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Model of the Syntactic Structure of Early Proto-Indoeuropean |
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) |