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Jessica Coon COMPLEMENTATION IN CHOL (MAYAN): A THEORY OF SPLIT ERGATIVITY by Jessica Coon Bachelor of Arts, Linguistics and Anthropology, Reed College 2004 Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUT OF TECL at the OCT 14 2121 Massachusetts Institute of Technology LIArm July 2010 ARCHIVES © 2010 Jessica Coon. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Authof Jessica Coon Dep ment of Linguistics and Philosophy Certified By- .... David Pesetsky 'V Professor of Linguistics I Thesis Supervisor Accepted By ...... .. ... 7 . ......... Irene Heim Professor of Linguistics Chair of the Linguistics Program COMPLEMENTATION IN CHOL (MAYAN): A THEORY OF SPLIT ERGATIVITY by Jessica Coon Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on July 14, 2010 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics ABSTRACT The central claim of this dissertation is that aspect-based split ergativity does not mark a split in how Case is assigned, but rather, a split in sentence structure. Specifically, I argue that the contexts in which we find the appearance of a nonergative pattern in an otherwise ergative language-namely, the nonperfective aspects-involve an intransitive aspectual matrix verb and a subordinated lexical verb. In other words, the nonperfective forms show a dissociation between the syntactic predicate and the stem carrying the lexical verb stem. This proposal builds on the proposal of Basque split ergativity in Laka 2006, and extends it to other languages. I begin with an analysis of split person marking patterns in Chol, a Mayan language of southern Mexico. I argue that the appearance of split ergativity in the language follows naturally from the fact that the progressive and the imperfective morphemes are verbs, while the perfective morpheme is not. Ergative-patterning perfective constructions are thus monoclausal, while progressives and imperfectives involve an aspectual matrix verb and a nominalized embedded clause. The fact that the nonperfective morphemes are verbs, combined with independent properties of Chol grammar, results in the appearance of a split. Next, focusing on Chol, I survey aspect splits in a variety of unrelated languages and offer an explanation for the following universal: in a language with an aspectual split, the perfective aspect will always retain an ergative pattern (Dixon 1979). Following Laka's (2006) proposal for Basque, I suggest that the cross-linguistic tendency for imperfective aspects to pattern with locative constructions is responsible for the biclausality which causes the appearance of a nonergative pattern. Building on Demirdache and Uribe-Etxebarria's (2000) prepositional account of spatiotemporal relations, I propose that the perfective is never periphrastic (and thus never involves a split) because there is no preposition in natural language that correctly captures the relation of the assertion time to the event time denoted by the perfective aspect; instead, perfective is the default aspect. The proposal here thus accounts both for the appearance of aspect-based split ergativity without the need for special rules of Case assignment, and also provides an explanation for why we find the splits in certain aspects and not others. Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Professor of Linguistics 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to begin my expressing my deepest gratitude to the Chol-speakers who have shared their homes, meals, friendship, and language with me over the past nine years. I am especially grateful to Matilde Vizquez Vazquez, Virgina Martinez Vizquez, Doriselma Gutierrez Guti6rez, Juan Vizquez Alvarez, Dora Angelica Vizquez Vizquez, Nicolis Arcos L6pez, Nicolas Arcos Alvarez, and Pedro Gutierrez Sanchez for all of their help with Chol. Thank you to the entire Vazquez Vazquez family -especially Don Jes6s, Fabiana, Hermelinda, Maria, Matilde, Julio, and Dora-for the hospitality and generosity they have consistently shown me. Special thanks are due to Irineo and Virginia, as well as Elmar, Maria de J6s6s, Morelia, and Orlando, for bringing me into their family and for teaching me far more than what is covered in this dissertation. It goes without saying that the work presented below would have been impossible without these people. Wokox awdall! I consider myself fortunate to have had David Pesetsky, Norvin Richards, and Sabine Iatridou as my dissertation committee. Their comments, encouragement, and advice have been critical both in the writing of this document, and to my professional life as a whole. While I learned a lot in classes over the years, I have learned perhaps most of what I know as a linguist from meetings and discussions with these individuals. In turn, they have each learned more details of Chol grammar than perhaps any other people who have never set foot in Chiapas, and I am immensely grateful for their enthusiasm and support of my work on this language. In particular, I would like to thank David Pesetsky for being an incredible mentor; his encouragement, advice, and love of syntax have been inspiring. Thanks to Norvin for teaching me how to ask the right questions and for countless helpful suggestions throughout. I thank Sabine for always asking me the right questions and never letting me gloss over issues I didn't understand. In addition to the core members of my committee, I am grateful to numerous individuals who have provided important comments, questions, and suggestions on this material during its development over the years. I am especially grateful to Judith Aissen, Juan Vizquez, and Roberto Zavala, for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts. Thanks also to Adam Albright, Edith Aldridge, Jonathan Bobaljik, Seth Cable, Chris Collins, Amy Rose Deal, Marcel den Dikken, Danny Fox, Robert Henderson, Alana Johns, Jeremy Hartman, John Haviland, Irene Heim, Itziar Laka, Alec Marantz, Diane Massam, Pedro Mateo Pedro, B'alam Mateo-Toledo, Jim McCloskey, Matt Pearson, Gilles Polian, Masha Polinsky, Omer Preminger, Kirill Shklovsky, Donca Steriade, Peter Svenonius, and Martina Wiltschko. My time at MIT would have been considerably less enjoyable without my classmates and friends, in particular Gillian Gallagher, Maria Giavazzi, and Omer Preminger. Days in the office were always better with Gillian around, and I doubt I would have survived first year without her friendship and perspective... probably not the other years either, for that matter. I would like to single out Omer Preminger for being not only a great friend but also a great syntactician. I have subjected Omer to countless half-formed thoughts and confused questions. Many of the ideas that made it to this dissertation grew out of, or were improved by, discussions with him. I would like to thank John Haviland for introducing me to Mayan languages, Matt Pearson and Giilgat Aygen for introducing me to formal syntax, and Roberto Zavala for an invaluable semester at CIESAS. I am grateful to the following individuals for their expertise, discussions and judgments on a variety of languages: Itziar Laka and Omer Preminger for Basque; Andres Salanova and Maria Amelia Reis Silva for M6bengokre; Rafael Nonato for Kisedj8; Kirill Shklovsky for Tseltal; Robert Henderson for Kaqchikel and K'ichee'; Pedro Mateo Pedro and B'alam Mateo-Toledo for Q'anjob'al; Pranav Anand, Rajesh Bhatt, and Kush Varshney for Hindi; Jim McCloskey for Irish; Pritty Patel for Kutchi Gujarati; Peter Graff and Patrick Grosz for German; Masha Polinsky for Austronesian and Tsez; Conor Quinn for Algonquin; and Norvin Richards for most of the rest. Finally, thank you to my families. To my parents Ray and Kathy for everything they did to get me where I am, to my sister Monica for all of her help in these last stages of writing, and to Kevin, Ann, Kyra, and Reid for welcoming me into their family. I am especially thankful to Jess for his love, support, and constant patience. He deserves at least another page of acknowledgements, but for now I just add that I could not have done this without him. Thank you to Nelly for giving me the time and peace of mind to get this work done. Finally, to Ella, for keeping it all in perspective. I am happy to acknowledge the financial support that has made this work possible: MIT's Ken Hale Fund for Field Research, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant (#0816923), as well as research funds granted to Noam Chomsky by Ik-Hoon Lee. This material is also based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Any shortcomings or errors in the data or analysis are my own responsibility. cha'ai Virginia CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1.1 Ergativity .. ....... ...... 1.2 Split Ergativity: The puzzle ..... 1.2.1 Split-S .. ...... .... 1.2.2 Aspect split .... .... .. 1.2.3 Nonperfective verbs .. ... 1.2.4 Directionality of splits . .. 1.3 Outline of the dissertation . ..... 1.4 A note on methodology .. ..... 2 Mayan basics, splits, and subordination 2.1 Chol and the Mayan family . ... 2.2 Typological basics .. ....... .. 2.2.1 Predicate initiality .... .. 2.2.2 Roots, Stems, and Predication 2.2.3 Eventive Predicates .... .. 2.2.4 Aspect . ...... ..... 2.2.5 Person marking .. ..... 2.3 Ergativity and split ergativity in Mayan 2.3.1 Subordinated clauses .. ... 2.3.2 Pre-verbal adverbs .. .... 2.3.3 Aspect ..... ...... 2.3.4 Previous analyses . .... 3 Verbs and nouns in Chol 3.1 Verbs (and only verbs) have DP complements . .. .. ..... .. .. 3.1.1 One-place predicates and Split-S ... .. .. .. .. .. .. 3.1.2 Complementing and complementless forms ........... 3.1.3 On predicate-external subjects.. ... .... ...... 3.1.4 The v generalization ... ..... .... ..... .. .. .. 3.1.5 Alternations ..
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