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Model of the Syntactic Structure of Early Proto-Indoeuropean
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All Indoeuropean languages are nominative languages. That means that
they use a special case called nominative as marker of the subject both
in transitive and intransitive sentences. The case of the (direct) object
in transitive sentences is called accusative. These cases are marked by
the endings -s/-d (nominative) and -m/-d (accusative) in nouns (singular).
The endings -s and -m are used for the animate gender, the ending -d is
used for the inanimate one. None of the other cases shows gender markers.
If you are interested in further questions concerning case and gender look
at the
page referring to nouns.
Nevertheless it has often been maintained that an early stage
of Proto-Indoeuropean was an ergative language, although there is no Indoeuropean
language of this type. Well-known ergative languages are the Basque and
the Georgian languages for example. Ergative languages resemble the passive
voice construction of nominative languages. That means that in transitive
sentences the subject is the patient whereas the agent shows the case endings
of an oblique case called "ergative". The case of the subject is called
"absolute". The same subject case is used in intransitive sentences and
marks the agent there. So you can say that the agent shows different cases
in transitive and intransitive sentences and that the case of the patient
in transitive sentences agrees with the case of the agent in intransitive
sentences, whereas nominative languages mark the agent in both sentences
by the nominative (the case of the patient in transitive sentences does
not agree with the agent case in intransitive ones). I do not want to prove
this claim but I will try to build a model of how the hypothetic ergativic
stage of early Proto-Indoeuropean could have worked.
First of all, it is necessary to say that the current nominative
must either be a new case or a reinterpreted oblique one. With the nominative
in its current function you see simply a nominative and not an ergative
language. The easiest way to reach an ergativic stage is the following
one: The verb has not been changed anyway. The case of the patient in the
transitive sentence has not been changed anyway. That means that the current
accusative must have been the "casus absolutus", which was also used as
subject case in intransitive sentences. The agent in transitive sentences
was expressed by the "casus ergativus". At the moment when a new case called
"nominative" occured for use as the agent both in transitive and intransitive
sentences a nominative language was born. An ergative language of the type
described above is a weak type one because just before the establishment
of the nominative the verb showed concordance to the agent whereas in ergative
languages of the strong type the verb shows concordance to the subject
i.e. the patient in transitive sentences. I think that this weak type is
the first step towards a nominative language and that this step is a necessary
one for the transformation. I assume that the locative which ends in -i
(beside endingless forms) was used as ergative case. In a reflexive sense
also the dative could be used for the agent. Now look at the system of
the origin of verbal endings!
According to this verbal ending system I suggest the following
original syntactic structure for early Proto-Indoeuropean at its (latest)
ergativic stage period (the verb showing concordance to the agent):
Sentence type / Syntactic element
|
Agent of Transitive Sentence
|
Patient / Subject of Intransitive Sentence
|
Verb
|
| intransitive |
(none) |
N-e (pronouns) or N-0+-m/-d = gender markers (nouns) |
R-e-V-Xintr-e |
| explanation |
(none) |
nominal stem (N) + ending absolute (accusative) |
reduplication (R) + verbal stem (V) + intransitive (perfect)
ending set (Xintr) |
| transitive |
N-i |
N-e (pronouns) or N-0+-m/-d = gender markers (nouns) |
R-i-V-Xtrans-i |
| explanation |
nominal stem (N) + ending ergative (locative) |
nominal stem (N) + ending absolute (accusative) |
reduplication (R) + verbal stem (V) + transitive (primary
active) ending set (Xtrans) |
| reflexive (medium voice) |
N-ei/-oi |
... |
R-(o)i-V-Xrefl-oi |
| explanation |
nominal stem (N) + ending dative |
... |
reduplication (R) + verbal stem (V) + reflexive (primary
medium) ending set (Xrefl) |
At the time when the nominative as new agent case (ending in -s/-d)
was developed to be used both in transitive and in intransitive sentences,
a direct transformation from the former ergativic system to the current
nominative system took place as you can see in the table above. As the
concordance system "case ending of the agent - reduplication vowel - verbal
ending vowel" lost its sense at the same time, secondary endings could
develop by reduction of the ending under the influence of the augment (é-bher-o-nt
< é-bher-o-nt-i and so on).
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Written by Hans-Joachim Alscher
e-mail: hans.alscher@noel.gv.at
