Euskararen lerrokadura ergatiboaren sorreraz

Resumen

In this paper, the rise of the ergative morphological alignment of Basque is discussed. The process which caused this rise is to be located before Aquitanian and the beginning of the contact with Latin, at some point of Proto-Basque.

Following Trask’s (1977) proposal, it will be assumed that, since the initial slot of all the finite verbs of present conjugations and many of the past/irrealis conjugations is occupied by a P (= Patient) marker, an application of Givón’s principle according to which “today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” (e.g. nator ‘I come’ < *ni da-tor) should lead to the logical conclusion that these transitive finite verbs come from passive predicates (e.g. nakus ‘(s)he sees me’ < *ni da-kus ‘I am seen’).

The previous postulate can also provide an explanation for some classical problems, both morphological and syntactic, of Basque linguistics, such as the split ergativity, the rise of the ergative marker -k in the noun-declension, the rise of the agreement markers of non-pronominal origin -t and -k, and the drift AVO > AOV in the order of constituents.