Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area

Volume 34.2 — October 2011

9

“OPTIONAL” “ERGATIVITY” IN TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGES

Scott DeLancey University of Oregon

Abstract: The case-marking systems of Tibeto-Burman languages are a long-

standing problem in both synchronic description and analysis and historical

reconstruction. Early research on the family tended to characterize the family, and

especially the Tibetan languages, as ergative. But work over the last two decades

has demonstrated, first with respect to Tibetan, and then to other languages of the

family, that the prevalent ―alignment‖ is a ―pragmatic ergative‖ pattern in which a

case marker is optionally present on A and some S arguments of the clause. The

―optional‖ presence of the ergative marking is determined by semantic factors,

especially agentivity and perfectivity, and pragmatic factors, particularly contrast. It

is now clear that this grammatical phenomena characterizes the family as a whole,

although there are a few languages which show more familiar typological profiles.

Keywords: Tibeto-Burman, ergativity, relational marking, agentive marking

The newest hot area for research in the typology of case-marking and

grammatical relations is the phenomenon of ―variable‖, ―optional‖, or

―pragmatic‖ marking of Agent, Subject, or A arguments (Barðdal and Chelliah

2009, McGregor and Verstraete 2010, McGregor 2010, Fauconnier 2011, inter

alia). Once again Tibeto-Burman plays a central role, as it has previously with

respect to ergativity, active-stative marking, and inverse/hierarchical indexation.

The contributions in this issue of LTBA offer the same kind of seminal

contribution to the study of pragmatic case marking as earlier volumes of the

journal devoted to evidentiality in TB have made to foundational work on that

topic.

1. ALIGNMENT IN TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGES

From the earliest days of research on Tibeto-Burman languages it has always

been evident that case-marking in these languages operates on principles quite

different from those of Indo-European languages. Western literature on Tibetan

has always had to grapple with the notion of ergativity, a task made more

problematic by the fact that most Western scholars were not otherwise aware of

the phenomenon, and thus had no frame of reference, or name, for it. Western

scholars of Burmese were less confused by the syntactic distribution of its case

markers, which can be reasonably described in terms of roughly familiar notions

of Subject and Object, but have groped for a descriptive framework in which to

account for the fact that indubitable subjects and objects are often simply not

marked.

As the modern study of ergativity has developed, the Tibeto-Burman family,

and Tibetan in particular, have been recognized as important exemplars, and

Scott DeLancey

10

characterized as essentially ergative, in one sense or another (DeLancey 1981;

Dixon 1994). The Tibetan data have always been distressingly non-canonical

(Chang and Chang 1980; DeLancey 1982, 1984a, 1985). And while consistent

ergative case marking is reliably reported in the family, in groups as distant

geographically and genetically as Newar (Genetti 2007: 106-10) and Central

Kuki-Chin (Chhangte 1993), it is now becoming clear that this is a minority

pattern. Extensive work over the past two decades on Tibetan languages, and a

small flood of thorough, text-based descriptions of other languages across the

family, shows that, as first pointed out by LaPolla (1995), the commonest case

marking pattern across the family is one in which an ergative or agentive marker

occurs on A and usually some S arguments, but only under certain vaguely-

defined semantic and pragmatic conditions. With the studies in this issue we have

now reached the point where we can confidently confirm LaPolla‘s proposal of 20

years ago, that ―variable‖ or ―pragmatic‖ ―ergativity‖ is indeed the dominant case-

marking pattern in the family.

What we find, across Tibetan and in the majority of languages across the

family, is that in elicited data we have something approximating a consistent

ergative, aspectually split-ergative, or active-stative case marking pattern, while

in natural discourse the ―ergative‖ marking is found only in some clauses, often a

minority, usually with some pragmatic sense of emphasis or contrast. (In Kumi

(Peterson in this volume) we see the obverse pattern, where elicited data shows no

case marking, but ergative-like patterns manifest themselves in text data).

Tournadre 1991 and Saxena 1990 are the first accounts of Tibetan case marking

to explicitly discuss pragmatic factors; LaPolla 1995 is the first systematic

consideration of case marking across the family to note the pervasiveness of

―case‖ marking sensitive to non-syntactic factors. There is considerable variation

across languages in the degree to which case marking is strictly syntactic or

pragmatically variable (Hongladarom 2007), even across quite closely-related

languages (Zeisler 2010). But some form of the variable pattern is found

everywhere from West Himalayan to Qiangic, from Central Tibetan to Southern

Chin. In fact the consistent, syntactically definable ergative alignment which we

see in Newar or Mizo, although typologically more typical than the variable

pattern, is somewhat anomalous in TB perspective.

In the flush of excitement a generation ago, when linguists first started

thinking about syntax in diachronic terms, it seemed obvious that data like these

should be interpreted as an alignment shift in progress (DeLancey 1977; Givón

1980). It remains important to keep the diachronic perspective in view – a very

noteworthy fact about Tibeto-Burman languages is their tendency to innovate new

case postpositions1 (DeLancey 1984c; LaPolla 1995; Noonan 2009; Huang 2010;

1 The fact that a language has innovative case markers does not automatically mean that case

marking in itself is a recent innovation, as is sometimes inferred (e.g. LaPolla 1995: 189, Coupe

this volume). If, as generally assumed, PTB had the same SOV syntactic profile as virtually all

the modern languages, it would be unusual, at least in an Asian context, for it not to have had

case-marking postpositions.

“Optional” “Ergativity” in Tibeto-Burman Languages

11

and Coupe‘s contribution to this volume), and it is likely, as LaPolla and others

have suggested, that there is a connection between this fact and the variability of

case marking in synchronic grammars (LaPolla 1995; Chelliah 2009). But it is

certainly unrealistic to imagine that all the data which have been presented on

pragmatic case marking in TB represent languages in flux, particularly in light of

evidence for the panchronic nature of the phenomenon in Tibetan and Bodic.

Not all TB languages have been described as ergative; a significant set,

including many Lolo-Burmese and Bodo-Garo languages, appear at first glance to

have a more nominative-accusative cast. But for Burmese, the best-known

example, the case is by no means so simple. As in Tibetan and elsewhere,

―subject‖ marking is not syntactically obligatory, but is strongly determined by

pragmatic factors; this has been a long-standing problem in Burmese linguistics

(Lehman 1973; Thurgood 1978; Wheatley 1992; Sawada 1995; Soe 1999: 94-

116). Something similar appears to be true for ―subject‖ marking in Boro. Given

that in languages with the pragmatic ergative profile, some intransitive subject

arguments are subject to ―ergative‖ or ―agentive‖ marking, it may well be that the

difference between an ―ergative‖-like language like Tibetan and a ―nominative‖-

like one like Burmese is a relatively minor difference in the conditions under

which the subject marking appears, rather than a major difference in fundamental

syntactic alignment.

While the focus of this volume is on the pragmatic ergative phenomenon, what

Fauconnier (2011) has termed Differential Agent Marking, we should not lose

sight of the strong parallels, and connections, in TB languages between ―subject‖

and ―object‖ marking. The prevalent pattern of object marking in TB is some

variation or another on what is now called Differential Object Marking (Givón

1984; Bossong 1985; inter alia); for two genetically distant examples see

Matisoff 1973: 155-8 and Genetti 1997. This has long been noted as a South

Asian areal feature (Masica 1982, 1986, 2001). The pioneering survey of the issue

in TB is LaPolla 1992; apart from that and one later paper (LaPolla 2004), this

question seems to have been neglected in favor of the more exotic and mysterious

patterns of ―subject‖ marking found in the family. LaPolla characterizes DOM in

Tibeto-Burman as primarily semantics-driven, and on that basis adopts Comrie‘s

(1975) term ―antiergative‖ to describe the typical TB pattern. There are, however,

TB languages where object marking is determined largely or entirely by the same

kinds of pragmatic factors which we see elsewhere in the world, so it is not clear,

at least so far, that object marking patterns in the generality of TB languages are

characteristically distinct from the broader typological picture of DOM which has

been developing since Bossong 1985. In any case this is not the only object-

marking configuration attested in the family (see the account of Central Tibetan in

DeLancey 2001), and we will at some point need to devote the kind of attention to

object marking which is now focused on A ~ A/S marking.

Scott DeLancey

12

2. “ERGATIVE” MARKING IN TIBETAN

In Western handbooks (e.g. Hahn 1985: 53; Beyer 1992: 259-60) and in the

Tibetan grammatical tradition (see e.g. Kesang Gyurme 1992) Classical Tibetan

has been described as an ergative language (though only a few authors use that

term). This characterization is based on the Sanskrit-based Tibetan grammatical

tradition, which can be interpreted2 as prescribing a consistent ergative

distribution for the A marker kyis. A consistent ergative pattern can be observed

in many texts composed according to the rules of Classical Tibetan grammar,

although we also see variable marking in many older texts. Scholars who mention

deviations from consistent ergative marking seldom do more than note it:

La particule dite ―instrumentale‖ peut indiquer : l‘agent, et, comme telle, s‘ajoute

habituellement au sujet des verbes transitifs, plus rarement à celui des intransitifs.

(Lalou 1950: 25-6)3

(Note that Lalou‘s formulation implies that the essential determinant of ―ergative‖

marking is semantic, as also argued by later authors (Chang and Chang (1980),

DeLancey (1985, 1990); there is no consideration of pragmatic factors).

Thus Tibetan, which in the past has often simply meant Classical Tibetan, has

entered the realm of typology as an exemplar of ergative typology:

A volume of linguistic studies carrying ―ergative‖ in its title naturally arouses the

expectation that it will deal inter alia with Tibetan, generally acknowledged as

second only to Georgian as the mother-lode for ergative syntactic structures.

(Miller 1996: 757)

But any attempt to treat the facts of spoken Tibetan as a fit topic for

grammatical investigation independent of Classical grammar must come to grips

with the fact that, in the modern languages, the ―ergative‖ marker just isn‘t always

there when a good ergative marker ought to be (Chang and Chang 1980), and

sometimes is there when it shouldn‘t be (DeLancey 1984a, 1984b, 1985). Modern

descriptions of contemporary spoken varieties of Tibetan give us a quite different

picture. As the study of Tibetan and other TB languages has deepened, a number

of scholars have noted that in both modern (Chang and Chang 1980; DeLancey

1984a, 1984b, 1990; Saxena 1991; Tournadre 1991, 1996; Huber 2005, inter alia)

and older forms (Regamey 1954; Saxena 1990, 1991; Nagano 1995; Takeuchi and

Takahachi 1995) of Tibetan the actual distribution of the ―ergative‖ marker in

connected discourse is quite different from the canonical pattern in which only

2 The interpretation of traditional Tibetan grammars and grammatical categories remains

subject to interpretation; see Tillemans and Herforth 1989, Verhagen 1992, Miller 1992,

Tournadre 1990, 1997, 2010, Tournadre and Dorje 2003, Hill 2004, Zeisler 2006, Vollmann

2008. 3 ―The ―instrumental‖ particle can mark: the Agent, and, as such, is added habitually to the

subject of transitive verbs, more rarely to those of intransitives.‖

“Optional” “Ergativity” in Tibeto-Burman Languages

13

and all (or all, subject to restrictions of tense/aspect or person) A arguments of

transitive clauses are marked. From the beginning of modern, linguistically-oriented research on spoken

Tibetan, it has been clear that the problem of the distribution and use of ergative

case is not a simple matter of marking the A argument to distinguish it from S and

O. Chang and Chang 1980 and DeLancey 1984, 1985 attempt to analyze Lhasa

Tibetan in essentially syntactic, or syntactic/semantic, terms (cp. Tournadre 1995,

1996, Zeisler 2004: 250ff). This work is characterized by a concern with

developing a semantically consistent analysis. For example, Chang and Chang

(1980: 20) note that in intransitive clauses, the ergative often appears with

perfective -pa (/-pʌ/), and seldom with non-perfective -kyis (/-qī/), verb forms,

then suggest a semantic interpretation for the residue:

When the base is followed by -qī, however, the use of the ergative with intransitive

verbs is rare in any construction ... This suggests that the ergative with intransitive

verbs is correlated with accomplished fact. (Chang and Chang 1980: 20-21)

In an early paper (DeLancey 1984), I tried to interpret my Lhasa data – mostly

obtained through direct elicitation, with all of the advantages and problems

intrinsically associated with such data – in terms of the complex notion of

―Transitivity‖ developed by Hopper and Thompson (1980), and in a later paper

(1990) in terms of a proposed cognitive model of human action. DeLancey 1984,

1985, 1990 describe modern Lhasa Tibetan as having a complex alignment, a sort

of aspectually-split active-stative pattern in which ergative marking is obligatory

on the A argument of a transitive verb in a perfective clause, optional on A

arguments of non-perfective clauses or the S argument of a +control intransitive

verb in a perfective clause, and not possible in non-control perfective intransitives

or any non-perfective intransitive clause. This presentation highlights the fact that

the acceptability of ergative marking varies with two parameters, aspect and

something rather like the traditional concept of transitivity.

This account remains deficient in two related respects. First, it is based

primarily on data obtained through direct elicitation, a method which is useful for

elucidating semantic issues, but which is incapable of dealing with discourse-

pragmatic phenomena. And, as a result of this deficiency, a crucial part of the

puzzle is missing, viz. an account of what determines the presence or absence of

ergative marking in the configurations where it is ―optional‖. Syntactic/semantic

approaches to the problem such as these are oriented toward characterizing the set

of clause types where ergative marking is possible, rather than the set of clause

types where it actually occurs. Casual reference to ―optionality‖ is a time-honored

way of dismissing pragmatic factors, and it is used in just that way my early work

on the topic.

The missing piece, as pointed out by Saxena (1991) and Tournadre (1991), is

the pragmatic force of emphasis or contrast which is associated with ergative

marking. Saxena notes that while ergative marking is optional in elicitation even

in a perfective transitive clause with unmarked constituent order, it cannot be

Scott DeLancey

14

omitted in text examples where the O argument has been marked as a topic by

fronting. Tournadre notes the same interaction with word order, and points out

that there is no syntactic environment where ergative is truly obligatory, and that

wherever it occurs it indicates contrastive focus (see also Zeisler 2004: 514ff). He

shows that the presence or absence of ergative marking often seems to have a

pragmatic (or ―rhetorical‖) force, such that the presence of ergative marking

serves to emphasize the agentivity of the A argument, or to place it in discourse-

pragmatic focus. Unsurprisingly, it has proven extremely difficult to elicit

consistent judgments from speakers about the semantic or pragmatic contrast in

minimal pairs differing only by ergative marking. However, consultants are

consistently clear that there are such differences.

The mismatch between the Classical handbooks and, in many cases, texts, and

modern descriptions of the spoken dialects immediately implies some kind of

diachronic change, with the more typical ergative pattern of the Classical

language changing over time into something like an aspectually split split-S

language. On the other hand, LaPolla (1995) suggests that the pragmatic ergative

pattern is an early stage in the development of ergative marking, and that these

patterns grammaticalize into more typical ergative structures rather than the other

way around. An alternative hypothesis is based on the nature of Classical Tibetan,

which is an artificial standard based in part on attempts to interpret Tibeto-

Burman linguistic structure in the terms of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition.

Perhaps the more consistent ergative pattern prescribed by Classical grammarians

(like much Western research on the language) represents an imposition of Indo-

European concepts of paradigmatic case-marking on a language which in fact was

organized on quite different principles. As we have noted above, scholars have

noted examples in the texts of ergative case in clauses where it is not predicted by

a strict ergative rule, and its absence in clauses where it would be expected.

Takeuchi and Takahashi (1995) point out that such examples can be found all the

way back to Old Tibetan texts from the 8th

and 9th centuries, lending support to

the idea that Tibetan may well have been a ―pragmatic ergative‖ language

throughout its history.

3. TIBETO-BURMAN AND TYPOLOGY

LaPolla, in his seminal 1995 paper, was the first to note that the variable A

marking phenomenon was not a local oddity of Tibetan, but a pattern attested

across the family. Since then, and especially over the last few years, there has

been a growing stream of reports from newly-described languages, both Tibetan

(Huber 2005; Honglaradom 2007; Zeisler 2007) and others (Chelliah 1997, 2009;

Coupe 2007; Andvik 2010; Lustig 2010; Hyslop 2010; Huang 2010, and now the

contributions in this volume), sufficient to settle any doubt that this is a

characteristic TB feature.

There is considerable variety in the details of these systems – indeed it is

remarkable how often we see apparent variation across descriptions of closely

related languages (Zeisler 2007, Teo to appear, Coupe this volume). This may in

“Optional” “Ergativity” in Tibeto-Burman Languages

15

part simply be a reflection of the complexity of these systems and our difficulty in

describing them: [F]or Tshangla clauses, the presence of the agentive case marker -gi is determined

by a combination of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors instantiated within

the individual clause as well as the larger discourse context, no single one of which

is sufficient on its own to motivate agentive marking. (Andvik 2010: 124)

(Andvik then devotes 30 pages to a painstaking discussion of the various factors

which influence the presence or absence of ergative marking in his data). But the

same semantic and pragmatic factors – aspect, agentivity, and contrastiveness –

turn up consistently: The conditions for the distribution of ergative case marking in K[yirong] T[ibetan]

are quite complicated. In short, verb type (control, valency) and aspect determine

whether the use of the ergative is allowed at all. When it is allowed, its use seems

to have a purely pragmatic function ... the speaker having mostly the aim of

emphasizing the A or S argument. (Huber 2005: 61)

For a thoroughly non-Bodic language, compare Zaiwa: [T]he agentive/instrumental suffix <-(N)eq

1> emphasizes the agentive role of the

subject. This normally happens when the subject is inanimate … [but it] also

occurs which the subject is animate. The use of this suffix apparently emphasizes

the fact that the subject really performed the given action, for example when this

was done on the sly. (Lustig 2010: 261)

Of course the influence of aspect or agentivity on the case marking of A and/or

S arguments is not a novel observation; the important typological news here is the

discourse-pragmatic dimension.

As we have noted, certain TB languages, such as Burmese and the Bodo-Garo

languages, are often discussed as having a nominative alignment. But once we

have recognized the pragmatic ―ergative‖ function as extended to agentive

intransitive subjects, and under special conditions even to subjects of involuntary

verbs like ‗die‘ (see Coupe‘s paper in this volume), the distinction between such a

language and one like Burmese, where the ―subject‖ postposition occurs under

very much the same kinds of pragmatic conditions, and differs from the

―ergative‖ only in occurring more freely with non-agentive arguments, begins to

seem more a matter of degree than of a fundamental difference in ―alignment‖. In

the same vein, the subject suffix in Boro, while much more frequent in text than

what is described for most of the languages discussed in this volume, nevertheless

is not invariable. It marks what can be described as ―specific‖ arguments, a notion

related to but broader than ―definite‖ as it occurs in English. Since most subjects

are specific, most subjects take the suffix, but not all.

A number of authors have emphasized the impossibility of situating the

pragmatic case marking tendencies of TB within current conceptions of

Scott DeLancey

16

grammatical relations and ―alignments‖ (Bhat 1991: 107ff; LaPolla 1992, 1995;

Tournadre 1995; 1996; DeLancey 2005; Coupe this volume). A pragmatically-

governed case marking is not exactly an ―alignment‖, in the sense of a

morphosyntactic system which distinguishes grammatical relations, since neither

all nor only A or A/S arguments bear a characteristic marking (LaPolla 1992,

1995, 2004). Unlike the well-known situation of languages like Yupik, there is no

reason here to think that we are dealing with something like an antipassive

alternation. There are no other morphosyntactic correlates to the presence or

absence of ergative marking, and certainly no evidence whatever of any change in

grammatical relations. Indeed, as LaPolla and others have argued, it is

questionable whether these languages are best described even as having a subject

or object relation, much less machinery for reassigning them.

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