-
tern assigns viewpoint with respect to the temporal aspect of the event vector,
with terminal viewpoint corresponding to the attainment of the terminal point
by the actors in the event.
There is another difference in principle between these two approaches to
viewpoint assignment. Note that, in the EH-split pattern, viewpoint is assigned
with respect to the actual point of view of speaker and hearer, both of whom
are prototypically external (at the time of the speech act) to the event-even
if one or both were or will be participants in the event. In the aspectual split,
viewpoint is assigned with respect to the actual point of view of a participant
in the event; perfectivity as terminal viewpoint is the point of view of an actor
who has reached the end of the event. This same distinction constitutes the
difference between the expression of inference and of volition. These share a
more abstract interpretation of the event vector, in which it represents not the
actual unfolding of an event in space/time, but its development from potentiality
to realization.47 Here the starting-point represents the cause of the event's
46
There is some reason to believe that the distinction between old and new information can be
interpreted as a deictic notion, and thus that the pronoun vs. full-NP split pattern may also have
a deictic interpretation. Note, for example, in ?4.3, that some North American direction-marking
systems treat the proximal 3rd -> obviative 3rd configuration as direct, and obviate -- proximal
as inverse.
47
Other manifestations of this interpretation of the event vector have been described in unpub-

becoming real, and the terminal point its culmination in reality. In these lan-
guages, viewpoint placed at the starting-point indicates that the event is tracked
from its inception; terminal viewpoint indicates that the event enters conscious
awareness only when it is realized. The difference between the marking of
inference vs. first-hand knowledge and inadvertence vs. volition is that the
first distinction represents the point of view of an external observer-the
speaker-while the second represents a point of view associated with the actor
in the event. (In this connection, it is interesting that the marking of volitionality
in Batsbi is applicable only to SAP's; in other words, one does not make
insupportable inferences about the awareness of 3rd persons.)
Thus the framework suggested here allows a unitary account of several
apparently disparate phenomena. It should be noted that the basic concepts
invoked here, viz. viewpoint and AF, do not have to be taken as given in the
sense of the 'primes' of Relational Grammar, or of the 'core semantico-syn-
tactic relations' named by Dixon (1979:61): transitive subject, transitive object,
and intransitive subject. They are, rather, hypotheses about human cognitive
and perceptual structure; as such, they are subject to empirical investigation
by methods other than those of theoretical linguistics.48
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An Interpretation of Split Ergativity and Related Patterns

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

(EH), and of similarly governed direct/inverse systems, in terms of the hy-

' In much of this

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which outrank non-human animates, which in turn outrank inanimates. In the

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

(7) ramesh-e pen khdrid-y-i.

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language. Inverse patternsof EH or aspectual split, with ergative morphology

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

(13) md hdri-lai kitap din-chu.

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Both case-markingand verb-agreementare, as we have seen, primarilyde-

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temporalorderingof phases of the event; other thingsbeing equal, the ordering

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word-order type in human languages.16There is some evidence (cited and

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

(24) ngaa- Piwaa 2-kaay? saay 2-naa-ng.

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alternativego. This is the most concrete possible instance of viewpoint spec-

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3.5. VIEWPOINT INTRANSITIVE SENTENCES. The notion of viewpoint, like AF,

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The extension of such a localist analysis to transitivity is somewhat more

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an event, am a much more naturallocus of viewpoint in a sentence which I

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This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

In this construction, the 3rd person agent-markeroccupies the same prefixed

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Given a language-specificrankingof Ist>2nd>3rd person, the distributionof

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

viewpoint is not the starting-point.Note furtherthat Jyaronghas another di-

Both Blackfoot and Ojibwaassign agreementprefixes accordingto the same

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This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

In each case, the active alternantis considerablyless natural;i.e., it requires

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linguistic ability or cognition, or the realities of existence, involve some uni-

5.1. PERFECTIVE ANDIMPERFECTIVE.37 The aspectual SE pattern associates

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I have described naturalAF as reflectingthe temporalstructureof the event

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perfect constructionis ordinarilyinterpretedas reportinginferenceratherthan

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This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

Accordingto Witherspoon,this is not simplyan instanceof naturalviewpoint

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

(74) wi ba tec'ki 'I got bumped [accidentally].'

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

case-form doesn't alternate with a nominative form in sentences with two

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

-. 1978a.Ergativity.Syntactic typology, ed. by WinfredP. Lehmann,329-94. Aus-

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

J. A. 1965. Tiddim Chin: A descriptive analysis of two texts.

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM

TAYLOR, ALLANR. 1969. A grammar of Blackfoot. Berkeley: University of California

This content downloaded from 143.54.11.131 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:45:09 PM