ABSTRACT

In the most general terms, ergativity means that subjects of transitive and intransitive clauses are treated differently in the morphology (morphological or surface ergativity) and/or with respect to syntactic processes (syntactic or deep ergativity). This chapter shows that ergativity is not a uniform phenomenon that types languages neatly into ergative and non-ergative languages. Languages may show ergativity only in the morphology, show partial syntactic ergativity, ergativity in head marking or dependent marking, while also showing non-ergative alignment under (partially) contrasting conditions. Recent approaches to ergativity and case thus need to account for a vast variety of patterns.