Possessive subjects, nominalization, and ergativity in North Russian

• Published in: GRAMMATICAL CHANGE IN INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE WORKSHOP ON INDO-EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS AT THE XVIIITH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, MONTREAL, 2007, Bubenik, Vit, Hewson, John, & Rose, Sarah [Eds], Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009, pp 207-220 Vol. 305; pp. 207 - 220
• Main Author: Jung, Hakyung
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: The Netherlands John Benjamins Publishing Company 2009
• Subjects: Alignment; Grammatical Change; Historical & comparative linguistics; Language History; Paleolinguistics; Periphrasis; Russian; Syntactic Structures; Voice
• ISBN: 9027248214; 9789027248213
• ISSN: 0304-0763
• DOI: 10.1075/cilt.305.21jun

This paper explores the development process of the North Russian be-perfect construction, with a focus on the innovations that resulted in particular case & agreement patterns. I argue that the North Russian perfect developed from a passive construction into an active structure through the derivation of the agentive subject from the possessive expression & the nominative object reanalysis of the patient argument. In this process, the underlying structure of the passive underwent distinct degrees of nominalization, which caused the variations of object case-marking & agreement found in modern dialects. I evaluate the North Russian construction as ergative, given that the North Russian structure is identical with ergative patterns found in Hindi, Inuit, Nez Perce, etc. in terms of the inherent case-marking on the subject & the limited availability of the accusative case for the object, both of which make the nominative marking on the object possible.