The History of Raising and Relativization in Polynesian

Some Polynesian languages have accusative case systems, while others have ergative systems. Chung 1978 has argued that the Proto-Polynesian case system was accusative, and that the case systems of the ergative languages are the result of a PASSIVE-TO-ERGATIVE re-analysis, which re-interpreted passiv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language (Baltimore) 1980-09, Vol.56 (3), p.622-638
Main Authors: Chung, Sandra, Seiter, William J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Grammatical clauses
Idioms
Linguistic complements
Linguistics
Nouns
Polynesian studies
Pronominalization
Relative clauses
Transitive verbs
Verbs
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Summary:Some Polynesian languages have accusative case systems, while others have ergative systems. Chung 1978 has argued that the Proto-Polynesian case system was accusative, and that the case systems of the ergative languages are the result of a PASSIVE-TO-ERGATIVE re-analysis, which re-interpreted passive structures as superficially active and transitive. We argue here that the passive-to-ergative re-analysis accounts historically for the unexpected properties of two syntactic rules found in ergative Polynesian languages: (a) the Raising rule of Niuean, and (b) the Relativization rule of Tongan and many Samoic-Outlier languages. Such an account is desirable since these rules are typologically rather unusual. Niuean Raising counter-exemplifies Postal's (1974) suggestion that Raising is universally restricted to complement subjects, while Relativization in Tongan and many Samoic-Outlier languages violates Keenan & Comrie's (1977) Accessibility Hierarchy. We conclude by arguing that certain differences in the histories of Raising and Relativization in Polynesian follow from the different characterizations of the two rules in universal grammar.
ISSN:0097-8507
1535-0665
DOI:10.2307/414453