Doctoral Dissertation Research: Syntactic Ergativity in West Circassian

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

A central question in linguistic research on the structure of sentences is how to identify the subject of a sentence, and whether this can be done in a uniform way for all languages. In many languages (e.g. English and Japanese), the subject can be identified as the most prominent element in a sentence, according to many grammatical phenomena. However, so-called ergative languages present a puzzle to this relatively stable cross-linguistic picture, since in these languages, the object, rather than the subject, behaves as the most prominent element according to some of those same phenomena. Two broad approaches have been taken in dealing with ergative languages. The first consists in claiming that ergativity is a surface phenomenon; that is, it is not a reflection of deep structural differences between ergative and nonergative languages. The second approach claims that ergative languages are in fact structurally different from nonergative languages, in that the subject is not always the most prominent element in the sentence. Settling this debate will be an important step towards gaining a better understanding of the range of possible variation in the structure of human languages. An important step in addressing this debate is the close investigation of languages that have been claimed to be ergative, since many of them remain relatively understudied. The present project focuses on one such language: West Circassian, of the Northwest Caucasian family. Based on previous descriptions of the language, the PI and co-PI adopt the second approach described above as their initial hypothesis in accounting for ergativity in this language. In order to test this hypothesis, the co-PI will work with native speakers of West Circassian in the Republic of Adygea, Russia. The data to be collected will primarily comprise recorded conversations with speakers and oral narratives. Whether the hypothesis is confirmed or not, the project will present a valuable contribution to our understanding of the limits of linguistic variation, as well as to our knowledge of currently understudied aspects of West Circassian. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.