Re: Evolution of Applicatives

From:    Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
> For the language I was talking about recently on the list, I would
> really like to know how a language can evolve applicatives if it
> doesn't already have them. I always have problems with things like
> that: I can understand how existing structures etc can be reanalysed
> as having new meanings, and how sound changes etc can remove
> distinctions, but I don't quite understand how a language with nothing
> at all similar already can gain things like applicatives.
Just look at English, for example.  Mark Baker has argued (IMO
plausibly) that English has a kind of "abstract incorporation"
with verbs which take prepositional complements become phonologically
fused to them, and then this process feeds passivization, which
cannot normally occur with prepositional complements:

(1) a.  John has slept in the bed.
    b.  The bed has been slept in.
(2) a.  David was writing on Tuesday, but not Thursday.
    b.  **Tuesday was being written on.

(1b) is fine for most, if not all, speakers, but (2b) is
ludicrously ungrammatical. For Baker, all applicatives are
kinds of incorporation, so this fits the bill well enough.
So, to really answer your question, it may be something as
simple as reanalysis of a phrasal boundary that leads to
the development of applicatives in a language which used
not to have any.

> But since some languages have them, it must be possible...
> on a related note, are there any ergative languages which have
> applicatives?
Mayan languages, which are mostly ergative, have them IIRC.

> And if there are, do they promote arguments to
> Absolutive?
In some languages, but not in others.  Check out Baker's book
_Incorporation_ (a reworking of his dissertation, really). This
has a lot of discussion of the typology of causativization and
applicativization.  My understanding is (to be brief) that some
languages are like English (the goal can passivize, the patient
can't), some are like some Bantu languages (the patient can
passivize, the goal can't), and others are like IIRC Norwegian
and some English dialects (where both arguments can passivize).
This ability to passivize is correlated with case marking, as
well.

> Since Absolute is the core case in an ergative
> language is seems less likely somehow than Accusative languages
> promoting arguments to Direct Object...
What constitutes a "core" case depends on the language, though
I would think in most ergative languages both the ergative and
absolutive are core cases.  (Do you perhaps mean the pivot?)

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
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Chicago, IL 60637

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