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Date Available
10-13-2015
Year of Publication
2015
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Linguistic Theory and Typology (MALTT)
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Linguistics
Faculty
Dr. Gregory T. Stump
Faculty
Dr. Gregory T. Stump
Abstract
Most western Iranian languages, despite their broad differences, show a common quality when it comes to the verbal agreement of past transitive verbs. Dabir-moghaddam (2013) and Haig (2008) discuss it as a grammaticalized split-agreement to encode S, A, and P, which is sensitive to tense and transitivity, and uses split-ergative constructions for its past transitive verbs. Laki shows vestiges of the same kind of verb-agreement ergativity (Comrie 1978) by using a mixture of affixes and clitics for subject and object marking.
In this thesis, I investigate how the different classes of verbs show agreement using four distinct property classes. Considering the special case of the {3 sg} and using Hopper and Traugott's pattern for the cline of grammaticality (2003), I argue that although Laki has already lost the main part of its ergative constructions, the case of the {3 sg} marking is yet another sign that this language is in the process of absolute de-ergativization and its hybrid alignment system is moving toward morphosyntactic unity. As a formal representation of the Laki data, the final part of the thesis provides a morphosyntactic HPSG analysis of the agreement patterns in Laki, using the grammar of cliticized verb-forms (Miller and Sag 1997).
Recommended Citation
Moradi, Sedigheh, "LAKI VERBAL MORPHOSYNTAX" (2015). Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics. 9.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ltt_etds/9
