7. On Mechanisms by Which Languages Become Ergative

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Participants vii
4. Acknowledgments ix
5. Introduction xi
6. I. The Nature of Syntactic Change
7. 1. On the Gradual Nature of Syntactic Change 3
8. 2. Syntactic Reanalysis 57
9. 3. Reanalysis and Actualization in Syntactic Change 141
10. II. Word Order Change
11. 4. The Drift from VSO to SVO in Biblical Hebrew: The Pragmatics of Tense-Aspect 181
12. 5. Syntactic Change and SOV Structure: The Yuman Case 255
13. 6. Motivations for Exbraciation in Old English 291
14. III. Syntactic Change and Ergativity
15. 7. On Mechanisms by Which Languages Become Ergative 317
16. 8. The Syntactic Development of Australian Languages 365
17. IV. Development of the Copula
18. 9. A Mechanism for the Development of Copula Morphemes 419
19. 10. From Existential to Copula: The History of Yuman BE 445
20. V. Clisis and Verb Morphology
21. 11. The Evolution of Third Person Verb Agreement in the Iroquoian Languages 493
22. 12. From Auxiliary Verb Phrase to Inflectional Suffix 525
23. 13. Clisis and Diachrony 539
24. VI. Multiple Analyses
25. 14. Multiple Analyses 583
26. Author Index 609
27. Language Index 615