Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

>I am not an expert on Basque, but I am given to understand that there
>are some split-S characteristics lurking around in it.  Something about
>light verbs, IIRC.
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"light verbs"? Well, Basque is ergative in so much as the argument of a
morphologically intransitive verb is invariably abs, but it does
sometimes have semantically intransitive verbs appearing with transitive
auxilliaries, more often when there is clearly a controlling agent etc,
and also sometimes has "empty" agreement with the abs argument. An
example is:

deitu dizut
I called it to you

This is one way of saying "I called you", with empty agreement with a
non existence patient. However,

deitu zaitut
I called you

With you as the abs argument, is also acceptable. Similarly, there are
many compound verbs which are semantically intransitive which take
transitive auxilliaries, but this reflects their origin as transitive
verb + object. For example, "hitz egin" (sometimes written "hitzegin"
without the space), to talk, literally means "to make word". Hitz
(meaning "word") is lacking the normal markers of a noun phrase here
(all full NPs require a quantifier or determinant), but the origin of
this "compound verb" as a full patient + transitive verb is clear, which
is why it still takes transitive marking (this is not true
incorporation, as sometimes "hitz" can be separated from "egin" by other
words).
 I can't think of any clear examples of extensive split-S behavoir on
the part of Basque. The construction with ari (which is marginal and not
a core part of the verbal system) arose because the progressive forms of
verbs were once verbal nouns + locative suffix, and "ari" is an
intransitive verb meaning "to act". Thus for instance:

horri esaten ari naiz
I'm telling (it) to him/her

was originally "I'm acting at telling (it) to him/her", and ari ("to
act") still is an intransitive verb used in the modern language, which
tellingly takes an argument in the abs case. If a verb with an argument
so clearly an actor as "to act" takes abs, then it's pretty clear that
Basque doesn't have strong Split-S tendencies.