A new grammaticalization pathway: from non-finite verb to ergative marker

Guillaume Jacques

1. Introduction
Studies on the diachronic origin of ergative and agentive markers (Palancar
2002, Heine and Kuteva 2002) have focused on the development of ergative
from other case markers, in particular spatial cases (ablative, locative,
allocative, perlative) as well as genitive and instrumental.
These diachronic pathways are indeed widespread. For instance, the
ergative s, -kis in Tibetan is obviously related to the s in other cases such as
the ablative las, the elative nas and the comparative bas (see Hill 2011 on
the use of these cases in Old Tibetan).
This is however far from being the only attested origin of ergative markers.
In this paper, we present data from Tangut showing a grammaticalization
pathway from a converbial form of the verb to do to the ergative. We first
describe some syntactic properties of the ergative in Tangut, and then
propose a path of grammaticalization accounting for this development.

2. The ergative in Tangut

Kepping (1979, 1985: 242-8) first pointed out the existence of an ergative
marker in Tangut, the disyllabic marker dj.wji (NB: the tone on the first

syllable is unknown). This marker is not only unusual in being disyllabic in a

language where most grammatical morphemes are monosyllables, but also by its very
low frequency. Most transitive sentences have no case marking at all on the agent and
the patient (see for instance example (6) in this paper) and their canonical word order
is SOV. As in all Sino-Tibetan languages, the arguments are often elided and a single
finite verb form is a complete sentence.
We do not yet have a complete searchable database of all Tangut texts, but i n
three juan of Leilin (3, 4 and 5; this corpus was based on Kepping 1983 and
Shi et al 1990), we find 60 examples of ergative (120 out of 22753 syllables).
It is not possible to provide an exact figure for the number of transitive clauses
in this corpus. However, a preliminary estimation can be given using the
number of transitive alternating verbs which present the B form in 1SG>3 and
2SG>3 and the A form elsewhere (see Gong 2001 and Jacques 2009). We
find 1158 verbs in A form and 179 verbs in B form in this corpus; while the
real figure of all transitive verbs is much higher (since most transitive verbs,
even among common ones, are non-alternating), this gives a maximum
frequency estimate: one transitive clause out of 22, at most, is marked with
the ergative.
Given its rarity, the marker dj.wji is only a marginal morpheme for
marking grammatical relations in Tangut. Syntactic roles are indicated in part by
verbal agreement (Kepping 1985, Jacques 2009), but this morphology (comprising
stem alternation and a set of suffixes) is only informative for speech act participants;

unlike direct-inverse in Rgyalrong languages (see Gong to appear), there is no

morphological marking in 3>3 forms to distinguish agent and patients.
The postposition .jij marks the patient of a transitive verb (including the
recipient of bitransitive verbs), the genitive and perhaps the only argument of
intransitive verbs (Kepping 1985 gave a few examples of the latter, but some more
research is necessary to confirm this). As such, it is an almost prototypical case of
what LaPolla (1992) called anti-ergative, and is much more common than the
ergative marker (we find 443 examples in the aforementioned corpus). It mostly
appears with human patients, but examples with inanimates are also attested as in (1),
a case of left dislocation of the patient.

(1)
thja

dew
.jij
mjaa
this
fruit
ANTIERG
mja-dzji- mo
APPREHENSIVE-eat[A]-IRR

djow

we

b lu

nj

fly

bird

bug

PL

Birds and bugs could eat these fruits. (Leilin 03.29B2)

It is possible for both the ergative and the antiergative to appear in the same
sentence with canonical SOV word order, as in (2). The ergative is a real
ergative, not an agentive, in that it is not attested with intransitive predicates,
even in cases of strong volitional action.

(2)
sjwa kow

dj.wji ljii j no

Xuan Gong

ERG

prince

.jij

dja- ljiij

zjo

ANTIERG

PFV-destroy

when

When Xuan Gong destroyed the prince, (The twelve kingdoms p.23,
Solonin 1995: 192, 39)

The ergative commonly occurs with human agents as in (2), but also with
animals (3) and even inanimates as (4).

(3)
wej

.u

di dzji

su

ka

wu

le

ditch

middle

fox

COMP

precipice

area

tiger

eat[A]

dj.wji
ERG

Better to be eaten by a tiger in a precipice than by a fox in a ditch.

(Tangut proverbs, Kychanov 1974: 112, 190)

(4)
m

dj.wji

.w

kj-pju

wu

dja-sji

fire

ERG

1SG

husband

PFV-burn[A]

INSTR

PFV-die

The fire burned my husband and he died. (Leilin, 4.11A.5).

Example (3) is the only example found up to now of dj.wji in postverbal (antitopical) position in Tangut. It is also attested with the causal linker

 nioow because of, as in (5).

(5)
thj tja .war
this

TOP

sjij dj.wji nioow

thing smel-

ERG

ly

be-

lj
PART

cause

This is due to smelly things. (Leilin 06.12A.1)1

The only case of the ergative used with first or second person pronouns is in
reported speech, as in (6). None of the verbs in this sentence have second
person marking; this is because it illustrates a case of hybrid indirect speech:
the verb form is in direct speech (it represents the original utterance) while the
person markers and the flagging on the arguments is in indirect speech
(represents the point of view of the speaker).

(6)
nji
PEARL

nja
2sg

dj.wji dj-lhjwi
ERG
PFV-take

.wji
do[A]

wu
INSTR

.wj-dzji
PFVeat[A]

.j-a
say1SG

I will say that you have taken the pearl and have eaten it. (Leilin
04.02A.1)

Unlike Rgyalrong languages, the ergative marker in Tangut is distinct from the
instrumental wu illustrated in (7). The marker wu also commonly

In the context of the story from which this sentence is taken (about the physician Hua Tuo), it means more
precisely it is because (you ate) smelly/imperfectly cooked (meat).

occurs as a clausal linker (as in (6) above).

(7)
tuko
Tugan
g

bjr
swor
d

wu
INSTR

rjijr
horse

kj
foot

dja-kjw .wji
PFV-cut
do[A]

Tugang cut the horses foot with his sword (Leilin 03.24A.6)

Tangut thus presents a combination of differential object and differential agent

marking. The ergative marker dj.wji is unusually among the known
cases of optional ergative marker by its low frequency; survey such as
McGregor (2010) or the issues 34.2 and 35.1 of

Linguistics of the Tibeto-

Burman Area (see in particular Chelliah and Hyslop 2011 and DeLancey 2011)
have not reported a similar phenomenon.
The following table presents of classification sentences with

dj.wji

in the chapters 3-6 of Leilin: the rows indicate whether the agent is human or
inanimate (there were only two examples of animals as agent in this part of
the corpus; they are not included) and the column distinguish whether the
object is overt or covert, whether it receives anti-ergative marking, and
whether, if overt, it follows SOV or OSV orders. Referents indicating groups of
people (such as countries for instance) were counted as human.

hum.
inan.

non overt O
hum.
inan.
18
0
0
0

SOV
hum.
inan.
6
3
3
5

SO-antierg-V
hum.
inan.
11
0
0
0

OSV
hum.
inan.
8
1
0
0

Table 1: Sentences with the ergative marker in the juan 3-6 of Leilin
For a complete evaluation of the function of

dj.wji in Tangut texts, a

similar Table with the transitive sentences without ergative marker must also
be completed, but due to time constraints, this research could not be
undertaken here. The following preliminary generalisations can be proposed
on the basis of these limited data. First, inanimate agents marked with the
ergative normally appear with an overt patient following SOV order. Second, if
sentences with antiergative are not counted, SOV and OSV order are equally
common in sentences with overt patient and with the agent in the ergative.

3. Etymology of the Tangut Ergative and its grammaticalization pathway

Although all modern languages closely related to Tangut described up to now
have agentive or ergative markers, none of them present any resemblance
with dj.wji, which must be a Tangut-specific innovation.
The etymology of dj.wji is transparent, and has already been
explained by Kepping (1985:246), who glosses it as do an action
( ). It contains the noun dj action and the verb .wji
to do, an alternating transitive verb whose 1SG>3 and 2SG>3 stem is .wjo
(see Gong 2001, Jacques 2009). This stem alternation never appears
however on the ergative marker itself even when the agent is 1SG or 2SG, as
we saw in example (5). However, since the personal suffixes and TAM affixes
never appear on the ergative marker, it is safe to assume that it has ceased to

be synchronically analyzed as a verb, even though its etymological structure

is still clear.
No similar case of grammaticalization has apparently been presented in
the literature up to now. However, in some varieties of Western Tibetan
(Zeisler in preparation), we find an interesting case of grammaticalization
where the converbial form of the verb to do bas-te (do:PST-CONV), meaning
having done in Old Tibetan, has been grammaticalized into a causal marker
because of, due to (base in Sham and

aste in Leh). This marker must be

combined with the ergative case, which has been preserved from Old Tibetan
in that language.
Since the change from causal marker to ergative is straightforward
(Palancar 2002 presents numerous examples of ergative-causal syncretisms
and evolutions from causal to ergative), Western Tibetan shows a possible
intermediate stage between the converbial form of to do and the ergative
marker. On this basis, we propose the following grammaticalization path (7).

(8) converbial form of DO >

having done

CAUSAL

marker >

ERGATIVE

because of

Tangut differs from Tibetan in that the ergative marker, in addition to verb verb
to do, contains the noun dj action. This noun, when used on its own,
translates Chinese y action, karma or sh technique, ability. In order

to account for the presence of this noun in the ergative marker, an

anonymous

reviewer

suggested

that

at

some

stage

during

the

gramamticalization process of dj.wji, the noun dj action was a

kind of dummy object, and that its used could be glossed into English as he
did his thing or even he did it. While in attested Tangut texts there is no
evidence that dj action can be used in such a way, it is possible that the
grammaticalisation of dj.wji indirectly preserves a former construction
where this noun was used as a quasi-pronoun.
It is unclear whether the low frequency of use of dj.wji is due to its
grammaticalization from a converbial phrase rather than from a postposition
(and ultimately a nominal). The marker dj.wji in Tangut had not been
fully grammaticalized: the absence of any trace of phonological attrition (it is
the only disyllabic grammatical morpheme in the language) betrays a recent
origin and its restricted use suggests that at the time when the Tangut texts
were written it was still limited to highly marked agents, and has not yet
spread to become a more general agent marker.

4. Conclusion
In this paper, we have described some of the syntactic properties of the
Tangut ergative marker dj.wji and provided a first evaluation of its
frequency in Tangut texts. We show that it attests a hitherto undescribed
grammaticalization pathway from a converbial form of the verb to do to an

ergative marker.
It is possible that future studies on Sino-Tibetan or other language families
will reveal similar cases of ergative or of other case markers derived from
converbial verb forms.

References

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Tibeto-Burman Area 34.2: 1-7.
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10

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