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Article published In: Diachronic Dimensions of Alignment Typology
Edited by Eystein Dahl
[Diachronica 38:3] 2021
► pp. 314–357

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Two types of alignment change in nominalizations

Austronesian and Japanese

 | Academia Sinica
 | University of Tsukuba
Published online: 23 July 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.19044.ald
Abstract
This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives.
With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.
Résumé
Cet article propose deux analyses concernant le changement d’alignement résultant de la réanalyse d’un type de proposition enchassée nominalisée dans lequel l’argument externe était au génitif et l’argument interne était focalisé. Nous montrons qu’un sujet génitif au début du développement des langues austronésiennes est devenu un sujet ergatif lorsque les propositions relatives objet dans les constructions clivées ont été réanalysées comme propositions principales transitives. A l’inverse, le cas génitif marquant un argument externe dans les propositions nominalisées en japonais ancien a été étendu au marquage de tous les sujets après la réanalyse des arguments de cause dans les constructions psychiques impersonnelles en tant que sujets thématiques de prédicats inaccusatifs. Ainsi, nous montrons qu’il n’existe pas de chemin préétabli pour les changements d’alignement. Il serait plus juste de dire que l’alignement résultant peut être ergatif ou accusatif selon les conditions syntaxiques impliquées dans cette réanalyse.
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Artikel schlägt zwei Fälle für den Wechsel der Ausrichtung vor, die beide aus der Reanalyse einer nominalisierten eingebetteten Phrase resultierten, in der das externe Argument im Genitiv stand und das interne Argument fokussiert war. Wir zeigen, dass ein Genitiv-Subjekt in der frühen Entwicklung der austronesischen Sprachen zu einem ergativen Subjekt wurde, wenn Objekt-Relativsätze in Spalt-Konstruktionen als transitive Hauptsätze reanalysiert wurden. Im Gegensatz dazu weitete sich die Genitiv-Markierung in nominalisierten Phrasen des Altjapanischen von externen Argumenten auf alle Subjekte aus, nachdem kausative Argumente in unpersönlichen psychischen Konstruktionen als Themen-Subjekte von unakkusativischen Prädikaten reanalysiert worden waren. Auf diese Weise zeigen wir, dass der Wechsel der Ausrichtung keinem vorbestimmten Verlauf folgt. Vielmehr kann die resultierende Ausrichtung ergativisch oder akkusativisch sein, abhängig davon, welche syntaktischen Bedingungen im Prozess der Reanalyse involviert sind.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Genitive to ergative in Austronesian
    • 2.1Previous connections between Austronesian clause structure and nominalization
    • 2.2Reanalysis
    • 2.3Summary
  • 3.Genitive to nominative in Japanese
    • 3.1Two types of genitive markers in Old Japanese
    • 3.2After OJ: A change from active to accusative alignment
    • 3.3Reanalysis
      • 3.3.1Psych predicate constructions
      • 3.3.2Impersonal psych transitive constructions in Old Japanese
      • 3.3.3After OJ: Psych predicate constructions
    • 3.4Summary
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • Digitalized texts
  • References
References (94)
Digitalized texts
The Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ), the National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics, [URL]
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