Grammatical semantics of ergative constructions in Western Indo-Aryan languages
Liudmila Khokhlova
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Abstract: The typological evolution of Indo-Aryan languages demonstrates numerous deviations from the truly ergative model not only in the formal morpho-syntactic features of ergativity (marking of syntactic primitives and verbal agreement), but also in the grammatical semantics. There is no opposition of agentive/factitive verbs typical for ergative languages and no semantic motivation for the strategy of encoding the role characteristics of actants, which precludes the presence of multiple diatheses for a single predicate. Nominal marking does not correspond to the principle “one role — one case”. An ergative agent may point to a referent that is not in control of the situation.
Keywords: typological evolution of Indo-Aryan languages, morpho-syntactic features of ergativity, grammatical semantics of ergative constructions
For citation: Khokhlova L. Grammatical semantics of ergative constructions in Western Indo-Aryan languages. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2025. Vol. 8, iss. 2. Pp. 122–138. (In Rus.) doi:10.37632/PI.2025.22.57.005
