Although Basque’s case-marking pattern has conventionally been regarded as ergative, I argue in this article that it is not straightforward to determine whether this pattern is actually ergative or rather semantically-based. Several factors make this one a complex issue. Perhaps the most important factor among these, and one which has gone largely unnoticed in the literature, is the fact that there are clear dialectal differences regarding the behavior of lexically-simple unergative verbs. Another complication comes from establishing the specific contrast underlying the putative semantic split among Basque intransitives. With these questions in mind, I propose that the case-marking system of Western Basque should be considered semantically aligned instead of ergative. This system is based on a contrast patientive / non-patientive. Conversely, Eastern and Central Basque may be considered to have an ergative case-marking system, but one which differs in some respects from that of the most typical ergative languages and which is not too different from a semantic system.
2019. Mapping variation in Basque: The BiV database. Linguistic Typology 23:2 ► pp. 347 ff.
Martinez de la Hidalga, Gillen, Adam Zawiszewski & Itziar Laka
2019. <i>Eppur non si muove</i>: Experimental evidence for the Unaccusative Hypothesis and distinct ɸ-feature processing in Basque. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4:1
2022. Latin and Romance Influence on the Basque Verbal Morphosyntax. Journal of Language Contact 14:3 ► pp. 497 ff.
Nash, Léa
2022. Nonunitary structure of unergative verbs in Georgian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 40:4 ► pp. 1201 ff.
Pineda, Anna & Ane Berro
2020. Hybrid intransitives in Basque. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1
Rezac, Milan, Pablo Albizu & Ricardo Etxepare
2014. The structural ergative of Basque and the theory of Case. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32:4 ► pp. 1273 ff.
Rott, Julian Andrej, Elisabeth Verhoeven & Paola Fritz-Huechante
2023. Directionality in the psych alternation: a quantitative cross-linguistic study. Linguistic Typology 0:0
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