ERGATIVIT Y ARGUMENT STRUCTURE AND GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS a dissertation submitted to the department of linguistics and the committee on graduate studies of stanford university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy Christopher D Manning December c Copyright by Christopher D Manning All Rights Reserved ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate in scop e and in quality as a dissertation for the degree of Do ctor of Philosophy Joan Bresnan Principal Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate in scop e and in quality as a dissertation for the degree of Do ctor of Philosophy Ivan A Sag I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate in scop e and in quality as a dissertation for the degree of Do ctor of Philosophy Peter Sells I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate in scop e and in quality as a dissertation for the degree of Do ctor of Philosophy Mary Dalrymple Approved for the University Committee on Graduate Studies iii Abstract This dissertation considers the prop er treatment of syntactic ergativity arguing for a framework that decouples prominence at the levels of grammatical relations and argument structure The result is two notions of sub ject grammatical sub ject and argument structure sub ject as in Schachter and Guilfoyle Hung and Travis and a uniform analysis of syntactically ergative and Philippine languages Both these language groups allow an inverse mapping in the prominence of the two highest terms b etween argument structure and grammatical relations A level of argu ment structure although app earing in much recent work is shown to b e particularly well motivated by the examination of ergative languages A study of Inuit Tagalog Dyirbal and other languages shows that constraints on imp erative addressee and controllee selection antecedent of anaphors and the controller of certain adverbial clauses are universally sensitive to argument structure Thus these phenomena are always accusative or neutral and we can explain why passive agents and causees can generally bind reexives However constraints on relativization topicalization fo cussing or questioning sp ecicity or wide scop e coreferential omission in co ordina tion etc are shown to b e universally sensitive to grammatical relations Examining just these phenomena which are sensitive to grammatical relations we see that many languages are indeed syntactically ergative and so this option must b e countenanced by linguistic theory iv Acknowledgments My choice for a dissertation topic can b e traced to an interest in ergativity that was sparked during my time as an undergraduate at the Australian National University More recently Bob Dixon suggested to me that I should write a thesis on how well or badly mo dern syntactic theories fare in treating ergative languages However I havent altogether done that although much of this thesis b ears on that issue mainly b ecause it would have b een dicult to start writing on such a topic without having rst sorted out my own views on the typology of ergative languages Having started with Australia let me complete my thanks for that part of the world Ive appreciated having Avery Andrews as an email corresp ondent and o ccasional coau thor Ive also b een lucky enough to meet various other Australian linguists while at Stanford mainly ANU graduates of an earlier time and so I am in the unexp ected p osition of knowing more Australian linguists now than when I b egan at Stanford If the choice of topic still harks back to my Australian education the treatment of it b ears much to my Stanford education I had a wonderful four years at Stanford I also remember the climate fondly as winter b egins to descend in Pittsburgh The p eople on my dissertation committee were among those that contributed most to my time at Stanford Joan Bresnan was welcoming right from when we rst met provided brilliant and inspiring lectures organised workshops and discussion groups at Stanford and did everything she could to assist me in writing this dissertation in less than ideal circumstances I think p erhaps my biggest debt to Ivan Sag is for helping me to b ecome part of the larger linguistics community but I learned a lot else from Ivan over the years including much ab out how to do and present research Peter Sells is legendary among Stanford students for the quantity and quality of help he gives to students b oth individually and in lectures and I appreciate what I received v even more now that I can see how busy life is on the other side of the fence Thanks also to the many others at Stanford from whom I to ok courses and seminars The nal member of my committee was Mary Dalrymple who I thank not only for her many comments on the content and organization of this thesis but also for her advice help and friendship throughout my time at Stanford Most of my contact with Mary was not actually at Stanford but at Xerox PARC I was very fortunate to receive a Xerox internship for the summer of and then to have a continuing asso ciation with Xerox PARC Not all that much of what I learned at PARC app ears in this thesis but it has b een exceedingly useful in other places not least in my new job I learned ab out many things from Ron Kaplan including LFG theoretical com putational linguistics and the history of computing He also always dealt eciently with nding ways to pay me despite my irregular schedule Others that contributed to the quality of my time at PARC include Jeanette Figueroa Marti Hearst Julian Kupiec John Maxwell Hinrich Schutzeand Hadar ShemTov Nearly all the examples in this dissertation come from published sources and thus this dissertation would not have b een p ossible at all without the dedicated eldwork of others A dozen or more examples are taken from the work of each of Maria Bittner Bob Dixon Michael Fortescue Martin Hasp elmath Paul Schachter and Jerry Sado ck and so they deserve sp ecial thanks although I am also grateful to the many other p eople on whose work I have drawn Thanks also to all the other p eople who help ed me to write this dissertation Edna Paneatak MacLean willingly discussed I nupiaq with me despite the fact that we had to go slowly b ecause of my p o or knowledge of the language Brett Kessler corrected and help ed me gloss the Sanskrit examples G uven G uzeldereokayed some Turkish examples MaraEugeniaNi nowas on hand when needed to provide Spanish judgments and Tagalog references Maria Bittner Miriam Butt Martin Hasp elmath and Jerry Sado ck discussed various asp ects of their and my work with me by electronic and regular mail Not everyone help ed sp ecically with the thesis More general thanks to the others in my year Lynn Cherny Hyewon Choi Yookyung Kim Hinrich Schutzeand Hadar ShemTov May they have the b est of luck with their dissertations Particular thanks vi to Hyewon for b eing my rst friend at Stanford and for submitting this dissertation for me Even more particular thanks to Jane for her love and help This thesis is longer than Janes so I must have disturb ed her more than she disturb ed me Thanks also to our friends in particular Jill Jennifer and Pollo In Gina and Michelle I was fortunate to have some of the nicest administrative sta around And nally to my family not all of whom will b e able to read this vii Transcriptions Abbreviations and Conventions This section describ es conventions and abbreviations that I have used I have tried to make this dissertation useful as a reference do cument There is an index of languages and topics although I should stress that it is incomplete The bibliography also acts as an index of citations at the end of each entry is a list that gives the page numbers where the work is cited At the rst mention of each language strictly the rst mention from Section on outside of fo otnotes I list in brackets its family aliation and where it is sp oken Almost all the examples in this thesis are drawn from previously published sources The source of each example is given in the App endix Sources of Examples Refer ences are to the example number of the cited work where available in the form chex when examples are numbered separately within each chapter otherwise to the page number Most examples app ear using the transcription conventions of my source Some attempts have b een made to make transcriptions and the glossing of grammatical formatives more consistent as outlined b elow All Dyirbal examples are transcrib ed using a form of the practical orthography now in widespread use by Australianists including Dixon The corre sp ondences with the system employed by Dixon are ny N j d r and rr r However the name Dyirbal is not written in the practical orthography where it would b ecome Jirrbal The transcription of Inuit examples is not completely consistent Some West Greenlandic examples are in the ocial orthography while others are in a pure phone mic variant thereof the new orthography continues to distinguish ie uo and vf although these dierences are not phonemic Examples from other varieties of Inuit are transcrib ed as in their source viii Most Lezgian examples use the transliteration system of Hasp elmath but 0 some examples from Mel cuk follow his transcription conventions Mayan examples app ear in the practical orthography of Terence Kaufmann the most unusual feature of which is that is used for glottal stops Tagalog examples